This is the grave of George Pettibone.

Born in 1862, Pettibone was a miner. He came out of Kansas, but he eventually ended up in Idaho. He was just a working class guy. He became an activist in the Western Federation of Miners. This started up in Idaho at the Coeur d’Alene mines after the 1892 strike. Pettibone was a leader of the miners in that strike. He became a leader of the strike. It did not take the miners long to believe that the use of dynamite was a good strategy. They were good at it since it was so central to mining operations anyway. Pettibone evidently masterminded this. He and other men climbed above a mine shaft where the Pinkertons were hiding and blew it up. No one was hurt but a shootout started between the men and the Pinkertons. It was a pretty big deal at the time.

After this, Pettibone left mining entirely. He was blacklisted, though there were ways to avoid the blacklist if you really wanted, such as moving to a different mine district and using a different name. It’s not as if there were Social Security cards in 1892. He ran a store in Denver. He was just a guy. He kept a membership in the WFM on principle, but was not actively involved in the industry. He was known to be a funny guy and a nice guy, though one that you did not want to mess with on union matters.

On December 30, 1905,  former Idaho governor Frank Steunenberg walked home after a snowstorm in Caldwell, Idaho. When he arrived he pulled open his outside gate, triggering a bomb that blew him ten feet into the air and killing him. Steunenberg had arrived in Idaho from Iowa in 1887, quickly getting involved in local politics. In 1890, he was elected to the state legislature and in 1896 won the governorship at the head of a Democratic/Populist fusion ticket. Like a lot of Populists (William Jennings Bryan to his credit was an exception), Steunenberg was elected with labor support but became a tool of corporate power once he achieved office. The mines of northern Idaho were a hotbed of radicalism in the 1890s. The WFM were organizing workers around their terrible wages and working conditions, as well as violent suppression of unionization through the use of Pinkerton spies to fire anyone who signed a union card.

The miners had two reasons to elect Steunenberg. First, he claimed to represent working-class interests. Second, many of these miners were working in silver and silver coinage was a key part of the Populist platform. But when the workers went on strike in 1899, Steunenberg betrayed them, taking bribes from the miners to crush the strike.

Steunenberg declared martial law and convinced William McKinley to send in federal troops to crush the strike. Hundreds of activists were rounded up and kept in stockades for months without trial. Steunenberg stated, “We have taken the monster by the throat and we are going to choke the life out of it. No halfway measures will be adopted. It is a plain case of the state or the union winning, and we do not propose that the state shall be defeated.” The strike was crushed.

Years later, in 1905, a guy named Harry Orchard put a bomb in Steunenberg’s mailbox. It blew up and killed him. Orchard was a former WFM activist with a taste for violence. He claimed that Big Bill Haywood (now involved in the new IWW), Charles Moyer, and Pettibone ordered him to do that. It was nonsense. Why? In 1905? Also, why in the hell was Pettibone included in this? Did Orchard hold some grudge against him going back a decade. No one knows. We also don’t know to this day why Orchard killed Steunenberg or why he then accused his former comrades in the WFM of the crime. Probably he was just unstable.

The case was huge. The state of Idaho charged all three with murder and capital punishment was expected. Haywood’s trial came first, as he was the biggest name. Clarence Darrow defended him and the case was so obviously transparent bullshit that the jury, to the shock of both Haywood and Darrow, actually looked at the evidence and found him not guilty. At that point the cases against Moyer and Pettibone fell apart. Pettibone was quickly found not guilty. Darrow later wrote in his memoir that he was utterly befuddled as to why Pettibone was included in all this.

Alas, Pettibone developed stomach cancer during all of this and died shortly after his trial. That was in 1908, at the age of 46. Doctors actually attempted surgery and it went as poorly as this usually went at that time. It was two days after the surgery that he died.

George Pettibone is buried in this excellent WFM funded grave in Fairmount Cemetery, Denver, Colorado.

If you would like this series to visit other members or major supporters of the Western Federation of Miners, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Ed Boyce is in Portland, Oregon and Emma Langdon is in Denver. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.

The post Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 1,784 appeared first on Lawyers, Guns & Money.

This is the grave of Christopher Columbus.

Hoo boy……

I’m largely just going to copy from my Columbus Day labor history post from earlier this year, which lays most of it out. Do we really need a basic bio here? I don’t think so.

Columbus was both a smart guy and an idiot at the same time. In case anyone still thinks this, everyone knew the world was round. The idea that everyone thought the world was flat and Columbus was this genius who thought it was round was complete bullshit made up by Washington Irving in the early 19th century to create his beloved American mythology. The Greeks had more or less figured out the circumference of the Earth a long time ago. Their predictions about the Earth’s size were pretty close to accurate too. It’s just that everyone thought there was nothing out there between Europe and Asia. Columbus wasn’t some genius. He had his own personal calculations of the planet’s size that claimed the Greeks were wrong and the Earth was in fact much smaller. So he convinced the King and Queen of Spain to fund a trip–after all, what did they have to lose? If Columbus died, who cares? Then of course he gets to Hispaniola, sees nothing there that has anything to do with what the Spanish expected due to the goods they got through Muslim middlemen from southeast Asia, and remained determined that this was the Spice Islands by God. Even though everyone else was like, wait a minute, this is something new.

I still remember when I first found out that the Columbus thought the world round thing was a myth, which was my senior year of college when a professor discussed it. I was outraged at being lied to my whole life and I don’t think I’ve ever fully recovered.

Anyway, on the first voyage, Columbus took maybe two dozen Tainos back to Spain. Were they slaves? Well, they weren’t really conceptualized as such. They were examples, evidence. Some may have chosen to go. It was after all a life-changing experience for everyone involved and some may have desired to see what all this was about. But some were captured too. One man volunteered to go when his wife and children were captured. It’s certainly not a good story, but the true horrors were to come.

It’s really the second voyage in 1493 that things get awful. He had left some men in Hispanola. He went back to Spain and by the time he returned on the second voyage, all the men he had left were dead, killed by Tainos after they argued over gold and then stole indigenous women as sex slaves. Finally, a Taino leader named Canoabo led forces to kill the rest of the Spanish. Columbus’ men then captured Canoabo and sent him to Spain. He died on the voyage. Columbus routinely used torture and mutilation in governing Hispanola, with cutting off ears and noses a popular punishment.

By this time, Columbus saw himself as an outright slave trader. This was the future for European wealth. Columbus had seen the new fort in Guinea the Portuguese had constructed that already sold some slaves, though it would be a long time before this became the infamous slave trade. But in February 1495, he sent 550 Taino and other peoples from the islands he explored on a ship back to Spain for that nation’s slave markets. Already, some were being used as sex slaves, a side to slavery we still don’t talk about often enough. We know this from the diaries of some of the officers Columbus had brought along who enslaved young Carib girls for sex. In fact, those 550 slaves were just a fraction of the people Columbus and his men had captured, at least 1,600. The reverse Middle Passage was pretty well as brutal as the more infamous one from Africa to the Americas later. About 200 of the people died on the voyage to Spain.

Columbus proposed to turn Hispanola into the next Guinea, the center of slavery. But Ferdinand and Isbella were not interested in this. In fact, while they had approved the sale of the surviving Natives when they arrived in Spain, four days later, they changed their minds and issued a counter-order. There were theological and spiritual considerations to be made. What were these people? Did they have souls? The Spanish had a long slavery tradition, but generally that was under the idea of enslaving enemies at war. Were these indigenous people enemies? So they created a body of theologians and lawyers to work all this out. They took a full five years to come up with an answering, not until 1500. We also don’t know the answer–the document no longer exists. But we do know Queen Isabella particularly came out against Native slavery. When Columbus sent another group of Indians to Spain as slaves in 1499, she exploded in rage, stating “Who is this Columbus who dares to give out my vassals as slaves?” We also know that in 1500, she gave a bunch of Indians the choice to go back and almost without exception, they did.

Columbus damn near died in Jamaica in 1503 on his fourth voyage, when they crashed there after storm damaged a ship. If some of his men hadn’t rowed a canoe to Hispaniola, he may well have. The reason Columbus was able to survive is that he knew that there was a likelihood of an eclipse in 1504 and when it happened, it convinced the Tribes to keep supplying him because of his power, despite his obvious murderous violence. Unfortunately, he was rescued.

Also, Columbus was too high on his own supply to even recognize that where he was wasn’t Asia. It had to be Asia. He did his own research! That’s why the continents are named for Amerigo Vespucci and not Columbus. He was naturally litigious as all hell with the Spanish crown, demanding 10% of everything from the Americas for himself. It might not shock you that Madrid was less than interested in this arrangement. Despite failing health, from gout, from his many voyages. possible from sexually transmitted diseases, he kept pressing his claims on the Spanish crown. Finally, and with no great sadness from said crown, he died in Valladolid in 1506, at the age of 54.

Columbus’ remains have been all over the place. First they were in Valladolid. Then they were moved to Seville in 1513. Then they were sent to Santo Domingo, in what is today the Dominican Republic, in 1536. Then in 1793, they went to Havana. Then in 1898, the Spanish took him with them when they left Cuba after the U.S. took it over. A 2003 DNA sample demonstrated that the remains in the Seville Cathedral, which is where I took this picture, are at least partly of Columbus. There are at least some claims that some of his remains are still in Santo Domingo and in fact, the U.S. had whatever they are on a boat that opened the Panama Canal. Class all the way here.

Also, I was very excited for this grave visit, maybe not the actual highlight of Seville, but kinda a personal one.

If you want this series to visit other violent Europeans who explored what is today the Americas, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Hernan Cortes is in Mexico City and James Cook is in Kealakekua, Hawaii (leaving behind whether Hawaii is part of the Americas, it is the United States). Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.

The post Erik Visits a Non American Grave, Part 1,786 appeared first on Lawyers, Guns & Money.

A federal judge Monday tossed out parts of an Arkansas state law that allowed librarians and booksellers to be sent to prison for up to a year for allowing minors to access “obscene” or “harmful” materials, whatever local officials might decide is “obscene” or “harmful.” Probably gay penguins.

In his ruling, US District Judge Timothy Brooks found that the law, Act 372, violated the First Amendment and also generally sucked, was overly vague, and didn’t provide adequate guidance to libraries and booksellers to help them avoid being arbitrarily prosecuted. The law created a new process for complaints and required libraries (tell you what, just assume “and booksellers” is part of every sentence, OK?) to shelve “harmful” materials in a special adults-only section, although it didn’t mandate that such a section be behind a beaded curtain like at an old video store. A similar law in Idaho — minus the librarian-jailing — is also being challenged in federal court, as are multiple other censorship laws.

Brooks wrote that the law “deputizes librarians and booksellers as the agents of censorship; when motivated by the fear of jail time, it is likely they will shelve only books fit for young children and segregate or discard the rest,” which was of course the point. For all the Mad Moms’ insistence that they only want to protect tiny innocent kids from “obscene” materials, the actual targets of book banning tend to be anything rightwing parents dislike, especially mentions of LGBTQ people, books about race, and sex education.

Not surprisingly, Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin said that while he’ll respect the ruling, he plans to appeal, and Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders issued a statement calling Act 372 “just common sense” because “schools and libraries shouldn’t put obscene material in front of our kids,” so there.

Holly Dickson, executive director of the ACLU of Arkansas, said yippee, now we can poison kids’ minds, destroy the family, and kill God, or at least that’s how wingnuts will interpret what she actually said, which was

“This was an attempt to ‘thought police,’ and this victory over totalitarianism is a testament to the courage of librarians, booksellers, and readers who refused to bow to intimidation.”

Judge Brooks found that the law hadn’t adequately defined “harmful to minors” and that it would “invite censorship decisions on the basis of content.” He noted that while the state “helpfully offers the dictionary definitions” of several terms like “present,” “furnish,” or “make available,” the definitions by themselves didn’t really help, since they didn’t make clear how much action would be adequate to avoid prosecution.

If a book with some sexual content were placed on a shelf or otherwise displayed in the teen or adult section of the library or bookstore, the librarian or bookseller could reasonably be accused of “furnishing a harmful item to a minor” if a younger minor could access it.

The only way to absolutely avoid being prosecuted and sent to prison for a year, he reasoned, would be to “burden older minors’ and adults’ access to books that contain even a modicum of sexual content” on the off chance that a preschooler might wander into the existing grownup nonfiction stacks and bring back a copy of, let’s say, Fear of Flying or an accurate journalistic report on the threesome frolics of Moms for Liberty cofounder Bridget Ziegler and related alleged rape investigation into her husband, Christian Ziegler, who wasn’t prosecuted but was shitcanned as Florida GOP chair.

Or maybe libraries and bookstores could just ban kids who aren’t accompanied by a parent at all times, as has happened in some places.

Brooks also found that, despite the claims of its backers that Act 372 was only meant to protect children from all that porn that already isn’t in libraries, the law doesn’t define “appropriateness” at all, leaving it up to local committees:

“Material subject to challenge is not limited to sexual content, and the law does not define ‘appropriateness’ at all,” Brooks wrote. “Instead, a book challenger may target any expression of ideas that he or she personally deems inappropriate.”

The law also didn’t require a challenger to be a library user, to have read the material being challenged, or even to be an Arkansas resident, leaving the law open to abuse, which was the point to begin with.

Here’s hoping that Judge Brooks’s ruling is just the first of many to follow as more Americans decide they’d rather not be ruled by a minority of rightwing creeps, the end.

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[Arkansas Advocate / Ruling in Fayetteville Public Library v. Crawford County / AP]

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Book Us, Danno

Here to warm your heart a little bit is a fable about a magical land called the US Congress, where in the midst of last week’s huge stupid fight about whether to actually have a government anymore, and about whether unelected weirdo billionaires should be able to destroy said government, the Senate passed a little-noticed bill that will update American child welfare laws for the first time in 15 years and help out kids in foster care.

As Gabe Fleisher at Wake Up To Politics points out, there weren’t any big culture war provisions in the bill, and somehow the flaky billionaire with an online propaganda factory didn’t catch wind of it, so the Supporting America’s Children and Families Act passed and was signed into law without getting much attention at all. In fact, when Fleischer wrote about it over the weekend, he noted that “as far as I can tell, not a single other article has been written about this legislation by any news outlet, anywhere.”

Fleischer included a google link so people could check, and I did. Even after his post, nope, nothing much, apart from several social media posts linking to Fleisher, plus the expected press releases from members of Congress who helped pass the bill. The only exception we found was a Yahoo reprint of a brief story from Native News Online, based on a press release from the National Indian Child Welfare Association (NICWA), which advocated for the law because it

increases funding for tribal child welfare programs and courts, reduces administrative burdens, closes a gap in data collection for Native children and families who are in state child welfare systems, and requires the Department of Health and Human Services with the assistance of the Bureau of Indian Affairs to provide needed technical assistance to states and tribal nations to improve implementation of the Indian Child Welfare Act.

So there’s a second article, and now Yr Wonkette makes three. Maybe some bigger outlets should cover this, although that might run the risk of bringing it to the attention of some jerk who thinks kids in the system have it too easy and need to be working overnight shifts.

As Fleisher — who staunchly refuses to have a c in his name no matter how often I misspell it — points out, there are some excellent things in the bill beyond the increase of $75 million a year into the budget for “the federal program tasked with combatting child abuse/neglect and protecting children in the foster care system.”

Among other things, the bill allows states to pass on federal child welfare funds directly to families that have hit an economic rough patch, to “prevent children from being separated from parents solely on the basis of poverty-related circumstances” — instead of declaring the parents “neglectful” and taking their kids away.

Other measures in the law will

expand mental health services for children in foster care; ease the transition out of foster care by offering assistance to former foster children until they reach the age of 26; increase funding for the 2.5 million grandparents and relatives raising children who would otherwise go into foster care; create a new requirement that states consult with affected children and parents when crafting their child welfare policies; seek to improve the relationships between incarcerated parents and their children in foster care; and reduce the administrative burden of child welfare caseworkers by 15%, so they can focus more on children and less on paperwork.

That’s a hell of a lot of good that literally got zero mention in the mainstream press, mostly because the bill was written and passed without any drama or denunciations that it would promote witchcraft, turn children into communists, or force Americans to live under the tyranny of the Metric System. And that, Fleisher says, is a damn shame, because “coverage of the country’s legislative output should not be dictated by how much squabbling went into the passage of the bill.” A media focus on dysfunction might be entertaining, but leads to cynicism and to people never hearing about genuinely worthwhile, honest-to-Crom “bipartisan achievements like the Supporting America’s Children and Families Act.”

We think Fleisher is right, though we’d also add that it would sure help a hell of a lot if our politicians, especially those on one side of the aisle, would actually try to legislate instead of trying to get their scowling faces on Fox News. Oh dear, that wasn’t bipartisan of me at all.

OPEN THREAD.

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[Wake Up to Politics]

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BOTH SIDES of your credit card matter

In Saint-Flour, a town in the Auvergne region of central France, the highest cathedral in Europe perches at 892 meters (nearly 3,000 feet) above sea level. Saint-Pierre sits at the confluence of the dry winds blowing across the surrounding plateaus, making it, surprisingly, the ideal place to age local hams to perfection.

This church-aged charcuterie was the brainchild of Philippe Boyer, who became rector of Saint-Pierre in 2011. Soon thereafter, he encountered his first challenge: The 600-year-old cathedral was in need of some TLC, specifically for its 19th-century choir organ. Repairs would cost several thousand euros, money no one had: not the diocese, and certainly not the French state, despite technically owning 87 of the country’s cathedrals, including Saint-Pierre.

Boyer was undeterred. “I said to myself, ‘Why not make a product in the spirit of the great medieval abbeys, who made their own food, which they sold to survive, to live?’” he says. “In this case, it’s not for us to live, but to give new life to heritage.”

Boyer began by adding beehives to the cathedral roof, and, following the success of the resulting honey, he turned his attention to one of the region’s star products: Jambon d’Auvergne, a ham boasting a protected status similar to Champagne or Roquefort. Typically aged in drying rooms for eight to 12 months, these hams, Boyer figured, could easily be aged instead in the cathedral’s breezy north tower.

He mentioned the idea to a reporter from local newspaper La Montagne, and the article caught the attention of farm cooperative Altitude. “We thought the idea was pretty original, pretty iconoclastic,” recalls Altitude communications manager Thierry Bousseau, noting that the group also thought the project would be the ideal way of promoting the work of their farmers and salaisonniers, experts in the art of curing and aging charcuterie like sausages and hams.

A host of bureaucratic hurdles loomed, including authorizations from French health services and the certifying board granting the hams IGP (Indication Geographique Protégée) status. And of course, the architecte des bâtiments de France, a civil servant devoted to the protection of state-owned buildings, had to be consulted. “He gave his OK,” says Bousseau, and so, in June 2022, Bishop Didier Noblot officially invoked the protection of Saint Antoine, patron of charcutiers, in blessing the first hams.

Today, hams produced by one of Altitude’s 30 farms are first aged in the cooperative’s aging rooms. Only the best are selected for sale to the Association des Amis de la Cathédrale, whose volunteers meet weekly to replenish the supply, carrying each ten-kilo (around 22 pounds) ham up the 150-odd steps of the spiral staircase to the tower. Here, they’re swaddled in bags and suspended from hooks just beneath the 19th-century bells. About 50 hams hang here at any given time, dry-aged for at least two months under the watchful eye of Patrice Boulard, a member of the Association and an expert salaisonnier with Altitude. The environment, he says, makes for a superlative ham. “It’s like in the olden days,” he says, “when in the French countryside, they’d age in the barn.”

The Association sells each ham for about 150 euros; proceeds have thus far funded not just the organ’s restoration but the purchase of a new Gospel Book made by the master goldsmith Goudji.

Altitude’s expertise means the hams are far from a gimmick. Their meaty wares show up on Michelin-starred tables such as Guy Savoy’s in Paris or Régis et Jacques Marcon's in Saint-Bonnet-le-Froid. “It was really important to us,” says Bousseau, “that this ham, which we age longer than most, which we choose in our workshop, be approved of by reputed chefs.”

But after just a few months, the project hit a snag. The new architecte des bâtiments de France noticed grease stains on the floor below the hams, and, Boyer recalls, “he started to panic.” The stains were easily explained by the fact that the bells are greased every six months, but, fueled perhaps by the memory of Notre-Dame’s 2019 conflagration, the architect dubbed the hams a fire hazard. “Hams don’t catch fire, just like that,” protests Boyer. But the group was nevertheless forced through yet another series of bureaucratic hoops. Six months after adopting new protocols, things seemed to have settled, Bousseau recalls. “And then in October 2023, we got a letter.”

By this point, Boyer had been transferred to nearby Aurillac, so it was the new vicar, Jean-Paul Rolland, who received the news: The changes had been deemed insufficient, and effective immediately, the hams had to be removed.

But Rolland took advantage of the bureaucratic tangle in forming his response. “He decided that the diocese, as the renter of the space, was not responsible for what happened in the cathedral,” says Bousseau. “He got the message across that basically, the hams weren’t going anywhere.”

These days, the status of the project is “a bit convoluted,” admits Bousseau. “Officially, aging the hams is illegal, but the reality is that they’re still there.” And despite their novelty, they’ve become beloved among locals. “Saint-Florins have appropriated them,” he says, “as though they had always been.”

The group remains optimistic for the future of the hams, especially following Notre-Dame’s 700 million-euro restoration. Funding these state-owned religious buildings has become a topic du jour, with Minister of Culture Rachida Dati even floating the idea of charging entry to the Parisian cathedral, an idea that was ultimately abandoned. Nevertheless, according to Bousseau, “there’s a contradiction regarding the announcements made by the state. ‘We can’t finance our heritage.’ And then we, at the local level, find solutions, and there’s a civil servant putting a wrench in the works.”

Dati agreed. In late October, the Minister of Culture voiced her official support of the hams.

For Bousseau, this project is “just a drop in the bucket” when it comes to the problem of funding France’s heritage. But this marriage of culture and cuisine shows how a little ingenuity and cooperation can help preserve history.

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Christmas tip jar!

As a team we had a Secret Santa last week; and after the exchanges were done, we sat down to serious work: recording how Ukrainian- and English-speaking people represent farm animal sounds verbally.

You might suggest that this is a cunning way for us to avoid writing an extensive, deeply-reported article during the holidays.

To that I would say: how dare you. ;)

Merry Christmas,
Tim and the rest of the Counteroffensive team.