When people think of California and natural disasters, they usually think of earthquakes, wildfires and droughts. But the worst natural disaster to hit the west in the last 160 years was the Great Flood of 1862, a series of storms that inundated much of the land, from Oregon to San Diego. The agriculturally rich Central …
Worse Than the Big One: California’s Coming Megaflood Read More »
(Published in Fifth Estate, Spring 2022) In the wake of the punitive No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top legislation of the Bush and Obama years, education reform has turned one hundred and eighty degrees. Today, many schools are implementing much more noncoercive practices, like restorative justice and culturally sensitive teaching, which aim …
Today in Labor History March 29, 1852: Ohio prohibited employers from forcing women or children to work more than 10 hours in a day. March 29, 1918: Union buster, Sam Walton, was born in Kingfisher, Oklahoma. Despite his nativist “Buy American” campaign, Walmart is now the single largest importer of foreign goods in the U.S. …
Today in Labor History March 18, 1741: The New York governor’s complex was burned in an arson attack. The Fort George fire started the New York Conspiracy of 1741. The conspiracy involved a series of fires in Manhattan in the spring of 1741. They were supposedly carried out by slaves and poor whites and Catholics. However, historians disagree as …
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 …