Damned Cartoons! Workers’ Identity and Resistance

2020 ◽  
pp. 159-170
Author(s):  
Montse Feu

Varied visual strategies were showcased in España Libre. Some authors ridiculed fascists in gendered terms while others sought compassion for refugees. Comic art grew awareness of the threat of fascism and exposed the state of terror perpetrated by Hitler and Franco. When Sergio Aragonés translated the Spanish underground resistance reports into visual language on the front page of España Libre, he perceptively counteracted the Franco regime’s propaganda. Similarly, Josep Bartolí i Guiu’s illustrations humanized political prisoners for readers. As visual discursive spaces, cartoons endorsed emotions brought forth by belonging to a transnational, antifascist, and proletarian community and asked readers to think collectively about the need for solidarity and protection of the working-class culture both in exile and under fascism. Cartoons delivered España Libre’s message powerfully until the last issue of the periodical, even after many founders had passed away.

2016 ◽  
Vol 93 (2) ◽  
pp. 4-16
Author(s):  
Brian Kovalesky

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, during the height of protests and actions by civil rights activists around de facto school segregation in the Los Angeles area, the residents of a group of small cities just southeast of the City of Los Angeles fought to break away from the Los Angeles City Schools and create a new, independent school district—one that would help preserve racially segregated schools in the area. The “Four Cities” coalition was comprised of residents of the majority white, working-class cities of Vernon, Maywood, Huntington Park, and Bell—all of which had joined the Los Angeles City Schools in the 1920s and 1930s rather than continue to operate local districts. The coalition later expanded to include residents of the cities of South Gate, Cudahy, and some unincorporated areas of Los Angeles County, although Vernon was eventually excluded. The Four Cities coalition petitioned for the new district in response to a planned merger of the Los Angeles City Schools—until this time comprised of separate elementary and high school districts—into the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). The coalition's strategy was to utilize a provision of the district unification process that allowed citizens to petition for reconfiguration or redrawing of boundaries. Unification was encouraged by the California State Board of Education and legislature in order to combine the administrative functions of separate primary and secondary school districts—the dominant model up to this time—to better serve the state's rapidly growing population of children and their educational needs, and was being deliberated in communities across the state and throughout Los Angeles County. The debates at the time over school district unification in the Greater Los Angeles area, like the one over the Four Cities proposal, were inextricably tied to larger issues, such as taxation, control of community institutions, the size and role of state and county government, and racial segregation. At the same time that civil rights activists in the area and the state government alike were articulating a vision of public schools that was more inclusive and demanded larger-scale, consolidated administration, the unification process reveals an often-overlooked grassroots activism among residents of the majority white, working-class cities surrounding Los Angeles that put forward a vision of exclusionary, smaller-scale school districts based on notions of local control and what they termed “community identity.”


Brood & Rozen ◽  
1997 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ludwine Soubry ◽  
Geert Van Goethem ◽  
Paule Verbruggen

1990 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 377-420 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rudolf Dekker

SUMMARYFrom the 15th to the 18th century Holland, the most urbanized part of the northern Netherlands, had a tradition of labour action. In this article the informal workers' organizations which existed especially within the textile industry are described. In the 17th century the action forms adjusted themselves to the better coordinated activities of the authorities and employers. After about 1750 this protest tradition disappeared, along with the economic recession which especially struck the traditional industries. Because of this the continuity of the transition from the ancien régime to the modern era which may be discerned in the labour movements of countries like France and England, cannot be found in Holland.


Author(s):  
David Menconi

This book is a love letter to the artists, scenes, and sounds defining North Carolina’s extraordinary contributions to American popular music. David Menconi spent three decades immersed in the state’s music, where traditions run deep but the energy expands in countless directions. Menconi shows how working-class roots and rebellion tie North Carolina’s Piedmont blues, jazz, and bluegrass to beach music, rock, hip-hop, and more. From mill towns and mountain coves to college-town clubs and the stage of American Idol, Blind Boy Fuller and Doc Watson to Nina Simone and Superchunk, Step It Up and Go celebrates homegrown music just as essential to the state as barbecue and basketball. Spanning a century of history from the dawn of recorded music to the present, and with sidebars and photos that help reveal the many-splendored glory of North Carolina’s sonic landscape, this is a must-read for every music lover.


2018 ◽  
Vol 61 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 159-177
Author(s):  
Marcel Paret

How do insecure layers of the working class resist when they lack access to power and organization at the workplace? The community strike represents one possible approach. Whereas traditional workplace strikes target employers and exercise power by withholding labor, community strikes focus on the sphere of reproduction, target the state, and build power through moral appeals and disruptions of public space. Drawing on ethnography and interviews in the impoverished Black townships and informal settlements around Johannesburg, I illustrate this approach by examining widespread local protests in South Africa. Insecurely employed and unemployed residents implemented community strikes by demanding public services, barricading roads and destroying property, and boycotting activities such as work and school. Within these local revolts, community represented both a site of struggle and a collective actor. While community strikes enabled economically insecure groups to mobilize and make demands, they also confronted significant limits, including tensions between protesters and workers.


2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 94
Author(s):  
Renata Garcia Campos Duarte

Este artigo tem como objetivo discutir a importância da utilização de impressos operários enquanto fonte para as pesquisas em história da educação, analisando alguns debates e ideias educacionais presentes em dois jornais operários de origem associativa: O Labor, da Confederação Auxiliadora dos Operários, e O Confederal, do Centro Confederativo dos Operários. As associações responsáveis pelos periódicos foram constituídas nos primeiros anos de existência de Belo Horizonte, cidade construída para sediar a nova capital do Estado de Minas Gerais. Os impressos operários, por sua vez, são entendidos em suas particularidades tendo-se em vista as suas características, os quais divulgavam algumas ideias e debates, como os referentes ao campo educacional. A partir da análise dos jornais foi apurada a existência de demandas e propostas por educação para todas as classes sociais, visto que o ensino em Belo Horizonte não era ofertado a todos, ou se era oferecido, não alcançava as classes sociais menos favorecidas.The working class press and the History of Education: an analysis of the contributions of the newspapers The Labor and The Confederal to the History of Education in the initial years of Belo Horizonte. This article aims to discuss the importance of the use of working class press as a source for research in the history of education, analyzing some debates and educational ideas present in two workers' newspapers of associative origin: The Labor, of the Auxiliary Confederation of Workers, and The Confederal, of the Confederative Center for Workers. The associations responsible for the periodicals were constituted in the first years of existence of Belo Horizonte, city built to host the new capital of the State of Minas Gerais. The working class periodicals, in turn, are understood in their particularities in view of their characteristics, which disseminated some ideas and debates, such as those concerning the educational field. From the analysis of the newspapers, the existence of demands and proposals for education for all social classes was verified, whereas the education in Belo Horizonte was not offered to all, or if it was offered, it did not reach the less favored social classes. Keywords: Workers associations; Belo Horizonte; Education; History of education; Working class press.


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