Join socialists from across the nation and beyond to discuss working-class struggles of the 1930s. Each session will start with a short presentation on the reading, followed by open discussion.
Hosted by: Revolutionary Socialist Network, Speak Out Now and other groups. For more info, see the facebook event posted here:
https://www.facebook.com/events/1053567018433491/
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8:00pm – 9:30pm EDT (5:00pm – 6:30 PDT) for all sessions
Sunday, Oct 18 – The Great Depression
Sunday, Nov 1 – The 1934 Toledo Strike
Sunday, Nov 15 – The 1934 San Francisco General Strike
Sunday, Dec 6 – The 1934 Minneapolis General Strike
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The reader for the first session can be found here
From the reader for the first session:
“The 1920s were a period of great expansion for American capitalism. For the trade unions, it was a period of decline, which they met by trying to persuade employers to establish unionism to guarantee labor peace. By the late 1920s, one of America’s leading economists was widely seconded when he declared that the country had entered an era of ‘permanent prosperity.’ Already, however, serious constriction had begun in such industries as coal and textiles, and with the collapse of the stock market in October 1929, depression—long believed a thing of the past—set in.With the Depression came enormous misery—loss of jobs, homes, farms, savings, even the means to eat. Within three years, some fifteen million workers were unemployed. By early 1932, according to a New York journalist, groups of thirty or forty men would enter chain grocery stores and ask for credit: ‘When the clerk tells them business is for cash only, they bid him stand aside; they don’t want to harm him, but they must have things to eat. They load up and depart.’”
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