Continuing my notes on 'Classes' by Erik Olin Wright

#WorkingClass #Socialism #Socialist #Marx #Marxism #Capitalism #Philosophy #Economics #Politics #AmWriting #AmReading https://proletarianperspective.wordpress.com/2025/06/19/part-2-the-agenda-of-contemporary-marxist-analysis-notes-from-classes/

The workers' freedom must be the work of their own hands, the emancipation and liberation of the working class cannot be granted or imposed by external political parties or authorities, but must be achieved through autonomous, collective action and self-organization.

$50 TRILLION
Upward Transfer: According to the Economic Policy Institute, the top 1% has siphoned off $50 trillion from the working and middle class since 1975. That’s not capitalism — that’s looting.

#politics #trump #fascism #maga #failure #workingclass

Mamdani: This military parade the other day is a perfect example of everything that’s wrong with the MAGA movement—a focus on pomp and circumstance over actually addressing the needs of working- and middle-class Americans.

https://bsky.app/profile/acyn.bsky.social/post/3lrqudblgms2a

Um his yes, common sense speaking again: Covid & disability is ABSOLUTELY about working class people and should be talked about as such! #covid #longcovid #communism #socialism #leftists #disability #workingclass #health #medsky

RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:ewik4sc47eaez25i3qw6fi3e/post/3lrsuolbouc2b

From @rbreich via Substack: "The giant #Trump Republican bill now before the Senate—the so-called 'One Big Beautiful Bill'—cuts #taxes for #high earners and #reduces #benefits for the #poor and #WorkingClass." https://robertreich.substack.com/p/the-most-regressive-bill-in-well

#Classconsciousness is understanding that #immigrants #asylumseekers and #refugees are also #workingclass https://t.me/wobbliechannel/9096

"Scum (Back) On Top: Part Ten"

#Mephistopheles #Schattengeld #GoldAndSilver #WorkingClass #MoneyClass #BelgianCongo

https://www.writingsandart.com/Art/Scum%20Back%20On%20Top/sbot10.html

#USA has to justify the #Israel #colonizer experiment because they did it in #America with #natives and #black people. They are still doing it.

#WorkingClass #Solidarity around the world.

#Capitalism is a failing experiment.

We need a true #democracy.

We need #socialism.

#DictatorshipOfTheProletariat

Since our department was privatised we've noticed a drop off a cliff in the quality of the equipment we're provided to do the job/service.

It took a month and a half.

Today in Writing History June 10, 1928: Maurice Sendak, author of “Where the Wild Things Are,” was born in Brooklyn, New York. A little boy once sent him a card with a drawing on it. Sendak was so moved he sent the boy another letter with his own personal “Wild Thing” drawn on it. The boy’s mother sent Sendak a thank you note saying that her son loved the card so much he ate it. Sendak considered that one of the highest compliments he ever received. Sendak was an atheist Jew who lost numerous family members in the Holocaust. He was also gay.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #mauricesendak #author #writer #books #children #holocaust #antisemitism #lgbtq #newyork @bookstadon

Today in Labor History June 10, 1937: The mayor of Monroe, Michigan organized a vigilante mob of 1,400 men armed with baseball bats and teargas to break the picket line at Newton Steel. As a result, eight strikers were injured and hospitalized. The vigilantes also vandalized sixteen of the workers’ cars dumped eight of them into the river. During this same strike wave in the steel industry, there was a Memorial Day Massacre, in Chicago, in which the police beat and shot scores of people, including men and women, killing at least 25. There was also the Women’s Day Massacre, in Youngstown, Ohio, in which 2 workers were killed. 10% of the union at that time was made up of African American workers. Although few women worked in the industry, they played a pivotal role in the strike, walking picket lines with the men, risking life and limb in confrontations with the police.

Today in Labor History June 10, 1960: Thousands of council workers and revolutionary students surrounded the entourage of U.S. Presidential Press Secretary Hagerty at Haneda airport in Tokyo. Hagerty had to be rescued by a US marine helicopter, while the pro-imperialist government of Japan collapsed in embarrassment. President Eisenhower, fearing for his life, cancelled his July visit. The protests were part of the 1959-1960 Anpo (Security Treaty) protests. By June, 1960, hundreds of thousands of protestors were surrounding Japan's National Diet building in Tokyo on nearly a daily basis. At least one protestor was killed.

Today in Labor History June 10, 1971: Mexican police, and paramilitary death squads known as Los Halcones, killed 120 student protesters, including a 14-year-old boy, in the Corpus Christi Massacre, also known as El Halconazo. In 1968, the government had massacred up to 500 of students and bystanders in the Tlatelolco massacre. The Halconazo started with protests at the University of Nuevo Leon, for joint leadership that included students and teachers. When the university implemented the new government, the state government slashed their budget and abolished their autonomy. This led to a strike that spread to the National Autonomous University of Mexico and National Polytechnic Institute. To suppress the strike, the authorities used tankettes, police, riot police, and the death squad, known as Los Halcones, who had been trained by the CIA. Los Halcones first attacked with sticks, but the student fended them off. Then they resorted to high caliber rifles. Police had been ordered to do nothing. When the injured were taken to the hospital, Los Halcones followed and shot them dead in the hospital. Silvia Moreno-Garcia writes about these events in her 2021 novel “Velvet Was the Night.” It is also depicted in the 2018 film Roma.”

#workingclass #LaborHistory #students #protest #massacre #mexico #repression #freespeech #police #tlatelolco #cia #film #books #novel #writer #author @bookstadon

“It didn’t occur to me for about five or six years after leaving school that literature was something I could be involved in. Then I discovered it was possible to write stories myself…”

—an extract from James Kelman on “Elitism & English Literature”, from a book I’m currently typesetting

Today in Labor History June 9, 1843: Bertha von Suttner was born (d. 1914). She was an Austrian journalist, author, peace activist and Nobel Prize laureate. She was also a friend of Alfred Nobel, who famously told her that there would not be world peace until a weapon was invented that was so deadly it could annihilate countries in seconds. Some say that it was her activism and advocacy that inspired him to include a peace prize as part of his endowment. Von Suttner wrote “Lay Down Your Arms,” an anti-war novel that made her a leading figure in the Austrian peace movement. However, it was also considered a feminist novel for its characters resistance to accepting traditional gender roles. Tolstoy compared her favorably with Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Read my satirical bio of Nobel here: https://marshalllawwriter.com/the-merchant-of-death/

#workingclass #LaborHistory #peace #antiwar #WeaponsOfMassDestruction #nobel #nobelprize #BerthaVonsuttner #journalism #author #writer #books #novel @bookstadon

Several days ago, the ICE Gestapo illegally arrested David Huerto, President of SEIU, in a raid in Los Angeles. He is still in prison, for doing nothing wrong.

It's an attack on immigrants.
An attack on the working class, on unions.

No one is Free Unless We ALL are Free.

Protests today at noon to force his release

Today in Labor History June 9, 2004: Brian Williamson died. He was a Jamaican activist and co-founder of J-FLAG (in 1998), the Jamaican Forum for Lesbians, All-Sexuals and Gays. They run the Stop Murder Music campaign, which fights for the censorship of homophobic lyrics in Jamaican music. They also co-run the Black Gay Men’s Advisory Group and OutRage, a direct-action LGBTQ activist group. Williamson was one of the first openly gay public figures in Jamaica. He was murdered in his apartment by an acquaintance, at the age of 58. Police officially ruled it a botched robbery. However, J-FLAG believes it was a homophobic attack. Williamson previously survived a homophobic knife attack and numerous death threats.

There is a way forward from the current protests against the Trump oligarchy in Los Angeles and other cities:

"The working class must reject all attempts to divide it along national or ethnic lines. The fight to defend immigrant workers can succeed only through the united mobilization of the working class as a whole—black, white, native-born, immigrant, documented and undocumented alike. This means building rank-and-file workplace and neighborhood committees to oppose the deportation operations and prepare collective actions using the immense social power of the working class."

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2025/06/05/bgvr-j05.html

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