Today a community took action.
Working and living conditions for the women and children who ran machinery in New England's textile mills at the start of the 20th century were nothing short of horrible. Technical innovation allowed machines to do more, and to do it faster, enabling factory owners to hire fewer workers with less skills and for less pay (usually recent immigrants who couldn't even speak English). Their days were dirty, dangerous, and long; a 5-day work week wouldn't be introduced until 1929. Life at home was no better. People lived in overcrowded apartments, many without sanitation or even windows, and ate diets of cheap bread and beans. Half of all children would die before they were six, and over a third of mill workers were dead by the age of 25.
When weavers at a cotton mill in Lawrence, Massachusetts noticed on this day in 1912 that their paychecks had been reduced to jibe with a cut in their hours, they spontaneously walked off the job, and within a week, 20,000 workers would follow them. Battle lines were drawn. The Industrial Workers of the World union jumped in to run the strike. A factory owner tried to frame strikers by planting bombs. City fathers ordered state militia into the streets, shot at least one striker and, when workers tried to send their children out of state, clubbed and arrested them and their parents. National press coverage and a Congressional investigation ensued, resulting in a return to work in early March for increased pay and improvements in working conditions...all of which would be reversed within a few years.
The dynamics of how real communities are drawn together, organize, and take shared action are interesting, aren't they?