Today in Labor History September 14, 1879: Margaret Sanger, American nurse and activist, was born. Sanger was famous for popularizing the term "birth control." She also opened the first birth control clinic in the United States and established the organizations that evolved into Planned Parenthood. Her protests and civil disobedience efforts contributed to court cases that helped legalize contraception in the U.S. Many on the Christian right have targeted her for her role in supporting women’s reproductive rights, yet Sanger was opposed to abortions and, as a nurse, she refused to participate in them.

In the early 1910s, Sanger joined the Women's Committee of the New York Socialist party. She also participated in labor actions by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), including the notable 1912 Lawrence textile strike and the 1913 Paterson silk strike. She also became close with many left-wing writers and activists, like John Reed, Upton Sinclair, Mabel Dodge and Emma Goldman. During this period, she saw the toll unwanted pregnancies and back-alley abortions took on poor, working class and immigrant women. And it was at this point that she shifted the focus of her activism toward promoting birth control as a way to prevent abortions and the economic strain of having unwanted pregnancies.

In 1914, she launched “The Woman Rebel,” a monthly newsletter with the anarchist slogan, “No Gods, No Masters.” It promoted contraception, with the goal of challenging the federal anti-obscenity laws, which were then used to suppress education and outreach about birth control. In 1916, she opened the first birth control clinic in the U.S., leading to her arrest. In 1921, she founded the American Birth Control League, which later became the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. She argued that women who are educated about birth control are the best judge of the time and conditions under which they should have children, and that it is their right to determine whether or not to bear children.

After World War I, Sanger increasingly appealed to the social necessity of limiting births among the poor. She was a eugenicist and believed that it was necessary to reduce reproduction of those who were “unfit.” While she defined “fitness” in terms of individual fitness, and not race, she supported restricting immigration, and she was known to “look the other way” when racists spoke in favor of eugenics. She even gave a presentation to the women’s auxiliary of the Ku Klux Klan. She also supported compulsory sterilization for those with cognitive disabilities.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #anarchism #margaretsanger #birthcontrol #plannedparenthood #abortion #IWW #socialism #civildisobedience #freespeech #eugenics #immigration #racism #ableism #kkk

Today in Labor History September 14, 1843: Lola Rodríguez de Tió, Puerto Rican poet, abolitionist, and women's rights activist was born. She and her husband became active in the movement against Spanish colonialism on the island. In 1889, the Spanish authorities banished them for their political activities. In exile in New York, she worked with Cuban revolutionary, Jose Marti, for Cuban independence from Spain. She wrote the lyrics for the anthem, La Boriquena. Many believe that the Puerto Rican flag came from her idea of having the same colors as the Cuban flag, but reversed.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #puertorico #feminism #abolition #slavery #poetry #cuba #LolaRodríguezdeTió #josemarti #Revolutionary #books #writer @bookstadon

Today in Labor History September 14, 1930: More than 100 Mexican and Filipino farm workers were arrested for union activities in the Imperial Valley, California.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #union #farmworkers #mexican #filipino #imperialvalley #california #police #immigration #racism

Today in Labor History September 15, 1923: Osugi Sakae and his partner Noe Itō, both anarchists and feminists, were murdered by the Japanese military, during the 3-week long Kantō Massacre. They also murdered Osugi’s six-year-old nephew, who had dual US-Japanese citizenship. Over the course of the massacre, Japanese authorities slaughtered over 6,000-9,000 ethnic Koreans, along with Japanese political dissidents. The massacre began on September 1, 1923, the same day as the Great Kanto Earthquake, a magnitude 7.8-8.2 temblor that killed up to 140,000 people and destroyed much of Tokyo, Yokohama and Chiba. The massacre began as a pogrom against Korean immigrants who worked in the Kanto region. Korean labor unions had organized a very effective food relief program to serve quake victims. The police considered them a den of socialists. Many were members of the Korean Independence movement and had been organizing to end Japanese colonial rule. On September 2, police began spreading false rumors that Koreans had been seen carrying gasoline cans in preparation for burning down Japanese neighborhoods, and that Koreans were raping Japanese women. In Yokohama, Kanagawa and Tokyo, police gave residents permission to kill Koreans. The police even formed their own vigilante gangs in some towns. The police and army also used the ongoing violence as justification and cover as they slaughtered union leaders, communists and anarchists. The great film maker, Akira Kurosawa, who was a child at the time, was horrified by the event. “With my own eyes I saw a mob of adults … chasing a bearded man, thinking someone with so much facial hair could not be Japanese....Simply because my father had a full beard, he was surrounded by a mob carrying clubs.”

The massacre is still denied to this day by many mainstream politicians. As recently as August 30, 2023, just before the 100th anniversary of the massacre, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno said that the government believed there was no adequate evidence that the massacre occurred. In 2017, the Cabinet Office removed historical evidence and acknowledgement of the massacre from their website. In 2022, Tokyo mayor Yuriko Koike refused to send a commemorative message for the sixth year in a row. She has argued that the occurrence of a massacre was a matter of historical debate. In July 2020, Koike was re-elected as mayor of Tokyo in a landslide victory. Annual events to commemorate the massacre are regularly met with counterprotests, sometimes violent.

Novelist Ushio Fukazawa, a Zainichi Koreans (Korean nationals living in Japan, prior to World War Two, and their descendants), wrote about the massacre in the 2015 novel “Green and Red.” There have also been several plays written about the massacre, translated into Esperanto. Osugi Sakae, the anarchist assassinated in the massacre, was Japan’s first Esperanto teacher.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #japan #korea #earthquake #massacre #pogrom #racism #anarchism #feminism #union #tokyo #esperanto #books #novel #play #writer #author @bookstadon

Today in Labor History September 15, 1931: Sailors at Invergordon, Scotland, mutinied, causing a panic on the London Stock Exchange and ultimately forcing England off the gold standard. The sailors mutinied primarily over a 25% cut for the rank and file. They sang “The Red Flag” and refused orders. Military control was restored without bloodshed, with the pay-cut reduced to 10%. One of the mutiny leaders later defected to the USSR, where he was imprisoned in the gulags as a British spy. Another mutiny leader later commanded the British Battalion of the antifascist International Brigades, fighting in the Spanish Civil War.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #mutiny #sailors #scotland #uk #greatdepression #socialism #ussr #antifascism

Today in Labor History September 15, 1963: Four members of the local KKK planted 19 sticks of dynamite in the Sixteenth Street Baptist church in Birmingham, Alabama. As a result, 4 young African-American girls died: Denise McNair, 11, and Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley and Addie Mae Collins, all 14. The outrage helped mobilize support for the civil rights movement. By 1965, the FBI knew who the perpetrators were. However, no prosecutions occurred until 1977. Others weren’t convicted until 2001-2002.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #civilrights #SixteenthStreetBaptistChurch #birmingham #alabama #racism #whitesupremacy #massacre #fbi #kkk #kukluxklan #BlackMastadon