1920s-1940s
Today in Labor History March 17, 1920: A General Strike in Germany helped defeat the Kapp Putsch.
March 17, 1921: The Bolsheviks defeated the Kronstadt mutiny. Trotsky boasted that he would “shoot them like pigeons.”
March 17, 1942: The Nazis gassed the first Jews from the Lvov Ghetto at the Belzec death camp. It was located in what is today eastern Poland.
1960s
Today in Labor History March 17, 1966: César Chávez & the National Farm Workers Association marched from Delano to Sacramento, California. They arrived on Easter Sunday.
March 17, 1968: The U.S. Army Chemical Corps killed over 6,000 sheep while illegally testing a nerve gas agent at the Dugway Proving Ground in Skull Valley, Utah. A 1998 report, the by Air Force Press was the “first documented admission” from the Army that a nerve agent killed the sheep at Skull Valley. The incident inspired Stephen King’s novel “The Stand.”
1990s-2000s
Today in Labor History March 17, 1992: South Africa passed a referendum to end apartheid.
March 17, 1996: 30,000 people marched in Villahermosa, Mexico, in support of a campaign to blockade state-owned oil wells that would displace thousands of poor people.
March 17, 2016: The Movement for a Democratic Society declared the establishment of the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria. Supporters of the federation claim they have implemented a form of libertarian socialism, influenced by American anarchist Murray Bookchin, with decentralization, gender equality and local governance through direct democracy.