LABOR CELEBRATES ITS HISTORY

  Harry Targ

LABOR DAY PARADE, 1882. The first Labor Day Parade, held in Union Square, New York City, by the Knights of Labor on 5 September 1882. Wood engraving from a contemporary American newspaper.

https://www.granger.com/results.asp?image=0041831

        On the morning of September 5, 1882, 30,000 men and women bricklayers, freight handlers, printers, blacksmiths, railroad workers, cigar makers, furriers, seamstresses and other workers lined up to begin the first Labor Day march in New York City. Many of the marchers carried signs with such messages as "Labor Will Be United," "Eight Hours for Work-Eight Hours for Rest-Eight Hours for What We Will" and "Strike With the Ballot."

            The New York Central Labor Union spread the word about Labor Day and two years later a national labor organization, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions, resolved at its convention that the first Monday in September be set aside as labor's national holiday. It was to be celebrated by all workers, Black and white, women and men, young and old, skilled and unskilled, industrial and craft. After years of labor-initiated celebrations, the Haymarket Affair of 1886, and the rise of a worldwide anarchist and socialist workers’ movements, and growing support for a Labor Day in cities and states around the nation, Congress finally adopted Labor Day as a national holiday in 1894.

            The original Labor Day was designed to symbolize the demand for the 8-hour day, a healthy work environment, adequate rest, and basic health and other benefits. It also was designed to express the pride that workers felt about their role in the production of all the goods and services in the society. Finally, Labor Day was a time to mobilize workers for the ongoing struggle to achieve a fair and living wage, safe and productive worksites, basic economic security, and worker participation in economic and political decision making.

            The specific issues of the 21^st century are different than the 1880s but the general concerns of workers remain the same.

          -Workers must stop plant closings and the millions of good jobs that have been lost because of capital flight.

          -Workers must stop the shift in the economy from well-paying jobs to part-time and minimum wage jobs. Workers must reverse the 30-year decline in real wages that Americans have experienced.

       -Workers must challenge the decline in health and safety in the workplace.

         -Workers must struggle to reverse the rise in the numbers of homeless people and the declining ability of people to pay for health care.

        -Workers must join with their brothers and sisters from Mexico, Canada, Asia, and Africa to oppose the pitting of underpaid and overworked men and women in one country against men and women in other countries using the excuse of "free trade."

        -Workers must oppose new technologies, such as artificial intelligence and data centers, as long as they destroy jobs, communities, and the environment.

           -Workers must fight back against a state repression (ICE) that kidnaps workers who are defined as "illegal." No worker is illegal.

         -And finally, it is clearer now than ever that worker solidarity worldwide is needed to stop militarism, wasteful military spending, and war.

          To achieve these goals, workers have to combat the economic and political assault on trade unions which reached massive proportions in the 1980s and 1990s. Without trade unions, there would have been no Labor Day proclaimed in 1882 and there would be no Labor Day in 2026.

 

 Hard Ball Press

https://www.hardballpress.org/

 

WAR, MILITARISM, AND RESISTANCE: A DIALECTICAL VIEW (a repost): Still Relevant in 2026

 Harry Targ

(originally posted on Monday, October 1, 2018)

The remarks below and the essay that follows review the historical narrative about imperialism and resistance that are familiar to us but sometimes forgotten. The original presentation is ten years old but seems to remain relevant. despite some significant historical changes. The patterns of resistance in Latin America, from ALBA, Cuba, the Bolivarian Revolution have weakened but the BRICS have increased their organizational efficacy. And, of course, the growing global resistance to Israeli genocide and the US war on Iran have become main foci of global attention. Slowly some on the left have begun to revisit international institutions such as the United Nations system and have encouraged cross-national efforts at solidarity. The world is changing but the core elements of the system of imperialism  ,permanent war, and resistance remain. And the tasks of those of us who support peace and justice remain the same as well. (Sept4ember 3, 2026)

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While aspects of the global order have changed since this essay was written, the main elements--imperialism, militarism, and resistance--remain. In recent days, countries of Europe, Russia, and China have begun to dialogue in opposition to United States global hegemony. While instabilities in the Global South continue, grassroots movements seeking autonomy from neoliberal austerity survive in Venezuela, and models of economic development continue to progress in countries such as Cuba, and China and Russia are further connecting with the Global South. Undergirding this are grassroots mobilizations growing against neo-fascism, racism, sexism, exploitation, and environmental devastation. The Trump administration, through dramatic increases in military spending, a proposed militarization of space, increased covert interventions, confrontations with Russia and China and traditional allies in Europe and North America, is desperately trying to forestall the declining relative power of the United States in the world. This ironically is speeding the growth of resistance. (HT)

Imperialism

I still find compelling the main points about modern imperialism articulated by Lenin in his famous essay on the subject. Reflecting on the transformations of capitalism from its early manufacturing days until the twentieth century he argued that economic concentration had replaced a multiplicity of semi-independent economic actors, manufacturing capital had merged with financial institutions creating a system of monopoly finance capital, and as a consequence the export of capital--what we would call today foreign investment, financial speculation, and the debt system--would replace the export of commodities as the dominant form of economic exchange on a global basis. During some periods capitalist states would divide up the world each extracting wealth of all kinds from its own sphere of influence and during other periods they would engage in competition and even war to pursue profits. Lenin could not foresee a time, from the mid-20^th century until now, when resistance would come not only from competing and militarized capitalist states but from masses of people in colonized, neocolonial, and dependent societies.

The Cold War and Post-Cold War International Systems

The latest phase of the system Lenin described was constructed at the end of World War II. The United States emerged from the war as the most powerful nation and used military, economic, political, and cultural tools to enshrine its dominance. This meant building a system to crush the emerging Socialist Bloc, controlling the drive toward independence of former colonies, and shaping the politics of lesser but significant capitalist states. To achieve these difficult goals, the United States began to construct a “permanent war economy.”

By the 1960s, the United States capacity to control the economic and military destiny of the world was severely challenged. The Tet Offensive of January, 1968 represented a metaphoric great divide as U.S. presumptions of hegemony were sorely challenged by a poor but passionate Vietnamese people’s army. From the late 1960s onward the U.S. was challenged not only on the battlefield but in the global economy. Rates of profit of U.S. corporations declined. Industrialization had led to overproduction. Working classes in the United States and other capitalist countries had gained more rights and privileges. Socialist countries were experiencing significant growth spurts. Countries of the Global South began to demand a New International Economic Order that regulated the way global capitalism worked. In addition, inter-capitalist rivalry grew. On top of all this the price of oil increased markedly.

The response of the global capitalist powers (the G7 countries) to the crisis of capitalism was a dramatic shift in the pursuit of profit from the production of goods and services to what became known as financialization, or financial speculation. The banks Lenin talked about became instrumental. With rising oil prices, oil rich countries awash in new profits, and banks swelling with petrodollars, nations were enticed and forced to borrow to pay for the oil that cost many times more than it had in the recent past. The global debt system was launched. When the United States freed the dollar from the gold standard, currencies themselves became a source of speculation.

The debt system gave international financial institutions and banks the power to impose demands on countries that required loans. Thus, the IMF, the World Bank, regional international banks, and private institutions demanded that the world’s countries open their doors to foreign investors, cut their government programs, privatize their economies, and shift to exporting commodities to earn the cash to pay back the bankers. The era of neoliberalism was advanced by globalization, the scientific, technological, and cultural capacity to traverse the globe. No geographic space could maintain autonomy from global capitalism. So a Cold War that was launched by creating a permanent war economy was transformed by financialization, neoliberalism, and globalization. With the shift of work from higher wage capitalist centers to low wage peripheries, deindustrialization became a common feature of the economic landscape.

By the 21^st century the system of neoliberal globalization was facilitated by new techniques of empire. Wars which traditionally had been fought between states were now fought within states. The United States established a military presence virtually all across the globe with an estimated 700 to 1,000 military installations in at least 40 countries. Major functions of the globalization of military operations had become privatized so massive U.S. corporations gained even more profits from war-making than they had during the days of the Cold War. The military—public and private—began to engage in assassinations and covert “humanitarian interventions.” And, aided by new technologies, the United States and other capitalist countries, using unmanned aerial vehicles or drones, could make war on enemies without “boots on the ground.” As we have learned, intelligence gathering, spying on people, has immeasurably advanced as well.

To put it succinctly, while imperialism remains generically as it has been throughout history today:

-Imperialism has become truly global.

-The military continues to be big business, sucking up at least half of the federal budget.

-The United States has developed the capacity to fight wars without soldiers on the ground.

-Empires, particularly the United States empire, kill with impunity.

-The connections between economic interest and militarism remain central.

-Ideologies defending 21^st century military interventions vary from those neoconservatives who argue that the United States must use its power to maximize our global position to the humanitarian interventionists who claim that the United States acts in the world for good.

Resistance

This narrative is not unfamiliar to us. What is less familiar is the idea that throughout history the forces of domination have been challenged by resistance, sometimes successfully, sometimes less so. It is important to note that the drive for U.S. hegemony, for example, has been affected by resistance. A recent articulation of this narrative appears in the writings of Vijay Prashad, who has described the efforts of the newly independent nations of the Global South to achieve political and economic sovereignty. Many of these efforts from the 1950s to the 1970s faltered at the steps of the debt system and neoliberal globalization. But the struggle has continued. In addition, there have been examples of people such as the Cubans and the Vietnamese who, with much pain and suffering, were able to achieve some measure of economic sovereignty and political independence.

21^st century movements for change are varied and complicate the efforts of imperialism to achieve its goals. Resistance includes the following:

-Mercosur, a trade organization that includes Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Venezuela, Chile, and others waiting for admittance constitutes the third largest trading bloc in the world.

-The development of collaborative relationships among powerful Global South nations. For example, representatives from the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) recently met to chart an independent agenda in global affairs.

-The Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) consists of ten Latin American/Caribbean countries which are launching a program of economic integration and political cooperation.

-The Community of Latin America and Caribbean States (CELAC) is a new grouping of some 33 Western Hemisphere nations, minus the United States and Canada, which will seek to expand regional collaboration.

-Individual nations, based on their historic resistance to imperialism, such as Cuba, Vietnam, Venezuela, and Bolivia, continue to inspire activists.

-The United Nations system, considerably weakened from the days of the Cold War, still engages in global mobilizations through its conferences, support for some progressive NGOs, and projects involving education, development, and peacekeeping. Affiliated organized such as the International Labor Organization pursue goals that are sometimes independent of imperial agendas.

-Global anti-capitalist mobilizations, such as the World Social Forum, have brought together thousands of activists largely from the Global South to discuss the problems faced by workers, women, indigenous people, environmental activists, and others.

-Perhaps most important at this time is the grassroots mobilizations of millions of people all across the globe demanding economic justice, worker rights, gender equality, environmental justice,  and peace. Such mobilizations, while stimulated by local issues, are defined as part of a global movement such as “From Tahrir Square to Madison, Wisconsin.” People worldwide, particularly the young, workers, and women are seeing the common dimensions of struggle against imperialism.

Where Do Left and Progressive Forces Fit?

First, we on the left need to “bring imperialism back in;” that is socialist organizations can through education revisit and revise the theory of imperialism so that it is more serviceable for 21^st century socialist movements.

Second, progressives should link war/peace issues to environmental issues, to gender issues, to class issues, and race issues. As Martin Luther King declared in 1967: “I speak of the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home, and death and corruption in Vietnam.”

Third, every socialist and progressive organization should challenge the permanent war economy. Andrew Bacevich pointed out that the framers of the permanent war economy in the 1940s believed that the role of the citizenry was to remain quiescent, pliant, and supportive of the decisions made by the foreign policy establishment. That assumption must be resisted.

Fourth, local and national work should link economic justice, environmental preservation, and peace. These issues are inextricably connected.

Finally, left and progressive groups should respond to specific imperial transgressions by:

-working to cut military budgets

-opposing drone warfare

-saying no to US military aid to Syrian rebels

-supporting the just demands of the Palestinian people

-challenging the construction of military bases in Asia

-demanding an end to subversion in Latin America

-calling for the release of the Cuban 5

-insisting on the end of the Cuban blockade.

This essay was originally prepared for the national convention of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS) on Friday, July 19, 2013, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

A Timely Repost: The United States’ political system, we are told repeatedly, is the gold standard for the world.

By Harry Targ | The Rag Blog | October 21, 2014

Through her decades of entertaining on stage and screen, [Joan] Rivers developed numerous classic bits and catchphrases, but three small words stand above the rest: “Can we talk?” (Kelli Bender @kbendernyc, 09/04/2014, also at People.com)

I never liked comedienne Joan Rivers who died recently. But her famous one-line introduction to talk show interviewers and stand-up performances is a powerful reminder that certain subjects might be dangerous to discuss in polite company. Whether the United States’ political system is a democratic one is such a subject.

Everything we Americans have learned since infancy suggests that the United States is a democracy. In fact, the United States political system, we are told repeatedly, is the gold standard for the world.

Distinguished data source Freedom House claims that freedom can only exist in democratic political systems. Democratic systems are those in which governments are accountable, the rule of law exists, and associations and speech are guaranteed to all. Polity IV, another data-based source of information about governments, has a more refined definition of democracy: there are procedures by which citizens can express their preferences about leaders and policies and there exist both constraints on executive power and guarantees of civil liberties. University of Iowa Political Science Professor William M. Reisinger prepared a chart summarizing the key components of democracy reflected in the writings of political philosophers (such as Aristotle), politicians (John C. Calhoun), skeptics (H. L. Mencken), and a variety of contemporary political scientists. He appends to his chart 25 quotations that illustrate variations in the understanding of the concept “democracy.” Reisinger identifies five emphases in most writings on the subject.

“1) it is a dangerous form of government; 2) it includes genuine competition for power; 3) it permits mass participation on a legally equal footing; 4) it provides civil and other liberties that restrict the sphere of state power within the society; or 5) it promotes widespread deliberation about how to make and enforce policy so as to promote the common good.” (William M. Reisinger, “Selected Definitions of Democracy,” uiowa.edu)

The United States does not meet broadly endorsed criteria for a democracy.

Reflecting on these five elements of democracy might lead to a more sober understanding of the United States’ political system than what most people learned in school (from kindergarten through graduate programs in political science). Particularly, looking at Reisinger’s last four features might suggest that the United States does not meet broadly endorsed criteria for a democracy.

Does the political system afford “genuine competition for power?” The answer is no for a variety of reasons. Campaigns for office from local through federal positions require enormous amounts of money. Supreme Court decisions have enshrined the right of the wealthy (often the one percent) to pour unlimited financial resources into elections. Koch Brothers affiliates have even invested in local school board elections to influence school curricula and give support to the privatization of education.

Funding of elections is reinforced by rules and regulations limiting political participation to two parties. Also states, from Indiana, Wisconsin and Michigan to the South and Southwest, have imposed rulings making it harder for citizens to vote. Some voter suppression laws, sometimes overturned by courts because of their egregious violation of constitutional principles, have survived serious challenges (such as the Supreme Court decision to allow the Texas disenfranchisement of an estimated 600,000 minority voters) at least for the next election.

In the end money, institutionalized procedures, state laws, and judicial decisions have undermined the possibility of competition for political power.

Money, power, institutions, and media propaganda conspire to limit
political participation.

Everything that has been said above limits equal and mass participation in politics. Money, power, institutions, and media propaganda conspire to limit political participation and the entire weight of the political system works to impair workers, minorities, young people, and the elderly.

In the 1970s, Political Scientist Samuel Huntington wrote a paper for the then influential foreign policy organization, The Trilateral Commission, warning of the “danger of democracy.” The danger he identified all across the globe was the “excess of democracy.” In other words, in the 1970s, (and one would only surmise the condition is worse today) too much participation in politics would challenge the status quo and stability.

Reisinger pointed out that some definitions of democratic states (on his chart six of 25 entries) highlight “civil and other liberties that restrict the sphere of state power within the society.” There is much anecdotal evidence to suggest that in the United States local police have garnered vastly increased power to arrest, charge, kill, and incarcerate more citizens on a per capital basis than most countries in the world. The most overrepresented targets of the expanding police state are young, African/American males but the class character of the criminal justice system has been prevalent as well.

In addition federal government surveillance, criminal conduct by the National Security Agency, and long-standing practices of the Federal Bureau of Investigation to undermine and crush dissent have been significant features of the historical landscape.

Fewer than 10 media conglomerates control most of the information consumed
by the citizenry.

Finally, Reisinger has found some references in discussions of democracy to “deliberation” on public policy to “promote the common good.” Fewer than 10 media conglomerates control most of the information consumed by the citizenry and think tanks generating “expert” analyses are bought and paid for by corporations, government agencies, billionaires, and political parties.

Two recent stories have been ignored in the mainstream media. First, the German government has decided to provide free college education to all its citizens (thus eliminating crippling student debt). This is a policy that should warrant discussion. Second, Cuba has transported a delegation of 160 Cuban health care professionals to Sierra Leone and expects to provide another 260 for Liberia. The first delegation was sent before President Obama announced a U.S. program of medical aid to West Africa.

It could be that if Americans were aware of the special training received by medical personnel in Cuba, particularly in Third World settings, they might suggest that United States and Cuban collaboration would increase the effectiveness of ending the threat of a spreading Ebola epidemic in Africa. These are just two policies worthy of conversation in the United States. (To its credit The New York Times, on its opinion page on October 20, 2014, published an editorial entitled “Cuba’s Impressive Role on Ebola.”)

In sum, the Joan Rivers one-liner is critical now. We need to talk about the reality that the United States is not a democracy. And as a few commentators have pointed out, democracy is dangerous. It is dangerous because the people will be able to participate in the decisions that affect their lives; class, race, and gender will not exclude participation in politics; and the whole reason for democratic institutions is to “promote the common good.” As Pennock put it the ideal democracy is one characterized by:

“Government by the people, where liberty, equality and fraternity are secured to the greatest possible degree and in which human capacities are developed to the utmost, by means including free and full discussion of common problems and interests.” (J. Roland Pennock, Democratic Political Theory, Princeton Press, 1979, 7)

To be clear, the United States is not a democracy. Progressives who believe it is fool themselves at the peril of the country. BUT, rather than disengagement, they should struggle all the harder “inside and outside” conventional political processes to achieve it. And struggles for equality, justice, and a sustainable environment are also struggles for democracy.

THE MARCH ON WASHINGTON STILL INSPIRES

 Harry Targ

https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2026/8/28/thousands-take-part-in-march-on-washington-to-promote-voting-rights

Thinking about the 63rd anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, my thoughts returned to the profound intellectual, political, and moral transformation many of us experienced about civil rights, the pursuit of peace, and the fundamental need for economic and social justice that resulted from the first historic March. 

After the August 28, 1963 March many of us, young and old, Black and white, men and women, straight and gay, of all class, ethnic, and geographic backgrounds came to the realization that we had to march, to protest, to sing and shout, and to organize to continue to work for peace and justice.

As the years unfolded, we studied and learned more about the historic struggle for justice that began hundreds of years before August 1963 and after the March on Washington, we realized, the struggle would not end. 

And over the years the analyses, visions, and political practices of all of us, even the organizers and speakers at the first March, changed. Dr. King himself said in a famous speech at Riverside Church in New York in 1967 that social and economic justice cannot be achieved at home while we were engaged in massive war against the Vietnamese people. “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”

Dr. King’s understanding of the economic dimension of racial injustice deepened as well. Again in 1967 he said: “One day we must ask the question, ‘Why are there forty million poor people in America?’ And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question you begin to question the capitalistic economy.”

A March on Washington today would have an even broader agenda than the event of fifty years ago. The National Action Network, the organization that launched the 2013 commemoration, identified nine key talking points that inspired it: jobs and the economy; voting rights; workers’ rights; stand your ground laws and gun violence; women’s rights; immigration; LGBT equality; environmental justice, and youth. 

Harry Belafonte, paraphrasing a former President of the United States, reported that "when the state finds itself moving away from its commitment to the rights of the citizen, when those rights are being trampled and misguided, when there are those who would wrest from the Constitution the equality that it attempted to give all of us, then the citizens of the nation have not only the obligation, but the right, to challenge the state and those who run it. And, he said, if we fail to do that, if we fail to meet those moral criteria, then we, the citizens, should be charged with patriotic treason.”

Fortunately, contemporary generations of workers, occupiers, peace activists, anti-racists, women’s liberationists, gay rights activists, and environmentalists are heeding the call to carry on the legacy of the Marches on Washington, advocating what was called meeting the “moral criteria” embedded in the U.S. Constitution. 

 

THE LEGACY OF EUGENE V. DEBS

 Harry Targ

Ten thousand times the labor movement has stumbled and bruised itself. We have been enjoined by the courts, assaulted by thugs, charged by the militia, traduced by the press, frowned upon in public opinion, and deceived by politicians. But not withstanding all this and all these, labor is today the most vital and potential power this planet has ever known, and its historic mission is as certain of ultimate realization as is the setting of the sun (Eugene V. Debs).

Born and raised in Terre Haute, Indiana, Debs began his political life as a teenager, served a term in the Indiana legislature, worked on the railroad, and spearheaded the formation and national mobilization of the American Railway Union, an early industrial union. When the ARU supported a strike of Pullman workers in 1894, the federal government, encouraged by railroad moguls, bankers, and the media, sent troops to Chicago to crush the workers’ movement. Debs and some of his comrades were sentenced to six months in jail for leading the Pullman strike.

And it was in jail, reading, studying, and reflecting, that Debs became a Socialist. For the remainder of his life he worked to mobilize the working class to use the ballot, the strike, and mass actions to organize and agitate for a new, humane, Socialist society.

He believed that those who produced all the wealth of society, workers (Black/white, men/women, native born and immigrants) should receive the fruits of their labors. They should receive the value of what they produced. They should control the means of their production. And they should have a predominant voice in the political institutions in their society.

For thirty years as a leader of the newly constituted Socialist Party, Debs articulated this vision before hundreds of thousands of workers. He garnered millions of votes over his five presidential campaigns. His party, the Socialist Party, produced a national newspaper, The Appeal to Reason, in Emporia, Kansas, which at one time had 700,000 subscribers.  

Debs’ last incarceration resulted from his violation of the Sedition Act which prohibited any public opposition to World War I. He had made it clear in his famous 1918 antiwar speech in Canton, Ohio, that the global working class had no interest in war; that the ruling class of bankers and manufacturers declared wars that workers were forced to fight. 

The Eugene V. Debs story is vividly portrayed in a 29-minute video on his life (still available). The video, divided into eleven chapters, briefly discusses the lack of contemporary awareness of Debs and his movement; the rise of finance and manufacturing capital and its war on workers; the emergence of the Socialist Party as one working class response to capitalist exploitation; and the personal biography of Debs, from his youth in Terre Haute Indiana to national and global acclaim. It highlights the theory that capitalism is an exploitative system that in the end was antithetical to the interests of workers. Capitalists seek to divide workers (by race, gender, ethnicity, and nation) to weaken their capacity to organize. Debs also emphasized the inextricable connection between capitalism and war.

http://youtu.be/w82pFvUq3o8.

https://debsfoundation.org/

AN OLD LABOR STRUGGLE IN CHICAGO AND THE ROLE OF A JEWISH WOMAN: Repost

 A repost from Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Harry Targ

Six hundred and fifty Hart, Schaffner, and Marx clothing workers rallied at noon, on Monday, May 11, 2009, in the Chicago suburb of Des Plaines. They demanded that Wells Fargo, which received a $25 billion bank bailout from the federal government, provide loans to investors who would purchase their bankrupt company and keep it open. Workers at the Des Plaines, Illinois plant were speaking for 3,600 workers around the country who could lose their jobs if the company was sold to an investor committed to closing the company.

Stephen Greenhouse in a New York Times article quoted Illinois Congressman Phil Hare who asserted that Wells Fargo needed “to stand up for the American worker, like Congress stood up for the banks when times were tough.”

A spokesperson for the workers proclaimed that the union local was going to do whatever was necessary to keep Hart Schaffner and Marx plants open. The workers, Greenhouse wrote, were “coming from Chicago’s south side as well as China, Greece, Mexico, Poland and a dozen other countries, many earn around $12 an hour.”

Worker’s struggles for jobs and living wages at Hart Schaffner and Marx have a long history. Ninety nine years earlier, on a bright and sunny morning, 17-year-old Russian immigrant, Hannah Shapiro ran to work at the old Hart Schaffner and Marx factory in downtown Chicago. She rushed to her wooden chair and began sewing the pockets that would be attached to men’s pants. Shortly after the workers assembled at their work stations the foreman came on the floor and curtly announced that from now on they would earn 3 ¾ cents per pocket instead of 4 cents.

Hannah, called Annie by friends, was so outraged by this cruel cut in piece work pay that she got up from her chair and stormed off the shop floor. To her surprise 15 co-workers, also young women, followed her. Thus was launched the great Hart Shaffner and Marx strike that would lead to 40,000 workers in Chicago factories walking off their jobs in support. Annie Shapiro, the Russian girl who spoke English haltingly, mobilized support from Hull House activists, the Women’s Trade Union League, and she marched with famed lawyer Clarence Darrow and 20,000 workers in a solidarity parade on December 4, 1910.

While the workers did not earn union recognition immediately, Hart Schaffner and Marx offered an agreement to Hannah Shapiro and her co-workers to establish a joint worker/management committee to address grievances. Workers voted to accept the agreement. Within three months workers gained pay raises and improved working conditions. In addition, the walkout, led by a humble young Russian woman, not only brought modest gains to workers in the men’s clothing factory but planted the seeds for worker solidarity, militancy, and trade unionism in Chicago.

In retrospect, the seeds for worker justice today were planted long ago in hundreds of thousands of invisible local struggles, like that waged by Hannah Shapiro and her co-workers. Until jobs, living wages, healthy working conditions, and rights to a union are guaranteed, these struggles will continue.

A children’s rendition of the story of Hannah Shapiro and the Hart, Schaffner and Marx strike by Marlene Targ Brill. For further information:

https://www.marlenetargbrill.com/books_new001.html

For more on Jewish radicalism in Chicago see:

https://portside.org/2016-03-05/jewish-progressive-tradition-examples-chicagos-labor-and-socialist-movements

The Increasing Interest in Democratic Socialism in the United States: a radio discussion

 The Grass Is Greener, a weekly radio program from Milwaukee, Wisconsin

The Grass is Greener, August 18,  presents  a discussion with Professor Harry Targ about the historic factors that have shaped the rise of support for Democratic Socialism in the United States and how close the Democratic Socialist candidate came to winning the Governor's primary in Wisconsin. on WXRW 104.1FM 

https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fsoundcloud.com%2Fuser-240416425%2F2026-08-18-2200-grass-is&data=05%7C02%7Ctarg%40purdue.edu%7Cde0f78da21d64162553908defdeee28d%7C4130bd397c53419cb1e58758d6d63f21%7C1%7C0%7C639227399618854920%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=m6JgOGbznD5QmgvEc3rlcNEpVmxPbw1qIeu%2B2igqDho%3D&reserved=0