Woe to the vanquished !!
the names of our heros, and our defiers, will last forever !!
The only reason we have 5 day work weeks, 8 hour workdays, overtime pay, benefits, workplace health/safety/environmental regulations, unions, health care, paid time off, vacations, etc. is because our grandfathers and great-grandfathers busted heads, and got their own heads busted, fighting corporate goons in the streets - and WINNING!
Those heroic workers would be ashamed at what their grandchildren have let the Sociopathic Oligarchs have done to America. They fought hard to keep those psychopaths under control, and we not only let them up, we helped them take full power.
grandfathers busted heads, and got their own heads busted, fighting corporate goons in the streets - and WINNING!
No one won anything. The massive militant strike actions in the USA in the early 20th century usually were losses. Wins tended to be pyrrhic, with the company cleaning house a couple months later or simply reversing the won benefits.
Things were brought to a head by the depression. The solution was simple, the most militant leaders were arrested, reforms were done to buy off the less militant, and the anger was channeled into marching all of us off to war (with the support of the non-militant collaborationist unions, of course).
Except that in the end, we still have the 8 hour workday/ 40 hour work week, overtime, benefits, etc. None of those things existed before the labor riots, so things didn’t get rolled back as much as you claim, and the most important ones stuck permanently.
The Labor Riots were extremely successful, and completely reconfigured the American workplace for the rest of the century, and beyond. MAGA wants to revert to the old days.
Everyone I know works more than 40 hours a week because its not enough to live on. Overtime is barely doled out and “benefits” account for either expensive PPOs or slightly cheaper HMOs (which suck, fyi). And I live in a state with strong labor protections. In all of the country its entirely possible to work more than 40 hours a week and not receive any overtime pay at all. Or be misclassified, or be subject to illegal wage theft.
All that changed is the worst jobs got sent overseas and a certain section of careers for the college educated exist that provides some semblance of “good benefits and good hours”.
Yeah, corrupt corporations are exploiting the system, with the help of the corrupt government. What’s new? The fact still remains that the work environment we generally accept as normal, was created by those Labor Riots, and we are still better off for them. Even if MAGA manages to roll back the workplace environment to the 19th century, they will always have to compete with the memory of America’s peak, and will look bad in comparison.
You have false nostalgia for a time you weren’t even alive as things have always been shit for working people especially in the United States.
You are stuck on your biases, and can’t even consider the idea that labor issues were terrible in the 19th C/ early 20th C, and it was labor riots in the second quarter of the century that ended the old way, and began a new workplace environment. It is definitely not perfect, but it’s far better than it once was, and it’s ridiculous to argue otherwise.
I think it’s worth pointing out that calling these riots isn’t really appropriate. When we think of riots, we think of unfocused, unplanned, unmanaged, etc. Highly organized protests sometimes wind up turning into riots because capitalists use violence, but it’s not the norm.
Super This:
Organized, non-violent protests are not riots. They are people, in mass, using their freedom of speech to complain about something.
A common issue is that some people, either within the protest group, or outside instigators, will then prod the protest into violence in order to discredit it. Two examples:
- Police using rubber bullets/tear-gas/pepper-spray to disperse a lawful gathering. This escalates and adds tension. Not everyone is prepared to weather abuse to stay non-violent. Gassing a peaceful protest is going to make at least some of them really mad and is a pretty trivial way to turn a peaceful protest into something else and remove it’s message, making it just a “riot.”
- Agitators claiming to be within the group, but who are actually against, it performing actions such as property damage or violence in order to discredit the whole event. If a non-violent march is walking down a street and some dick throws a rock through a store window and steals something, the whole march is called a riot by the media.
It’s important that if you are involved in a protest that you stay calm despite what is thrown your way. The protest is the message and fighting back during that event is only harming your message. Please do things like capture pictures/videos of people inciting violence, of police using crowd control on peaceful protesters, of generic unfair treatment; but during that event, the goal is to be calm. Afterwards, you can take all your grievances to the medias. If you’ve been harmed during a protest, find a lawyer – many will work pro-bono for cases like this and if your first pick doesn’t… fuck 'em: Name and shame – and then fight back after the event, when you have legal standing.
Your grievances are real. Your pain is real. The people in power will use every trick to discredit your issues. Don’t give them ammo.
Labor movements in the 19 th and early 20th centuries also literally organized riots, where the express purpose was to destroy property. It used to be a legitimate protest strategy against the owning class.
Reasonable men adapt themselves to their environment; unreasonable men try to adapt their environment to themselves. Thus all progress is the result of the efforts of unreasonable men.
The most sociopatic “winners” of the current system will always laud whatever was done to establish the system in which they get so much and decry anything that might overthrow or even meaningfully change that system.
Those who have a more empathic view of things, even when they too are considered “winners”, have a different posture if they think the current system isn’t working well for most people because they don’t think only about personal upside maximization at any cost for the rest.
As it so happens, caring for more than just “me, me, me” is what distinguishes leftwingers from rightwingers.
So this is a great way to spot fake leftwingers in or seeking positions of power and wealth: no matter how “progressive” their words are in general, when it comes to the current system they’ll display exactly this kind of hypocrisy of being against any kind of actions that will change the current system whilst lauding the very same kind of actions when they installed the current system, since their one true drive is “What’s in it for me”, a rightwinger’s motivation.
This is literally every country.
“OUR REVOLUTIONARIES WERE HEROES”
But also: “Don’t y’all even dare thinking about overthrowing the current system. Violence Baaad!”
Why is this yellowed like it’s been in a smokers house for the last 15 years?
Sepia tone is the JPG artifacts of the past
Someone spilled water on their phone and now the meme is moldy
memes from the 80s
40s
80s got that 40 years of smoke to get it ripe and yellow
Your back hurts too asshole!
I think it’s a picture of a monitor.
Red light filter?
Screenshots can be affected by the overlay.
This is why you use your phone’s built-in blue light filter, rather than a 3rd party app that just slaps an ugly red hue over your entire screen.
Built-in filters don’t show up in screenshots, and more importantly, don’t filter pure black, so your OLED screen still looks good with it enabled.
some phones dont have a built in blue light filter my old phone didnt have one had to use a 3rd party app
Yep, generation loss is a killer.
Violence isn’t the answer!
The answer is… checks history book
wait not that one… starts flipping pages
uhh if you hang on a second uhh furious page-flipping
Violence is the only answer, and until youre ready for that nothing will change. Extreme violence is the only answer.
Not entirely. As they say, there’s a different between being peaceful and being harmless. Sometimes the threat or implication of violence is just as or more effective.
The Internet has made people too easy to divide and conquer
I’m suddenly reminded of this quote:
“Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation.”
– Douglas Adams in Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
Phhh that’s exactly the kind of behaviour I’d expect with a user from leminal.space!
Bahh! Bloody Trekkies stirring the pot as usual, go back to your Spock Base and phase some Vulconions!
Yep. Creating division amongst the common class, so they fight each other, instead of those in power who are the real criminals.
Has this been aged? Lol looks like sepia
Cursed
Yes, because it’s long been true and people didn’t fucking listen. Now my country doesn’t even really have liberal democracy, and people are still himing and hawing about disruption being bad and lawbreaking being bad
I was just trying to make a pithy joke about the discoloring
It’s just UV damage from exposure, nbd.
People really need to stop leaving their memes out in the sun.
You’ve got to seize the means of production, of course in the US that means getting on a plane.
Global capitalism makes seizing the means of production a global effort no matter where you are, which is why nationalism is main the tool for maintaining capitalism
Which is why we will always need heroes.
The State only respects power. If a group of people show that they have more power than the State, change can happen. However, what is power?
Power comes in many different forms.
There is economic power which is showcased through strikes and boycotts.
There is democratic power which is showcased through the ballot box.
There is soft power which is showcased through the lobbying, and speeches.
There is non-violet power which is showcased through protests, marches, and sit ins.
There is violent power which is showcased through physical violence such riots.While, the populace has access to many different forms of power. The State is limited to either soft power or violent power. Depending on the State, soft power might not even be contemplated.
Riots are just one form of power for the populace to exercise.
This feels really insightful, and I wonder if there is a source other than ShaggySnacks.
Can anyone expand on or contradict this comment? I honestly want to hang it in my house so my children can see it and understand they power they have.
This feels really insightful, and I wonder if there is a source other than ShaggySnacks.
Sadly, no source. It’s something I’ve observed. I can’t recall any time a State changed it’s position on an issue simply because it was the moral thing to do.
There are other forms of power such as legal (using the Courts), culture, morality, etc.
The examples above aren’t exhaustive, for example having allies in the State does help with change, which is means running for office in an a democratic system.
Are USians not still working 10 hours day/6 days a week? The USA are usually near the top of the “time worked per week” OECD rankings.
Also, interesting how the poster and first replier have the same avatar. Is that a historical figure?
The desperation and work culture of believing we can just slave away into success are what keeps people from rocking the boat. Faith in being able to win the game is how we got here.
Yes, Americans are not still working 10 hours a day, 6 days a week. (But phrasing things backwards that way is confusing!)
40 hours a week is typical for normal, salaried jobs. But, because union membership is extremely low, some people are pressured into working a lot more than that. Also, some people have to work multiple jobs to make ends meet. But, I don’t think 6 days a week is at all normal, nor is 10 hours a day.
It’s actually the USA that is to thank for the normal work day being only 8 hours. In post-civil-war USA 6 days a week, 10 hours a day was the norm. But, workers in Chicago went on strike on May 1st, demanding an 8 hour day. Their argument was “Eight Hours for work. Eight hours for rest. Eight hours for what we will.” They didn’t get what they were demanding. Instead the strikers were met by police and Pinkerton violence. Some anarchists in the crowd responded to that police violence by throwing bombs (at least, allegedly). The police responded to the bombs by shooting the crowd. They then rounded up the suspected leaders of the anarchist movement and after incredibly brief show-trials, they hanged them.
It was actually the backlash against the hangings that energized the unions and communists around the world, and although it took years to actually achieve the 8 hour day they demanded. The rest of the world also celebrates a worker day on May 1st as a result of this event. But, of course, in the US, “May Day” is seen as being too close to “communism” so Labor Day is in September instead.
It took decades more to reduce the work week from 6 days to 5. Again this was the result of union pressure.
American workers have lots immense amounts of power since the 1880s. Even if those striking workers were beaten by Pinkertons, they were at least able to organize a general strike.
It looks to me like the top post is a screenshot of Twitter, and the two below are on Tumblr. I think they were just sharing their own post. But I don’t use either site, so I can’t be sure.
How are you referencing the OECD and claiming 60 hour weeks in the same paragraph? If you actually checked the OECD that you reference, you know hours worked is wayyyyyy lower.
I generally assume that the OECD statistics are underreporting overtime and moonlighting/illicit work wouldn’t be included in these statistics anyway, though the latter is probably a bigger issue in poorer countries. Also, it doesn’t make a difference between part time work and fulltime work, which greatly diminishes how useful it is for gauging how much a fulltime employee works.
So you’re just adding on an extra 25 hours a week to the actual average number based off vibes?
C’mon man :(
I would guess he is saying that the hours listed in the OECD, which I think were 1730 per year, is skewed. I wonder if separating rich/middle/poor would yield vastly different results.
