St. Louis, MO – A diverse audience of labor leaders, educators, students, community activists, and workers – both union and non-union – gathered to participate in the 4th annual Commemoration of the General Strike of 1877 at the Community Arts and Media Project Center on Cherokee St. Attendees enjoyed a pot luck lunch and open discussion of the historic first general strike in US history.

The St. Louis General Strike, also known as the St. Louis Commune or "reign of the rabble", shut down the city on both sides of the river in the summer of 1877. The action in St. Louis came as part of a nationwide strike by railway workers against a 10% pay cut, anti-union bosses busting organizing efforts, and a long period of cuts and take-backs by bosses in the wake of the Great Panic of 1873.

Speakers at Saturday’s event described how strikers across the country were brutally suppressed by the authorities, with the police, state militias and US army being called in to end the demonstrations and send the strikers back to work by any means. Tensions reached a boiling point on July 25, 1877 when a massive demonstration closed all business in the city of St. Louis and the general strike was declared. An executive committee was elected to coordinate the strike and supply networks to distribute food, regulate transportation and protect strikers and railroad company property.

Don Fitz of the Gateway Greens spoke of the horrific working conditions and anti-worker attacks which lead to the nationwide railworkers strike and initiated one of the most intense periods of militant labor struggle in US history. Mr Fitz also explained how some of the strike demands foreshadowed labor’s struggle for the 8-hour day and the ban on child labor.

Retired teacher and State Executive Board member Jim Hamilton, AFT local 420, read from "The Reign of the Rabble", a history of the general strike written by St. Louis’s own David T. Burbank of IBEW local 1, and highlighted the role played by women, minorities and immigrant workers, who fought shoulder to shoulder on the front lines of the struggle, and drew parallels between the initiative of workers in 1877 and the struggles of labor today against cuts and take-backs. Hamilton pointed to the UAW rally at Chrysler’s St. Louis Assembly plant in Fenton, MO only 24 hours before, where thousands of workers, retirees and their families from across the region came together to demand that Chrysler use the $12 Billion in federal aid it received from taxpayers earlier this year to re-open the recently closed plant and others like it across the US.

Tim Kaminski, who worked in the South plant in Fenton for decades and served as on the Executive Board of UAW local 110 before retiring, spoke further on the importance of solidarity between white, black and immigrant workers in 1877, as well as the role played by early labor organizations like the Knights of Labor and the American United Workingmen’s Party and compared this to the massive demonstrations of immigrant workers on May Day, 2006 saying: "these are the sort of things that will bring about real change!" Kaminski read from labor historian Philip Sheldon Foner’s "The Great Labor Uprising of 1877" and detailed how the Ku Klux Klan was used by the bosses and authorities in St. Louis to help break the general strike, terrorizing strikers and their families, and he pointed out the similarity between the costumes worn by the Klan and the Veiled Prophet in St. Louis’ annual V.P. ball. The V.P. Parade, now known as Fair St. Louis, was originally commenced by St. Louis’ business and political elite to celebrate the crushing of the general strike.

Andrew Kluethe of the greater-St. Louis area Autonomy Alliance called for working class solidarity and described the brutality of the strike’s "bloodless" end. On July 28, 1877 over 8,000 US troops, police and armed thugs entered St. Louis, placing the city under martial law and killing at least 18 strikers, imprisoning 70 more. The railroad companies fired hundreds, and by early August most of the strikers nationwide had been forced back to work. Kluethe said "Though retaliation and union-busting continued for decades, valuable lessons were learned and the tone was set for continuing workers’ struggles for dignity and against exploitation well into the 20th and 21st centuries."

David May, a local factory worker and member of the Workers International League, reminded the audience that 2009 is also the 75th anniversary of the strike wave of 1934, which opened the door to further struggles led by the CIO to organize workers in mass industry and also to create the modern labor movement. Mr. May also spoke about the factory occupations in the year 1937 by workers at Emerson Electric and GM in St. Louis, and drew together the similarities between 1877 and the 1930s – first and foremost that in these periods the unions were able to wage militant strikes against the bosses by adopting class struggle methods, abandoning "labor-management partnership" idea that what is good for the company is necessarily good for the workers, as well as the role played by Socialists in both periods, saying: "the key lessons of 1877 and the 1930s for the labor movement today is the need for class struggle policies to carry the movement forward and a perspective that looks beyond the limits imposed by capitalism… without our unions and the struggle for meaningful reforms today, the struggle for a better tomorrow would be impossible."

Attendees at the event participated extensively in hours of dialogue on the lessons to be learned from the St. Louis General Strike and Great Strike of 1877 and their implications for the modern labor movement. The event concluded with a decision to organize a planning committee to continue the tradition of commemorating the legacy of the brave workers who fought against oppression and exploitation, whose historic struggle shut down one of the nation’s largest cities and captured the world’s attention in the summer of 1877, all in the cause of labor.

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