shakedown.social is one of the many independent Mastodon servers you can use to participate in the fediverse.
A community for live music fans with roots in the jam scene. Shakedown Social is run by a team of volunteers (led by @clifff and @sethadam1) and funded by donations.

Administered by:

Server stats:

285
active users

#execution

3 posts3 participants0 posts today
Continued thread

When US District #Judge James #Boasberg ruled in April that #Trump admin officials could face #criminal #contempt charges for #deporting migrants in defiance of a #CourtOrder, the blowback was immediate.

Trump’s supporters unleashed a wave of #threats & menacing posts. And they didn’t just target the judge. Some attacked Boasberg’s brother. Others blasted his daughter. Some demanded the #family’s arrest – or #execution.

Today In Labor History May 1, 1886: The first nationwide General Strike for the 8-hour day occurred in Milwaukee and other U.S. cities. In Chicago, police killed four demonstrators and wounded over 200. This led to the mass meeting a Haymarket Square, where an unknown assailant threw a bomb, killing several cops. The authorities responded by rounding up all the city’s leading anarchists, and a kangaroo court which wrongfully convicted 8 of them, including Albert Parsons, husband of Lucy Parsons, who would go on to cofound the IWW, along with Mother Jones, Big Bill Haywood, Eugene Debs, and others. Worldwide protests against the convictions and executions followed. To honor the wrongfully executed anarchists, and their struggle for the 8-hour day, May first has ever since been celebrated as International Workers Day in nearly every country in the world, except the U.S.

You can read my complete bio of Lucy Parsons here: michaeldunnauthor.com/2024/03/

A quotation from Lincoln

In this and like communities, public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it, nothing can succeed. Consequently, he who moulds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions. He makes statutes and decisions possible or impossible to be executed.

Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) American lawyer, politician, US President (1861-65)
Speech (1858-08-21), Lincoln-Douglas Debate No. 1, Ottawa, Illinois

Sourcing, notes: wist.info/lincoln-abraham/4895…

Jon Henley notes that an Amnesty International report documented at least 1,518 executions globally in 2024, the highest since 2015. Iraq executed 63 people, Saudi Arabia 345, Iran, 972, and the US 25. The real figure is likely much higher, with housands of suspected cases in countries including China, North Korea and Vietnam.

#CapitalPunishment #DeathPenalty #execution #AmnestyInternational

theguardian.com/world/2025/apr

The Guardian · Executions at 10-year high after huge increases in Iran, Iraq and Saudi ArabiaBy Jon Henley

Today in Labor History March 29, 1951: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage. They were executed at Sing Sing in 1953. The Rosenberg’s sons, Michael and Robert Meeropol were adopted by Abel Meeropol, the composer of “Strange Fruit,” (made famous by Billie Holiday). The sons maintained their parents’ innocence. However, after the fall of the Soviet Union, decoded Soviet cables showed that their father had, in fact, collaborated, but that their mother was innocent. They continued to fight for the mother’s pardon, but Obama refused to grant it. The Rosenberg’s sons were among the last students to attend the anarchist Modern School, in Lakewood, New Jersey, before it finally shut its doors in 1958.

The Modern School movement began in 1901, in Barcelona, Spain, when Francisco Ferrer opened his Escuela Moderna. It was one of the very first Spanish schools to be fully secular, co-educational, and open to all students, regardless of class. His ideas were so popular that 40 more Modern Schools opened in Barcelona in just a few years, while 80 other schools adopted his textbooks. In 1909, there were mass protests and a General Strike against Spanish intervention in Morocco. The state responded with a week of terror and repression, during which they slaughtered over 600 workers and falsely executed Ferrer as an instigator of the protests. His execution led to worldwide protests. Modern Schools started to pop up outside of Spain, inspired by his original Escuela Moderna, including 20 in the U.S.

For more on the Modern School movement, read my article: michaeldunnauthor.com/2022/04/

Today in Labor History March 18, 1871: The Paris Commune began on this date. It started with resistance to occupying German troops and the power of the bourgeoisie. They governed from a feminist and anarcho-communist perspective, abolishing rent and child labor, and giving workers the right to take over workplaces abandoned by the owners. The revolutionaries took control of Paris and held on to it for two months, until it was brutally suppressed. During Semaine Sanglante, the nationalist forces slaughtered 15,000-20,000 Communards. Hundreds more were tried and executed or deported. Many of the more radical communards were followers of Aguste Blanqui. Élisée Reclus was another leader in the commune. Many women participated, like Louise Michel and Joséphine Marchais, including in the armed insurrection. Nathalie Lemel, a socialist bookbinder, and Élisabeth Dmitrieff, a young Russian exile, created the Women's Union for the Defence of Paris and Care of the Wounded, demanding gender and wage equality.

Read my complete biograph of Louise Michel here: michaeldunnauthor.com/2024/04/

Replied in thread

⬆️ @knittingknots2

>> "In Texas, they are mad that an unelected billionaire seems to be exercising … executive powers, unchecked. In Georgia, they are upset about the WH position on Ukraine and about its ham-fisted federal funding and staffing cuts. And they are angry that their representatives don’t appear interested in doing much about any of these things. Their message [for] the elected official: “Do your job!”"

#ElectedRepresentatives are daring us to explain what #execution really means.

“What I want is for every dirty, lousy tramp to arm himself with a revolver or knife on the steps of the palaces of the rich and stab or shoot their owners as they come out.”

This was what Lucy Parsons, then in her 80’s, told a crowd at a May Day rally in Chicago, at the height of the Great Depression. The way folk singer Utah Phillips tells the story, she was the image of everybody’s grandmother, prim and proper, face creased with age, tiny voice, hair tied back in a bun. She died in Chicago, Illinois, on this date in Labor History, March 7, 1942.

Little is known about Lucy Parson’s early life, but various records indicate that she was born to an enslaved African American woman, in Virginia, sometime around 1848-1851. She may also have had indigenous and Mexican ancestry. Some documents record her name as Lucia Gonzalez. In 1863, her family moved to Waco, Texas. There, as a teenager, she married a freedman named Oliver Benton. But she later married Albert Parsons, a former Confederate officer from Waco, who had become a radical Republican after the war. He worked for the Waco Spectator, which criticized the Klan and demanded sociopolitical equality for African Americans. Albert was shot in the leg and threatened with lynching for helping African Americans register to vote. It is unclear whether her initial marriage was ever dissolved, and likely that her second marriage was more of a common-law arrangement, considering the anti-miscegenation laws that existed then.

In 1873, Lucy and Albert moved to Chicago to get away from the racist violence and threats of the KKK. There, they became members of the socialist International Workingmen's Association, and the Knights of Labor, a radical labor union that organized all workers, regardless of race or gender. They had two children in the 1870s, one of whom died from illness at the age of eight. Lucy worked as a seamstress. Albert worked as a printer for the Chicago Times. These were incredibly difficult times for workers. The Long Depression had just begun, one of the worst, and longest, depressions in U.S. history. Jobs were scarce and wages were low. Additionally, bosses were exploiting the Contract Labor Law of 1864 to bring in immigrant workers who they could pay even less than native-born workers.

In 1877, Lucy and Albert Parsons helped organize protests and strikes in Chicago during the Great Upheaval. The police violence against the workers there was intense. One journalist wrote, “The sound of clubs falling on skulls was sickening for the first minute, until one grew accustomed to it. A rioter dropped at every whack, it seemed, for the ground was covered with them.” During the Battle of the Viaduct (July 25, 1877), the police slaughtered thirty workers and injured over one hundred. Albert was fired from his job and blacklisted, because of his revolutionary street corner speeches.

After the Great Upheaval, they both moved away from electoral politics and began to support more radical anarchist activism. Lucy condoned political violence, self-defense against racial violence, and class struggle against religion. Along with Lizzie Swank, and others, she helped found the Chicago Working Women's Union (WWU), which encouraged women workers to unionize and promoted the eight-hour workday.

During the late 1870s and early 1880s, she wrote numerous articles, including "Our Civilization, Is it Worth Saving?" and "The Factory Child. Their Wrongs Portrayed and Their Rescue Demanded." In 1884, she helped edit the radical newspaper The Alarm. She wrote an article for that paper, "To Tramps, the Unemployed, the Disinherited and Miserable," which sold of over 100,000 copies. In that article, she advocated using violence against the bosses. In 1885, she published "Dynamite! The only voice the oppressors of the people can understand," in the Denver Labor Enquirer. During this period, Lucy gave numerous fiery speeches on the shores of Lake Michigan. Hundreds of people routinely attended. Mother Jones thought her speeches advocated too much violence. The Chicago Police Department called her “more dangerous than 1,000 rioters.”

On May 1, 1886, 350,000 workers went on strike across the U.S. to demand the eight-hour workday. In Chicago, Albert and Lucy led a peaceful demonstration of 80,000 people down Michigan Avenue. It was the world’s first May Day/International Workers’ Day demonstration—an event that has been celebrated ever since, by nearly every country in the world, except for the U.S. Two days later, another anarchist, August Spies, addressed striking workers at the McCormick Reaper factory. Chicago Police and Pinkertons attacked the crowd, killing at least one person. On May 4, anarchists organized a demonstration at Haymarket Square to protest that police violence. The police ordered the protesters to disperse. Somebody threw a bomb, which killed at least one cop. The police opened fire, killing another seven workers. Six police also died, likely from “friendly fire” by other cops.

The authorities, in their outrage, went on a witch hunt, rounding up most of the city’s leading anarchists and radical labor leaders, including Albert Parsons and August Spies. Lucy toured the country, giving speeches and distributing literature about the men’s innocence. Everywhere she went, she was greeted by police, often being barred entrance to the meeting halls where she was scheduled to speak. She was also arrested numerous times.

Despite her efforts, and those of other activists fighting to free the Haymarket anarchists, seven were ultimately convicted of killing the cops, even though none of them were present at Haymarket Square when the bomb was thrown. Four were executed, in 1887, including Albert Parsons. On the morning of his execution, Lucy brought their children to see him for the last time, but she was arrested and taken to the Chicago Avenue police station, where they strip-searched her for explosives. Albert’s casket was later brought to Lucy’s sewing shop, where over 10,000 people came to pay their respects. 15,000 people attended his funeral. Several years later, the governor of Illinois pardoned all seven men, determining that neither the police, nor the Pinkertons, who testified against them, were reliable witnesses.

After her husband’s execution, Lucy continued her radical organizing, writing, and speeches. In October 1888, she visited London, where she met with the anarchists Peter Kropotkin and William Morris. In the 1890s, she edited and wrote for the newspaper Freedom, A Revolutionary Anarchist-Communist Monthly. In 1892, Alexander Berkman (an anarchist comrade and lover of Emma Goldman) attempted to assassinate the industrialist Henry Clay Frick, for his role in the slaughter of striking steel workers, during the Homestead Strike. Lucy published the following in Freedom: "For our part we have only the greatest admiration for a hero like Berkman."

In 1905, Lucy cofounded the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), along with Mother Jones, Big Bill Haywood, Eugene Debs, James Connolly, and others. The IWW was, and still is, a revolutionary union, seeking not only better working conditions in the here and now, but the complete abolition of capitalism. The preamble to their constitution states, “The working class and the employing class have nothing in common.” They advocate the General Strike and sabotage as two of many means to these ends.

At the founding meeting of the IWW, Lucy said that women were the slaves of slaves. “We are exploited more ruthlessly than men. Whenever wages are to be reduced the capitalist class use women to reduce them.” She called on the new union to fight for gender equality and to assess underpaid women lower union dues. She also started advocating for nonviolent protest, telling workers that instead of walking off the job, and starving, they should strike, but remain at their worksites, taking control of their bosses’ machinery and property. This was years before Gandhi started leading Indians in nonviolent protest.

 Read my entire biography of her here: michaeldunnauthor.com/2024/03/

“When the prison, stake or scaffold can no longer silence the voice of the protesting minority, progress moves on a step, but not until then.” –Lucy Parsons

South Carolina set to execute prisoner in state's first firing squad execution

Brad Sigmon, convicted in a 2002 double murder, has chosen a method that is rarely used. Utah carried out the last firing squad execution in 2010.

nbcnews.com/news/us-news/south

NBC News · South Carolina set to execute prisoner in state's first firing squad executionBy Abigail Brooks

Today in Labor History March 5, 1871: Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919) was born in Zamosc, Poland. Together with Karl Liebknecht, she helped found the radical Spartacus League in 1916. The Spartacists and other leftwing Council Communists launched an uprising to replace the Social Democratic government with a communist one. Many of the workers obtained arms. They tried, but failed, to get the support of the Navy, which remained neutral in the conflict. However, the Social Democrats got the anti-Communist Freikorps paramilitary to fight for their side. Many of the ultranationalist Freikorps members were suffering from PTSD from WWI. Many went onto to become members of the Nazi Party and served in the SS. The Freikorps had weapons and military equipment leftover from WWI and were able to quash the uprising within a week. Up to 200 people died in the fighting, including 17 Freikorps soldiers. The Social Democrats captured, beat and executed Liebknecht and Luxemburg.

Today in Labor History March 2, 1974: Salvador Puig Antich was executed by garrote in Barcelona, Spain. He was a militant anarchist and Catalan independence fighter who fought against the Spanish state with the terrorist group Iberian Liberation Movement in the early 1970s. He was convicted of bank robbery and killing a police officer. His arrest and execution became a cause célèbre in Francoist Spain for Catalan autonomists, pro-independence supporters, and anarchists. He was also the last person executed by the fascist Franco regime. His execution inspired new artistic works by Catalan artists Joan Miró and Antoni Tàpies.

Today in Labor History February 18, 1943: The Nazis arrested the members of the White Rose movement. The activist group called for opposition to the Nazi regime through an anonymous leaflet and graffiti campaign. The Nazis put on a show trial in which none of the defendants were allowed to speak. They executed Hans and Sophie Schol, and Christoph Probst on February 22, 1943. White Rose leaflets openly denounced the persecution and mass murder of the Jews. They might have taken their name from the poem "Cultivo una rosa blanca," by Cuban revolutionary and poet, Jose Marti. Alternatively, they may have gotten it from the B. Traven novel, “Die Weiße Rose” (The White Rose).” Traven served on the Central Council of the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic. He escaped the terror that followed the crushing of the Republic and fled to Mexico, where he wrote numerous novels, including “Death Ship” and “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.”

#LaborHistory #workingclass #WhiteRose #nazis #execution #holocaust #antisemitism #fascism #antifa #antifascism #JoseMarti #cuba #btraven #books #poetry #fiction #novel #writer #author @bookstadon

"One single idea acted upon is far more powerful than a thousand contemplated!" - Futurist Jim Carroll

This was a photo taken Saturday night after our 'proof' copy arrived - and it looks fantastic. We just made some minor fixes, and so we are good to go. We're in print!

Buy my book!

You can do that right now at mediocrity.jimcarroll.com.
I'd be thrilled to see a few orders come through! Seriously!

You can get it on Amazon - in Canada, the US, Germany, Japan, and a few other countries. Ships in just days!

Or, if you like, you can buy it directly from me. Send me your mediocre message with the order, and I'll personally write that into the front and sign it for you! Shipping might take a little bit longer since I'm doing my bulk print order later this week,

And thinking about this fun little project - that's the genesis of today's quote. I know I preach the idea that the future belongs to those who are fast.

We need to think big, start small, and scale fast.

That we should always be ready, set, and ... done!

Because the future belongs to those who are fast!

Do you think I have a theme at work here?

Living a career that has involved me preaching the importance of action and speed is one thing - but even I am wildly surprised at how quickly my wife and I moved with this book. Not only that but how quickly I'm already working on the sequel - known as Escaping Mediocrity!

Look, I'm a big believer in what I say in today's quote -
people do far better if they act on one single idea, rather than thinking about a whole bunch of ideas and NEVER acting upon them.

The future doesn't wait for those who ponder - those who wait - those who debate - and those who dream but never act.
It rewards those who move forward!

What a fun little project!

This was an idea that involved a blog post I wrote Dec. 15 - realizing I had the basis for a book on December 17 - working feverishly to pull together my content by December 23 - generating several hundred images to choose from from December 27th to the 30th - and then the hard legwork of getting all this into a printable format.

The fact is, it would have happened quicker, but my wife is the Treasurer of a young adult special-needs charity we are heavily involved with, and several very important projects took her priority! That being the case, the time from conception to print could have been far faster .... and I was advised to be patient several times during the intervening time.

Look, the future doesn't wait for those who analyze; it rewards those who anticipate and act.

----

Futurist Jim Carroll is already hard at work on the companion book to this one, titled Escaping Mediocrity.

#Action #Speed #Publishing #Implementation #Writing #Execution #Creation #Productivity #Collaboration #Organization

Original post: jimcarroll.com/2025/02/daily-i