Today in Labor History—April 26

Levellers Declaration (public domain)

April 26, 1649 – Robert Lockier was sentenced to be shot for leading a revolt by the New Model Army in England.  The first Digger's Manifesto, “The True Levellers' Standard Advanced,” was published:

"For by their labours, [the poor] have lifted up Tyrants & Tyranny; & by denying to labour for hire, they shall pull them down again. He that works for another, either for Wages, or to pay him Rent, works unrighteously, & still lifts up the Curse."  (From the Daily Bleed) 

Apr 26, 1862 – The Anti-Coolie Act of April 26th, 1862 was passed. It was titled "An Act to Protect Free White Labor.” The law was one of a series of xenophobic laws enacted specifically to block the immigration of Chinese to the U.S., particularly to California. (From San Francisco Chinatown.com)

April 26, 1873 – Captain Thomas Wright and Captain Evan Thomas were beaten by Captain Jacks' band of Modocs in the "Thomas-Wright Massacre." U.S. troops lost twenty men & and four officers. 16 were wounded, while one-third of their troops were lost to desertion. The Modocs suffered no deaths. (From the Daily Bleed)

Chinese Laborers Building Transcontinental Railroad in Snow

April 26, 1902 –The U.S. Congress continued its xenophobic and racist practices by passing the second Chinese Exclusion Act, barring Chinese laborers from entering the U.S. for the next 10 years and denying citizenship to the Chinese already here. In 1904 the act was extended indefinitely. (From the Daily Bleed)

April 26, 1942 – The deadliest mining disaster ever occurred in Benxi, China, when an explosion killed between 1,549 and 1,572 miners at the Honkeiko mine. (From the Daily Bleed)

April 26, 1966 – Rodolfo "Corky" Gonzales started the Chicano activist group Crusade for Justice in Denver, Colorado. (From the Daily Bleed)

April 26, 1968 – As many as one million high school and college students across U.S. protested the war in Viet Nam, with 2,000 boycotting classes at University of Washington. (From the Daily Bleed)

April 26, 1975 – 60,000 people marched on Washington, D.C., demanding jobs for all Americans. Angry people rushed the stage, which included mainstream politicians like Hubert Humphrey, causing the rally to be shut down prematurely. (From Workday Minnesota)

Mutation Attributed to Chernobyl (Image by Vincent de Groot, wikipedia)

April 26, 1986 – The Chernobyl nuclear disaster occurred in Ukraine, U.S.S.R. (From the Daily Bleed)

Today in Labor History: April 24

April 24, 1920--A General Strike in Piedmont, which started on April 15, was put down on this date by the Italian authorities. (From the Daily Bleed).

 

April 24, 1954--Mumia Abu Jamal, death row activist, journalist and former Black Panther, was born on this date.(From the Daily Bleed).

 

April 24, 1999 - The International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union brought shipping to a standstill on the West Coast of the United States in solidarity with Mumia Abu-Jamal. (From Workday Minnesota)

April 24, 1996 – Nineteen demonstrators were arrested in Kiev, during an illegal anti-nuclear protest marking 10th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster. (From the Daily Bleed).

Today in Labor History—April 26

Levellers Declaration (public domain)

April 26, 1649 – Robert Lockier was sentenced to be shot for leading a revolt by the New Model Army in England.  The first Digger's Manifesto, “The True Levellers' Standard Advanced,” was published:

"For by their labours, [the poor] have lifted up Tyrants & Tyranny; & by denying to labour for hire, they shall pull them down again. He that works for another, either for Wages, or to pay him Rent, works unrighteously, & still lifts up the Curse."  (From the Daily Bleed) 

Apr 26, 1862 – The Anti-Coolie Act of April 26th, 1862 was passed. It was titled "An Act to Protect Free White Labor.” The law was one of a series of xenophobic laws enacted specifically to block the immigration of Chinese to the U.S., particularly to California. (From San Francisco Chinatown.com)

April 26, 1873 – Captain Thomas Wright and Captain Evan Thomas were beaten by Captain Jacks' band of Modocs in the "Thomas-Wright Massacre." U.S. troops lost twenty men & and four officers. 16 were wounded, while one-third of their troops were lost to desertion. The Modocs suffered no deaths. (From the Daily Bleed)

Chinese Laborers Building Transcontinental Railroad in Snow

April 26, 1902 –The U.S. Congress continued its xenophobic and racist practices by passing the second Chinese Exclusion Act, barring Chinese laborers from entering the U.S. for the next 10 years and denying citizenship to the Chinese already here. In 1904 the act was extended indefinitely. (From the Daily Bleed)

April 26, 1942 – The deadliest mining disaster ever occurred in Benxi, China, when an explosion killed between 1,549 and 1,572 miners at the Honkeiko mine. (From the Daily Bleed)

April 26, 1966 – Rodolfo "Corky" Gonzales started the Chicano activist group Crusade for Justice in Denver, Colorado. (From the Daily Bleed)

April 26, 1968 – As many as one million high school and college students across U.S. protested the war in Viet Nam, with 2,000 boycotting classes at University of Washington. (From the Daily Bleed)

April 26, 1975 – 60,000 people marched on Washington, D.C., demanding jobs for all Americans. Angry people rushed the stage, which included mainstream politicians like Hubert Humphrey, causing the rally to be shut down prematurely. (From Workday Minnesota)

Mutation Attributed to Chernobyl (Image by Vincent de Groot, wikipedia)

April 26, 1986 – The Chernobyl nuclear disaster occurred in Ukraine, U.S.S.R. (From the Daily Bleed)

Today in Labor History: April 24

April 24, 1920--A General Strike in Piedmont, which started on April 15, was put down on this date by the Italian authorities. (From the Daily Bleed).

 

April 24, 1954--Mumia Abu Jamal, death row activist, journalist and former Black Panther, was born on this date.(From the Daily Bleed).

 

April 24, 1999 - The International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union brought shipping to a standstill on the West Coast of the United States in solidarity with Mumia Abu-Jamal. (From Workday Minnesota)

April 24, 1996 – Nineteen demonstrators were arrested in Kiev, during an illegal anti-nuclear protest marking 10th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster. (From the Daily Bleed).

Perfect Storm: Climate Change Meets Nuclear Disaster

Image by fsgm

While public concern over the multiple nuclear meltdowns at Fukushima Daichi, in Japan, have all but disappeared, there have been several serious nuclear threats much closer to home. Wild fires in the Southwest have forced the shutdown of the Los Alamos Nuclear Weapons Lab in New Mexico for several days now. According to Democracy Now, Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety reported that the fire has come within 3.5 miles of a dump site storing 30,000 55-gallon drums of plutonium-contaminated waste in fabric tents above ground, and within a mile of the lab itself. Los Alamos is the main nuclear weapons lab in the country, and produces nuclear warheads.

While it is difficult to prove that the current fires are a direct result of climate change, as the Southwest is prone to fires at this time of year, it is clear that increasing global temperatures and changing weather patterns, especially droughts and heat waves, will increase the quantity and severity of wildfire events in general, thus making events like this much more common and serious. Even normal, seasonal fires place a tremendous strain on resources and emergency services, which is only exacerbated by the cutbacks and downsizing that has accompanied state budget crises. Consider how incompetent the federal and local responses were to the hurricane Katrina disaster.

The fire approaching the Los Alamos nuclear facility is not the only possible climate change-induced near-nuclear disaster this season. In Fort Calhoun, Nebraska, a berm protecting a nuclear power plant collapsed due to flooding, allowing waters from the Missouri river to reach containment buildings and transformers, forcing a shutdown of the plant, ABC News reported this week. The plant has been down since April, due to heavy rains and flooding in the Midwest and is located only 20 miles from Omaha, the state’s largest city. The Cooper Nuclear Power Station 85 miles downriver may face a similar fate, according to Democracy Now.

The flooding has devastated huge swaths of the Midwest. In North Dakota, the situation has been described as “apocalyptic,” which should give pause to anyone living near a nuclear facility. If spring rain can cause “apocalyptic” flooding, then nuclear disasters are not only inevitable, but impending, and the only sane response is to shut down all nuclear power plants and seek much safer storage facilities for the remaining wastes. Shockingly, the opposite is occurring. President Obama is not only considering an expansion of nuclear energy in the U.S., he has been pushing for an expansion of the nuclear weapons program, with a new $6 billion plutonium manufacturing center being built at Los Alamos, according to Democracy Now. Another plant of similar size is being built at the Oakridge, Tennessee facility, and another is planned for Kansas City. These plants will produce nuclear warheads for submarines, missiles and bombers.

Image by quapon

Meanwhile, the Fukushima disaster is far from over. The company running the plants has finally admitted that three of its reactors are still in meltdown, Daily Censored reports, while Democracy Now says that the Japanese authorities are now revealing that 15 tons of radioactive water have leaked into the ground and that people living 25 miles away have been contaminated with radioactive cesium and iodine. Significantly elevated levels of radioactivity have been found in milk and produce in Japan. However, slightly elevated levels have also been found in California and Arizona. Very little has been reported on the effects on fish. Considering that some fish migrate long distances and that they or their prey could be feeding in waters near the Fukushima disaster, the safety of local fish supplies should also be of concern.

Japan Deliberately Exposing Children to Unsafe Levels of Radiation

The Japanese government has loosed the rules on the amount of radiation children can be exposed to at school. The rules were relaxed in order to allow schools in the region of the nuclear disaster to re-open. However, they are now allowing children to be exposed to ten times the amount of radiation that was previously permissible, according to the Teacher Solidarity website.

Physicians for Social Responsibility condemned the decision, saying that the new limit of 20 millisieverts “for children exposes them to a 1 in 200 risk of getting cancer. And if they are exposed to this dose for two years, the risk is 1 in 100. There is no way that this level of exposure can be considered ‘safe’ for children.”

A statement from the Fukushima Teachers Union is reposted from the Teacher Solidarity website below:

Protect Children from Radiation Health Damage

Since the terrible disaster of Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, the radiation levels remain incredibly high. For the protection of children from health damage by radiation, we have been continuously urging the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) and the Fukushima Prefecture Education Board to set guidelines for security measures. On April 19, a month after the catastrophe, the MEXT finally notified “Tentative Guideline on Use of School Buildings and Playgrounds in Fukushima Prefecture”. On this “guidelines”, however, many anxious voices are raised from the parents and teachers in Fukushima whether their children could really be protected from the radiation effect by the new radiation standard.

The MEXT has set 20mSv/y as the upper limit of radiation levels for school children on April 19. It states that this maximum level of 20mSv/y is based on the recommendation Pub.109 by the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) that recommended a tentative safety standard within a band of 1 to 20 mSv/y as reference levels in “Post Emergency Situation”. But this standard is set for the general public. It is not for school children. Moreover, it should be noted that the current guideline of regulation is set on 1 mSv/y. The threshold quantity of 20mSv/y is for the planned exclusion zones and also matches the annual radiation exposure dose limit for workers at nuclear plants (the 1990 Recommendation of ICRP). It is apparently very dangerous to adopt this standard to children who are the most vulnerable to radiation. Moreover, when children are exposed to radiation over many years, cumulative radiation will be considerable amount and therefore their risk to cause health damages will be substantial. If we follow the MEXT’s guideline, the lives and health of our children would never be protected.

The MEXT just set the exposure limit at 3.8 μSv/h for children using a school playground. The radiation dose on school playgrounds, however, varies greatly from place to place. The radiation level is comparably high at side ditches and puddles where rainwaters or dusts gather. Children touch soil or sand and run around school playgrounds. They cannot avoid breathing dusts flying in the air. They sometimes fall on the ground and skin their knees. Then radioactive materials would attach to their wounds. Even the air dose rate is less than 3.8 μSv/h, children would receive higher radiation through direct touch with the ground than in the air. There is also a danger of internal exposure.

For the protection of children from health damage by radiation, we strongly demand the rapid control of the nuclear plant accident and the prompt implementation of safety measures to prevent risk to children’s health, instead of repeating, “There is no immediate threat to health”.

TAKENAKA Ryuichi, President of Fukushima Prefecture Teachers’ Union

Today in Labor History—April 26

Levellers Declaration (public domain)

April 26, 1649 – Robert Lockier was sentenced to be shot for leading a revolt by the New Model Army in England.  The first Digger's Manifesto, “The True Levellers' Standard Advanced,” was published:

"For by their labours, [the poor] have lifted up Tyrants & Tyranny; & by denying to labour for hire, they shall pull them down again. He that works for another, either for Wages, or to pay him Rent, works unrighteously, & still lifts up the Curse."  (From the Daily Bleed) 

Apr 26, 1862 – The Anti-Coolie Act of April 26th, 1862 was passed. It was titled "An Act to Protect Free White Labor.” The law was one of a series of xenophobic laws enacted specifically to block the immigration of Chinese to the U.S., particularly to California. (From San Francisco Chinatown.com)

April 26, 1873 – Captain Thomas Wright and Captain Evan Thomas were beaten by Captain Jacks' band of Modocs in the "Thomas-Wright Massacre." U.S. troops lost twenty men & and four officers. 16 were wounded, while one-third of their troops were lost to desertion. The Modocs suffered no deaths. (From the Daily Bleed)

Chinese Laborers Building Transcontinental Railroad in Snow

April 26, 1902 –The U.S. Congress continued its xenophobic and racist practices by passing the second Chinese Exclusion Act, barring Chinese laborers from entering the U.S. for the next 10 years and denying citizenship to the Chinese already here. In 1904 the act was extended indefinitely. (From the Daily Bleed)

April 26, 1942 – The deadliest mining disaster ever occurred in Benxi, China, when an explosion killed between 1,549 and 1,572 miners at the Honkeiko mine. (From the Daily Bleed)

April 26, 1966 – Rodolfo "Corky" Gonzales started the Chicano activist group Crusade for Justice in Denver, Colorado. (From the Daily Bleed)

April 26, 1968 – As many as one million high school and college students across U.S. protested the war in Viet Nam, with 2,000 boycotting classes at University of Washington. (From the Daily Bleed)

April 26, 1975 – 60,000 people marched on Washington, D.C., demanding jobs for all Americans. Angry people rushed the stage, which included mainstream politicians like Hubert Humphrey, causing the rally to be shut down prematurely. (From Workday Minnesota)

Mutation Attributed to Chernobyl (Image by Vincent de Groot, wikipedia)

April 26, 1986 – The Chernobyl nuclear disaster occurred in Ukraine, U.S.S.R. (From the Daily Bleed)

Today in Labor History: April 24

April 24, 1999 - The International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union brought shipping to a standstill on the West Coast of the United States in solidarity with Mumia Abu-Jamal. (From Workday Minnesota)

April 24, 1996 – Nineteen demonstrators were arrested in Kiev, during an illegal anti-nuclear protest marking 10th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster. (From the Daily Bleed).