Seattle's glorious lefty history: the general strike of 1919

Crowd outside Skinner & Eddy employment office following the shipyard strike of January 21 that led to the Seattle General Strike, January 1919
Photo by A. Curtis, Courtesy UW Special Collections (Image No. A. Curtis 37055)

As Occupy Oakland has the Port of Oakland shut down in an as-yet peaceful general strike, we're proud to live in Seattle known for being the location of the first citywide collective action in American history known as a general strike.

General strikes are rare in American social/political movements- there have only been two. The other was in Oakland in 1946.

From HistoryLink:

The Seattle General Strike began at 10 a.m. on February 6, 1919, and paralyzed the city for five days. Never before had the nation seen a labor action of this kind. Many in Seattle were expecting revolution -- and a few wanted it -- but when 65,000 laborers walked off the job that day, the result was more an eerie calm. Initially, the strike demonstrated the power of union solidarity, but it soon fizzled. For labor, the Seattle General Strike was a glorious folly that led to government crackdowns and to the distrust of the public and the press for a decade to come.

Read more here...

Comments

[StarTheWonderDog]

Perhaps that was in part the foundation leading to our teachers' breaking the law with their silly strikes now days.
A good historical piece, thanks Michael.

[JimF]

What does this have to do with talk radio?

[StarTheWonderDog]

Talk radio focuses on current events and discusses it's merit. Occupy-whatever is a current event, ergo this historical happening lends itself to the overall conversation. And, over and above everthing else the blog belongs to Michael's choice of topics.

[Pete]

There's a reason such tactics are rare - they require the overwhelming support of the public, and that support can be destroyed by a handful of idiots.

In Oakland yesterday tens of thousands of people were peaceful throughout the day, and folks could often identify with those protesters and their concerns, but what people are reading about this morning are the actions of a few hundred idiots who felt they just had to make a "more radical statement" with fires, vandalism, and graffiti. If those knuckleheads aren't in the direct pay of the 1%, they should be. The same dynamic on a smaller scale happened with the Dimon protest in Seattle last night.

The public support for the Occupy movement thus far is only possible because they've made a strikingly effective commitment to nonviolence. When people behave otherwise - whether it's sincere or agent provocateurs - the public turns against the larger movement. It could very well happen again.

[Chucks]

This post is a wonderful reminder of the day when unions were relevant and really meant something to the common man.
Those days are long gone now. Now if the union strikes too many times, the company just moves away and leaves the membership unemployed. Look at Detroit vs the south. Where are our cars (and starting soon, aircraft) being built? When I first started selling cars, they came from Michigan, California, Missouri, Ohio and other rust belt states. Now they are built in Kentucky, Tennessee, the Carolina's, Georgia, Mexico and other more business friendly locations.
When was the last time a great ship was built at Todd or any of the other ship building company's of the NW that didn't have a military contract attached?
Take a close look at the people primarily involved with the Occupy movement. They are primarily young and ignorant people with little real life experience and a few old people that never escaped the sixty's. Others are just different people with differing life issues trying to hijack the "movement" to gain some advantage over some other entity be it government, employers or opposing political party's. Then, of course, you have the anarchists that just hate every institution and rule of law.
No telling if any of it will take root like our movement did in the 60's and 70's. I don't see a lot of heart in this movement. Just manipulators trying to create something out of little.

[JimF]

Thank you, Pete, and Chucks. Actually, after thinking about it for a minute, talk radio has been full of this lately. It's an important story for the talk industry. It sure isn't going away.

[JimF]

Maybe we're both right - talk radio is history.

[Pete]

Hi Chucks - I have had a chance to talk with a few of the OS folks (including their communications people). My sense is that there's a lot of heart there - you don't spend weeks living outdoors on a lark - but also a lot of naivete and political inexperience. There's also a fair amount of tension within the group - not surprising when you throw together a whole lot of people from different backgrounds who've never worked together before and don't have clear goals - and they're having a hard time with some of the manipulators and nihilists you mention.

What I did not see was any evidence that the Occupy movement resembles anything from the '60s. Quite the opposite - yeah, they're mostly young, but the issues are class-based and economic, with an underlying belief that our political system is broken and corrupt, and the people involved are much more heterogeneous.

1960s protesters sneered at the American middle class; the occupier folks have "We are the 99%" as their main slogan. They could not care less about the protests of your youth. This is their own thing. Historically, a better analogy is a less desperate version of the Hoovervilles and army bonus protests of the '30s.

[Pete]

JimF - BlaM has stated very clearly for years that it's his blog and he'll write about what he wants to. We get it that you'd rather he stick to nothing but talk radio posts - which would mean, posting about once a week, since the few remaining locally produced shows are all pretty boring and predictable.

We also get it that your complaining isn't going to influence BlaM in the slightest. If you want a solely talk radio forum, try the discussion boards at Radio-Info.com.