#CancelRent: 

Tenants Demand Rent Relief & Organize Strikes as Unemployment Surges Due to COVID-19

STORY APRIL 01, 2020

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TOPICS
Housing
Coronavirus

GUESTS
Cea Weaver
campaign coordinator for Housing Justice for All, which is organizing to cancel rent during the coronavirus outbreak.

LINKS
Cea Weaver on Twitter
Housing Justice for All
Image Credit: Twitter: @MW_Unrest


Today is April 1, and millions across the country don’t have the money to pay rent. But despite eviction moratoriums and relief on mortgage payments in hard-hit states like California, Washington and New York, no rent freeze has been ordered. In response, tenants around the country are calling for immediate rent cancellation. Some are planning to “rent strike.” Meanwhile, many workers who lost their income due to the pandemic haven’t even been able to file for unemployment in New York state, with the unemployment website continually crashing and phone lines jammed. Seven-point-eight million people called the New York state Labor Department hotline last week, compared to the average 50,000. We get an update from Cea Weaver, campaign coordinator for Housing Justice for All, which is organizing to cancel rent during the coronavirus.

Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.


AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman in New York. Juan González is in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Today is April 1st. Millions across the country do not have money to pay rent in the midst of this pandemic. But despite eviction moratoriums and relief on mortgage payments in hard-hit states like California, Washington and New York, no rent freeze has been ordered. In response, tenants around the country are calling for immediate rent cancellation. Some are planning to rent strike. This is Crystal Stella Becerril, a tenant in Brooklyn, speaking to PIX News.


CRYSTAL STELLA BECERRIL: Asking them to reduce our rent by a minimum of 50%, beginning April 1st, so this Wednesday, with the possibility up to 100% rent reduction or forgiveness for those tenants who have completely lost all forms of income and won’t be able to pay. … We’re standing in solidarity with those who can’t, because we know that if three people in a building of 36 can’t pay rent, those people will be taken to court and be evicted. But if we stand in solidarity with them, the chances of that happening are reduced.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s Crystal Stella Becerril, a tenant in Brooklyn, speaking to PIX News. According to one estimate, 40% of renters in New York City may not be able to make rent this month. And while a record 3 million people in the U.S. applied for unemployment last week, many workers who lost their livelihoods still have not even been able to file for unemployment. Nearly 8 million people called the New York state Labor Department hotline last week, compared to an average 50,000 weekly calls.

For more, we’re joined by Cea Weaver, campaign coordinator for Housing Justice for All, which is organizing to cancel rent during the coronavirus pandemic. She’s here in New York, as Juan González is also in New Jersey.

Cea, talk about what you are calling for on this first day of the month. Yes, no one is talking about April fools in the midst of this pandemic, but clearly no one is canceling rent right now at a mass level.

CEA WEAVER: Yeah, so, you’re absolutely right. It’s April 1st, and millions of New Yorkers are going to be unable to pay their rent today. While the eviction moratorium is a step in the right direction, it does nothing to prepare for when we emerge from this crisis. And so we are calling for full universal cancellation of all rent that is accrued during this crisis. So that means you can’t pay — if you can’t pay now, you don’t have to pay, and you won’t be taken to court for this rent later, either.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And how do you respond to folks like Governor Cuomo, who has said he’s all for a mortgage and rent moratorium, but not for cancellations per se?

CEA WEAVER: Yeah, so, Cuomo has actually not called for a rent moratorium. He’s called for a mortgage moratorium for property owners. And, you know, I think that Governor Cuomo is simply just ignoring the fact that more than half of the state rents their homes. He has repeatedly said that the closure of housing courts, the eviction moratorium, is — taken care of the rent issue. I think that he’s got to be kidding himself if he thinks that that’s true. I know he can’t truly think that that’s accurate. All that that is is just the very definition of kicking the can down the road.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to turn to Governor Cuomo speaking about the eviction moratorium at his press conference Tuesday. He is then asked about what renters should do when that moratorium ends.


GOV. ANDREW CUOMO: You cannot be evicted for nonpayment of rent, residential nor commercial, for three months. Again, we pick these intervals, and you can say they’re somewhat random. But, you know, when is it going to end? Nobody knows. Pick an interval. So we said three months. You can’t be evicted, residential or commercial, for nonpayment of rent for 90 days. On that basis, my daughters have stopped paying me rent. I’m not even sure that their finances have dropped significantly, but I think they’re just taking advantage of the noneviction order that I myself posted. And I resent it.


REPORTER: Governor, what do you say —


GOV. ANDREW CUOMO: I love when they lie to me.


REPORTER: — renters should do once your 90-day moratorium on evictions ends and they likely owe several months of rent? You know, unemployment is obviously increasing.


GOV. ANDREW CUOMO: We’ll deal with that when we get to it.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s Governor Cuomo’s daily news conference from yesterday. Cea Weaver, if you could respond to what he said, and Governor Cuomo, who is now being talked about in all sorts of circles as a possible presidential candidate, a brokered convention, etc., what his history has been on housing here in New York?

CEA WEAVER: Cuomo has a long history of standing with the real estate industry and not standing with the tenants. He’s got a long history of standing with real estate over standing with public housing. He has worked in housing his whole career, and the entire time he has been on the side of the real estate industry. So it’s not surprising to hear that he’s not really taking seriously the rights of renters during this time and the fear that renters may feel about being unable to pay the rent on April 1st, on May 1st, on June 1st, and not really having a plan to move forward. It’s unsurprising, but it is terrifying, and we need the governor to take urgent action here —

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Cea —

CEA WEAVER: — to take the rental [inaudible] response seriously.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Cea, do you have any sense whether across the country the movement is spreading of people saying they just won’t pay rent to their landlords?

CEA WEAVER: Absolutely. There are more people who are waking up to the housing crisis today than ever before. And that’s the thing that is giving me hope and making me feel like we’re going to win this thing. The housing justice movement has been saying for a long time that everyone is just one major life event away from an eviction. We say that — we say that a lot. We say, you know, if your mother gets sick or if you lose a job or if you have to — if you have a medical emergency yourself, that you may be just, you know, one paycheck away from an eviction. What’s happening right now is that that is happening to hundreds of thousands of people, millions of people, all at once in our society. And so, all of those people are turning to the housing justice movement and saying, “Wow! I was living that precariously.” And sort of a moment — it’s a moment where everybody is realizing just how the housing market is not working for renters, and trying — coming together to take political action.

AMY GOODMAN: And can I get your comment to Mayor de Blasio calling for a rent freeze for the 2.3 million tenants in nearly a million rent-stabilized units across New York, the city saying they’ll work with the state to suspend Rent Guidelines Board process for the upcoming year? De Blasio is saying, “We are in the midst of a crisis only comparable to the Great Depression. The people of our city are struggling, and a rent freeze is the lifeline so many will need this year to stay above water.” Cea?

CEA WEAVER: Yeah, so, I think, yeah, you said it yourself: The buck stops with the governor, unfortunately. And it’s great that de Blasio is taking a step, but we need Cuomo to take action. That’s just the scenario that we’re in right now. And then, I think it’s incredibly important to not forget the millions of other renters who are not rent-stabilized, who are living precariously without the right to a renewal lease, in unregulated apartments, who have also lost income, who also need immediate relief now.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Cea Weaver, we want to thank you so much for being with us, campaign coordinator for Housing Justice for All, organizing to cancel rent during the pandemic.

And as we wrap up the show, Juan, this latest news that has just come out, of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus joining with many others, 3,000 medical professionals, as well as many immigration rights groups, for ICE to immediately release all 37,000 detainees in ICE custody, Juan?

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Amy, it’s clear that given the huge number of people in detention, in immigration detention, overwhelmingly, most of them have not been — they’ve not been convicted of any crime. They’re being detained while their status is adjudicated. And it seems positively mind-boggling that the federal government doesn’t realize, especially in the crowded conditions that many of the detainees are in, that it would be the proper humanitarian policy to release them, release them now, to prevent the spread of COVID-19. And their status can be adjudicated after this crisis is over.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, we have to come to the end of the show. We tried to reach Chris Smalls, who organized the Amazon protest and was fired, Amazon said, because he wasn’t keeping social distancing rules or quarantining, and, Chris Smalls alleges, because he organized the protest at Amazon to keep workers safe. But we will certainly continue to follow this issue.

And a little correction: Earlier in the headlines, I talked about Franklin Graham, the president of the Christian relief organization Samaritan’s Purse, who has helped to organize a hospital outside of Mount Sinai here in New York in the middle of Central Park. I mentioned he was a university president. He isn’t. That’s Jerry Falwell, who kept Liberty University open despite the concern of many staff, teachers and students.

That does it for our show. By the way, whether or not we have access to medical masks, using a scarf is a great idea when you go outside. We must all protect ourselves to protect the community. All safety to everyone. Juan, thanks so much for joining us. Democracy Now! produced by a remarkable team: Mike Burke, Renée Feltz, Deena Guzder, Nermeen Shaikh, Carla Wills, Tami Woronoff, Libby Rainey, Sam Alcoff, John Hamilton, Robby Karran, Hany Massoud, Denis Moynihan, Charina Nadura, Tey-Marie Astudillo, Adriano Contreras. Special thanks to Julie Crosby. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González. Be safe, all.
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George Takei claims he'll be the final torchbearer to light the Olympic Flame in Tokyo next year in April Fool's Day Joke: 'A bit of levity in an otherwise dark time'

By ADAM S. LEVY FOR DAILYMAIL.COM 2 April 2020

George Takei hasn't lost his sense of humor in these trying times.

The 82-year-old actor played an April Fool's Day Joke Wednesday, posting on social media that he would be the the final torchbearer to light the Olympic Flame in Tokyo next year.

'Friends! I’ve been sitting on some big news for quite some time now,' Takei, who played the role of Sulu on Star Trek, wrote. 'Unfortunately, given the current global situation, I haven’t been given the clear to announce it until now.'



The latest: George Takei, 82, played an April Fool's Day Joke Wednesday, posting on social media that he would be the the final torchbearer to light the Olympic Flame in Tokyo next year

Takei, a hit with audiences on The Howard Stern Show for years, said, 'I am honored beyond belief to have been selected to be the final torchbearer who will light the Olympic Flame in Tokyo in 2021!'

He continued: 'This will be such a unique moment, before the eyes of a billion people, lighting the torch as a symbol of hope for the future in 2021 in Tokyo.

'As a life-long runner, I’m especially grateful to have been chosen, and hope to do everyone in the US of A proud!'

The socially-conscious star later clarified that he was not serious with the initial post.

+4



Set-up: The actor first said he was going to take the ceremonial feat at next year's games


Admission: Takei later said it was a joke, as he sought to provide levity in tough times
George Takei of Star Trek poses for photos at premiere in 2015



Oh my! Takei was a hit with audiences as an on-air personality on The Howard Stern Show. He was snapped last year in NYC

'Yes, friends, I'm afraid this was an April Fools prank, a bit of levity in an otherwise dark time,' he wrote. 'And while I’ll not be lighting that fire myself, my eyes will look upon it as a symbol of our triumph over this invisible foe and a reuniting of the global community.'

The Tokyo Olympics were postponed March 24 amid coronavirus precautions and the International Olympics Committee later said that the new date for the games will be July 21, 2021.

The international pandemic has spread to a number of notable names in the show business world George has worked in for decades. They include Tom Hanks, Rita Wilson and Idris Elba, who have all tested positive for the virus, in addition to dozens of stars in the worlds of music, sports and politics.

As of Wednesday, the death total for COVID-19 - declared a public health emergency by World Health Organization - had soared to 4,774 people in the U.S., The COVID Tracking Project reported, with 212,695 total positive diagnoses.

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'I can’t believe we finally found it': Robert Irwin photographs a 'critically endangered species' in the wild amid the COVID-19 pandemic

By SHIVE PREMA FOR DAILY MAIL AUSTRALIA  2, April 2020

Robert Irwin has been taking care of the animals at Australia Zoo after it closed its doors amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

And on Wednesday, the 16-year-old ventured out into the bush on an expedition to photograph a 'critically endangered species' in its natural habitat.

Robert posted a video of his photography trip to Instagram, documenting the exact moment he made the rare sighting. 

Robert Irwin photographs a VERY rare sighting amid COVID-19 pandemic


'I can’t believe we finally found it': On Wednesday, Robert Irwin (pictured) photographed a 'critically endangered species' in the wild amid the COVID-19 pandemic

'I'm here in the natural habitat of a critically endangered species. It's very rare and I'm going to see if I can document it for the first time,' Robert said in the clip.

In the video, Robert then ventured through the bush while high-stakes music played.

'There it is! Stay calm, get down! Straight through there!' Robert said, before hilariously revealing that the endangered species was actually a roll of toilet paper.


Gold: 'There it is! Stay calm, get down! Straight through there!' Robert said, before hilariously revealing that the endangered species was actually a roll of toilet paper

The endangered species: Toilet paper and other sanitary items have been in short supply due to panic buying amid the COVID-19 pandemic

Toilet paper and other sanitary items have been in short supply due to panic buying amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

'How's that? It's in perfect condition! Critically rare and endangered! This is amazing. Wow! Can't believe it!' Robert said as he took photos of the toilet roll.

The camera then panned over to another in-demand supply, hand sanitiser.

'Hang on! Look over there, no way! It's even more endangered. I can't believe it! It's a close relative of this one, also critically endangered,' Robert said.


They need conservation! The camera then panned to another in-demand supply, hand sanitiser

'Hang on! Look over there, no way! It's even more endangered. I can't believe it! It's a close relative of this one, also critically endangered,' Robert said as he took photos

Robert then concluded the video, revealing that it was actually just a COVID-19-inspired April Fool's Day prank.

'This is one of the most incredible expeditions I've been on. Tough work, but we finally found them. April fools! Wash your hands, people,' he said.

Meanwhile, the COVID-19 pandemic continues to escalate in Australia.

As of Thursday night, there have been 5,136 confirmed cases, which have resulted in 24 deaths.


Pandemic: As of Thursday night, there have been 5,136 confirmed cases, which have resulted in 24 deaths

Robert Irwin photographs a 'critically endangered species' in the wild amid the COVID-19 pandemic

Republican Paul Gosar promoted an antisemitic website that praised him for condemning ‘Jewish warmongers’
Jerod Macdonald-Evoy, Arizona Mirror
April 17, 2023, 6:57 PM ET

Paul Gosar (AFP)

Arizona Republican Congressman Paul Gosar on Sunday promoted an antisemitic website that denies the Holocaust, praises Adolf Hitler as “a man of valor” and features a large number of admittedly false articles.

In Gosar’s weekly newsletter to constituents, he included several links to stories about himself, one of which was titled “Congressman Gosar: Warmongers Nuland & Blinken ‘Are Dangerous Fools Who Can Get Us All Killed,’” referring to the on-going conflict in Ukraine.

But the headline of the actual article was edited by Gosar’s staff to remove obvious antisemitism. The article the congressman linked to was headlined “Congressman: Jewish warmongers Nuland & Blinken ‘Are Dangers Fools Who Can Get Us All Killed,’” and was published by a far-right website well known for publishing antisemitic content that includes Holocaust denialism and conspiracy theories around 9/11.

A review of the authors on the website by the Arizona Mirror found that one is currently promoting a book in which he claims the Holocaust was a “fraud,” and many of the site’s articles spread common antisemitic tropes.

The site is also heavily pro-Kremlin, often republishing articles from the Russian state-run propaganda websites Russia Today and Sputnik. The story shared by Gosar was originally published by Sputnik, but had its headline changed to reflect the antisemitic tone of the site.

Rory McShane, a spokesman for Gosar, said that the congressman uses a “third-party aggregating service” for headlines, and claimed that the website changed the article’s headline on April 17.

That’s the day Media Matters for America published a piece about Gosar’s promotion of the site, and the day the Mirror sought an explanation from Gosar’s camp. The article does not say it was updated on April 17, only that it was published on Feb. 26. McShane did not respond to follow up questions asking how Gosar knew it the headline was changed on April 17.

“We will not be using this website as a reference for any future articles,” McShane told the Mirror. He added that Gosar “is well known as one of the top advocates of the State of Israel and a defender of those of the Jewish faith across the world and has regularly been asked to speak to Jewish advocacy groups like the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation.”

But this is not the first time Gosar has promoted content from websites that are connected to white supremacists who traffic in antisemitism.

In 2021, Gosar promoted the work of known white nationalist Vincent James Foxx, who became the unofficial propagandist for a neo-Nazi fight club. Gosar spoke at the same white nationalist conference as Foxx a few years earlier, alongside Holocaust-denier and antisemite Nick Fuentes, the first sitting politician to do so.

That work mentioned the “great replacement theory,” the idea, popular among white supremacists, that white Americans are being replaced by immigrants. It has been seized upon by extremist groups such as the American Identity Movement and Generation Identity.

It has also inspired violence. Fears of immigrants undermining his vision of a white Christian Europe motivated Anders Behring Breivik’s murderous rampage in 2011 at a Norwegian youth summer camp.

In the U.S., the Tree of Life synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh in 2018 was the deadliest attack against the Jewish community in United States history. Just before it took place, the killer took to right-wing social media site Gab to say he believed that immigrants were being brought in to replace and “kill our people.”

The next year in New Zealand, 51 people would be killed and 40 injured but not before the shooter would post a 74-page manifesto titled “The Great Replacement.”

Again in 2019, in El Paso, Texas, a shooter who would kill 23 in a Walmart would cite the manifesto in one of his own saying it was a response to the “hispanic invasion of Texas.” Then again in 2022 in Buffalo, New York, where a shooter killed 10 people, most of them black.

Gosar has frequently seized on meme culture used by white supremacists and neo-nazis on his Twitter account, including the #DarkMAGA movement, which has roots in accelerationist neo-Nazi meme culture and many memes related to it often express a desire for violence against perceived enemies. In many cases, they are accompanied by neo-Nazi imagery.

Gosar’s staff said they were unaware of #DarkMAGA until it was brought to their attention by the Mirror.

“Congressman Gosar continues to show us exactly who he is and what he stands for. The man has no shame, and remains a stain on Arizona’s political landscape,” Paul Rockower, executive director for the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Phoenix, said in a statement to the Mirror.

Neither the Arizona Republican Party nor the Mohave County Republican Party responded to questions about Gosar’s promotion of an antisemitic website.

Arizona Mirror is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arizona Mirror maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jim Small for questions: info@azmirror.com. Follow Arizona Mirror on Facebook and Twitter.

FOLKLORE STUDIES
Did you miss snow last winter? Here's what the Farmers' Almanac is predicting this year

Katie Landeck and Hadley Barndollar, Providence Journal

Mon, August 14, 2023 

Last winter may have been marked by mild weather and short bursts of deep freezes, but according to the Farmers' Almanac, don't expect those mild temperatures this winter.

Prepare to be cold and prepare for snow.

Plow working through East Providence clearing snow and slush from the winter storm Monday evening. Tuesday, Feb 28, 2023. [The Providence Journal / Kris Craig]

"After a weird and warm winter season last year, this winter should make cold weather fans rejoice — especially those in the Great Lakes, Midwest, and northern New England areas,” editor Peter Geiger said in a press release. “The ‘brrr’ is coming back! We expect more snow and low temperatures nationwide.”

The Farmers' Almanac is calling for a return to cold and snow this winter in New England, the Great Lakes and the Midwest.

What to expect in winter 2023-2024 in Rhode Island

The Farmers' Almanac is forecasting "below-average temperatures and lots of snowstorms, sleet, ice, rain" in New England and quite a few other spots in the country.

While there wasn't a lot of snow last year, they're saying the whole Interstate 95 corridor from Washington to Boston should expect to contend with quite a bit of the white stuff this year. Prepare to get your snowblower back out.

Here are some of the more specific predictions:

"The second week of January will be stormy, snowy, and wet for both the Pacific Coast and the Eastern States."


"An East Coast storm affecting the Northeast and New England states will bring snowfall, cold rain and then frigid temperatures, during the second week of February."

"Another East Coast storm will bring a wintry mess to this area during the first week of March."

"A possible late-season snowfall over the high terrain of New England during the third week of April won’t be a fun “April Fools’ Day” prank!"

How does the Farmers' Almanac make predictions?

The Farmers' Almanac, which is slightly different from the Old Farmer's Almanac and was founded in 1818, uses sunspot activity, tidal action of the moon, the position of the planets and other factors.

The Farmers' Almanac claims to have secret formulas. The only person who allegedly knows the exact formula of the Farmers' Almanac is its weather prognosticator, who goes by the pseudonym Caleb Weatherbee.

Published reports have said the Farmers' Almanac takes into account climate change.

Are the Farmers' Almanac's predictions accurate?

So, how accurate are the predictions each year?

The Farmers' Almanac claims an accuracy rate of about 80% to 85%.

Others are less sure. A 2010 University of Illinois study found the Farmers' Almanac to be correct only about 50% of the time when the researchers compared the forecasts with the real weather data.

How coronavirus could be the ‘final straw’ for the U.S Postal Service
Ben Werschkul DC Producer, Yahoo Finance•April 1, 2020
NOT APRIL FOOLS

A U.S.Postal Service worker wears a face mask and gloves while delivering mail amid the coronavirus pandemic. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)

The U.S. Postal Service has been in trouble for some time. Now, the coronavirus crisis has come along and made everything much worse.

Mail volume (and the accompanying revenue) could be down 50% this year, according to some estimates. The already teetering Postal Service could run out of money soon. That fear, combined with widespread concerns about letter carriers exposed to the virus, has put some lawmakers into a fatalistic mindset.

Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) put it bluntly: “We need to start thinking in those apocalyptic terms,” he said in an interview with Yahoo Finance Tuesday, “because we are about to face the apocalypse.”

The current crisis is “in many ways the final straw,” said Connolly, who is chairman of the House subcommittee that oversees the Postal Service. He believes that without some sort of intervention it will run out of cash in June.

Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), talks to reporters on Capitol Hill. 

(Caroline Brehman/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

‘There's a growing anxiety’

Questions of safety are now dogging the service. “There's a growing anxiety that they're at risk and that there's not sufficient resources to protect them even in the most minimal of ways like hand sanitizers or gloves or the like,” Connolly said.

Two weeks ago, ProPublica published a report saying that some postal employees were continuing to work after displaying COVID-19 symptoms, and seemingly healthy employees had insufficient protection against the virus.

Postmaster General Megan J. Brennan responded to some of the concerns on Wednesday during a Board of Governors session. "We are promoting healthy behaviors and protocols and encouraging any employee who feels sick to stay home,” she said. “In order to further encourage this behavior, we have updated our leave policies to allow liberal use of leave."

Brennan also acknowledged some supply problems in the recent past saying, "we are continuing to work to overcome gaps in the supply chain to insure that our employees have access to hand sanitizer masks and gloves."

But questions are likely to keep coming. Sen. Cory Booker and other New Jersey Democrats wrote a letter to Postmaster General Brennan last week expressing a series of concerns and questions. On Tuesday, Sen. Bernie Sanders sent another letter raising similar questions.

Our postal workers already had one of the most important jobs in America.Now they are putting themselves at risk to deliver everything our country needs.I am asking the Postal Service to do much, much more to protect their safety and wellbeing right now. pic.twitter.com/L4Gj9iF4p2— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) March 31, 2020

A spokesperson for Booker told Yahoo Finance that his office has not received an answer but remains hopeful that we can work with the service “to implement stronger workplace protections for the safety and well-being of USPS employees as well as the millions of Americans who depend on their services.”

"The health and well-being of our employees is always our first thought in facing the COVID challenge," the Postmaster General said on Wednesday. She also underlined that the CDC, WHO, and Surgeon General all “have all said that there is very low risk that this virus is spread through mail which should be a comfort to us all and to the public.”

Connolly agreed the risk of transmission via mail is low, but “if we made sure that all of our postal workers had access to hand sanitizers and gloves, we could come close to eliminating the risk.” A lack of guidance or protection for letter carriers “is very imprudent and puts people at some risk. Not a high risk, but a risk.”

The USPS has made one change: it no longer requires customer signatures. Letter carriers will instead – from a distance – request the customer’s information and enter it themselves.
‘They're going to run out of cash in June’

The USPS operates as a self-supporting, independent federal agency – sort of halfway between an independent business and a government agency. It likes to tout that the service “receives no tax dollars,” instead paying for itself from the sale of postage, products and services.

A postal worker in Los Angeles.

 (Stephen Albanese/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)

During the phase 3 negotiations, Connolly and other House Democrats proposed changing that by eliminating outstanding debt and allotting $25 billion to further shore up USPS finances. They even wrote a letter to Sen. Mitch McConnell “to seek your urgent help.”

They also want to repeal a mandate imposed in the Postal Act of 2006, which they say denies the USPS a chance to be profitable, arguing that the rule requires the Postal Service to pre-fund retirement health benefits for its employees. It’s a financial burden that puts “the Postal Service in a straight jacket,” according to Connolly, and has been the focus of repeal attempts for years.

The push didn’t work. The final package, signed into law by President Trump last Friday, included $10 billion in additional borrowing authority with strings attached.

The National Association of Letter Carriers, a union representing postal employees, responded: “That is woefully inadequate.”

Connolly says that some of the conditions on the $10 billion (including more of a Treasury role in management) was “an unacceptable condition for everybody,” and he still sees the USPS going out of business within months if nothing is done.

Then USPS and ‘Phase 4’ negotiations

The Postal Service has been gradually shrinking for years as outfits like UPS and Fedex Express (not to mention email) encroach further on its business. Total mail volume has shrunk from 170.9 billion pieces of mail in 2010 to 146.4 billion in 2018.

Yet advocates note the USPS still serves important functions, from delivering prescription drugs to Social Security checks. It also remains the only option in some rural areas where; as the National Association of Letter Carriers points out, “private companies rely on the USPS for last-mile delivery.”

The USPS is also how millions of Americans who don’t have direct deposit information on file with the IRS will receive their $1,200 stimulus checks.
And then there’s perhaps the most politically fraught factor: “We're also counting on the Postal Service to save our election process,” Connolly said amid questions about whether November’s elections will need to be done through the mail given concerns about voting in person. “What if there's no Postal Service?” he said. ”Well, that could affect the outcome of an election.”

Trump has not discussed the Postal Service at length since the coronavirus crisis began. On March 23 he thanked “the hardworking men and women of Federal Express, UPS, the United States Postal Service, and the truckers who are maintaining our supply chains and supply lines.”

But Connolly claims that, behind the scenes, Trump himself was instrumental in killing aid to the USPS. He said Trump personally axed direct aid to the service. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “said this came directly from Trump and she has reiterated that more than once,” Connolly said.

The White House did not offer comment on Connolly’s claim.

On Tuesday, during an appearance on MSNBC, Pelosi reiterated that Postal Service funding is crucial in a phase 4 deal largely to keep voting by mail as a viable option.

“I'm going to continue like a dog and a bone on this issue,” said Connolly, “because we won't appreciate the criticality of it until the worst happens, and I'm trying to prevent the worst from happening.”

Ben Werschkul is a producer for Yahoo Finance in Washington, DC.

Russia sends plane with medical supplies, equipment to U.S.

NOT APRIL FOOLS, BUT ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF THE USEFUL IDIOT
HELPING PUTIN PR CAMPAIGN

By Don Jacobson
April 1 (UPI) -- A Russian military plane carrying donated medical supplies left Moscow Wednesday en route to destinations in the United States to help fight the coronavirus pandemic, the Russian government said.

The Russian Aerospace Forces cargo plane is carrying medical face masks and other health equipment, the defense ministry said.

U.S. President Donald Trump first mentioned the aid from Russia during a press briefing at the White House Monday.

"Russia sent us a very, very large planeload of things, medical equipment, which was very nice," he said in an update of the administration's response to the crisis.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Tuesday Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin had spoken and that aid was being sent with the understanding that the help can be reciprocated once American manufacturers had caught up in producing medical equipment.

Russian health officials reported more than 400 new cases Wednesday, pushing the nation's total over 2,800.

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FIRST THING A CARNIVORE INVENTS

Meat from extinct mammoth grown in lab, used to create meatball

Mike Corder
The Associated Press
Staff
March 28, 2023 8:29 p.m. MDT

AMSTERDAM -

Throw another mammoth on the barbie?

An Australian company on Tuesday lifted the glass cloche on a meatball made of lab-grown cultured meat using the genetic sequence from the long-extinct pachyderm, saying it was meant to fire up public debate about the hi-tech treat.

The launch in an Amsterdam science museum came just days before April 1 so there was an elephant in the room: Is this for real?

"This is not an April Fools joke," said Tim Noakesmith, founder of Australian startup Vow. "This is a real innovation."

Cultivated meat -- also called cultured or cell-based meat -- is made from animal cells. Livestock doesn't need to be killed to produce it, which advocates say is better not just for the animals but also for the environment.

Vow used publicly available genetic information from the mammoth, filled missing parts with genetic data from its closest living relative, the African elephant, and inserted it into a sheep cell, Noakesmith said. Given the right conditions in a lab, the cells multiplied until there were enough to roll up into the meatball. 5 Things to Know newsletter: Sign up to start your day with the biggest stories

More than 100 companies around the world are working on cultivated meat products, many of them startups like Vow.

Experts say that if the technology is widely adopted, it could vastly reduce the environmental impact of global meat production in the future. Currently, billions of acres of land are used for agriculture worldwide.

But don't expect this to land on plates around the world any time soon. So far, tiny Singapore is the only country to have approved cell-based meat for consumption. Vow is hoping to sell its first product there -- a cultivated Japanese quail meat -- later this year.

The mammoth meatball is a one-off and has not been tasted, even by its creators, nor is it planned to be put into commercial production. Instead, it was presented as a source of protein that would get people talking about the future of meat.

"We wanted to get people excited about the future of food being different to potentially what we had before. That there are things that are unique and better than the meats that we're necessarily eating now, and we thought the mammoth would be a conversation starter and get people excited about this new future," Noakesmith told The Associated Press.

"But also the woolly mammoth has been traditionally a symbol of loss. We know now that it died from climate change. And so what we wanted to do was see if we could create something that was a symbol of a more exciting future that's not only better for us, but also better for the planet," he added.

Seren Kell, science and technology manager at Good Food Institute, a nonprofit that promotes plant- and cell-based alternatives to animal products, said he hopes the project "will open up new conversations about cultivated meat's extraordinary potential to produce more sustainable foods, reduce the climate impact of our existing food system and free up land for less intensive farming practices."

He said the mammoth project with its unconventional gene source was an outlier in the new meat cultivation sector, which commonly focuses on traditional livestock -- cattle, pigs and poultry.

"By cultivating beef, pork, chicken, and seafood, we can have the most impact in terms of reducing emissions from conventional animal agriculture and satisfying growing global demand for meat while meeting our climate targets," he said.

The jumbo meatball on show in Amsterdam -- sized somewhere between a softball and a volleyball -- was for show only and had been glazed to ensure it didn't get damaged on its journey from Sydney.

But when it was being prepared -- first slow baked and then finished off on the outside with a blow torch -- it smelled good.

"The folks who were there, they said the aroma was something similar to another prototype that we produced before, which was crocodile," Noakesmith said. "So, super fascinating to think that adding the protein from an animal that went extinct 4,000 years ago gave it a totally unique and new aroma, something we haven't smelled as a population for a very long time."

------

Associated Press reporter Laura Ungar contributed from Louisville, Kentucky.

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NOT AN APRIL FOOLS JOKE
"Shoot them dead": Duterte orders police to kill Filipinos who defy coronavirus lockdown

Christina Capatides,CBS News•April 2, 2020


In the Philippines, the 57 million residents of the country's main island, Luzon, are under strict lockdown orders to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Despite that, many in a Manila slum took to the streets Wednesday to protest a lack of supplies, arguing they had not received any food packs since the lockdown started two weeks ago.

The local government refutes those claims and clashed with protestors, ultimately arresting 20 people who refused to return home.

Poland is making quarantined citizens use a selfie app to prove they're staying inside. Singapore is using Bluetooth signals between cellphones to keep track of who people come into contact with.

But Duterte's threat may be the boldest. "I will not hesitate my soldiers to shoot you," Duterte said in forceful tones Wednesday. "I will not hesitate to order the police to arrest and detain you. Now, if you are detained, I will leave it up to you to find food."

On Thursday, as often happens after Duterte makes these sorts of inflammatory public remarks, Filipino officials rushed to insist that the president was simply using hyperbole to communicate the gravity of the situation.

"Probably the president just overemphasized on implementing the law in this time of crisis," Philippine National Police Chief Archie Gamboa said, adding that officers understood that they were not actually being instructed to kill troublemakers.

---30---

SEE

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/04/evgeny-lebedev-its-not-racist-to-say.html

Biden is cool with Transgender Day of Visibility falling on Easter — Republicans freaking out

Although Transgender Day of Visibility falls on March 31 every year, this year is especially upsetting for bigots

By KELLY MCCLURE

Nights & Weekends Editor
PUBLISHED MARCH 30, 2024 

U.S. President Joe Biden, alongside First Lady Jill Biden gestures after speaking at the annual Easter Egg Roll on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, DC, on April 10, 2023.

 (ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images)

The first International Transgender Day of Visibility was on March 31, 2009 and has been celebrated on the same day of the year from then on. But this year, since it happens to fall on Easter Sunday, certain people are losing their minds about it. Especially Republicans.

On Friday, the White House made the following announcement:


“I, Joseph R. Biden Jr., president of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim March 31, 2024, as Transgender Day of Visibility. I call upon all Americans to join us in lifting up the lives and voices of transgender people throughout our Nation and to work toward eliminating violence and discrimination against all transgender, gender nonconforming, and nonbinary people.”

And judging by the response, you would think that Biden proclaimed this Sunday International Worship Satan Day.

Trump’s national press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, is asking for an apology from the White House for this day falling on the same day it always has, which has nothing at all to do with Biden, writing, “We call on Joe Biden’s failing campaign and White House to issue an apology to the millions of Catholics and Christians across America who believe tomorrow is for one celebration only — the resurrection of Jesus Christ.” And others like her fell right in line.

In a post to X (formerly Twitter) from Monica Crowley, Former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, she writes, The “president” has proclaimed Easter Sunday as “Transgender Day of Visibility." This is a spiritual war. See it & understand it. Fast."

And Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene clocks into the discourse with, "Biden and the Democrats decided Easter - the Holy Day of our Savior’s Resurrection - as transgender day of visibility. There is no length Biden and the Democrats won’t go to to mock your faith, and to thumb his nose at God. We know that Christ is King and God will not be mocked, just like we know Joe Biden isn’t really the one calling the shots in the White House. Psalm 37:13: ‘but the Lord laughs at the wicked, for he knows their day is coming.’"

Creating a whole video to explain how these folks are misguided, political commentator Brian Krassenstein writes, "To the ignorant people claiming that The White House and Biden are Satan for 'declaring Easter Sunday as Transgender Day of Visibility,' every March 31st for the last 15 years, including 4 years under Trump was International Transgender Day of Visibility. In 2029 when Easter happens to fall on April Fools Day will you all claim that whoever is President then must think that Easter is a Joke? At least inform yourselves before jumping on the ignorance bandwagon."

Watch here:

Transgender Day of Visibility


PRESS STATEMENT
THE SECRETARY OF STATE
MARCH 31, 2024


Transgender Day of Visibility is a celebration of the courage and resilience of transgender, nonbinary, and gender non-confirming persons who exist in every country and culture around the world. On this day, the United States recognizes the achievements and progress that trans persons have made in the global struggle for equality and re-affirms its commitment to supporting the equality, inclusion, and full recognition of the human rights of transgender persons.

In many parts of the world, trans persons face violence, suppression, and infringements on their human rights and fundamental freedoms, including the freedoms of expression and peaceful assembly, as society treats trans persons with stigma, discrimination, and violence. Transgender persons deserve to live authentically, safely, and with dignity. They deserve documentation that reflects who they are, healthcare that is responsive to their needs, and the right to live full lives of opportunity.

It is clear that there is still much work to do. We urge our partners around the globe to work with the United States in fighting for a world in which transgender persons are free to live safely and openly as themselves.

As Biden supports 'Trans Day of Visibility,' Iran cracks down on the LGBT community

Iran, which has continuously cracked down on LGBTQ+ rights, has used gender-affirming surgery as a way to enforce heteronormativity on the gay community.

By BENJAMIN WEINTHAL

MARCH 31, 2024

JERUSALEM POST

Thousands participate in the annual Gay Pride Parade in Tel Aviv, on June 8, 2023

.(photo credit: MIRIAM ALSTER/FLASH90)


The capital city of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Tehran, announced in early March that transgender people should not appear in popular sections of the metropolis.

The Tehran city council directive to ostracize transgender people coincides with US President Biden declaring that March 31 is "Transgender Day of Visibility.”

The US government-funded news organization Radio Farda reported that Tehran city council spokesman Alireza Nadali said transgender people should not congregate at heavily crowded locations such as the Valiasr Intersection.

"We're not sweeping the issue under the rug. There should be an inclusive space for them, just not in this busy area," Nadali said.

Radio Farda said Valiasr Intersection is a “ focal point in Tehran for both its cultural significance and as a site of major public gatherings, including protests.”

Sophie Baron-Amirteymour, an Iranian-American who is transgender, told the Jerusalem Post "The notion of the Islamic Republic being trans-friendly is regime propaganda aimed at naive Western leftists. Gender reassignment surgery is often imposed on homosexuals as a regime -endorsed cure for their 'mental disease.' As long as gender non conforming behaviour remains illegal, and an Islamist establishment reacts with violence towards LGBT individuals, Iranian trans people remain unable to live as they please and truly search for their personal happiness."

Jessica Emami, an Iranian-American lesbian sociologist, told The Jerusalem Post, “The Iranian government as a whole has used transgender surgery as a way to enforce heteronormativity on gay people. They compel gays and lesbians to get surgery to become the opposite sex. That is the only reason why they accept transgenderism.” She added, “Of course, that does not mean there aren’t any transgender people. “

She said the regime wants to “control their presence” and “control their social life.” Emami added, “These announcements by city officials do nothing to improve families who are domestically violent against LGBT people, and the policy does not help or address honor killings against LGBT people carried out by family members."

Gigi Pour, an Iranian-American refugee and LGBTQ+ rights advocate, told The Post that “Regarding transgenders in Iran, clearly the regime has realized being trans is not the same as being gay for whom they have figured the sex tradition operation. The trans community is not safe regardless of the country they live in.“

She added that “Here in the US transgenders are also subject to harsh physical violence and acts of murder. Clearly the regime has realized the trans community can’t be pigeonholed as gay or lesbian. They are creative, flamboyant and fierce. The regime is not interested in including them but rather have them excluded from society.”
A method for shielding regime repression

Many apologists of the Islamic Republic of Iran see the nation’s transgender policy as an expression of liberalism. The Economist noted in a 2019 article that the Islamic Republic’s exploitation of sex-reassignment surgery (SRS) has been used to purge gays and lesbians from public life.

“Gay Iranians face pressure to change their sex regardless of whether they want to, say activists and psychologists in Iran. Therapists tell patients with same-sex desires that they may be transgender, not gay," wrote The Economist. “I thought I was trans until I was 18 because the only information online and in newspapers was about transsexuals,” a psychologist in Tehran who is a lesbian told the magazine. “It is a system where homosexuals are not educated, and the law does not protect them.”

The clerical regime has codified the death penalty in its Islamic Sharia law system for same-sex relations. According to a 2008 British Wikileaks cable, the Iranian regime executed between 4,000-6,000 gays and lesbians since the 1979 Islamic revolution. During the tenure of the Holocaust-denying Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, he declared his country didn’t have any gay people.

The theocratic state’s first Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, authorized SRS after he met a transgender person in the mid-1980s.

The Scottish Jewish journalist Eva Barlow posted on X last week that “The betrayal by groups such as Queers For Palestine and LGBTQ+ popstars and artists for gay Jews like myself isn't just about our expulsion from the tribe, but it's also about their self-betrayal. PRIDE is about confidence and strength in knowing yourself. Not cowering to others. Not desperately trying to be liked.”

Emami, the sociologist, said Western “Queers for Palestine idea is just a fantasy.” She continued that “I do not doubt if unorganized groups of queers went to Palestine unannounced, they would be dealt with violently by the government and the people.”

She said Palestinian LGBTQ only gather in areas that are governed by Israel because they are so endangered in places like Nablus that are under the Palestinian Authority (PA). Emami said Palestinian LGBTQ people meet in Haifa in Israel to avoid persecution by the PA.



According to critics, a telling example of Western naiveté and a one-sided approach to the dire plight of the LGBTQ+ community in the Gaza Strip and the wider Middle East is a slated Sunday panel at the Leslie-Lohman Museum in New York City titled “Reclaiming Queerness, Reclaiming Palestine: A long table session reflecting on queer Palestinian reclamation.”

The Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art states on its website that it is “a home for LGBTQIA+ artists, scholars, activists, and allies, and a catalyst for discourse on art and queerness.”

The Post reached out numerous times to the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art. A press query was sent asking if the panel would discuss Hamas' lethal homophobia, its persecution of gays and lesbians, and Hamas' rape of people on October 7 and after the jihadi terrorist group took hostages. The Museum refused to comment. The US and Europe classified Hamas as a foreign terrorist organization.

Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, and the sections in the West Bank where the Palestinian Authority governs are considered the most dangerous places for LGBT travelers, according to a 2021 entry on the travel blog Asher and Lyric.

Israel is widely regarded as the only safe haven for the LGBTQ+ community in the heart of the Middle East.

A 2022 BBC article reported that “Gay Palestinian Ahmad Abu Marhia [who was] beheaded in West Bank."

The report read, "Palestinian police have arrested a suspect in the killing of a 25-year-old man after his body was found decapitated in the occupied West Bank. LGBTQ groups say he had spent two years in Israel waiting on an asylum claim to flee abroad after receiving death threats from within his community.”

In October 2022, an AP report said, “LGBT Palestinians Targeted by Hamas Regime." According to the AP, “Palestinian Authority police have banned a Palestinian LGBT rights group from organizing any activities in the West Bank and threatened to arrest them, saying such activities are contrary to the 'values of Palestinian society.'”

The US-based Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) revealed that on September 16, 2023, the Hezbollah-affiliated Mayadeen TV network aired a report about opposition in Gaza to the new UNRWA Code of Conduct, which the reporter said promotes homosexuality and asserts that there are homosexuals among UNRWA employees and the refugees.”

Muhammad Shwadeh of the UNRWA Workers Union said that "it started" with equality between men and women, and now the UNRWA are demanding equality for "groups that do not exist among the Palestinian people."

MEMRI also noted that in a sermon that was posted to the Al-Aqsa Call YouTube channel on June 26, 2022, Palestinian Islamic scholar Sheikh Yousef Abu Islam preached that Allah said homosexuals "should be thrown head first from the rooftop of the tallest building, and then they should be stoned."

White House bashes 'dishonest' Republican criticism of Biden's transgender proclamation on Easter

Easter's date happened to coincide with the Transgender Day of Visibility.

ByFritz Farrow and Kendall Ross
March 31, 2024



The White House is pushing back against top Republicans' misleading criticism of President Joe Biden for issuing a proclamation in support of transgender people on the same day as Easter.

A spokesman for the president rejected the attacks from the House speaker and others that Biden's message for the Transgender Day of Visibility goes against Christianity.

"As a Christian who celebrates Easter with family, President Biden stands for bringing people together and upholding the dignity and freedoms of every American," White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said in a statement to ABC News.

"Sadly, it's unsurprising politicians are seeking to divide and weaken our country with cruel, hateful, and dishonest rhetoric. President Biden will never abuse his faith for political purposes or for profit," Bates added.

Biden, who is only America's second Catholic president and regularly attends Mass, faced mounting conservative criticism over the weekend because of a proclamation he issued on Friday honoring "the extraordinary courage and contributions of transgender Americans" for the Transgender Day of Visibility -- which occurs annually on March 31.

The date of Easter, which varies, fell on the same day this year.

Biden has issued a proclamation marking March 31 as the Transgender Day of Visibility every year since he took office in 2021.

He also issued a statement on Sunday marking Easter, saying in part that it "reminds us of the power of hope and the promise of Christ’s Resurrection. As we gather with loved ones, we remember Jesus' sacrifice. We pray for one another and cherish the blessing of the dawn of new possibilities.

Speaker Mike Johnson on Saturday posted on X that the Biden administration "has betrayed the central tenet of Easter--which is the resurrection of Jesus Christ."

The speaker went on to say it's "outrageous and abhorrent" that Biden is "proclaiming Easter Sunday as 'Transgender Day,'" though the president was actually marking a date that has been celebrated since 2009.

ABC News reached out to Johnson's office for further comment and got no response.

Former 2024 GOP presidential candidate and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy echoed Johnson's attack in social media posts of his own.

Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, another former Republican presidential candidate, likewise sent a text to supporters -- accompanied by a donation link -- saying that Biden had "insulted Christians everywhere."


Former President Donald Trump's presidential campaign on Saturday joined the chorus of Republican critics, slamming Biden's proclamation as "blasphemous."

"We call on Joe Biden's failing campaign and White House to issue an apology to the millions of Catholics and Christians across America who believe tomorrow is for one celebration only -- the resurrection of Jesus Christ," Trump campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.

Trump has a history of questioning his opponents' religious beliefs.

Biden allies are also challenging the attacks.

President Joe Biden speaks at the Washoe Democratic Party Office in Reno, Nev., on March 19, 2024.
Jacquelyn Martin/AP

"This is just one more instance of folks who do not know how to lead us trying to divide us, and this is the opposite of the Christian faith," Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock, who is also a pastor in Atlanta, said on CNN on Sunday.

Another layer to the criticism of Biden this Easter weekend surrounds an egg art contest for the annual Easter Egg Roll scheduled for Monday at the White House. Trump, Johnson, Scott and Ramaswamy each claimed the administration had banned religious depictions as part of the contest.

The American Egg Board, which works to promote egg farmers, has partnered with the White House for the annual exhibits around Easter for 47 years, including during the Trump administration, a spokesperson told ABC News.

The spokesperson said the board, which was created by Congress, must follow federal guidelines, including one that prohibits them from being favorable to a religion -- language they said they've included in their promotions for years.

A copy of this year's flyer calling for submissions to the youth egg art contest lists restrictions including the promotion of discrimination, illegal drugs and firearms or "any questionable content, religious symbols, overtly religious themes, or partisan political statements."

"The American Egg Board has been a supporter of the White House Easter Egg Roll for over 45 years and the guideline language referenced in recent news reports has consistently applied to the board since its founding, across administrations," the organization said in a statement.

ABC News' Lalee Ibssa and Soo Rin Kim contributed to this report.

Spring Has Sprung

In Edmonton, Spring is now officially here. The pods covering my pussy willow tree burst this week, and the pussy willows are now blooming a sure sign spring is here.

Pussy Willow branch with catkins in early spring

Today we turned our clocks back to Mountain Daylight Time another sign of spring, and it came a week early due to the alignment with the Americans.

Yesterday and today I drank beer on the outdoor patio at my corner pub, a sure sign of spring. People watching I saw someone wearing shorts and the motorcycles were out. Spring is here, though not officially until March 21, which this year coincides with Good Friday.

So we actually get a day off to celebrate the return and resurrection of the Sun, and the end of winter. Which after all is what Easter is all about.

Not surprisingly the pussy willow represents resurrection, even the branches I chopped off the main tree last fall, are now sprouting. The moister of the snow feeds the orphaned limbs abandoned behind my garage.

The Lord and Lady of the Dark have given over their domain to their children of the fields and the Sun.

Within some neo-pagan traditions this is represented by The Willow King, who returns to battle winter for dominion; the passing of the old year into a new year.
After all the Willow King is simply another form of the Green Man; the old mole Robin Goodfellow, or Robin Hood.

In the signs that bewilder the middle class, the aristocracy and the poor prophets of regression, we do recognise our brave friend, Robin Goodfellow, the old mole that can work in the earth so fast, that worthy pioneer — the Revolution
Karl Marx

See:

In Like A Lion

Passover Song

Palm Sunday April Fools Day

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
weather, Vernal, Equinox, spring, snow, Edmonton, winter, March
Attis, Jesus, Gnostic, Gospels, Easter, Passover, Carnival,Easter Eggs, pagan, Divine Fool, April Fool, Tree of Life, Christianity, Cybele, Lucifer, Easter Bunny, magick, gnostic

THE BLACK WORKING CLASS IS UNDER ASSAULT BY THE POLICE 
JUST LIKE THE IWW WAS A HUNDRED YEARS AGO, 
POLICE BRUTALITY
HAS BEEN AROUND A LONG TIME

The Justice Department Campaign Against the IWW, 1917-1920

by Steven Parfitt

 IWW picnic to raise funds for "class war prisoners," Seattle, July 20, 1919. UW Libraries, Labor Archives and Special Collections. (click to enlarge)

The Palmer Raids are usually remembered as the high water mark of the First Red Scare. Under the leadership of A. Mitchell Palmer, Woodrow Wilson’s Attorney General from 1919 to 1921, the Bureau of Investigation launched raids in November 1919 and January 1920 against anarchists, members of the new Communist and Communist Labor Parties, and others seen as supporters of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. Hundreds of foreign nationals were deported to Soviet Russia with the help of immigration officials from the Department of Labor. The Palmer Raids have been immortalised in literature and cinema. They launched the career of J. Edgar Hoover, then only twenty-four but a rising star within the Bureau of Investigation. They also launched the Bureau as the federal government’s first line of defence against Bolshevism in particular and left-wing radicalism in general.

All the attention given to the Palmer raids, however, has obscured the first great use of the Bureau of Investigation several years earlier against a domestic enemy: the Industrial Workers of the World. On September 5, 1917, agents of the Bureau of Investigation, in conjunction with local law enforcement, raided every office of the IWW across the United States within the space of twenty four hours, with possibly the widest-ranging search warrant in US history. They took five tons of material from the national headquarters of the IWW in Chicago alone, and took tons more from 48 local offices and the homes of leading Wobblies (IWW members). Federal agents seized everything from office furniture to paper clips. The District Attorney for Detroit complained to Thomas Gregory, Attorney General from 1914 to 1919, that it ‘became necessary to procure wagons to haul the stuff’ removed from the home of only one Wobbly, Herman Richter.[1]

Steven Parfitt is a Teaching Associate at the Universities of Nottingham and Loughborough and Associate Lecturer at University of Derby in the UK. He is author of Knights Across the Atlantic: The Knights of Labor in Britain and Ireland, forthcoming in 2016 with Liverpool University Press. He has written articles on American, British and global labour and social history (including the IWW) in journals including Labor, International Review of Social History and Labour History Review, and is currently working on a global history of the Knights of Labor. He can be reached at spar232@aucklanduni.ac.nz .

Some government officials claimed that the seized material ‘was sought by the government as evidence tending to connect I.W.W. leaders with the German war office.’ The District Attorney for Philadelphia hinted at other motivations when he described the September raids as done ‘very largely to put the I.W.W. out of business.’[2] Justice Department officials then used the captured documentation to prosecute more than a hundred IWW leaders at Chicago. The Chicago trial became one of the largest show trials held outside Stalin’s Russia. The defendants were all found guilty, after less than an hour’s deliberation by the jury, of more than 10,000 individual violations of federal law. Fifteen of them received twenty-year prison sentences, and though some of these sentences were later commuted the raids, trials, and other repression hamstrung the IWW at one of the most promising times in its history. This essay concerns the September raids, the trial that followed, and the elaborate mix of censorship, propaganda and other methods that federal agents used to secure the conviction of the Chicago defendants. It is, in other words, the story of an unprecedented attack by the federal government against a political movement on more or less explicitly political grounds.

 Raids, Censorship and Surveillance

 The reasons behind the federal government’s campaign against the IWW stretched back almost to the foundation of the IWW in 1905, but the immediate cause of that campaign lay in the wider war in Europe. When the United States entered the First World War in April, 1917, the IWW became one of the leading voices against the conflict. IWW organisers roamed the United States and established powerful branches in two crucial wartime industries in particular – copper mining and lumber. They did so in the context of an industrial boom, stimulated by the demand for war material from the United States and Allied governments. That boom brought unemployment down from 15% in 1914 to 8% in 1917 and, at the same time, encouraged a wave of unrest across the entire country that broke all records for industrial conflict.[3] Three thousand strikes took place between April and November 1917.[4] Business and government leaders worried that these battles might hamper if not completely disrupt the war effort, and the Wilson Administration moved to grant concessions to unions affiliated with the American Federation of Labor in return for industrial peace. The IWW, the most radical, anti-war and uncompromising section of the American labor movement, was marked out for repression instead.

Click to see the University of Arizona Special Collections web exhibit

That repression came from several quarters. Employers, particularly the Phelps Dodge Corporation, which owned a string of copper mines in Arizona, were not about to let the Wobblies lead their employees on strike. In July 1917, after IWW locals called strikes at Phelps Dodge mines in Bisbee and Jerome, Arizona, the company and biddable sheriffs struck back. On July 10, mine supervisors and vigilantes rounded up more than a hundred men in Jerome and deported 67 of them to Needles, California. On July 12, the local sheriff and a posse of more than 2,200 men rounded up more than a thousand suspected IWWs at Bisbee and left them in the desert 200 miles beyond the city limits, in cattle cars helpfully provided by the El Paso and Southwestern Railroad. A kind of corporate-vigilante axis got to work on the Wobblies in other parts of the country as well. In August 1917, masked men broke into the hotel room of an IWW organiser, Frank Little, in Butte, Montana. They hanged him from a railroad trestle and left a warning to other labor agitators on his body. Little had arrived in the town to support miners on strike against the Anaconda Mining Company, and the company was almost certainly implicated in his murder.

The military joined the anti-IWW crusade in earnest. The War Department claimed that during hostilities its soldiers put down twenty-nine revolts, most of which actually referred to strikes called by the IWW. Lawmakers gave army units the power to use force in defence of anything that state governors declared a “public utility.” In practice this meant that, as Robert Goldstein writes, military personnel ‘began a massive program of strike-breaking, including raids on IWW headquarters, breaking up meetings, arresting and detaining hundreds of strikers under military authority without any declaration of war, and instituting a general reign of terror against the IWW.’[5] Military Intelligence, which grew from 2 to 1300 employees from the beginning to the end of the war, contained a domestic counter-intelligence service, MI-4, which spent a large fraction of its resources in spying on and disrupting IWW branches across the United States. This included the Plant Protection Service, made up of informants at all the major munition plants in the country that kept tabs on the political activities of their co-workers and paid particularly close attention to the doings of the IWW.[6]

The Justice Department went farthest of all in their repression of the Wobblies. The Bureau of Investigation, founded in 1908, had only 141 employees in 1914. As war loomed the Bureau rapidly increased its force of special agents, quintupling them between 1916 and mid-1918. They could also draw on the services of 150,000 volunteer patriots grouped into the American Protective League, which acted as an auxiliary to the Bureau’s more reliable and effective force of special agents. Attorney General Gregory did not boast idly when he claimed, in the Justice Department’s annual report for 1918, that ‘it is safe to say that never in its history has this country been so thoroughly policed as at the present time.’[7] Once Congress voted to declare war on Germany in April 1917 the Justice Department turned to the IWW as Enemy No.1. Congress also provided the main legislative weapon that the Department used against the IWW: the Espionage Act.

It is easy to see why the Espionage Act has re-emerged as the weapon of choice for Attorney Generals in the Bush and Obama Administrations against whistle-blowers like Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning. Passed in June 1917, the Act contained provisions that prosecutors could use in almost any conceivable contingency. It demanded harsh sentences for causing or attempting to cause ‘insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, refusal of duty, in the military or naval forces of the United States,’ and allowed for conspiracy charges for this crime. The Act further allowed the Post Office Department to restrict from the mails any material ‘advocating or urging treason, insurrection or resistance to any law of the U.S.’[8] William Fitts, a senior attorney working for the Justice Department, quickly noted the relevance of the Act to the Department’s campaign against the Wobblies. Along with several presidential proclamations and congressional resolutions the Act contained, as he later wrote to a colleague in July 1918, ‘the only statutes known to this Department which bear upon the activities of the I.W.W.’[9]

The Department soon acted on this enormous expansion of their legal powers. A memorandum from Assistant Attorney General Charles Warren to all Justice Department attorneys and agents on July 16 urged the use of every possible means to build up a complete picture of the IWW organisation, its plans and its leadership.[10] In September, the Los Angeles Times claimed that ‘for many weeks past, the activities of Industrial Workers of the World leaders have been under close scrutiny of the department’s bureau of investigation. Scores of field workers, chiefly in the West and Middle West, have devoted their undivided attention to alleged attempts on the part of leaders to embarrass the government in the conduct of the war by strikes and other disturbances called in the name of labor.’[11]

That report appeared just after the Bureau of Investigation conducted the September raids. They did so, as we saw at the start of this essay, partly to paralyse the IWW and partly to build up a more detailed picture of their activities. The raids certainly deprived the Wobblies of all the bureaucratic tools needed to run a national movement, from the pens, pencils and typewriters needed to write out reports and correspondence to the desks used to write them on, and the filing cabinets intended to catalogue and store them. The raids also netted the Justice Department an enormous volume of internal correspondence, mailing lists and other valuable information.

Attorneys scoured through the captured material and quickly drew up an indictment of 166 leading Wobblies that charged them with violating provisions of the Espionage Act, various presidential proclamations, and a number of other congressional resolutions and federal statutes. Taken together, the New York Times claimed, the Justice Department charged the defendants with ‘‘the crime nearest to treason within the definition of the criminal code.’[12] They proved these charges with a series of “overt acts,” which consisted, as Philip S. Foner has described it, ‘entirely of official statements, policy declarations, newspaper articles, and personal expressions of opinion in private and organization correspondence.’[13]  This novel definition of an overt act certainly rested on shaky constitutional grounds. Perhaps realising this, the Justice Department put together an impressive collection of attorneys to bring the prosecution to a successful finish. The Chicago Daily Tribune declared that ‘the array of legal talent now in Chicago working on these cases is perhaps the greatest which the government has called together since the famous “Beef Trust” case.’[14]

While the lawyers put together their case the Bureau of Investigation directed Special Agent George N. Murdock to arrange and classify the great mass of material captured in September. Murdock’s work must rank as one of the great bureaucratic triumphs of the FBI’s history. He drew up lists, arranged in alphabetical order, of all the newspapers, stickers and pamphlets captured during the raids. He compiled a dossier on each individual defendant, using seized correspondence, and listed and annotated the wide range of minute books, mailing lists, convention proceedings, account books and financial statements taken by federal agents. Murdock even made an “Incomplete Inventory Office Furniture,” giving historians an unrivalled view upon the table, chair and desk situation that Wobblies faced in the summer of 1917.[15] On a more serious note, Murdock’s labors allowed the Justice Department to build up a very sophisticated picture of the IWW’s finances, the number and names of its members, and its organising activities and plans. This knowledge allowed the Department to refine its indictment of the 166 defendants at Chicago and prepare new legal assaults against other Wobblies.

The federal campaign against the IWW did not stop there. The Espionage Act, along with the power to raid and indict subversives of various kinds, also gave the government the power to deny the use of the US Postal Service to publications and correspondence deemed harmful to the war effort. Justice Department officials began by harassing the IWW defence campaign and threatening foreign-born Wobblies with immigration proceedings.[16] With the date of the Chicago trial set for April 1918, the prosecution decided to prevent the IWW from using the postal service to send out their newspapers, circulate defence literature, or even solicit contributions through the post for their defence fund.

In this June 30, 1917 issue, Solidarity avoided outright opposition to the war mobilization while promoting lumber and copper strikes that the government claimed hurt the war effort. Click to see maps and details about IWW newspapers.

Prosecutors had a reliable friend in Postmaster-General Albert Burleson, a Texan who was no friend of organised labor. Burleson ordered the Solicitor General of the Post Office, W.H. Lamar, to decide whether IWW material was fit to pass through the mails.[17] That order had predictable results. Lamar banned the IWW’s two main publications, Solidarity and Industrial Worker, as well as all IWW defence bulletins and most of the organisation’s other correspondence. In one notable instance he declared that an IWW resolution against sabotage could not pass through the Postal Service on the grounds that it used the word sabotage.  Burleson reported to Congress in 1919 that all of the items that the IWW deposited for circulation at the Chicago Post Office ‘was of a questionable character and approximately 99 per cent was of a character prohibited by law.’[18] Indeed, Lamar lamented to the prosecutors that the sheer volume of IWW literature impounded by Post Office inspectors caused ‘congestion’ in the Chicago Post Office![19]

The IWW was not the only victim of Lamar, Burleson and the Justice Department. The Socialist Party was denied the use of the mails for its own publications and circulars. Lamar impounded certain issues of liberal journals like the Nation and threatened the New Republic with similar consequences. He banned a National Civil Liberties Bureau (predecessor of the ACLU) pamphlet that challenged one of his earlier decisions. He banned an Irish-American magazine that quoted Thomas Jefferson in support of Irish independence, on the grounds that it would embarrass America’s wartime ally, Britain. The director of a movie was even arrested under the Espionage Act for depicting a massacre of civilians by British redcoats during the American Revolutionary War. The title of the film, subsequently banned, was The Spirit of ’76.[20]

But the IWW always remained at the front of the censors’ minds. When Carlton Parker, Dean of the Business School at the University of Washington, wrote an article mildly sympathetic to their plight in the December 1917 issue of the Atlantic Monthly, the Justice Department sprang into action. Frank Nebeker, a leading member of the team prosecuting the Wobblies at Chicago and a former attorney for copper mine companies like Anaconda and Phelps Dodge, raged to the Attorney General that Parker’s article had failed to highlight the ‘anti-patriotic, anti-war and essentially criminal’ character of the IWW.[21]Claude Porter, another member of the prosecution team, urged serious action against ‘a propaganda... being organized that has for its object creating public sentiment favourable to the I.W.W. with a view of influencing the verdict of the jury in the Haywood case.’ Nebeker further demanded that anti-IWW censorship be extended to all federal employees. They should not, he told the Attorney General, be allowed to say anything in public that might be construed as sympathetic to the Wobblies.[22]

The IWW received a brief respite from this all-pervasive censorship just before the Chicago trial was due to start. In late March 1918, their defence attorneys attempted to use federal censorship as part of a general attack on the constitutionality of the methods used by the Justice Department to obtain the evidence displayed in their indictment. Attorney General Gregory reassured the prosecution that this was temporary. ‘Move for search warrants demanded by Post Office Department soon as you can safely do so,’ he wrote to them on March 18, ‘without complicating issue respecting the papers in Haywood case.’[23] After that temporary blip the programme of surveillance and censorship went on unabated.

 Trials and Lost Opportunities

William "Big Bill" Haywood was the lead defendant in the Chicago trial that opened April 1, 1918.

 The trial of IWW leaders at Chicago finally began, appropriately enough, on April Fools’ Day, 1918. Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis presided. The 166 defendants, led by their leader, William “Big Bill” Haywood, had been reduced to 113 between September and April, and this number was further reduced when one of the defendants charged with convincing Americans to resist the draft, A.C. Christie, turned up to court in military uniform and on leave from his army unit. Eleven others were also dismissed, leaving 101 defendants in all. The trial almost collapsed at the outset when the court came to choose a jury. Obvious irregularities in that process aided the prosecution. There are suggestions that Attorney General Gregory had privately urged Landis to start the selection procedure all over again after the prosecution quickly used up their challenges on prospective jurors. The selection process was indeed halted, and the existing pool of jurors dismissed, after it was discovered that members of the defence team had approached one of their relatives. The new pool proved more amenable to the prosecution than the first might have been.[24]

The trial lasted for more than four months, from April 1 through to the middle of August. The prosecution made no attempt to prove the charges listed in the indictment. Prosecutors instead read out inflammatory passages from IWW newspapers, circulars and pamphlets to the court. They ‘indicted the organization,’ Melvyn Dubofsky writes, ‘on the basis of its philosophy and its publications.’[25] Guilt by the written word replaced guilt by deed. The defence team did its best under the circumstances. George Vanderveer, the IWW’s principal attorney, brought Wobblies to the witness stand by the score. J.T. “Red” Doran, one of the IWW’s most popular agitators, lightened the mood in the courtroom when he gave testimony in June and illustrated his lecture on political economy with chalk and blackboard. ‘Usually we have questions and literature for sale and collections,’ he finished, to laughter from the court, ‘but I think I can dispense with that today.’[26]

Vanderveer refused to give a closing statement, possibly on the grounds that as the prosecution had not attempted to prove their case there was no point rebutting arguments that had not been made. It probably made no difference to the outcome of the trial. In mid-August, Judge Landis, who had studiously maintained an air of impartiality throughout the proceedings, instructed the jury on how to go about determining guilt or innocence in a case involving more than 10,000 violations of federal law. The jury retired to consider their verdict on August 17.

"Fellow workers we are in Jail for you. What are you doing for us?" reads the inscription on this photo of IWW members on their way to prison, probably 1919. UW Libraries, Labor Archives and Special Collections

They did not make the defendants wait very long. Less than an hour later they returned and found all 101 Wobblies guilty on every charge that the prosecution had thrown at them. The defence was naturally shocked; but on reflection they probably should not have been. The government and press had carefully nurtured a public image of the IWW as anarchist bomb-throwers, pro-German saboteurs and slavish supporters of the Bolshevik Revolution, and the prosecution team had successfully reinforced that image in the minds of the jurors even if they didn’t choose to substantiate the contents of their indictment. The defendants were the kind of people who might do such dastardly things, even if nobody had proved that they had done them; this was probably the line of reasoning that led twelve jurors to find the Wobblies guilty on all counts. On August 31, Judge Landis handed the accused their sentences. Fifteen received the legal maximum of twenty years in jail, thirty-three received ten years, thirty-one received five, eighteen received lesser sentences, and together they incurred more than $2 million in fines. It later transpired than one of them, 19-year-old Ray Fanning, was not even an IWW member. Guilty or not, the defendants were quickly bundled off to the federal prison at Leavenworth, Kansas.[27]

Other trials followed the one at Chicago. More than forty IWWs went on trial at Wichita, Kansas, in December 1919 after two years in prison conditions so poor that some of the defendants died before appearing in court. All surviving defendants were found guilty and were sentenced to between three and nine years.[28] Around twenty Wobblies initially faced similar charges at Sacramento, California, before thirty more joined them after unknown arsonists bombed the Governor’s Mansion. The police then added members of the IWW defence campaign to the indictment. Theodora Pollak, for instance, arrived to pay the bail of some of the IWW defendants. She was promptly robbed of the money by police, arrested, forced to undergo a medical exam usually performed on prostitutes, and locked up with the people she had come to set free. Again, all of the defendants were found guilty and given prison time.[29] IWW members who attended the 1917 convention of the Agricultural Workers’ Industrial Union in Omaha, Nebraska were slightly luckier than the others. They were all arrested on 17 November, 1917, and were released in April 1919 without ever appearing in court.[30]

Wobblies outside prison suffered defeats as well. The mining companies, vigilantes and local, state and federal police conspired to keep them from returning to the copper mine towns of Arizona and Montana. Federal army units entered the lumber camps of the Northwest to remove the IWW’s influence there, and by the end of the war the production of lumber was carried out partly by uniformed soldiers operating under military discipline.[31] The Wilson Administration spared no expense, and left no means untried, in their campaign to root out the Wobblies wherever they happened to raise their heads and organise. Ongoing surveillance, the knowledge gleaned from the material captured in September 1917, and the removal of the entire national leadership to prison made this task much easier. The vast majority of victories that IWWs won against the federal government at this time were moral rather than actual ones. After a year of protests, for instance, an IWW local in Salt Lake City forced the Justice Department to return a typewriter, a waste paper basket and two lead pencils that federal agents had carried away in the September raids.[32]

IWW prisoners just before surrendering at federal penitentiary, Leavenworth, Kansas. UW Libraries, Labor Archives and Special Collections

The “guilty” Wobblies remained in prison during the great strikes of 1919, the Palmer Raids and all the repression of the First Red Scare. They remained there even when the new Republican Administration of Warren G. Harding decided to release Eugene Debs, the four-time presidential candidate for the Socialist Party who had been tried under the Espionage Act for making an anti-war speech in 1918, from jail in 1921. Their cause suffered further when Big Bill Haywood and eight of their other leaders skipped bail and escaped to Soviet Russia in 1921, even as the question of whether the IWW should support or oppose the Bolshevik government divided Wobblies in and out of prison.

Justice Department attorneys exacerbated these splits with an offer to commute the sentences of all IWWs on the condition that they promised to ‘be law-abiding and loyal to the Government of the United States and will not advocate or encourage disloyalty or lawlessness in any form.’[33] Some of the defendants, mentally and physically exhausted by their treatment by the federal government, gave in and made that promise, which essentially prevented them from engaging in IWW activities in the future. The rest refused to surrender in this way and remained behind bars. Eventually, in the mid to late 1920s, the last holdouts were released from jail and the federal government’s wartime suppression of the IWW concluded, more than half a decade after the end of the war. 

The raids, trials, censorship and surveillance of the IWW during the First World War did not destroy the organisation, which actually reached its peak membership in the early 1920s and still survives into the present. But the federal campaign against the IWW in wartime deprived it of its entire national leadership, its records and correspondence, and even the tools needed for routine administrative tasks, at a crucial time in its history. There is no way to tell whether, in the absence of this concerted and almost certainly unconstitutional attack by the state against a political movement, the IWW might have ever come close to achieving its aim of a society run by the workers for the workers. They might, at least, have imbedded themselves more deeply within the American labor movement. The federal campaign against the Wobblies certainly made sure that neither outcome ever became possible.

At a time when the Espionage Act has again become the tool of choice for dealing with dissent, and when government surveillance of the people has reached levels undreamt of a century ago, the fate of the IWW during the First World is a cautionary tale that we can still learn from today. We should not take from that tale the lesson that radical movements are always destined to be smashed by state repression. It does mean, however, that these movements must be able to exploit divisions within that state if they wish to survive and get what they want. Lenin once wrote that a revolutionary situation occurred when the lower classes did not want to live in the old way and the upper classes could not continue in the old way. The IWW was a revolutionary movement, with revolutionary aims, but it never found itself during the First World War in a revolutionary situation that it had any chance to exploit. The upper classes were very happy to continue in the old way and used any and all means to preserve it. IWWs found themselves instead in a counter-revolutionary situation, pursued by counter-revolutionary forces. The fact that they survived after the war in any form at all is a tribute to the idealism, the determination, and the militancy of Wobblies across the United States and beyond.

 Copyright (c) Steven Parfitt, 2016

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[1]  “US District Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan to the Attorney General,” October 31, 1917. Note: all correspondence cited here is from Melvyn Dubofsky and Mark Naison (eds), Department of Justice Investigative Files: Part 1, The Industrial Workers of the World (University Publications of America, Frederick MD, 1989).

[2] “Charges of Treason in Warrants Served on the Pacific Coast,” The Washington Post, September 6, 1917.

[3] David Montgomery, “The “New Unionism” and the Transformation of Workers Consciousness in America, 1909-22,” Journal of Social History 7:4 (1974), 513.

[4] Joseph McCartin, Labor’s Great War: The Struggle for Industrial Democracy and the Origins of Modern Labor Relations, 1912-1921 (Chapel Hill, 1997), 39.

[5] Robert Goldstein, Political Repression in Modern America From 1870 to the Present (Boston, 1978), 116.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Michael R. Belknap, “The Mechanics of Repression: J. Edgar Hoover, the Bureau of Investigation and the Radicals 1917-1925,” Crime and Social Justice 7 (1977), 50;  “1918 Report of the Attorney General,” 14 -15. Note: all congressional reports cited here are sourced from the US Congressional Serial Set (Readex). Available at: http://www.readex.com/content/us-congressional-serial-set-1817-1994.

[8] “The Espionage Act.” Available at: http://www.firstworldwar.com/source/espionageact.htm.

[9] “William C. Fitts to Frank Nebeker,” July 30, 1918.

[10] Melvyn Dubofsky, We Shall Be All: A History of the Industrial Workers of the World (Chicago, 1969) p505.

[11] “Government Suppresses "Reds" In Many Cities,” The Los Angeles Times, September 6, 1917.

[12] “I.W.W. Indictments Charge Crime Nearest to Treason,” The New York Times, September 19, 1917.

[13] Philip S. Foner, “United States of America Vs. Wm. D. Haywood, et. al.: The I.W.W. Indictment,” Labor History 11:4 (1970), 505.

[14] “High Official Working Here on I.W.W. Cases,” Chicago Daily Tribune, September 28, 1917; “The Daily Bulletin of the IWW Defense News Service,” April 8, 1918. The Beef Trust Case was an antitrust proceeding by the Justice Department against an alleged interstate meat monopoly in 1905.

[15] “Affidavit of George S. Murdock at the Chicago District Court,” March 1918.

[16] Goldstein, Political Repression in America, 118.

[17] For Burleson’s battles against a union whose members fell under the wartime administration of the Post Office Department, the Commercial Telegraphers Union of America, see my essay “Whither Industrial Democracy? The Federal Government and Organized Labour in the Telegraph Industry During the First World War,” Journal of American Studies 48:2 (2014), 517-39.

[18] “1919 Report of the Postmaster General,” 112-3.

[19] “William H. Lamar to William C. Fitts,” March 15, 1918.

[20] For a fuller description of the federal censorship and propaganda campaign against the IWW during the First World War see my essay “Bringing the IWW Back In: Industrial Democracy and the Repression of Radicalism in the United States During the First World War,” Socialist History, 46 (2015).

[21] “Frank Nebeker to the Attorney General,” December 4, 1917.

[22] “Frank Nebeker to the Attorney General,” February 21, 1918.

[23] “Attorney General to Charles F. Clyne,” March 18.

[24] For a fuller account of the trial see Philip Taft, “The Federal Trials of the IWW,” Labor History 3:1 (1962), 57-91.

[25] Dubofsky, We Shall Be All, 435.

[26] Patrick Renshaw, The Wobblies: The Story of Syndicalism in the United States (New York, 1967), 229-30.

[27] Taft, “Federal Trials of the IWW,” 75.

[28] Ear Bruce White, “The United States v. C.W. Anderson et al.: The Wichita Case, 1917-1919,” in Joseph Robert Conlin (ed), At the Point of Production: The Local History of the IWW (Westport, CN, 1981), 153-60; Clayton R. Koppes, “The Kansas Trial of the IWW, 1917-1919,” Labor History 16:3 (1975), 342-54.

[29] Dubofsky, We Shall Be All, 438-41.

[30] Dubofsky, We Shall Be All, 442-3; David G. Wagaman, “’Rausch Mit’: The I.W.W. in Nebraska During World War I,” in Joseph Robert Conlin (ed), At the Point of Production: The Local History of the IWW (Westport, CN, 1981), 127-31.

[31] For the army-run union that the government set up in the Western lumber camps see Robert Tyler, “The Government as Union Organizer: The Loyal Legion of Loggers and Lumbermen,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 47:3 (1960), 434-451.

[32] “Isaac Blair Evans to Attorney General Gregory,” December 18, 1918; “Claude Porter to William V. Ray,” December 26, 1918

[33] “Memorandum for the Attorney General by James Finch,” November 28, 1922.

. Copyright (c) Peter Cole, 2015