COLORADO SPRINGS, CO- This is what happen when apolitical wits want to dribble their sardonic apathy on a subject of historic import. Or as they see it, unimport. The 100-year anniversary of the Ludlow Massacre passed in April, with considerable media attention and unfortunately the requisit controversy that comes of celebrants numbering equal parts decendents of the perps and not the miners. You'd think KRCC might have heard the dissonance in April, the attempt of National Guard to rewrite the history in accordance to today's culture of military-worship and the ensuing protestations, but no. Tonight a locally produced radio show called "Wish We Were Here" aired a one-hour episode about "Ludlow" on public radio franchise KRCC. Noel Black, Jake Burnell and Andrea Chalfin put the program together and relied on the same revisionists which dogged the official commemorations.
Tag: Ludlow
Ludlow 100 year anniversary feted by social class that committed massacre
DENVER, COLO.- I might be sensationalizing a technicality, but in effect it's what happened: the remembering of Ludlow has been commandeered by the class who perpetrated it. The preliminary series of events commemorating the 100 year anniversary of the Ludlow Massacre (April 20, 1914) concluded tonight at Denver's History Colorado Museum with a panel discussion featuring only establishment voices. "Is Ludlow relevant?" was the question posed to five participants among them three professors, a soldier, and a union rep. That's like asking "is global warming real?" The question is loaded with the suggestion that the opposite is equally plausible. I would have preferred to hear HOW is Ludlow relevant. Though the union rep skillfully skirted the issue, no one pushed back at another flawed presumption, that the coal strike was an armed conflict. Yes the massacre provoked the ten day "Coal Field War" during which striking miners retaliated against the mine company employees, but the death toll was still but a fraction of the number of miners killed in the mine accidents which precipitated the Ludlow strike. It took an audience member to address that omission. Alas nobody mentioned the aftermath that found many miners under arrest, others scattered, and
Pueblo museum excises Mine Workers Union from Ludlow Massacre exhibit!
PUEBLO, COLORADO- 2014 marks one hundred years since the Ludlow Massacre of 1914. A variety of commemorations are planned before the formal anniversary on April 20. I attended one such event on Wednesday, a lecture by a CSU professor to footnote the "Children of Ludlow" exhibit at El Pueblo History Museum. I'm always excitied when attention is paid to Ludlow, a subject regularly left out of American schoolbooks, but I was disappointed to find key elements of labor history excised from the museum's narrative. Literally. The United Mine Workers of America, the organization central to the strike, which supplied the tent city, and which even today maintains the memorial site, was mentioned only once, IN FINE PRINT! The Ludlow miners voted to strike because the mining companies refused to recognize the UMWA. Unmentioned. The horrors of the atrocity were not tempered, in their explicitness perhaps we think them enough, but there was also the apologist suggestion that some culpability belonged to the miners. I questioned one curator who admitted they were at pains to keep the story "balanced" and that the squeakiest wheel thus far has been the National Guard. Apparently the Guard is offended that its role will
“independent counsel” Feinberg says all okay by 2012″
The Gulf of Mexico will have largely recovered from the BP oil spill by the end of 2012, the administrator of the $20bn (£12bn) pay-outs fund has said. Attorney Kenneth Feinberg said that compensation to those who lost revenue from the disaster would be based on this prediction. Meanwhile, a judge has ruled that Mr Feinberg make clear to claimants that he is not independent from BP. The Deepwater Horizon spill was the biggest in US history. The fund was set up by BP in August to compensate those affected by the spill, and has so far paid out about $3.3bn to 168,000 people. 22617
“Capital” Punishment, forced compliance with Money-Worship.
If, as a Corporate Lawyer and somewhat friend suggests, Capital were the be-all and end-all for progress, economically, politically, technologically, and even spiritually, why then is Participation Made Mandatory? The Capitalist PIGS go after not only nations who opt for a more socialist economy, but communes within the Capitalist CONTROLLED countries. 19780
Bloody Ludlow, revisited?
Perhaps the Bonus March "Hooverville" WW 1 Veterans Camp that got shot up in Washington DC... The City Council and the C.S. Gestapo Department are proposing declaring War on The Homeless, over the Hooverville camps along Fountain and Monument creeks. 12319
Mother Jones and the children of Ludlow
APRIL 20 MARKS THE 95TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE LUDLOW MASSACRE. From her 1925 autobiography, Mother Jones wrote about the UMWA strike in Ludlow Colorado, over the harsh winter of 1914. 7476
Mother Jones: You Don’t Need a Vote
After the 1914 Ludlow Massacre and the later capitulation of the UMWA union, Mother Jones, by now 85 years old, toured the US to spread the word about what happened. She wrote in her autobiography, about a meeting in Kansas City: "I told the great audience that packed the hall that when their coal glowed red in their fires, it was the blood of the workers, of men who went down into black holes to dig it, of women who suffered and endured, of little children who had but a brief childhood. 'You are being warmed and made comfortable with human blood' I said. ... 'The miners lost,' I told them, because they had only the constitution. The other side had bayonets. In the end, bayonets always win.'" 7471
What became of Ludlow DEATH SPECIAL
One of the weapons deployed against the striking miners of Ludlow, was an early armored car nicknamed the "Death Special." Its steel plated sides emboldened mine guards to run their mounted machine gun through the union camps. What became of the intimidating machine? Does it sit in a prairie museum, or was its metal armor recycled? Recycled, definitely. 7381
At the site of the 1914 Ludlow Massacre
LUDLOW MEMORIAL, COLORADO- Day three of the Colorado College Ludlow Symposium featured a bus ride to the site of the 1914 massacre.
Springs Utilities and “Right to Work” law
Which is really the "right to fire you if you get injured on the job or if you seek fair compensation for your labor or if you form (or join an existing) an organization which represents the workers to ensure the Equal Protection Under the Law and right to petition the Government for redress of grievances" law. 7353
Ludlow Massacre or unhappy incident?
COLORADO COLLEGE- CC is holding a symposium on the 1914 Ludlow Massacre. Actually, it's only called the Ludlow Symposium. True to Colorado Springs form, several among the audience want to call it an "incidence," instead of a "massacre." One of the participants, author Scott Martelle, is willing to oblige, explaining that if the militia hadn't known that women and children were taking shelter beneath the tents which they were putting to the torch, then the soldiers were guilty only of criminally negligent homicide. 7338
Things to do in April
APRIL 2009 3- Antonio Skarmeta: Swing and Literature, Gaylord Hall, CC, 7pm 5- Andrew Skurka: Walking the Great Western Loop, CC, 4pm 7- Rajeev Taranath, Concert sarod/tabla, Packard Hall, CC, 7:30pm 14- Anniversary of BURNING OF BAGHDAD LIBRARY 15- LUDLOW SYMPOSIUM, Max Kade Theater, CC, 7pm 17- International Day of Farmers Struggle 20- 20th Annual Holocaust Commemoration, Gates Common Room, CC, 7pm
As if things weren’t bad enough…
From Democracy Now... Army Unit to Deploy in October for Domestic Operations Beginning in October, the Army plans to station an active unit inside the United States for the first time to serve as an on-call federal response in times of emergency. The 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team has spent thirty-five of the last sixty months in Iraq, but now the unit is training for domestic operations. The unit will soon be under the day-to-day control of US Army North, the Army service component of Northern Command. The Army Times reports this new mission marks the first time an active unit has been given a dedicated assignment to Northern Command. The paper says the Army unit may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control. The soldiers are learning to use so-called nonlethal weapons designed to subdue unruly or dangerous individuals and crowds. 4865
Creating Terror in America
We have an government active in creating a climate of terror inside its own borders. There is nothing really new about that, and today's Gazette had an entire section of the paper dedicated to the Ludlow Massacre which occured decades ago, leaving a permanent stain on the state of Colorado that it may never completely erase. 1222
Some Colorado labor history
Labor day. It commemorates the likes of Samuel Gompers, Big Bob Haywood and Mother Jones and their efforts to unite working class peoples. They met great resistance from gullible populations of consumers and business owners who weren't going to give anything unless they were forced. 153