The Judge RANTS!
Date: 20/04/14
The Ludlow Massacre
You may know - from being taught the official version of history at school - that President Franklin D. Roosevelt referred to the day that the Imperial Japanese Air Force attacked Pearl Harbor as, "A date that will live in infamy".
But there have been many dates in US history which will live in infamy from both before and after 1941, and today marks the centenary of one such. Except that you will never find it taught in the sanitised history curriculum used in every public school in the US. Because it is about the murderous criminality of The Boss Class, a criminality which continues - mutatis mutandis - to this very day in some form or another, and which will go on happening until those who flatter themselves to be the leaders of organised labour manage to develop at least one spinal column, one set of intestines and a pair of balls between them.
In brief, the mineworkers of the State of Colorado had been trying to join the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) for years, but ran into the implacable opposition of the mine-owners. In the end, the miners struck...and so did the mine-owners and their goon-squads. Read this for what happened next.
Years later, the legendary Woody Guthrie wrote this song in commemoration. I first heard it on John Peel's show around about the early 90s. It was a relevant warning of the lengths and depths to which The Owning Classes will go to protect their privilege, and it remains relevant today:
