Childhood hero gone 🤡💩

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On this day, 8 August 1988, thousands of people participated in a general strike demanding economic reform and democracy in Myanmar. The 8/8/88 struggle was referred to as the “Unfinished revolution” by the Myanmar Times and still holds a volatile place in public consciousness. In September 1987, Myanmar's military dictatorship of Ne Win's Burma Socialist Programme Party announced many currency denominations as worthless, which wiped out many people's savings. Then, on March 12, 1988, a fight outside a tea shop between students and government supporters led to the death of Ko Phone Maw, a student shot by security forces. Protests escalated, during which students were a strong force; the government responded by briefly closing all schools and universities. The opposition movement grew, particularly among medical workers, Buddhist monks, the housewives' union and more. Later in July, the long-ruling dictator Ne Win stepped down, but in reality still carried immense power. This failed to placate the movement, who proceeded with the general strike. Before the midnight of August 8, troops opened fire on protestors in the City Hall and other places in Yangon. By September, the government was in chaos as even some civil servants, police and soldiers had joined the movement. Citizens took up basic government tasks themselves, while student leaders and some politicians worked to draft their future visions.Finally, on September 18, the government installed a new military ruler, banned all protests and declared martial law. Soldiers began shooting unarmed civilians en masse. Some protestors threw items like Molotov cocktails and poisoned darts at police and officials in an attempt to fight back.In the repression, approximately, 3000 people were killed, 3000 imprisoned and around 10,000 activists had been forced to flee the country. Elections were finally held in 1990, which were won by pro-democracy candidates, so the military ignored the results.More info, sources and map: https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/10777/8888-uprising * If you appreciate our work, please consider supporting us on patreon. Link in bio.

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On this day, 9 August 1956, 20,000 women in Pretoria, South Africa marched against pass laws: apartheid laws curtailing freedom of movement for Black and Indian people. The Federation of South African Women-organised demonstration delivered a petition against the laws with 100,000 signatures and the participants sang "Wathint’Abafazi Wathint’imbokodo" meaning ‘Now you have touched the women, you have struck a rock’. The protest kickstarted a wave of civil disobedience across the country over two years in which thousands of women were arrested, until leaders of the African National Congress panicked and called it off. August 9 is commemorated today in South Africa as Women's Day.More information, sources and map: https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/10880/south-africa-women's-day * If you enjoy our social media posts be sure to check out our podcasts. In our flagship longform podcast, Working Class History, we speak with participants in social movements about their experiences, and our daily mini podcast, On This Day in Working Class History, has one of our anniversaries each day. We also have a website and map containing thousands of our stories with full sources. All of our work is funded by you, our readers and listeners, on Patreon. To learn more and support us check out our links in our bio.

Earth systems critical to all life are on the verge of total collapse
https://www.earth.com/news/earth-systems-critical-all-life-on-verge-total-collapse-paris-agreement/

https://redd.it/1endnq3
@failures_of_capitalism

Seventy per cent of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide comes from infrastructure: energy, transport, construction. Most of the rest is produced by industry. Meanwhile 37 per cent of British workers feel if their jobs are entirely unnecessary; if they were to vanish tomorrow, the world would not be any the worse off. Simply do the maths. If those workers are right, we could massively reduce climate change just by eliminating bullshit jobs.

So that’s proposal one.

— David Graeber, ibid

Proposal three: planned obsolescence. One of the main reasons we have such high levels of industrial production is that we design everything to break, or to become outmoded and useless in a few years’ time. If you build an iPhone to break in three years you can sell five times as many than if you make it to last 15, but you also use five times the resources, and create five times the pollution. Manufacturers are perfectly capable of making phones (or stockings, or light bulbs) that wouldn’t break; in fact, they actually do – they’re called ‘military grade’. Force them to make military-grade products for everyone. We could cut down greenhouse gas production massively and improve our quality of life.

— David Graeber, ibid

Song of the Day 🥩🥊: https://open.spotify.com/track/7r5R0CLCuyMaFYaQkdlZrx