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Today in Labor and Writing History 7/15/1381: The authorities executed Peasants Revolt leader John Ball by hanging, drawing and quartering. They later stuck his head on a pike and left it on London Bridge. Ball was a radical roving priest who routinely pissed off the Archbishop of Canterbury. As a result, they imprisoned him at least three times and excommunicated him. He helped inspire peasants to rise up in June of 1381, though he was in prison at the time. Kentish rebels soon freed him. The revolt came in the wake of the Black Plague and years of war, which the government paid for by heavily taxing the peasantry. Furthermore, the plague had wiped out half the population.

Ball and his followers were inspired, in part, by the contemporary poem, “Piers Plowman,” (1370-1390) by William Langland. Ball put Piers, and other characters from Langland’s poem, into his own cryptic writings, which some believe were coded messages to his followers. Ball is mentioned in the poem, “Vox Clamantis,” (also 1380-1390) by John Gower:

“Ball was the preacher, the prophet and teacher, inspired by a spirit of hell,
And every fool advanced in his school, to be taught as the devil thought well.”

Ball was also the main character in the anonymous play, “The Life and Death of Jack Straw,” (1593), which is about the Peasants’ Revolt. And socialist, William Morris, wrote a short story called “A Dream of John Ball.” John Ball is also referenced several times in “The Once and Future King,” (1958) by T. H. White.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #peasant #revolt #rebellion #uprising #JohnBall #prison #rebels #execution #poetry #books #fiction #novel #author #writer @bookstadon

Today in Labor History July 1, 1766: François-Jean de la Barre, a young French nobleman, was tortured, beheaded and burnt on a pyre for reading Voltaire's Dictionnaire philosophique and, more importantly, for not saluting a Roman Catholic religious procession in Abbeville, France. The articles in Voltaire’s work included critiques of the Catholic Church, as well as Judaism and Islam. The general public loved the book, which sold out quickly after its first, anonymous, printing. The religious authorities hated it and censored it in France and Switzerland. Charles Dickens reference the torture and murder of la Barre in his novel, Tale of Two Cities. Voltaire tried, unsuccessfully, to defend la Barre. His writings immediately after the arrest did help several other young Frenchman get acquitted for the same offenses.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #freespeech #censorship #torture #voltaire #enlightenment #execution #books #author #writer #philosopher #fiction #dickens @bookstadon

Japan executes ‘Twitter killer’ for 2017 serial murders

Japan has carried out its first execution since 2022, putting to death Takahiro Shiraishi, the man behind the infamous 2017 “Twitter killer” case that shocked the nation. Shiraishi, then 30, lured his victims – most of them young women between the ages of 15 and 26 – to his a…
#Japan #JP #JapanNews #execution #Japanese #Japanesenews #news #Twitterkiller
alojapan.com/1307857/japan-exe

Today in Labor History May 30, 1381: Tax collector John Bampton sparked the Peasants’ Revolt in Brentwood, Essex. The mass uprising, also known as Wat Tyler’s Rebellion, or the Great Rising, began because of attempts to collect a poll tax. However, tensions were already high because of the economic misery and hunger caused by the Black Death pandemic of the 1340s, and the Hundred Years’ War. During the uprising, rebels burned public records and freed prisoners. King Richard II, 14 years old, hid in the Tower of London. Rebels entered the Tower and killed the Lord Chancellor and the Lord High Treasurer, but not the king. It took nearly six months for the authorities to suppress the Peasants’ Revolt. They slaughtered over 1,400 rebels. Roughly 600 years later, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher tried again to impose a poll tax on Britain’s working class. It also sparked a revolt which brought an end both to the tax and Thatcher’s regime. Billy Bragg references Thatcher’s poll tax in his song, All You Fascists.

Today in Labor History May 17, 1917: The government stayed the execution of Tom Mooney while he appealed his case. Mooney ultimately spent 22 years in prison for the San Francisco Preparedness Day Parade bombing in 1916, a crime he did not commit. Mooney, along with codefendant Warren Billings, were members of the IWW and were railroaded because of their union and anarchist affiliations. The bomb exploded at the foot of Market Street, killing ten and wounding forty. Billings had heard rumors that agents provocateurs might try to blacken the labor movement by disrupting the pro-war parade. He tried to warn his comrades.

Mooney’s father had been in the Knights of Labor, a forerunner of the IWW. He had been beaten so badly during one strike, that his comrades thought he was dead. He ultimately died of silicosis from mining at the age of 36, when Tom was only ten. In San Francisco, Tom Mooney published The Revolt, a socialist newspaper. He was tried and acquitted three times for transporting explosives during the Pacific Gas & Electric strike in 1913.

Mooney filed a writ of habeas corpus in 1937, providing evidence that his conviction was based on perjured testimony and evidence tampering. Among this evidence was a photograph of him in front of a large, ornate clock, on Market Street, clearly showing the time of the bombing and that he could not have been at the bombing site when it occurred. The Alibi Clock was later moved to downtown Vallejo, twenty-five miles to the northeast of San Francisco. A bookstore in Vallejo is named after this clock. He was finally pardoned in 1939. Upon his release, he marched in a huge parade down market street. Cops and leaders of the mainstream unions were all forbidden from participating. An honor guard of longshoremen accompanied him carrying their hooks. His case helped establish that convictions based on false evidence violate people’s right to due process.

The accompanying photo shows Oliver Law, and the Tom Mooney Machine Gun Company, part of the Abraham Lincoln Brigades, who fought in the Spanish war against fascism (AKA the Spanish Civil War). Oliver Law was a communist, and the first black man known to have commanded white U.S. troops.

Read my complete article on Mooney and Billings here: michaeldunnauthor.com/2024/05/