87 quotes found
"A tumult, riot, and mob exist on the Pennsylvania Railroad at East Liberty and in the Twelfth Ward of Pittsburgh. Large assemblages of people are upon the railroad and the movement of freight trains either east or west is prevented by intimidation and violence, molesting and obstructing the engineers and other employés of the railroad company in the discharge of their duties. As the sheriff of the county, I have endeavored to suppress the riot, but have not the adequate means at my command to do so, and I therefore request you to exercise your authority in calling out the military to suppress the same."
"It's a question of bread or blood, and we're going to resist."
"We're with you. We're in the same boat. I heard a reduction of ten percent hinted at in our mill this morning. I won't call employers despots, I won't call them tyrants, but the term capitalist is sort of synonymous and will do as well."
"Meeting an enemy on the field of battle, you go there to kill. The more you kill, and the quicker you do it, the better. But here you had men with fathers and brothers and relatives in the crowd of rioters. The sympathy of the people, the sympathy of the troops, my own sympathy, was with the strikers proper. We all felt that those men were not receiving enough wages."
"You that know me know that I will obey orders...I have troops who will obey my orders and I tell you, gentlemen, these trains must go through. My troops will have no blank ammunition, and I give you warning of this in time."
"It was bread or blood, and they could get any number of men to come up and prevent the running through of any train until the matter was arranged with them."
"We are workingmen and we don't fight against workingmen. We want bread at home, but we don't want to rob our fellow-workingmen for it. No sir; we came here to protect property, but not to murder the poor men of Reading."
"In view of the recent high handed interference with the business of Railroad Companies, and the serious and sometimes fatal consequences that have resulted to the innocent traveling public from the unjustifiable and arbitrary conduct of the organization known as the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers upon other Railroads, it has been deemed unadvisable to retain in the employment of this Company any one who is a member of that organization."
"The Eagle has never been called upon to chronicle a more horrible slaughter of its peace and law-abiding citizens as is its duty to-day ... The pavements, sidewalks and streets in the vicinity of 7th and Penn streets, were literally baptized in blood..."
"My situation is not improved by the arrival of the Sixteenth regiment, which is very disaffected. The Fourth is becoming anxious, and is also very much exhausted. Should have reliable troops, without delay ... The Sixteenth regiment is furnishing the strikers with ammunition and openly declare their intention to join the rioters in case of trouble. If troops do not reach us by dark, I cannot vouch for the safety of the city, or my power to hold the depot. Stir heaven and earth to forward reliable and fresh troops."
"It will be useless to come with only two companies, and they not reliable. The morale of the Fourth regiment has given way within the last three hours, under their distrust of the Sixteenth … [T]he desertions from the Fourth regiment bring its effective strength down to one hundred muskets. The crowds cheer the Sixteenth, and hiss and groan the Fourth, and say if the Fourth would only leave, they would make no more trouble … Expect a meeting in what is left of the Fourth. The officers join with the men in the sentiments I have mentioned, and have just waited on me to demand their removal."
"The Fourth regiment most positively refuse to return to Reading to-night; the men declare they will walk home rather than return ... The regiment and company officers are perfectly useless."
"[I]f disobedience, insubordination and dicipline are to be disregarded, and allowed to go by without reproof or check, the armed soldiery of the land will be far more dangerous to the country, than an ignorant, howling, lawless mob, and, I predict, if we are not given a good, working, military code, the efficiency and stability of the National Guard of Pennsylvania, will be a failure, and, I regret to say, its days will be numbered."
"[H]ad the civil authorities acted with some degree of promptness, vigor, and determination, the riots would not have assumed such proportions. But it has proved in all of our late troubles, they act feebly, make no attempt to exhaust all power at their command, flee out of harm’s way, apply to the Governor for protection, and results in the calling out of the National Guard, who must stand the blunt, the stones, the abuse, and curses of the mob, and the slurs of the pusillanimous sympathizer, and the Guardsman is expected to stand and take all."
"The US has an unusually violent labor history, well into the twentieth century."
"American labor was strongest when the threat of communism was greatest. The apogee of America's welfare state, with all its limitations, was coterminous with the height of the Cold War. The dismantling of the welfare state and the labor movement, meanwhile, marched in tandem with communism's collapse."
"The United States had the bloodiest labor wars of any industrialized nation. Hundreds of workers were killed. Thousands were wounded. Tens of thousands were blacklisted. Radical union organizers such as Joe Hill were executed on trumped up murder charges, imprisoned like Eugene V. Debs, or driven, like Haywood, into exile. Militant unions were outlawed. During the on November 17, 1919, carried out on the second anniversary of the Russian Revolution, more than ten thousand alleged Communists, Socialists and anarchists were arrested. Many were held for long periods without trial. Thousands of foreign-born emigrés, such as Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman and , were arrested, imprisoned and ultimately deported. Socialist publications, such as and , were shut down."
"The holds a particular place in the history and theory of the labour movement, as well as today reaction to the bosses and the government during the coronavirus pandemic. [...] The great advance of American workers in the 1930s that led to the founding of the and a vast expansion of the derived from just such wildcat strikes in the rubber plants, the auto industry, among electrical workers and many others. Workers walked out by the thousands, some occupied their plants, while others created mass picket lines, fought scabs and police. Wildcat strikes spread during the Depression decade like a virus through the United States, drawing in small industrial shops and retail workers. A similar thing happened in the 1960s and 1970s with teachers and public employees who walked out in illegal strikes to found their unions. Rank-and-file upheavals also transformed the in the 1970s and shook up other unions as well."
"Almost half of America's workers—whether in Appalachia or Alabama, California or Carolina—work for less than a ."
"While the virus itself does not discriminate, it is the poor and disenfranchised who will experience the most suffering and death. They’re the ones who are least likely to have health care or paid , and the most likely to lose work hours."
"No one mentioned Communism or the Hiss Case until we sat over our coffee in the living room. Mrs. Philip Jessup had just used her personal good offices to try to get me off TIME. Luce was baffled by the implacable clamor of the most enlightened people against me. "By any Marxian pattern of how classes behave," he said, "the upper class should be for you and the lower classes should be against you. But it is the upper class that is most violent against you. How do you explain that?" "You don't understand the class structure of American society," said Smetana, "or you would not ask such a question. In the United States, the working class are Democrats. The middle class are Republicans. The upper class are Communists.""
"We Mexicans here in the United States, as well as all other farm workers, are engaged in another struggle for the freedom and dignity which poverty denies us. But it must not be a violent struggle, even if violence is used against us."
"We seek the support of all political groups and protection of the government, which is also our government, in our struggle. For too many years we have been treated like the lowest of the low. Our wages and working conditions have been determined from above, because irresponsible legislators who could have helped us, have supported the rancher's argument that the plight of the Farm Worker was a "special case." They saw the obvious effects of an unjust system, starvation wages, contractors, day hauls, forced migration, sickness, illiteracy, camps and sub-human living conditions, and acted as if they were irremediable causes. The farm worker has been abandoned to his own fate — without representation, without power — subject to mercy and caprice of the rancher. We are tired of words, of betrayals, of indifference. To the politicians we say that the years are gone when the farm worker said nothing and did nothing to help himself. From this movement shall spring leaders who shall understand us, lead us, be faithful to us, and we shall elect them to represent us. We shall be heard."
"The ranchers want to keep us divided in order to keep us weak. Many of us have signed individual "work contracts" with the ranchers or contractors, contracts in which they had all power. These contracts were farces, one more cynical joke at our impotence. [...] We are poor, we are humble, and our only choices is to Strike in those ranchers where we are not treated with the respect we deserve as working men, where our rights as free and sovereign men are not recognized. We do not want the paternalism of the rancher; we do not want the contractor; we do not want charity at the price of our dignity. We want to be equal with all the working men in the nation; we want just wage, better working conditions, a decent future for our children. To those who oppose us, be they ranchers, police, politicians, or speculators, we say that we are going to continue fighting until we die, or we win. We shall overcome."
"Across the San Joaquin Valley, across California, across the entire Southwest of the United States, wherever there are Mexican people, wherever there are farm workers, our movement is spreading like flames across ad dry plain. Our pilgrimage is the match that will light our cause for all farm workers to see what is happening here, so that they may do as we have done. The time has come for the liberation of the poor farm worker. History is on our side. May the strike go on! Viva la causa!"
"Today, thousands of farm workers live under savage conditions — beneath trees and amid garbage and human excrement — near tomato fields in San Diego County, tomato fields which use the most modern farm technology. Vicious rats gnaw on them as they sleep. They walk miles to buy food at inflated prices. And they carry in water from irrigation pumps."
"All my life, I have been driven by one dream, one goal, one vision: to overthrow a farm labor system in this nation that treats farm workers as if they were not important human beings. Farm workers are not agricultural implements; they are not beasts of burden to be used and discarded. That dream was born in my youth, it was nurtured in my early days of organizing. It has flourished. It has been attacked."
"I'm not very different from anyone else who has ever tried to accomplish something with his life. My motivation comes from my personal life, from watching what my mother and father went through when I was growing up, from what we experienced as migrant workers in California. That dream, that vision grew from my own experience with racism, with hope, with a desire to be treated fairly, and to see my people treated as human beings and not as chattel. It grew from anger and rage, emotions I felt 40 years ago when people of my color were denied the right to see a movie or eat at a restaurant in many parts of California. It grew from the frustration and humiliation I felt as a boy who couldn't understand how the growers could abuse and exploit farm workers when there were so many of us and so few of them."
"I've traveled through every part of this nation. I have met and spoken with thousands of Hispanics from every walk of life, from every social and economic class. And one thing I hear most often from Hispanics, regardless of age or position, and from many non-Hispanics as well, is that the farm workers gave them the hope that they could succeed and the inspiration to work for change."
"My friends, the time for action is upon us. The enemies of justice wants you to think of Dr. King as only a civil rights leader, but he had a much broader agenda. He was a tireless crusader for the rights of the poor, for an end to the war in Vietnam long before it was popular to take that stand, and for the rights of workers everywhere. Many people find it convenient to forget that Martin was murdered while supporting a desperate strike on that tragic day in Memphis, Tennessee. He died while fighting for the rights of sanitation workers. Dr. King's dedication to the rights of the workers who are so often exploited by the forces of greed has profoundly touched my life and guided my struggle."
"What the workingmen of the country are profoundly interested in is the private ownership of the means of production and distribution, the enslaving and degrading wage-system in which they toil for a pittance at the pleasure of their masters and are bludgeoned, jailed or shot when they protest — this is the central, controlling, vital issue of the hour, and neither of the old party platforms has a word or even a hint about it. As a rule, large capitalists are Republicans and small capitalists are Democrats, but workingmen must remember that they are all capitalists, and that the many small ones, like the fewer large ones, are all politically supporting their class interests, and this is always and everywhere the capitalist class."
"Strength of the U.S. economy is the country's edge in human capital, the productivity, innovation, and entrepreneurship of its workers. The United States remains the top destination for smart, skilled, and creative individuals even as the global competition for such workers intensifies."
"The billionaire class will do to us what it did to the radicals who rose up to form militant unions in the past. We had the . , tens of thousands were beaten, wounded, jailed and blacklisted. were infiltrated, shut down and outlawed."
"To me, you know, to answer your question, the definition of Democratic Socialism, to me, again, is the fact that in a modern, moral and wealthy society, no American should be too poor to live. And to me that means every working class American in this country should have access to dignified health care, should actually be able to go see a doctor without going broke. It means you should be able to send your kids to college and trade school if they so choose. And no person should feel precarious or unstable in their access to housing as our economy develops."
"The labor movement has long been struggling in the U.S., as fewer workers join unions and as high-profile organizing drives, like a June attempt to unionize Volkswagen employees in Tennessee, fall short. But American workers, feeling left behind as the economy grows around them, are joining together to demand a bigger slice of the pie. On Sept. 16, 50,000 workers walked off the job in their first strike since 2007, protesting idled plants and low wages. Nearly 8,000 Marriott workers went on strike in eight cities last year, while 31,000 supermarket employees in the Northeast did the same in early 2019. In the past year, tens of thousands of teachers walked out of their classrooms to demand better pay and funding. In all, nearly half a million workers participated in strikes and work stoppages last year, the most since 1986. The labor disruptions show no sign of abating."
"The recent labor unrest is in part fueled by uneven . While companies are prospering and the stock market hovers near all-time highs, the benefits haven’t been felt by many workers, who are often stuck in temporary jobs with no benefits. Paradoxically, the strong economy also emboldens workers. [...] When more jobs are available and unemployment is low, people feel more confident in demanding better pay and benefits. [...] Many nonunion workers also want change. Those in the , many of whom are considered- s and thus not eligible to unionize or receive benefits, have been demanding higher pay and steadier hours."
"A bipartisan infrastructure bill that has already passed in the Senate, but not in the house"
"A budget reconcilliation bill , that has divided Progressive Democrats and Moderate Democrats who have not been able to reach a compromise, neither in the house nor in the Senate."
"We are outraged that the initial framework does not lower prescription drug prices"
"The reconciliation framework is a pro-worker victory: child care, home care, clean energy jobs, health care, tax fairness, immigration improvements and support for worker organizing"
"The U.S. Congress is poised to pass a $778 billion military budget bill for 2022. As they have been doing year after year, our elected officials are preparing to hand the lion's share — more than 65% — of federal discretionary spending to the U.S. war machine, even as they wring their hands over spending a mere quarter of that amount on the Build Back Better Act... U.S. society does face critical threats to our security, including the climate crisis, systemic racism, erosion of voting rights, gun violence, grave inequalities and the corporate hijacking of political power. But one problem we fortunately do not have is the threat of attack or invasion... by any other country at all... If the public is ever to have any impact on this dysfunctional and deadly money-go-round, we must learn to see through the fog of propaganda that masks self-serving corruption... and allows the military brass to cynically exploit the public's natural respect for brave young men and women who are ready to risk their lives to defend our country."
"And, by the way, you hear these numbers — $3.5 trillion or $1.75 trillion. We pay for it all. It doesn’t increase the deficit one single cent"
"Call for the damn vote. Tell people to get in line. Be explicit"
"We are just missing two things: What exactly is going to be in the bill and how we’re going to pay for it “Other than that, we are good to go"
"I wish I could say yes, but there’s a great deal of uncertainty within the caucus as to what’s contained in the deal"
"The United States is on pace to spend over $7 trillion over the next ten years for the Pentagon. To put that number in perspective, the U.S. spends more each year on the military than China, Russia, India, the U.K., Germany, France, Japan, South Korea and Australia combined. While Republicans and Democrats are in sharp disagreements over the much smaller Build Back Better legislation, there is largely a bipartisan consensus when it comes to the military budget and foreign military intervention..."
"We have our Build Back Better Framework. Now it’s time for Congress to pass it. Let’s get this done."
"Most of that has been negotiated, most of it is ready to go. And we are just waiting for the last parts of the bill to be put together. We’re hopeful that that will be done in the next few hours, frankly"
"we're working on it"
"Until we get that, we don’t have anything to say about numbers"
"As we’ve consistently said, there are dozens of our members who want to vote both bills — the Build Back Better Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act — out of the House together"
"A full accounting of the spending and revenue has been provided by the White House, numerous pieces of the legislation have already been scored, and the [Joint Committee on Taxation] has put out analysis that Build Back Better will contribute to reducing the deficit"
"However, if our six colleagues still want to wait for a CBO score, we would agree to give them that time — after which point we can vote on both bills together."
"On the night the Build Back Better vote was to take place, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy forced a delay until the following morning by delivering an 8 hour, 32-minute floor speech—the longest in House history—during which he assailed the legislation as “big government socialism.” And, as with most legislation passed by the U.S. House of Representatives, not a single Republican supported the bill, which also lost the support a lone Democrat who voted against it. Now it’s the Senate’s turn. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer hopes to pass the bill by Christmas, but he first has to convince all 50 Democrats and the two independents who caucus with them to back the plan. It won’t be easy. The paid family leave provision may be cut to satisfy a demand from Sen. Joe Manchin, and Sen. Bernie Sanders will call for provisions in such areas as Medicare and climate to be strengthened. Any changes to the legislation will have to be voted on in the House, where Pelosi holds a razor-thin majority and can only afford three defections from her party. * In the meantime, Democrats have some selling to do. Many of the bill’s provisions won’t go into effect until after the 2022 mid-term election cycle where Democrats will go head to head for control of both houses. They will need to convince the American public of the many ways their lives will be made easier and more affordable by the Build Back Better Act."
"President Biden's framework is the product of months of negotiations and input from all members of the Democratic Party who share a common goal to deliver for the American people."
"As we work through the text of the legislation I would hope all of us will continue to deal in good faith and do what is right for the future of the American people"
"The Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill represents a historic investment in West Virginia’s infrastructure – around $6 billion over the next 5 years. Here are some of the investments that the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill will bring to WV:"
"Thanks to the #AmericanRescuePlan, nearly $124 MILLION in relief is on the way to 440 #WV healthcare providers. I fought for dedicated funding for rural healthcare providers in the ARP to ensure they can continue to provide critical care in our communities"
"This is a no on this legislation. I have tried everything I know to do. And the President has worked diligently. He's been wonderful to work with. He knows I've had concerns and the problems I've had and, you know, the thing that we should all be directing our attention towards the variant, a Covid that we have coming back at us in so many different aspects in different ways, it's affecting our lives again"
"I have always said, 'If I can't go back home and explain it, I can't vote for it.' Despite my best efforts, I cannot explain the sweeping Build Back Better Act in West Virginia and I cannot vote to move forward on this mammoth piece of legislation"
"If I sound angry, I am. My constituents are angry. It’s clear to us that this bill is wrong on the merits. And they have responded with a single word: enough!"
"President Joe Biden on Monday signed into law one of the largest infrastructure packages in U.S. history... shoring up $1.2 trillion, $550 billion in new investments for the nation's bridges, airports, waterways, public transit and more... Headlining the 2,702-page bill’s spending,"
"roughly $110 billion... toward improving the nation's roads and bridges..."
"the largest-ever federal investment in public transit, allotting $39 billion to modernize systems, improve access for the elderly and people with disabilities, and repair more than 24,000 buses, 5,000 railcars and thousands of miles of train tracks...."
"$66 billion earmarked for high-speed rail, safety improvements..."
"$65 billion to bolster the country's broadband infrastructure ..."
"$108 billion..help upgrade the nation’s electricity grid..."
"$7.5 billion for the nation’s first network of electric-vehicle chargers along highway corridors..."
"$5 billion for zero-emission buses..."
"$2.5 billion for ferries. Clean drinking water..."
"$55 billion to replace all the nation's lead pipes and service lines..."
"more than $50 billion for water infrastructure improvement... a sweeping clean-up measure targeting toxic hot spots or areas of heavy industrial pollution..."
"More than $25 billion...to help modernize America's airports..."
"$11 billion in transportation safety programs, including a new program to help... reduce crashes and fatalities... particularly among cyclists and pedestrians..."
"In addition to the $550 billion in new investments, the package also includes roughly:"
"$650 billion in previously authorized funding for roads and other infrastructure,"
"including nearly $300 billion for the Highway Trust Fund and"
"$90 billion for public transit..."
"[it ()] doesn't contain everything that the president proposed and that some had hoped. But that's the nature of progress in a democracy"
"Democrats 'pretty much there' on U.S. social spending bill"
"Being anti-Trump is not enough. Democrats need to run on results, and this should light a fire under frontline Democrats to get Build Back Better passed."
"[The White House's $1.75 trillion Build Back Better framework is] by far the most significant piece of legislation ever passed in the world [to address climate]"
"Sanders' remarks on the NDAA—which cleared a key procedural hurdle late Wednesday—came as Democrats in Congress also worked to finalize the Build Back Better Act, a reconciliation package whose social spending and climate provisions have been gutted to satisfy right-wing members of the majority party such as Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.). Manchin, a key swing vote in the Senate, has repeatedly cited the national debt as a reason to pare back the reconciliation bill, which now has a top-line price tag of around $1.75 trillion over ten years—roughly half of the original $3.5 trillion framework. But while the West Virginia Democrat says he's alarmed by the prospect of spending to expand Medicare and combat the climate crisis, he appears unconcerned that, over the past decade, Congress has poured over $9 trillion into the only federal agency that has yet to pass a full independent audit. Manchin has approved every NDAA since 2011, and he voted Wednesday to advance the 2022 Pentagon budget."
"“This week, Democrats are continuing to make important progress toward finalizing President Biden’s Build Back Better plan, and we remain confident that a final deal is within reach"
"After months of productive, good-faith negotiations with @POTUS and the White House, we have made significant progress on the proposed budget reconciliation package. I look forward to getting this done, expanding economic opportunities and helping everyday families get ahead."
"The sausage got made! President Biden's 1.2 trillion dollar infrastructure bill passed the house late last night and soon will be signed into law."
"There was a strange aftertaste to many of the calls for grand social reform in 2020. As the coronavirus crisis overtook us, the left wing on both sides of the Atlantic, at least that part that had been fired up Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders, was going down to defeat. The promise of a radicalized and reenergized left, organized around the idea of the Green New Deal, seemed to dissipate amidst the pandemic. It fell to governments mainly of the center and the right to meet the crisis. They were a strange assortment. Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and Donald Trump in the United States experimented with denial. For them climate skepticism and virus skepticism went hand in hand. In Mexico, the notionally left-wing government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador also pursued a maverick path, refusing to take drastic action. Nationalist strongmen like Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, Narendra Modi in India, Vladimir Putin in Russia, and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey did not deny the virus, but relied on their patriotic appeal and bullying tactics to see them through. It was the managerial centrist types who were under most pressure. Figures like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer in the United States, or Sebastián Piñera in Chile, or Cyril Ramaphosa in South Africa, Emmanuel Macron, Angela Merkel, Ursula von der Leyen, and their ilk in Europe. They accepted the science. Denial was not an option. They were desperate to demonstrate that they were better than the 'populists.' To meet the crisis, very middle-of-the-road politicians ended up doing very radical things. Most of it was improvisation and compromise, but insofar as they managed to put a programmatic gloss on their responses—whether in the form of the EU's Next Generation program or Biden's Build Back Better program in 2020—it came from the repertoire of green modernization, sustainable development, and the Green New Deal."