Screwed: Hartmann on the War Against the Middle Class
An excerpt from Air America Radio’s Thom Hartmann’s new book, “Screwed: The Undeclared War Against the Middle Class — And What We Can Do About It
Labor goes back a long way in U.S. history. In 1874 unemployed workers were demonstrating in New York City’s Tompkins Square Park. Riot police moved in and began beating men, women, and children with billy clubs, leaving hundreds of casualties in their wake. The police commissioner said: “It was the most glorious sight I ever saw.”
Three years later, on June 18, 1877, ten coal-mining activists were hanged. That same year a general strike in Chicago — called the Battle of the Viaduct — halted the movement of U.S. railroads across the states. Federal troops were called up, and they killed thirty workers and wounded more than a hundred.
