Peter Cole is a professor of history at Western Illinois University. He is the author of Wobblies on the Waterfront and Dockworker Power: Race and Activism in Durban and the San Francisco Bay Area.
Dock workers in San Francisco and Durban, South Africa, have huge amounts of strategic leverage in the global economy. Both have long used that power not just to fight for better wages, but also to fight imperialism and racism.
Ten years ago today, West Coast longshore workers celebrated May Day by walking out against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
True to its name, the Industrial Workers of the World spanned the globe — an international history that has long been forgotten.
Labor organizer Ella Reeve Bloor died on this day in 1951. Her life stands as a signpost for all radicals.
On this day in 1890, the US Army murdered as many as 300 Native American men, women, and children.
In the 1960s, a group of leftists risked everything to revive the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa.
Eric Hoffer was a conservative who only had the time to write because he was represented by a powerful leftist union.