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The Paterson Silk Strike of 1913 was a major struggle in the
history of American labor. Over 25,000 Italian and Jewish workers
shut down Paterson's 300 silk mills and dye houses for almost five
months over the issue of workers' control of the rate of
production. It was the biggest strike in Paterson's history.
Workers overcame their differences in craft, nationality, and
gender; and their democratic self-organization became a school in
self-management. The workers invited the Industrial Workers of the
World (IWW) to aid them. The IWW included a stress on the active
role of workers in the strike and this revolutionary vision of
workers' control reached its fullest expression in the Paterson
Strike Pageant performed by the workers themselves in Madison
Square Garden. This was a revolutionary innovation in theater and
labor struggles which remains an inspiration to labor and the Left.
Anne Bonney had sworn eternal vengeance against the British Empire,
which had sent a fleet to destroy her. But would the vampire in her
own crew be more dangerous?
In the 1930s, ordinary people moved to create grassroots political
movements which saved their communities. This is the story of how
they did this in one New Hampshire town. It remains an inspiration
to us all.
The Great Strike of 1877 was the largest labor upheaval on Earth
for the entire century between the end of the Napoleonic Wars in
1815 and the beginning of the Great War in 1914. For two weeks
America burned. This is that story.
The infamous pirate Blackbeard made a pact with Satan to turn
pirates into zombies and unleash the demons of Hell on the world.
Only the pirate Captain Bartholomew Roberts and the beautiful
pirate Anne Bonny can stop him and his demon hordes at the very
mouth of Hell.
Our memory of Sixties New Left radicals often evokes marches in the
streets, battles with the police, or urban bombings. However, the
New Left was a multi-faceted movement, with diverse tendencies. One
of these tendencies promoted electoral as the way to change
America. In every city that was a center of New Left activism, this
"Electoral New Left" entered the political arena. A surprisingly
large number of these New Left radicals were elected to office:
City Council, Mayor, State Senate, even the U.S. Senate. Once in
office, they persisted and prevailed. Cities and places we think of
today as eternally liberal-Berkeley, Madison, Ann Arbor, even the
state of Vermont-were, deeply conservative and deeply Republican
before the triumphs of the local Electoral New Left. These
"Radicals in Power," however, brought about a lasting political
realignment in their locales, and embodied the vision of a better
future that was at the heart of all New Left activism. However, the
accomplishments of the Electoral New Left, even its very existence,
are almost completely unexplored. Historians of the social and
political movements of the Sixties have focused on anti-Vietnam War
protest movements, or on the Revolutionary New Left. Radicals in
Power corrects that oversight and, in doing so, rewrites the
history of the Sixties and the New Left. Based on interviews with
the elected New Left radicals in each of their cities, Davin
details the birth and evolution of a local and regional progressive
politics that has, heretofore, been overlooked.
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