Media
On this day, 13 April 1890, Black dock worker and leading Industrial Workers of the World union activist, Ben Fletcher, was born in Philadelphia. Starting work on the docks in 1910, he joined the revolutionary IWW union three years later and became the lead organiser of its Local 8 on the Philadelphia docks. At a time when most unions were racially segregated, Fletcher helped build a powerful, multiracial workers' organisation which organised a strike in 1913 and won many improvements.In 1918, after the entry of the US into World War I, Fletcher was arrested and charged with dozens of other IWW members for supposedly hampering the war effort. Despite there being no witnesses to testify against Fletcher, he and all the others were convicted. Fletcher was sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment, after which he quipped to fellow defendant Big Bill Haywood: "The Judge has been using very ungrammatical language." When Hayward asked him "How is that, Ben?" Fletcher replied: ‘His sentences are much too long.’” His sentence was commuted in 1922, and he immediately returned to Philadelphia to take part in a strike for a maximum 40 hour work week.Learn more about his life and activism in episodes 73-74 of our podcast: https://workingclasshistory.com/podcast/e73-ben-fletcher/And you can find out even more in the book, Ben Fletcher: The Life And Times Of A Black Wobbly, available in our online store.

Media
On this day, 15 April 1989, the Hillsborough disaster took place during an FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest when a crush occurred after police directed fans into overcrowded areas, resulting in 96 dead and over 700 injured. Though it was caused by police negligence and a ground which did not adequately meet health and safety standards, the police and the Conservative government, with help from the mainstream media, concocted an entirely false story blaming working-class Liverpool fans for the disaster. The right-wing tabloid Sun newspaper falsely claimed that Liverpool fans robbed the dead, urinated on police and attacked officers who were trying to save lives.After years of campaigning by the families of the victims, eventually in 2012 the truth finally came to light, with the Hillsborough Independent Panel determining that the primary cause of the disaster was a "lack of police control". They also revealed that police had doctored 164 witness statements, that Conservative MP Irvine Patnick had passed lies from the police to the press. The police also went to extreme lengths in their attempts to shift responsibility to the victims, even testing the blood of dead children for alcohol to try to blame them for their own deaths.New inquests held in 2016 also found that the crush was caused by police, exacerbated by stadium defects. They determined that the senior police officer responsible breached his duty of care and that this amounted to gross negligence. They determined that the 96 victims were unlawfully killed.To this day, many people in Liverpool still boycott The Sun.More information, sources and map: https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/8641/hillsborough-disaster

Media
On this day, 15 April 1989, reformist Chinese Communist Party leader Hu Yaobang died, prompting a gathering of workers in Tiananmen Square within an hour, and eventually sparking a wave of protests by students and workers across the country which would only be crushed by the military several weeks later. While the rebellion is generally described in the west as a student movement calling for liberal capitalist democracy, the reality is more complex, and the working class was deeply involved. When students faced police repression, many workers took action to support them. In Beijing after the declaration of martial law, workers took to the streets, built barricades and fraternised with advancing soldiers, effectively stopping them from reaching the city centre. While students and intellectuals who spoke English did talk in abstract terms about "democracy", workers were primarily concerned with economic problems which were being exacerbated by market reforms introduced by the government, which they saw as being a result of undemocratic bureaucracy. As one worker put it: "[I]n the workshop, does what the workers say count, or what the leader says? We later talked about it. In the factory the director is a dictator; what one man says goes. If you view the state through the factory, it’s about the same: one-man rule… Our objective was not very high; we just wanted workers to have their own independent organisation." When the military crackdown finally began around the country on 4 June, workers were the most numerous of the victims, with extensive fighting in working-class districts around Beijing. The exact number of victims of the repression is unknown, but estimates range from the official Chinese government figure of 300 up to some thousands. Families of the victims have identified around 200 people who were killed. More information, sources and map: https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/8640/tiananmen-square-uprisingTo access this hyperlink, click our link in bio then click this photoPictured: Workers on motorbikes take part in the protests

Still a great animation and song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tIdCsMufIY

TIL that "Julie; or, the New Heloise" was the best-selling novel of the 1700s. Some readers were so obsessed that they could not accept that the book was fiction. Rousseau, the author, said that so many women offered sex to him that he could have slept with any aristocratic woman had he wanted to. [source, comments]

Song of the Day 🎙💔: Eigentlich absolut nicht mein Genre...aber dieser tolle Mensch, den ich mal auf einem Bahnsteig kennenlernen durfte, hat schon eine echt beeindruckende Stimme. https://open.spotify.com/track/6Gibzqq7FwyWkW4u42G1e9

Unis Zürich und Genf erforschen mit Bevölkerungsrat neue Demokratieformen https://www.watson.ch/!141222834

Song of the Day 🗽⌛: https://song.link/d/107344182

Ein Klimatologe liefert mögliche Erklärungen: «Wenn das ein Experiment wäre, hätte ich zuerst an einen Messfehler geglaubt» https://www.watson.ch/!690390215

Many people remember the historic demonstrations that shut down the summit of the World Trade Organization in Seattle in 1999 as a breakthrough for anarchist direct action. The mobilization against the summit of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in Washington, DC the following April confirmed the movement's strength, popularizing tactics that are widely used today.

This oral history explores the A16 mobilization in depth:

https://crimethinc.com/A16

The photo shows the black bloc driving back police by charging them with two sections of fencing. 🏴

Media
On this day, 17 April 1975, the Communist Party of Kampuchea (aka the Khmer Rouge) seized power in Cambodia after overthrowing the corrupt military dictatorship of Lon Nol, which was backed by Western powers. Support for the Party had increased dramatically amid a massive campaign of bombing by the US, during which around 500,000 tons of bombs were dropped on the country, killing 150,000 people.The Khmer Rouge then forcibly evacuated the cities, attempting to create an agrarian society to produce rice to sell on the world market to fund industrialisation. They turned the country into what resembled a labour camp, with uniform clothing for everyone, widespread malnutrition, and an atmosphere of paranoia and coercion. They also launched a brutal genocide, in which up to 500,000 Cham Muslim people were exterminated. Ethnic Chinese, Thai and Vietnamese people were persecuted, as were Christians and Buddhists. Others designated as intellectuals were murdered, along with their families – this included doctors, teachers, lawyers, scientists, engineers, professionals, people speaking a second language, or even people who wore glasses. Having exterminated experts, the government was unable to irrigate crops or manage agriculture effectively, and the healthcare system collapsed. Hundreds of thousands of people were killed by famines and disease. In total, the Khmer Rouge were responsible for the deaths of approximately 2 million people, around a quarter of the total population, until they were eventually toppled following an invasion by Vietnam. The US, UK and China then began to funnel military aid to the Khmer Rouge, enabling them to continue their reign of terror in areas they still controlled. The US sent them $85 million in arms and aid, while Margaret Thatcher's government in the UK sent SAS special forces troops to help train their fighters. In 1992, the United Nations handed control of around one quarter of Cambodia back to the Khmer Rouge.More information, sources and map: https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/8854/khmer-rouge-seize-powerTo access this hyperlink, click our link in bio then click this photo

TIL People who post their fitness routine on social media are more likely to have psychological problems. [source, comments]

Song of the Day 🍹🌇: https://open.spotify.com/track/5lcqXXSHHdEsugnaAYWOtC