The exhilarating grassroots working class culture that discovered itself in the strikes and organizing campaigns of the 1930s has been unmade and erased in the following half century. How did 100 percent unionization of restaurants in 1941 (a union card in the window practically required to get steady customers) become the low-wage, temporary, non-union cappuccino bars, taquerias, pizzerias, chain stores, and dessert boutiques of today? How come no one thinks there is a working class, let alone that they are in it? Our basic ability to see our lives as a collective rather than individual predicament has practically disappeared. How did this all happen?

8-Hour Day: 1865
City Front Fed'n 1901
Bloody Tuesday 1907
Carpenters Strike 1926
Burnette Haskell
Native Americans Cesar Chavez in SF Office Workers Workingmen's Party 1877-1880
Brewery Workers Bike Messengers Cabbies Waitresses and Unions
Sweatshops Class Struggle? Info Economy Service Sector Organizing 1986
Shanghaiing Blue Shield Racism Tom Mooney Union Labor Party 1901-1912
General Strike Blue Shield Strike No Paid Officials URR Strike