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I wonder how many present-day Republicans are even remotely familiar with this history? Or, if they've conveniently forgotten? My hunch is, a bit of both. Anyway, this is exactly the kind of history they'd like to not be taught because it might make their little angels feel bad about themselves. As the saying goes, if you're not made uncomfortable by some elements of history, you're not getting the whole story. A lot of lessons for today from our past...

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A story only a true historian could put into context! 🙏

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Thank you Heather for the history lesson on the African American effects on the history of the labor movement in America. So enlightening. I had never had anyone put together for me, how the suppression of the Blacks in the South, was tied into the anti labor position of the US Government years ago, and how much that helped change the nature of the Republican Party into what it is today.

I am glad you also got a mention in about the Pestigo Fire. My mother's family was involved in the lumber industry in the Upper Peninsula. This fire was legendary up there for generations. Horrible!!!

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Thank you, Heather for the History lesson tonight. I had never heard of the Peshtigo Fire! Now I know. And know more about the Great Chicago Fire! I hope you had a "Happy Birthday".

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Oct 9, 2022·edited Oct 9, 2022

LABOR NEWS HEADLINES & REASONS WORKERS HAVE BEEN VOTING FOR REPUBLICANS

'Where Are All the “Pro-Worker” Republicans Now?'

'While employees at Amazon and Starbucks win historic unionization campaigns, the “populist” wing of the GOP has been noticeably silent.'

'Howard Schultz’s fight to stop a Starbucks barista uprising'

'Amazon loses key step in its attempt to reverse its workers' historic union vote'

'Workers file for union vote at another Amazon facility'

LABOR FEB. 9, 2022

‘Pro-Worker Conservatives’ Are Just Union Busters in Thin Disguise'

'Throughout the second half of the 20th century, Americans with college degrees were more likely to vote Republican than those who lacked them. Today, the opposite is true.'

‘Meanwhile, in every presidential election from 1948 to 2012, white voters in the bottom third of America’s income distribution were more Democratic than those in the top third. Now, low-income whites vote to the right of wealthy ones.’

‘… a major, pro-labor shift in the Republican Party’s economic philosophy is not one of them. In 2016, Donald Trump did disavow his party’s most toxic fiscal ambitions (slashing Medicare and Social Security spending). But he also argued that America’s minimum wage was probably too high and that corporations paid too much in taxes. Once in office, Trump sought to gut public health insurance from the poor, cut taxes on the wealthy, deny guaranteed overtime pay to 12.5 million workers, undermine workplace-safety standards, … the Republican coalition grew more working class over the course of Trump’s first term. In 2020, a large number of blue-collar Hispanic voters flipped to the GOP, while the exodus of college-educated whites from red America continued apace.'

‘…Republicans will eventually need to align their agenda with their rank-and-file’s material interests. ‘… In 2020, (Oren Cass, a former Mitt Romney adviser and founder of the think tank American Compass) called on conservatives to recognize that “strong worker representation can make America stronger” — a sentiment that has now found expression in the Teamwork for Employees and Managers Act, the GOP’s most tangible legislative effort yet to win the hearts and minds of the working class.’

‘Cass did not ask his fellow Republicans to drop their opposition to the existing labor movement. On the contrary, he denounced Big Labor as an egregiously leftwing, overly political bureaucracy that did not serve workers’ best interests. ‘…his think tank’s surveys consistently showed that workers do not want unions engaging in politics and prefer forms of workplace organization that are not adversarial to management.’

'Of course, a union’s fundamental purpose is to secure workers’ leverage over bosses. The balance of power between an employer and individual employees is profoundly unequal. Most Americans have scant personal savings, enjoy meager unemployment benefits, and can be fired at will. Thus, individual workers generally have far more to lose from pushing back against an employer’s demand than an employer does from ignoring a worker’s request. For the worker, the termination of an employment contract can threaten their basic material security; for the employer, it mostly threatens a small, temporary disruption to business until a replacement can be hired. When workers organize into adversarial unions, however, they can credibly threaten to disrupt business massively by withdrawing their labor en masse, through a strike or work stoppage. This capacity to materially harm management is the wellspring of organized labor’s power. Every major concession that workers have won from capital in American history — from health-care benefits to the weekend — was won through adversarial labor relations.’ (NYMAGIntelligencer) Sorry no gifting possibility.

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Wow. I had to stop for a few moments after I read todays letter. I looked at the bottom of the letter where I find all the citations. I scanned the letter again then put my phone down and walked away. My husband and I have been basking in the warm glow of the Post Season success of our favorite baseball team (the Mariners, if you must know) but, I can’t shake the images of the letter from my mind.

I think anymore when I look at the stated policies and promises of the Democrats or the Republicans at any given point, past or present, and try to figure out who the guys in the white hats are in this round, I have to shrug my shoulders and say sometimes I can’t tell the players without the scorecard.

Who gets to be the standard bearer for the Everyman? When Lincoln was alive, and into the first decade after the Civil War, the Republicans spoke for the downtrodden. But, how long did it take for the fear of the Great Unwashed having greater influence in public policy and politics to have their hair standing on end? It wasn’t until FDR that the Democrats tried on the white hat for fit.

I’m weary. I’m weary and tired and afraid. Col. Alexander Vindeman’s words, “Here right matters” that I firmly believed, were dashed on the rocks, mocked and derided by the CORRECTLY described Deplorables. I’m sitting in my comfortably blue state that hasn’t elected a Republican as governor since 1980 that now may be facing the possibility of a MAGA governor! The Republican who may win is a mere shell of a suit compared to most of the gubernatorial candidates who were not elected in the past 40 years. Hershel Walker! Oh, my! How have we, as humanity, gotten to this place???

I am weary, I am tired, I am disappointed. I am afraid. I want to believe that our better Angels will prevail in the battle of goodness and right over the darkness of meanness and spite. I don’t know. I don’t know anymore.

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The past is truly present.

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"The past is never dead. It's not even past." - William Faulkner

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One slight correction. “India” and “Egypt” had nothing to do with the cotton trade as independent actors. They were totally controlled by the British and Anglo-French imperial overseers. If India had had a chance to control its own industrial development the world would be different today. The British glutted the market for cotton, and the competition between the South and the British Empire over cotton was part of the equation of 19th c. global politics.

This letter simply demonstrates that there were no “good” actors in the 19th century: not in Britain or Europe or the USA. We all have a lot to answer for. And that people like the Owenites, who tried to develop a humane industrial revolution—and were suppressed and destroyed because they showed that it could be done—were right all along.

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"They elected to office leaders who promised to confiscate wealth through taxation and give it to Black citizens in the form of roads, schools, and hospitals. "

God forbid taxes should be used to build roads, schools and hospitals! Heavens! What is the world coming to!

And certainly not to forgive any student loan debt! Good Lord! Many of them are poor and (horror of horrors) black!

A lot hasn't changed a bit.

"Post racial society" my Great Aunt Fanny!😡

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I hadn’t heard about the Peshtigo fire before tonight’s LFAA. Not surprising, given the circumstances outlined in the Letter. The moneyed class’s panic about worker’s rights, the black vote, and “socialists” has a long history in this country. Capital has ridden the current of fearful ignorance for a long time, rather successfully.

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Oct 9, 2022·edited Oct 9, 2022

While liberal democracies, broadly speaking, regard capitalism as a reasonably productive system, virtually all but the U.S., in my view, largely have come to recognize that capitalism is not very good at distribution unless wedded to social democratic institutions that contain its excesses and moderate its self serving impulses. For me, the Professor’s history lesson has provided added insight into why Americans today are far too easily duped by Republican rhetoric that aims to conflate socialism based on the idea of social ownership of the means of production typically controlled by the state or government with democratic socialism based simply on a more equitable distribution of a nation’s wealth. Moreover, I think that same history also reveals why it’s so difficult for far too many Americans to appreciate that the security of our nation and its people depend on a far more cooperative environment in which there is a modicum of social and economic justice for large numbers of people today who feel oppressed and marginalized by a runaway wild capitalism.

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Oct 9, 2022·edited Oct 9, 2022

AMERICAN ‘PATRIOTISM’ THEN AND NOW

Several days ago I lunched with two ‘late middle agers’and my NYU pre-med grandson. We got on to the subject of ‘patriotism.’

The 90-year-old, who immigrated from Germany in 1971, spoke of how Germans were surprised, visiting America in the 60s & 70s, by the abundance of American flags. They were puzzled by this display of patriotism. [He said that after WW II displays of German flags were avoided until about a generation and more later.]

We were appalled at how Trumpists seem to have taken the American flag as their own. I recalled how, after returning from my Congo experiences, when I went to a football game with my daughter, I would bawl during the playing of the Star Spangled Banner.

We agreed that the image of American ‘patriotism’ is extremely obscured these days. As Heather underscores, the Republicans don’t give a damn about what’s good for the United States. It’s Republican political slime, including supporting such scum balls as Trump, McConnell, and Cruz.

By contrast, President Biden is the personification of a proud and patriotic American. He is dedicated to pursue the interests of the United States and the great majority of the American people.

An overwhelming number of Democrats, many Independents, and some ‘RINOS’ share Biden’s dedication to American patriotism. How can we restore this selfless, patriotic pride in the face of all these despicable Trumpublicans?

As Kate Smith phrased it “God Bless America.”

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Geez Louise, is there any difference between our “dangerous classes” and that of the caste system in India??

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Oct 9, 2022·edited Oct 9, 2022

Thank you for putting our present political issues into an historical context. I have to take issue with your analysis of the reason for the fame of the Great Chicago Fire over the Peshtigo Fire that took many more lives. Chicago was linked by telegraph to the world and the Western Associated Press shared details of the fire with the world in real time. In the words of historian Carl Smith in his recent book, Chicago's Great Fire: "... the Great Chicago Fire was the first instantaneously reported international news event, details of which reached an audience in the tens of millions while it was happening." There was no one in Peshtigo with the resources to spread the news and it became a forgotten footnote. It is evidence, however, of the tinder dry conditions that existed throughout the midwest that autumn.

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Agreed on the happy birthday wishes, professor. And thank you. This is another story that changes history for me, and explains so much.

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