Toronto has been turned into a police state. ibid.
Above each cage they had two CCTV cameras and a little toilet in the corner with cameras pointing at that as well … Dark and scary and really cold … a cold cage in a warehouse. ibid.
And they said, We’re strip-searching you … kept beating me in the face … kicked me in the legs … I have one man sitting on me beating me … ibid. protester
You won’t be making it to the protest today. ibid rozzer
People dressed in black attire going behind a police line. ibid. protester
If the bubble touches me, you’re going to be arrested for assault. ibid. rozzer
They organised councils of the unemployed. And effectively pushed for social security and unemployment insurance. The party fought against the racial segregation and discrimination that were the accepted practices of the day. Seeing Red: Stories of American Communists, 1983
You may have heard of the Earth Liberation Front: the Attorney General himself says it’s a domestic terrorist organisation; the FBI says it is one of the most dangerous groups in the country. The ELF has claimed responsibility for more than two-dozen acts of eco-terrorism. If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front, 2011, news, 2011
This thing is complex … no-one got hurt. ibid. Daniel
I protested constantly … I wrote hundreds of protest letters. ibid.
There is this new kind of protest … people would call it sabotage or monkeywrenching. ibid.
In the months after the Ranger Station fires there was a split within the environmental movement. ibid.
Six of Daniel’s co-defendants have appeared in court to accept plea-deals; in exchange for reduced sentences they’ve agreed to testify in the government’s case against the remaining defendants. ibid.
In 1999 tens of thousands of people converged on Seattle to protest the WTO and its effect on the environment and labour … The police responded with force to clear the streets. ibid.
40th anniversary of the Great GM Sit-Down Strike: ‘… faced the buckshot, faced the teargas, this armband still has the teargas on it. The Women’s Emergency Brigade of Flint, Michigan made American history …’ With Banners & Babies: Story of the Women’s Emergency Brigade, conference speaker, 1979
We were the pioneers of the labour movement. ibid. striker
The more you produced, the more likely you would keep their job. ibid.
The foremen were using the girls and holding it over their heads that if they didn’t do what they wanted to do, they wouldn’t have a job. ibid.
That’s all we had in Flint, Michigan – churches and bars. ibid.
We met in a little coalshed. ibid.
They would have done anything to turn one against the other. ibid.
That’s when we decided to form the Women’s Auxiliary. ibid.
General Motors’ goons – our lives were in danger – they actually prepared with guns. ibid.
First they turned the heat off on ’em, then they turned the water off on ’em. ibid.
The victory was won and the UAW was born. ibid.
‘My father … was a skilled roofer and he was a union man, and he said, If you go to work and there’s a union, join it, no matter what kind it is. Any union is better than none, and if there isn’t one, organise one.’ Union Maids, 1976
This is the story of three women who were part of the rank and file labour movement during the tumultuous 1930s. Their lives were like many other young working women. But all three rose to the demands of their time and became militant organizers for their class. ibid. caption
‘People took what ever little work they could get … Hoover told us that prosperity was just around the corner.’ ibid.
‘The whites and blacks did different kinds of work and made different kinds of pay also.’ ibid.
By the mid-1930s workers saw they could not make gains without the strength of a union. But the American Federation of Labor refused to organise the growing number of unskilled workers. The AF of L was made up of many separate trade unions. ibid. caption
‘The most exciting meetings were those that were called at the shop gates.’ ibid.
Since Trump took power activists have seen a disturbing escalation in state repression against civil liberties, most notably the case of the J-20 for over 200 protesters and journalists mass-arrested at Trump’s inauguration are now facing years even up to decades in prison. Abby Martin, The Empire Files: Trump Expands Police-State Crackdown on the Left, 2017
While Martin Luther King junior was leading the charge in the South, one Californian woman was fighting on the front line for workers’ rights … She might well be the most vocal activist you’ve never heard of. Dolores, news bulletin, 2017
‘But when it came time then to make it a union, the CSO decided not to support us.’ ibid.
‘The feudal wage slavery of agro-business is just an extended of the attitude that has existed in the country.’ ibid. activist
1962: ‘We had 1,000 members. We had benefits. We had a life insurance plan. We had an office. We started a credit union.’ ibid. Dolores
‘There was so much violence against the Filipinos. ibid.
‘Dolores Huerta and Cesar Chavez felt it was possible to organise farm workers when no-one believed that that was possible.’ ibid. Angela Davis
‘It was total government interference. So this was very clearly not only a battle against the growers, it was a battle against the government and their support of the growers.’ ibid. Angela Davis
On the eve of World War I we had very powerful radical movements that were on the cusp of taking power and they were effectively crushed during the War. Chris Hedges, lecture Centre for International Governance Innovation August 2018, ‘The Collapse of the American Empire’
Delacroix was right. It is the struggle that matters. Not the outcome. I was where I should have been that Saturday in front of the Paris Opera House. Yes, our cries were not heard. Chris Hedges, Truthdig online 2019, ‘Only the Struggle Matters’
Yes, it may be futile. But the fight is what makes us human. It gives us dignity. It affirms life in the face of death. ‘This eternal combat’ brings with it, as the painter knew, a strange kind of consolation that lifts us up to the level of our despair. ibid.
When many people think of the Black Panther Party today, the image that comes to mind is male-centered and violent: a powerful man wearing the Panther’s signature black beret, with gun prominently in hand. This image has been seared into the collective conscious and appears on thousands of posters and T-shirts. It may be surprising, then, to learn that by the early 1970s, the Black Panther Party was two-thirds female.
Historian Ashley Farmer, who is a postdoctoral fellow at the Clayman Institute for Gender Research, offers an alternative to the conventional, macho portrayal of the Black Panthers. Farmer’s research shows that women played an instrumental role in shaping the black power movement. Their participation created new political models that encouraged women to be active and public revolutionary figures alongside men.
Farmer combed through publications such as The Black Panther newspaper to find evidence of black women’s public role. She looked particularly at newspaper artwork produced by women artists. What she found is that these women defied gender roles by depicting women as strong, gun-toting revolutionaries. In addition, women set a community-focused revolutionary agenda that supported programs for daycare, groceries, and housing. This research forms part of Farmer’s future book, tentatively titled What You’ve Got is a Revolution: Black Women’s Movements for Black Power.
The Black Panther Party formed in 1966 with the goal of protecting black neighbourhoods and ending police brutality. The organization’s rapid expansion into multiple cities across the nation, along with high-profile arrests and protests, soon made the Black Panthers an icon of 1960s counterculture.
Key to the Panthers’ iconic success, according to Farmer, was a series of commanding drawings and photographs of the black male revolutionary. These images were first included in the organization’s newspaper, The Black Panther (1968-1980). The revolutionary artwork contained within the newspaper’s pages produced a striking visual lesson in how to be a revolutionary, explains Farmer. What’s more, the enduring popularity of these images today helps fuel the common belief the party was largely male-centred.
But, by purposefully seeking out female artists, Farmer discovered that women played a crucial role internally in the creation of Black Panther revolutionary art and in shaping the black power movement.
Farmer examined the work of Tarika Lewis, whose artwork appeared in the first issues of The Black Panther in the late 1960s. Lewis helped create the popular image of the black male revolutionary. As Farmer explains, this shows how African-American women were integral to shaping the masculine Panther image from the Party’s earliest years. However, Lewis also challenged this early focus on the male image – by depicting women in similar revolutionary poses.