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Great-Grandma Knew How to Protest
Bread and Roses vs. “Hands Off”
You may have never heard of the Bread and Roses Strike of 1912. Most school textbooks don’t even mention it. After all, public schools in the US groom us to be good little capitalists. For example, the only economics that my school taught were: “there’s no such thing as a free lunch”, “supply and demand” determine prices in the marketplace, and that Karl Marx was a devious communist whose writings were meant to brainwash us, so never ever read Das Kapital.
Most people today would be surprised to learn of the courage and solidarity of the impoverished mill workers (mostly immigrants), and how they successfully won concessions from the wealthy mill owners over 112 years ago.
The 1912 Bread and Roses Strike in Lawrence, Mass., was one of the most significant struggles in U.S. labor history due to its level of organization and collaboration across ethnic and gender lines. Thousands of largely female workers engaged in a lengthy, well-organized, and successful walkout, standing firm against an entrenched group of mill owners and their hundreds of militia and police. Workers maintained soup kitchens and nurseries for children. Meetings were simultaneously translated into nearly 30 languages. Representatives from every nationality formed a 50-person strike leadership group. (link, bold text…
