Today in Labor History September 11

1500s

Today in Labor History September 11, 1541: Indigenous warriors, led by Michimalonco, attacked Santiago, Chile in order to free eight indigenous chiefs that the Spanish were holding captive. Ines de Saurez defended the town. She decapitated one of the warriors herself, and had others decapitated by her soldiers, effectively ending the attack.

1800s

Today in Labor History September 11, 1851: Escaped slaves, led by William Parker, successfully fought off a slave owner, a federal marshal and armed whites who were trying to seize them in the Christiana Resistance in Pennsylvania. The recently passed Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 increased penalties for assisting escaped slaves. It also required state officials, even in free states, to help recapture slaves. Many of the Blacks involved in the Christiana Resistance traveled to the safety of Canada. However, the federal government indicted 41 people for treason, including both Blacks and Whites. The first man they tried, Castner Hanway, a white man from Christiana, they acquitted after only 15 minutes of deliberation. They eventually dropped charges against the remaining defendants. 

1910s-1920s

Today in Labor History September 11, 1916: The trial of labor activist Warren Billings began in San Francisco on trumped up charges stemming from the San Francisco Preparedness Day parade bombing on July 22. As a result of the bombing, 10 people died and 40 were injured. Not surprisingly, the authorities only went after anarchists for 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. Billings and his codefendant Tom Mooney were wrongly convicted. They served 23 years in prison. Governor Edmund G. Brown pardoned them in 1961.

Today in Labor History September 11, 1925: The IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) marine strike began. 

1970s-2010s

Today in Labor History September 11, 1973: The CIA helped overthrew the democratically elected government of Allende in Chile. This ended nearly 150 years of democratic rule. Also killed in the coup were folk singer Victor Jara, and American IWW journalist Frank Teruggi. Jara courageously continued singing Venceremos (We Shall Win) while he lay on the ground, hands broken by his torturers, as they slaughtered hundreds in the national stadium. 16 years of military terror followed under Pinochet’s rule. Chilean-American author Isabel Allende is a cousin of the assassinated former president, Salvador Allende. She wrote her debut novel, “House of the Spirits,” while in exile in Venezuela, after fleeing the Pinochet dictatorship.

September 11, 2001: The World Trade Center was attacked in New York City, killing hundreds of workers and setting into motion a decade of U.S. initiated terror on civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and domestic repression within the U.S.