"Fight or Starve: March 6, 1930"

[Starry Messenger]

http://turkishbolshevik.tumblr.com/post/18881319146/fuckyeahmarxismleninism-the-first-nationwide

“The first nationwide organized protest (on March 6, 1930) against the burdens of the economic crisis, being shouldered by the working people of the United States, was organized upon the initiative of the Communist Party.” (Carl Winter, “Unemployment Struggles of the Thirties,” in Bart, Highlights of a Fighting History, 1979, International Publishers)

“With relatively few members, but with a clear head and a stout heart, the (Communist) Party boldly organized the famished unemployed…

”March 6, 1930 (was) the historic national unemployment demonstration, led by the Communists.The Communist Party, the Young Communist League, and the Trade Union Unity League threw their united forces into the preparations. A million leaflets were circulated and innumerable preliminary meetings were organized. The national demonstration was held under the auspices of the T.U.U.L. The central demand was for unemployment relief and insurance, with stress upon demands for the Negro (African-American) people, against wage cuts, and against fascism and war.

“Among the mobilizing slogans were ‘Work or Wages!’ and ‘Don’t Starve—Fight!’…

[dana_b]

1. wow - what a great picture

Just replace the date and use it for todays' protests.

The communists were such an essential part of the labor movement and it is so sad that people have con-notated all communism as evil and something to be afraid of.

[Starry Messenger]

2. A lot of money went into that.

Koch Pere, co-founder of the Birchers: http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/06/10/242334/john-birch-society-celebrates-koch/

Billionaire brothers David and Charles Koch have been dominant financiers for conservative front groups and nonprofits for nearly three decades. Their money has flowed to organizations dedicated to lobbying for corporate and upper income tax cuts, as well as to groups responsible for mobilizing Tea Party rallies against President Obama. But the Koch family’s association with fringe right-wing groups began a generation earlier with Fred Koch, the patriarch of the clan.

Fred not only founded the company now known as Koch Industries, he also was a founding member of the John Birch Society. As a founding board member, Fred helped engineer a hysterical wave of attacks on labor, intellectuals, public education, liberal clergy members, and other pillars of society he viewed as a threat. Birchers decried everyone from former President Eisenhower to water utility administrators as pawns in a global communist conspiracy. In the last two years, as the Koch name has become synonymous with right-wing plutocracy in the United States, the Koch family has played down its relation to the Birchers.

However, the New American, the official mouthpiece of the John Birch Society, published a piece this morning celebrating Fred and the Koch family’s pivotal role in developing the group:

Koch warned that American institutions were honeycombed with communist subversives, from labor unions and tax-free foundations to universities and churches. Art and newsprint, radio and television — all these media had been transmuted into vehicles of communist propaganda. [...] Fred Koch was no fly-by-night pamphleteer. He spent a generous portion of his later years using his wealth and influence to fight the communism he abhorred. He was an early member of the The John Birch Society’s National Council, an advisory group to JBS founder Robert Welch. Koch supported a variety of freedom-related causes, all the while continuing to build the company today known as Koch Industries.

I think a lot of it is wound up in the white supremacist plutocracy. Many of the cold war conservatives were fascist-sympathizers who parlayed that into anti-communism when WW2 made supporting Hitler directly a little less popular in this country. The owners and bosses of the US know that workers uniting and smashing their racist, classist, sexist power structure would erode their own privileges. They took aim at any org that was even vaguely progressive under the shadow of "the commie threat". Hell, they are still doing it!