Today in Labor History February 11, 1938: BBC Television produced the world's first ever science fiction television program, an adaptation of a section of the Karel Čapek play R.U.R., that coined the term "robot." He derived the word “robot” from the Czech word for forced labor by Serfs. R.U.R. is an archetype for many of the science fiction stories and films that followed, like Bladerunner, West World and Terminator, and others about robots, replicants and hosts that rebel against humans. However, “R.U.R.,” like Čapek’s 1936 novel “War with the Newts,” is also a satirical critique of totalitarianism, which was already on the rise in Europe at the time he wrote the play.
Today in Labor History February 10, 1898: Marxist playwright Bertolt Brecht was born. Brecht was a doctor, poet and playwright. He fled the Nazis only to be persecuted in the U.S. by HUAC during the Cold War. He is most well-known for his play, “The Three Penny Opera.” He also wrote “Mother Courage and Her Children” and “The Days of the Commune,” about the Paris Commune. Additionally, he wrote poetry and composed the lyrics to many of the songs performed in his plays, like “Mack the Knife” and “Alabama Song” (AKA Whiskey Bar).
Today in Labor History February 7, 1917: A court wrongly convicted labor organizer Tom Mooney for the San Francisco Preparedness Day bombing in July 1916. The governor finally granted him an unconditional pardon after 22.5 years of incarceration. 10 people died in the bombing and 40 were injured. A jury convicted two labor leaders, Thomas Mooney and Warren Billings, based on false testimony. Both were pardoned in 1939. Not surprisingly, only anarchists were suspected in the bombing. A few days after the bombing, they searched and seized materials from the offices of “The Blast,” Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman’s local paper. They also threatened to arrest Berkman.
In 1931, while they were still in prison, I. J. Golden persuaded the Provincetown Theater to produce his play, “Precedent,” about the Mooney and Billings case. Brooks Atkinson of the New York Times wrote, “By sparing the heroics and confining himself chiefly to a temperate exposition of his case [Golden] has made “Precedent” the most engrossing political drama since the Sacco-Vanzetti play entitled Gods of the Lightening… Friends of Tom Mooney will rejoice to have his case told so crisply and vividly.”
Today in Labor History January 31, 1912: A General Strike began in Brisbane, Australia. It lasted until March 6. The strike was a response to the suspension of tramway workers for wearing union badges. Within a few days, the strike committee became the de facto government of Brisbane. No work could be done in the city without the committee’s permission. They created their own independent police force and provided ambulance service for the city. They issued strike coupons, redeemable at stores that were in solidarity with the strikers. People wore red ribbons to show their support and even put them on their dogs and dray horses. On the second day of the strike, 25,000 people marched, with another 50,000 supporters watching. On Black Friday, February 2, the cops attacked a women’s march with batons. Emma Miller, a trade unionist and suffragist who was in her 70s and weighed less than 80 pounds, pulled out a hat pin and stabbed the rump of the police commissioner’s horse. The horse reared and threw the commissioner. As a result of his injury, he limped for the rest of his life. The courts ultimately ruled in favor of the unionists, and their right to wear union badges while on the job. Errol O’Neill wrote a play about the strike, “Faces in the Street.”
On Wednesday January 24, #JaneAusten & Co proudly present award-winning novelist and playwright, #UzmaJallaludin to talk about her Austen-Adjacent novels and plays. Event is from 7 pm - 8:30 pm EST and is on YouTube. The event is free.
Today in Writing History January 19, 1829: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's “Faust: The First Part of the Tragedy” premiered. It’s the story of a scientist who makes a pact with the devil to gain power and knowledge. It took him 37 years to complete the play. Goethe also published scientific works on anatomy and botany. In the late 1700s, he wrote that variation in plants and animals was due to descent from common ancestors. This idea later influenced Darwin, who also credited Goethe with discovering the intermaxillary bone. Goethe’s novel, “Sorrows of Young Werther,” led to a suicide craze in Europe.
Today in Labor History November 10, 1995: The Nigerian government executed playwright and environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, along with eight other members of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (Mosop). Saro-Wiwa led a nonviolent movement protesting the despoiling of Ogoniland by Royal Dutch Shell. Beverly Naidoo’s 2000 novel, “The Other Side of Truth,” is based on Saro-Wiwa’s execution, as is Richard North Patterson’s 2009 novel, “Eclipse.”
Today in Labor History November 3, 1793: French playwright, journalist and feminist Olympe de Gouges was guillotined during the Reign of Terror (1793–1794) for attacking the regime of the Revolutionary government and for her association with the Girondists. Her writings on women's rights and abolitionism reached a large audience in many different countries. She was also an outspoken advocate against the slave trade in the French colonies. In her Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen (1791), she challenged the practice of male authority and the notion of male-female inequality.
Today in Labor History October 12, 1998: Matthew Shepard died from injuries sustained after being beaten and tortured in a homophobic assault in Laramie, Wyoming. The crime led to numerous attempts to enact new anti-hate crime laws at the local and federal level. All were opposed by conservative groups and most failed. It wasn’t until 2009 that the Matthew Shepard Act was finally signed into law. NBA player Jason Collins wore jersey number “98” in honor of Matthew Shepard during the 2021-2013 season, before coming out himself. “The Laramie Project” was a play about Matthew Shepard’s life and death written by Moisés Kaufman and members of the Tectonic Theater Project.
Today in Labor History October 5, 1923: Swedish anarcho-syndicalist playwright & novelist Stig Dagerman was born. Over the course of 5 years, 1945–49, he wrote four successful novels, a collection of short stories, a book about postwar Germany, five plays, hundreds of poems and satirical verses, several essays and a large amount of journalism. He wrote the essay “Anarchism and Me” about his views on anarchism, and society, in post-World War 2 Europe. He killed himself in 1954, by running his car with the garage closed.
Today in Labor History August 21, 1680: Pueblo Indians captured Santa Fe from the Spanish. The Pueblo Revolt was an uprising against the Spanish colonizers in the province of Santa Fe de Nuevo México. The Pueblos killed 400 Spaniards and drove the remaining 2,000 settlers out of the province. However, the Spaniards reconquered New Mexico 12 years later. One cause of the revolt was the Spaniard’s attempt to destroy the Pueblo religion and ban their traditional dances and kachina dolls.
The Pueblo Revolt has been depicted in numerous fictional accounts, many of which were written by native and Pueblo authors. Clara Natonabah, Nolan Eskeets & Ariel Antone, from the Santa Fe Indian School Spoken Word Team, wrote and performed "Po'pay" in 2010. In 2005, Native Voices at the Autry produced “Kino and Teresa,” a Pueblo recreation of “Romeo and Juliet,” written by Taos Pueblo playwright James Lujan. La Compañía de Teatro de Albuquerque produced the bilingual play “Casi Hermanos,” written by Ramon Flores and James Lujan, in 1995. Even Star Trek got into the game, with references to the Pueblo Revolt in their "Journey's End" episode. The rebel leader, Po’pay, was depicted in Willa Cather’s “Death Comes for the Arch Bishop” and in Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World.”
Today in Labor History August 21, 1752: French radical priest Jacques Roux (1752-1794) was born in Charente, France. He participated in the French Revolution and fought for a classless society and the abolition of private property. He also helped radicalize the Parisian working class. Roux was a leader of the far-left faction, Enrages, and was elected to the Paris Commune in 1791. He demanded that food be available for everyone and argued that the wealthy should executed if they horded it.
Roux is featured in a mission in the French Revolution-set game Assassin's Creed Unity. He is also portrayed in Peter Weiss's Marat/Sade. Here, Roux is dressed in a straight jacket in an asylum and the asylum directors cut off his dialogue to symbolize the state’s desire to restrain political radicals.