Eric Thomas Chester is an American author, socialist political activist, and former economics professor.
Eric Thomas Chester is an American author, socialist political activist, and former economics professor.
Born in New York City, he is the son of Harry (an economist on the research staff of the United Auto Workers) and Alice (a psychiatrist né Fried) Chester. His parents were socialist activists from Vienna. They were forced to flee Austria after the Nazis invaded in February 1938, both because of their political activities and because they were Jewish.
Since the UAW is based in Detroit, Michigan, Chester spent much of his youth in the Detroit area.
Chester attended the University of Michigan from 1964 to 1973, receiving a BA and a PhD in economics. He joined the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) soon after coming to Ann Arbor.
In the spring of 1965 he was among those answering the call of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), going to Montgomery, Alabama, to demonstrate against Alabama's segregationist policies and the federal government’s unwillingness to end these policies. Later that summer he once again answered the call, going to Jackson, Mississippi, in support of people struggling against the segregationist policies of Mississippi. He spent 10 days in the Hinds County jail, in Mississippi.
In October 1965 he was arrested in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the first draft board sit-in as part of one of the first acts of civil disobedience against the American government's warfare against the people of Vietnam. He served 15 days in the Washtenaw County Jail. [1] He was one of several students who were reclassified for immediate induction into the army because of their participation in the sit-in. A landmark decision by the U. S. 2nd Circuit Court ruled that the draft could not be used to punish protestors. [2]
Chester helped to form the Radical Independent Party in Ann Arbor in 1970. RIP elected two members to the Ann Arbor City Council in April 1972. [3] It later merged into the Michigan Human Rights Party (United States).
Chester moved to Boston, Mass in 1973. He taught economics at the University of Massachusetts-Boston from 1973-1978, where he helped to organize the faculty-staff union, an affiliate of the National Education Association. [4] He was also active in the New American Movement during this period.
In 1978, Chester moved to Berkeley California. He taught as an adjunct for a semester at San Francisco State University. He worked as a cab driver in San Francisco, where he became involved in protests by drivers opposed to a substantial increase in the number of cabs on the street. [5] [6] The protests won a significant roll-back.
Chester joined the Socialist Party USA in 1980. He was the Socialist Party USA's candidate for Vice President in 1996. [7] He campaigned for the Socialist Party USA's presidential nomination for the 2000, 2004 and 2008 elections, but lost to David McReynolds, Walt Brown and Brian Moore respectively.
Chester returned to Boston in 1986. He was an active member of the Boston area Industrial Workers of the World.
He moved to Montague, Mass in 1999 where he was active in the Socialist Party of Massachusetts (Western Mass Local). He twice ran for Congress from Massachusetts's First Congressional District, in 2002 and 2006.
Chester moved to Washington’s Olympic Peninsula in the fall of 2007. He was active in protests against the Border Patrol’s decision to set up roadblocks along the only highway in the area. [8] [9]
Chester moved to Glasgow, Scotland, UK, in the fall of 2009 and stayed until the summer of 2021. He was actively involved in the Scottish Peace Network. He took part in protests against an arms fair being held in a venue controlled by Glasgow City Council. [10] [11] Following the protests, the city council decided that it would carefully consider whether to permit future arms fairs in their venues.
Chester was also active in the Clydeside IWW General Membership Branch and the Spirit of Revolt, an archive for documents produced by Glasgow anarchist and libertarian socialist activists.
He moved to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, in August 2021. He rejoined the Socialist Party USA and is active in the local group.
Following the principles and ideas of Eugene V. Debs and Rosa Luxemburg, Chester describes himself as a revolutionary democratic socialist. He remains impressed by the example set by the Wobblies in their heyday. He advocates uniting the radical and revolutionary movements into an organization that can challenge and transform the global capitalist system.
In his research, Chester seeks "to probe beneath the surface", while keeping in mind that "the goals and actions of decision makers, as well as their envoys, are frequently in marked contrast to their public statements." [12] His work relies heavily on primary archival sources.
He has published seven books. Two of the first four, Covert Network and The U. S. Intervention in the Dominican Republic, looked at "the connections between U.S. foreign policy and social democrats.” during the Cold War. [12]
The remaining two books of the first four, Socialists and the Ballot Box and True Mission, looked into U. S. socialist history. A specific focus was the need for a socialist politics entirely independent of the two mainstream parties.
The last three books arose out of a single research project, examining the suppression of dissent during the First World War. The books are The Wobblies in Their Heyday, Yours for Industrial Freedom, an IWW anthology, and Free Speech. A final forthcoming book in this series will focus on the repression of progressives during this same period.
“What’s up, Comrades?” Red Library talks to Eric Chester about “Free Speech & the Suppression of Dissent During WWI” (1:48:11), Monthly Review ,Oct 18, 2020. https://monthlyreview.org/press/whats-up-comrades-red-library-talks-to-eric-chester-about-free-speech-the-suppression-of-dissent-during-wwi/
The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), whose members are nicknamed "Wobblies", is an international labor union founded in Chicago in 1905. The nickname's origin is uncertain. Its ideology combines general unionism with industrial unionism, as it is a general union, subdivided between the various industries which employ its members. The philosophy and tactics of the IWW are described as "revolutionary industrial unionism", with ties to socialist, syndicalist, and anarchist labor movements.
William Dudley "Big Bill" Haywood was an American labor organizer and founding member and leader of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and a member of the executive committee of the Socialist Party of America. During the first two decades of the 20th century, Haywood was involved in several important labor battles, including the Colorado Labor Wars, the Lawrence Textile Strike, and other textile strikes in Massachusetts and New Jersey.
Franklin Henry Little, commonly known as Frank Little, was an American labor leader who was murdered in Butte, Montana. No one was apprehended or prosecuted for Little's murder. He joined the Industrial Workers of the World in 1905, organizing miners, lumberjacks, and oil field workers. He was a member of the union's Executive Board when he was brutally murdered.
Paul Mattick Sr. was a German-American Marxist political writer and social revolutionary, whose thought can be placed within the council communist and left communist traditions.
Arthur Elmer Reimer was an American socialist political activist and politician who served as the presidential candidate of the Socialist Labor Party of America twice.
The history of the socialist movement in the United States spans a variety of tendencies, including anarchists, communists, democratic socialists, Marxists, Marxist–Leninists, Trotskyists and utopian socialists. It began with utopian communities in the early 19th century such as the Shakers, the activist visionary Josiah Warren and intentional communities inspired by Charles Fourier. Labor activists, usually Jewish, German, or Finnish immigrants, founded the Socialist Labor Party of America in 1877. The Socialist Party of America was established in 1901. By that time, anarchism also rose to prominence around the country. Socialists of different tendencies were involved in early American labor organizations and struggles. These reached a high point in the Haymarket massacre in Chicago, which founded the International Workers' Day as the main labour holiday around the world, Labor Day and making the eight-hour day a worldwide objective by workers organizations and socialist parties worldwide.
The Human Rights Party (HRP) was a left-wing political party that existed in Michigan during the early and mid-1970s. The party achieved electoral success in Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti. It eventually expanded to include several other Michigan cities with large student populations. In 1975, the HRP became the Socialist Human Rights Party, and it later merged with the Socialist Party of Michigan.
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn was an American labor leader, activist, and feminist who played a leading role in the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Flynn was a founding member of the American Civil Liberties Union and a visible proponent of women's rights, birth control, and women's suffrage. She joined the Communist Party USA in 1936 and late in life, in 1961, became its chairwoman. She died during a visit to the Soviet Union, where she was accorded a state funeral with processions in Red Square attended by over 25,000 people.
Opposition to World War I was widespread during the conflict and included socialists, anarchists, syndicalists and Marxists as well as Christian pacifists, anti-colonial nationalists, feminists, intellectuals, and the working class.
The San Diego free speech fight in San Diego, California, in 1912 was one of the most famous class conflicts over the free speech rights of labor unions. Starting out as one of several direct actions known as free speech fights carried out across North America by the Industrial Workers of the World, the catalyst of the San Diego free speech fight was the passing of Ordinance No. 4623 that banned all kinds of speech in an area that included "soapbox row" downtown. Clashes with the police in the area led to riots, multiple deaths including the deaths of police officers, as well as the retaliatory kidnapping and torture of notable Socialists, including Emma Goldman's manager Ben Reitman. As a direct result of the aftermath of this fight, the neighborhood of Stingaree was razed to the ground and the obliteration of San Diego's Chinatown.
Free speech fights are struggles over free speech, and especially those struggles which involved the Industrial Workers of the World and their attempts to gain awareness for labor issues by organizing workers and urging them to use their collective voice. During the World War I period in the United States, the IWW members, engaged in free speech fights over labor issues which were closely connected to the developing industrial world as well as the Socialist Party. The Wobblies, along with other radical groups, were often met with opposition from local governments and especially business leaders, in their free speech fights.
Wobbly lingo is a collection of technical language, jargon, and historic slang used by the Industrial Workers of the World, known as the Wobblies, for more than a century. Many Wobbly terms derive from or are coextensive with hobo expressions used through the 1940s.
Montague David "Monty" Miller, born 7 July 1839 in Van Diemen's Land, was an Australian trade unionist, secularist, and revolutionary anarchist-socialist chiefly active in the states of Victoria and, in his most productive period, in Western Australia. His activism with unions and the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), during the early years of the twentieth century, saw him acting as a speaker and organiser for these sometimes illegal groups, leading to his conviction for conspiracy in 1916.
The Agricultural Workers Organization (AWO), later known as the Agricultural Workers Industrial Union, was an organization of farm workers throughout the United States and Canada formed on April 15, 1915, in Kansas City. It was supported by, and a subsidiary organization of, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Although the IWW had advocated the abolition of the wage system as an ultimate goal since its own formation ten years earlier, the AWO's founding convention sought rather to address immediate needs, and championed a ten-hour work day, premium pay for overtime, a minimum wage, good food and bedding for workers. In 1917 the organization changed names to the Agricultural Workers Industrial Union (AWIU) as part of a broader reorganization of IWW industrial unions.
B. J. Widick was an American labor activist in the United Auto Workers union and socialist movements.
John J. "Johnny" Ballam was an American Marxist political activist and trade union organizer. He is best remembered as a founding member and one of the pioneer leaders of the Communist Party of America and as a leader of the Trade Union Unity League in the textile industry during the 1930s.
The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) is a union of wage workers which was formed in Chicago in 1905. The IWW experienced a number of divisions and splits during its early history.
A general strike is a strike action in which participants cease all economic activity, such as working, to strengthen the bargaining position of a trade union or achieve a common social or political goal. They are organised by large coalitions of political, social, and labour organizations and may also include rallies, marches, boycotts, civil disobedience, non-payment of taxes, and other forms of direct or indirect action. Additionally, general strikes might exclude care workers, such as teachers, doctors, and nurses.
The American Way is the second in a four novel series entitled Building of Empire, Crime and Politics; the Cornerstone of America by author Paddy Kelly. The American Way relates the events leading up to and through the Great Woolen Strike of 1912 in Lawrence, Massachusetts when approximately 40,000 immigrants from nearly every country in Europe, sharing 30 religions and 127 ethnic back grounds organized a seven-week strike against the richest man in the world. This despite the fact that only ten percent of them spoke English. Released in 2011 the title of this historical fiction is originally taken from the opening lines of the 1950s Superman television program Adventures of Superman (1952–1958) ".. . truth, justice and the American way!" However the catch phrase is meant as an entendre in that the American Way, usually perceived as the right and good way, is also in reality a two edged sword of unprecedented levels of corruption found at all levels of industry and government at the time the story is set.
William Covington Hall, who also wrote under the pen names Covington Ami and Covami, was an American labor organizer, newspaper editor, writer, and poet. Hall was an active member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and rose to some prominence within the organization. Hall played a major role in the Louisiana-Texas Timber War and the United Fruit Company strike of 1913. He spent most of his life in Louisiana, particularly in New Orleans.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Other | |
