Tolpuddle Martyrs Pardoned (1836)

Mon Mar 14, 1836

Image: A contemporary illustration of the Martyrs, 1838

On this day in 1836, six English workers who had been sentenced to penal labor in Australia after forming a trade union were pardoned, following years of mass working class protests on their behalf.

The "Tolpuddle Martyrs" - George and James Loveless; James Hammett; James Brine; Thomas and John Standfield - had previously formed the "Friendly Society of Agricultural Labourers" to organize around their shared interest as farm workers. Their arrests took place during a crackdown on protest and worker agitation by the British ruling class following the Swing Riots of 1830.

The six men were charged with "taking an illegal oath" under the Mutiny Act of 1797, as they had sworn each other to secrecy in order to avoid repression by authorities. The prosecution was driven by their boss, local landowner James Frampton, who also sat on the jury during their trial.

All six men were sentenced to seven years' transportation to Australia in March 1834, sparking outcry from the organized labor movement. On April 21st, 1834, 30,000 people gathered in modern day King's Cross to present an 800,000-strong petition on the men's behalf. Home Secretary Lord Melbourne avoided the workers by hiding behind a set of curtains.

After the government attempted to provide conditional pardons in June 1835, the unions continued to push further, compelling the state to give full, unconditional pardons to all six men on March 14th, 1836. The men finally returned home from Australia between 1837 and 1839.

The case of the Tolpuddle Martyrs became an important milestone and a success for the early English worker movement. Today, this working class victory is commemorated with a museum and annual July festival in the village of Tolpuddle.

• Date: 1836-03-14
• Learn More: www.tolpuddlemartyrs.org.uk, tuc150.tuc.org.uk.
• Tags: #Labor, #Protests.
• Source: www.apeoplescalendar.org

Marielle Franco Assassinated (2018)

Wed Mar 14, 2018

Image: A photo portrait of Marielle Franco. Photograph by Mídia Ninja [The Guardian]

On this day in 2018, Marielle Franco, a queer feminist and socialist politician in Brazil, was assassinated by police. The day before her death, she tweeted "How many others will have to die for this war [with police] to end?"

Marielle Franco (1979 - 2018) was raised in Maré, a slum in northern Rio de Janeiro, where she also resided for most of her life. Franco began working to support her family at eleven years old and raised her daughter while working as a preschool teacher for minimum wage.

As an adult, Franco earned a master's degree in public administration from the Fluminense Federal University. Her master's thesis was titled "UPP: The Reduction of the Favela to Three Letters", dealt with a law enforcement program to retake control of Rio's favelas from gangs.

In 2016, Franco ran for Rio de Janeiro City Council and won her seat with more than 46,500 votes. As a city council member, Franco fought against violence against women, for reproductive and gay rights, and for the rights of favela residents.

On March 14th, 2018, Franco attended a round-table discussion titled "Young Black Women Moving [Power] Structures" (Portuguese: Jovens Negras Movendo Estruturas). Two hours after leaving the talk, Franco and her driver were assassinated by two men driving another car. Franco had been planning to marry her partner Mônica Benício that September.

Two former members of the military police were arrested for the murders in March 2019. All presidential candidates in Brazil during the 2018 campaign condemned the crime, except for Jair Bolsonaro, who repeatedly refused to condemn the assassination.

"Though we may earn lower salaries, be relegated to lower positions, work triple workdays, be judged for our clothing, be subjected to sexual, physical, psychological violence, killed daily by our partners, we will not be silenced: our lives matter!"

- Marielle Franco, from a speech she was preparing to give days after her assassination

• Date: 2018-03-14
• Learn More: www.opendemocracy.net, en.wikipedia.org.
• Tags: #Assassinations, #Queer, #Fascism, #Feminism, #Socialism.
• Source: www.apeoplescalendar.org

Havana Presidential Palace Attack (1957)

Wed Mar 13, 1957

Image: Two men, armed with rifles, participating in the palace attack in Havana on March 13th, 1957

On this day in 1957, the Directorio Revoluncionari Estudiantil, a group of anti-Batista, revolutionary Cuban students, attacked the Presidential Palace in Havana in a failed attempt to assassinate Fulgencio Batista and overthrow the government.

Participants of the attack successfully stormed the palace, making it to the third floor and killing many of Batista's personal guards, but failed to locate and kill Batista himself. The rebellion was successfully quelled, and two of the revolutionaries were put on trial; the rest were either killed or escaped.

A large pro-Batista rally, attended by ~250,000 people, took place on April 7th. Signs read "For Batista, in the Past, Now and Forever" and "Five Hundred American Residents of the Isle of Pines Have Faith in Batista."

On January 22nd, 1959, Fidel Castro stated to journalists that individual-focused acts such as the palace attack are "false concepts about the revolution" because "tyranny is not a man; tyranny is a system...We were never supporters of tyrannicide or military coups, [which tended] to inculcate the people a complex of impotence."

• Date: 1957-03-13
• Learn More: en.wikipedia.org, www.radiotelevisionmarti.com.
• Source: www.apeoplescalendar.org

New Jewel Revolution (1979)

Tue Mar 13, 1979

Image: NJM supporters and NLA fighters gathered at Radio Free Grenada on the morning of March 13th, 1979. From the Grenada National Museum [nowgrenada.com]

On this day in 1979, the People's Revolutionary Government (PRG) was proclaimed in Grenada after the Marxist-Leninist New Jewel Movement overthrew the state in a socialist revolution, with Maurice Bishop serving as Prime Minister.

After coming into power, Bishop stated the goals of the NJM: "We definitely have a stake in seeking the creation of a new international economic order which would assist in ensuring economic justice for the oppressed and exploited peoples of the world, and in ensuring that the resources of the sea are used for the benefit of all the people of the world and not for a tiny minority of profiteers".

The new government developed an ambitious social program, initiating a literacy campaign, expanding education programs, worker protections, and establishing farmers' cooperatives.

During the PRG's reign, unemployment was reduced from 49% to 14%, the ratio of doctors per person increased from 1/4000 to 1/3,000, the infant mortality rate was reduced, and the literacy rate increased from 85% to 90%. In addition, laws guaranteeing equal pay for equal work for women were passed, and mothers were guaranteed three months' maternity leave.

The government suspended the constitution of the previous regime, ruling by decree until a factional conflict broke out, ultimately leading to Maurice Bishop's assassination. President Ronald Reagan launched an invasion of Grenada a few weeks later, on October 25th, 1983.

"We have attempted to show in this Manifesto what is possible. We have demonstrated beyond doubt that there is no reason why we should continue to live in such poverty, misery, suffering, dependence and exploitation...The new society must not only speak of Democracy, but must practise it in all its aspects. We must stress the policy of 'Self-Reliance' and 'Self-Sufficiency' undertaken co-operatively, and reject the easy approaches offered by aid and foreign assistance. We will have to recognise that our most important resource is our people."

- Manifesto of the New Jewel Movement (1973)

• Date: 1979-03-13
• Learn More: www.marxists.org, www.zinnedproject.org, libcom.org, www.jacobinmag.com, en.wikipedia.org.
• Tags: #Marxism.
• Source: www.apeoplescalendar.org

Manol Vassev Assassinated (1958)

Wed Mar 12, 1958

Image: **

On this day in 1958, Bulgarian anarcho-syndicalist labor organizer Manol Vassev was assassinated by communist secret police, one day before his scheduled release from prison. This entry relies almost entirely on the work of anarchist historian Nick Heath:

A tobacco industry worker by trade, Vassev turned to anarchism while serving at the front in World War I, becoming a labor organizer and speaker. Vassev was persecuted for this work, serving time in prison and having to assume a fake identity (he was born Jordan Sotirov and adopted the name Manol Vassev to escape authorities). He was also active in anti-fascist resistance during World War II.

Vassev was arrested by the communist police for the first time on March 10th, 1945, along with all the delegates to the national conference of the Anarchist Communist Federation at Kniajevo, near Sofia. He was interned at the concentration camp of Dupnitsa and then at Kutzian.

After serving five years in prison, a trial was held for a second sentence. Held in public, Vassev was accused of being an "agent in the pay of the Anglo-Americans".

Vassev interrupted the accusation, retorting "It isn't me who signed the Teheran and Yalta treaties with the English and the Americans; it's not me who went to London to kiss the skirt of the Queen of England!"

Vassev died the day before his release was scheduled, poisoned by the Bulgarian secret police.

• Date: 1958-03-12
• Learn More: libcom.org, en.wikipedia.org.
• Tags: #Communism, #Assassinations, #Anarchism.
• Source: www.apeoplescalendar.org

Ala Gertner (1912 - 1945)

Tue Mar 12, 1912

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Ala Gertner, born on this day in 1912, was a Polish Jewish woman who helped facilitate the Sonderkommando revolt at Auschwitz, blowing up one of the crematoriums there. She was executed for this act of resistance in 1945.

Gertner was a member of the Sonderkommandos, slave laborers forced to aid with the disposal of gas chamber victims during the Holocaust. At Auschwitz, Gertner worked in the warehouses at first, sorting the possessions of Jews who had been gassed. There, she met Roza Robota, who was active in the underground resistance.

When Gertner was assigned to the munitions factory, she and Roza smuggled gunpowder to the Sonderkommando, who were building bombs and planning an escape. Gertner recruited other women to join the conspiracy and passed the stolen gunpowder to Roza.

On October 7th, 1944, the Sonderkommando blew up Crematorium IV, but the revolt was quickly quelled by armed SS guards. A lengthy investigation led the Nazis back to Gertner and Roza, and then to Estusia Wajcblum and Regina Safirsztajn, who were also implicated in the conspiracy. They were interrogated and tortured for weeks.

Gertner, along with three co-conspirators, were executed on January 5th or 6th (sources differ) in 1945. Their deaths were the last public hanging at Auschwitz.

• Date: 1912-03-12
• Learn More: en.wikipedia.org, web-static.nypl.org, encyclopedia.ushmm.org, encyclopedia.ushmm.org.
• Tags: #Birthdays.
• Source: www.apeoplescalendar.org

Ralph Abernathy (1926 - 1990)

Thu Mar 11, 1926

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Ralph David Abernathy Sr. (shown left), born on this day in 1926, was a Baptist minister and civil rights activist who co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and helped lead the 1968 Poor People's Campaign.

Abernathy was a close friend and mentor of Martin Luther King Jr., collaborating with King to create the Montgomery Improvement Association (which led to the Montgomery Bus Boycott) and co-founding the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).

Abernathy is noted for leading, among other demonstrations, the Poor People's Campaign in Washington, D.C., testifying in Congress in favor of the Voting Rights Act of 1982, and helping broker a deal between Native Americans and the U.S. government during the Wounded Knee Incident of 1973.

His tombstone reads "I tried".

• Date: 1926-03-11
• Learn More: en.wikipedia.org, www.wnyc.org, repository.wustl.edu.
• Tags: #CivilRights, #Birthdays.
• Source: www.apeoplescalendar.org

Wyndham Mortimer (1884 - 1966)

Tue Mar 11, 1884

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Wyndham Mortimer, born on this day in 1884, was an American communist union organizer active with the United Auto Workers union (UAW). After refusing to follow an anti-strike line from UAW leadership, he was ousted in 1941.

Wyndham Mortimer was born March on 11th, 1884 in Karthaus, Pennsylvania, the son of a coal miner who was organized with the Knights of Labor, an early American labor union. He later recalled that one of his earliest memories of life involved "walking behind parades of striking miners."

Mortimer left school at age 12 to work in the mines of Pennsylvania as a coal trapper. In 1900, still a teenager, he joined the United Mine Workers of America in 1900. In 1908, Mortimer joined the Socialist Party of America after hearing a campaign speech by the party's Presidential nominee, Eugene V. Debs.

Today, Mortimer is best remembered as a key figure in the 1937 Flint Sit-Down Strike, during which he was Vice President of the UAW. Also a member of the Communist Party USA, Mortimer was a vehement critic of the efforts of the conservative American Federation of Labor (AFL) to control the union.

In 1941, Mortimer's refusal to follow the anti-strike line of the UAW's governing Executive Board during a controversial work stoppage at a California aircraft factory led to his termination by the union, effectively bringing an end to his career.

"The [Walter] Reuther-Murray-Roman Catholic hierarchy has plans for us. They plan to make the American labor movement the staunch ally of monopoly capitalism in its war against the exploited and poverty stricken peoples of the world. And here at home, their witch hunting, disrupting, and raiding of other unions, is treason to the American working class."

- Wyndham Mortimer, in his autobiography "Organize! My Life as a Union Man"

• Date: 1884-03-11
• Learn More: en.wikipedia.org, reuther.wayne.edu, archive.org.
• Tags: #Communism, #Labor, #Birthdays.
• Source: www.apeoplescalendar.org

Leo Jogiches (1919)

Mon Mar 10, 1919

Leon "Leo" Jogiches (1867 - 1919), also known by the party name Jan Tyszka, was a Marxist revolutionary and politician who was executed on this day in 1919 for investigating the recent murders of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht.

Jogiches was active in both Germany and Poland, founding the political party "The Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland" in 1893 and becoming a key figure in the underground Spartacus League in Germany during World War I.

Jogiches was also a personal companion and a close political ally of Rosa Luxemburg. After Luxemburg and her political partner Karl Liebknecht were killed by the German Freikorps, Jogiches began investigating their deaths.

Jogiches was assassinated in Moabit prison on March 10th, 1919, in Berlin.

• Date: 1919-03-10
• Learn More: spartacus-educational.com, en.wikipedia.org.
• Tags: #Marxism, #Assassinations.
• Source: www.apeoplescalendar.org

Batista Coup d'état (1952)

Mon Mar 10, 1952

On this day in 1952, Fulgencio Batista led a military coup against outgoing Cuban president Carlos Prío Socarrás. With Batista's help, U.S. capital dominated the Cuban economy until he was ousted from power in 1959.

As part of the coup, Batista canceled national elections three months before they were scheduled to take place. Batista, himself a candidate, was not leading in the polls.

Claiming his actions were necessary to "save the Republic from chaos", Batista, with the backing of the army, stormed the Presidential Palace with squads of troops and police surrounding the building. President Prío had left the area 30 minutes before however, and the palace was seized without violence.

The United States recognized his government on March 27th, and Batista allowed U.S. financial interests to dominate Cuba's economy. By the late 1950s, U.S. capitalists owned 90% of Cuban mines, 80% of its public utilities, 50% of its railways, 40% of its sugar production and 25% of its bank deposits, approximately $1 billion in total assets.

When asked to analyze Batista's government, historian Arthur Schlesinger wrote "The corruption of the Government, the brutality of the police, the government's indifference to the needs of the people for education, medical care, housing, for social justice and economic justice...is an open invitation to revolution."

Accordingly, Batista's reign ended on January 1st, 1959 when he was ousted from power by communist revolutionaries. Early that morning, Batista fled with an estimated personal fortune of $300 million to the Dominican Republic, where strongman and previous military ally Rafael Trujillo held power. Batista eventually found political asylum in Oliveira Salazar's Portugal and Francisco Franco's Spain, dying in the latter in 1973.

• Date: 1952-03-10
• Learn More: www.theguardian.com, en.wikipedia.org.
• Source: www.apeoplescalendar.org

Bobby Sands (1954 - 1981)

Tue Mar 09, 1954

Image: A mural depicting Bobby Sands, reading "Everyone, Republican or otherwise, has their particular role to play...our revenge will be the laughter of our children" [irishtimes.com]

Bobby Sands, born on this day in 1954, was an Irish revolutionary who served in the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA). Sands died from a hunger strike at age 27 while imprisoned, just one month after becoming the elected MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone.

Sands grew up in North Belfast, a member of the Catholic minority and in a majority Protestant area. After being threatened at gunpoint and called "Fenian scum" by his co-workers at the age of 15, Sands became dedicated to revolutionary politics. In 1972, he attended his first Provisional IRA meeting.

Just a few months later, Sands was arrested and charged in October 1972 with possession of four handguns found in the house where he was living. After being released in 1976, he continued to be active in the IRA.

Later that year, Sands and five others were arrested following the bombing of the Balmoral Furniture Company in Dunmurry and a subsequent shootout with police. Sands and three others were sentenced to 14 years in prison for possession of a revolver.

Undeterred, Sands continued to protest in prison. He refused to wear a prison uniform and was kept in his cell naked without access to bedding for 13 hours a day. While incarcerated, Sands authored poems and songs, published by Republican magazines.

On March 1st, 1981, Sands initiated a hunger strike in collaboration with other inmates. The demands of the hunger strike included the right to not have to do prison work, the right to not wear a prison uniform, and full restoration of remission lost through protest.

Sands narrowly won a special election to serve as MP of Fermanagh and South Tyrone on April 9th, 1981, more than a month into the hunger strike. In response, the British government introduced the "Representation of the People Act", which prevents prisoners serving jail terms of more than one year in either the UK or the Republic of Ireland from being nominated as candidates in British elections.

Less than a month after winning this election, Sands died in prison at the age of 27. More than 100,000 people lined the route of Sands' funeral, and he was buried in the New Republican Plot, alongside 76 others.

"They have nothing in their whole imperial arsenal that can break the spirit of one Irishman who doesn't want to be broken."

- Bobby Sands

• Date: 1954-03-09
• Learn More: www.bobbysandstrust.com, www.pbs.org, en.wikipedia.org.
• Tags: #Birthdays, #Protests.
• Source: www.apeoplescalendar.org

Citizens' Commission Exposes COINTELPRO (1971)

Mon Mar 08, 1971

Image: A photograph of the Washington Post news article that broke the story, with the headline "Stolen Documents Describe FBI Surveillance Activities", authored by Betty Medsger and Ken W. Clawson.

On this day in 1971, a group of activists known as the "Citizens' Commission" broke into an FBI field office and stole over 1,000 classified documents, exposing COINTELPRO, a widespread surveillance operation of left-wing activists.

The "Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI" was an activist group that operated in the U.S. during the early 1970s, of which this is their only known action. Members of the raid mailed these documents anonymously to several U.S. newspapers, most of which refused to publish the information. The Washington Post was the first newspaper willing to publish the story.

The documents detailed widespread illegal surveillance on civil rights activists and contained some of the FBI's most self-incriminating documents, including several that detailed the FBI's use of postal workers and switchboard operators to spy on black civil rights activists.

Noam Chomsky stated that analysis of the stolen documents show that 40% of them were devoted to political surveillance, including two cases involving right-wing groups, ten concerning immigrants, and over two hundred on left or liberal groups. Notably, Muhammed Ali, whose 1971 fight with Joe Frazier provided cover for the burglary, was himself a target of this surveillance.

The perpetrators were never caught. Over 40 years after the break-in, some participants decided to go public with their story. In 2014, Betty Medsger's book "The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover's Secret F.B.I." was released, which details the burglary and revealed the identities of five of the eight participants. In 2014, filmmaker Johanna Hamilton made a documentary about the event, titled "1971".

• Date: 1971-03-08
• Learn More: en.wikipedia.org, www.nytimes.com.
• Tags: #CivilRights.
• Source: www.apeoplescalendar.org