136 years ago today was the Bay View Massacre in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Some 14,000 laborers arrived on May 3rd, 1886, to fight for the eight-hour workday, just as in Haymarket. The only business in town not involved in the general strike was the North Chicago Rolling Mills. Meeting the strikers were the goons known as the Wisconsin National Guard, under orders from the Wisconsin’s Republican (you surprised?) governor Jeremiah McLain Rusk to shoot to kill any striker who entered. I’d sarcastically say, “because those striking workers posed such a threat,” when in fact they did in some small way; nothing gets the bourgeoisie and their state dogs more terrified than a general strike putting a dent in profit. When the captain received the orders, he instead told his attack dogs to shoot to kill if the strikers so much as approached the mill. On May 5th, the crowd, now also containing children, approached the mill, not knowing of the boots’ murderous intent. The Guardsmen, in their capacity as capital’s hitmen, slaughtered ,officially, seven martyrs: Frank Kunkel, Frank Nowarczyk, John Marsh, Robert Erdman, Johann Zazka, Martin Jankowiak, and Michael Ruchalski.

In America we have bullshit legislation called “right to work” (read: death to labor) laws. On paper, they say that no one should be “forced” to join a union to work; in reality they’re just another way to defang one of the few avenues workers have to fight back against their employers. The 28 states that, as of right now, have these draconian measures on the books are: Arizona, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Iowa, Kentucky, Michigan, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, Missouri, Nevada, North Dakota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Dakota, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, Texas, Wisconsin, and Wyoming, with West Virginia about to put them on. Death to labor state have a consistently lower quality of life than in other states—lower wages, higher poverty and infant mortality rates, less access to the health care workers need and poorer education for their children. The only benefits of these laws are the increased corporate profits in the form of labor value stolen from workers. These laws do not make wages go up – it is a trickle-down lie whose purpose is to trick you into accepting stagnant pay and decrepit work conditions. Contact your local politicians to get these corporate boot heel laws of the books, and strike and demonstrate against laws that allow for labor theft against you and other relics of the gilded age.

Yet another thing that those "Don't tread on me" clowns will want to cancel.