pilsenprole: December 2009

About pilsenprole...

Welcome to PilsenProle, the news blog created by educator, labor journalist/activist, producer of the Labor Express Radio program and proud Pilsenite Jerry Mead-Lucero. The purpose of this blog is the posting of print stories, photos and other materials produced by Jerry and others, relevant to concerns of the worker's movement broadly, and topics covered on the Labor Express Radio & the Labor Beat TV programs in particular. I will also indulge in a little amateur travel writing via this site.

Explanation of the name “pilsenprole” – Pilsen is a Mexican, immigrant, working-class community on Chicago’s Southside. Over the past 150 years, Pilsen has changed in regards to the composition of it’s immigrant population – from Bohemian to Polish to Mexican – but it has always been a working class immigrant community. From the 1877 Battle of the Viaduct, to the events of Haymarket, to the 1910 garment workers general strike, to the struggle against gentrification today, few neighborhoods in the country can claim such a long and illustrious history of class struggle. I have been a proud resident of Pilsen since May 2000. “Prole” (short for proletariat) is an homage to the 20th century’s greatest Journalist, George Orwell…“If there was hope, it must lie in the proles, because only there in those swarming disregarded masses, 85 per cent of the population of Oceania, could the force to destroy the Party ever be generated…the proles, if only they could somehow become conscious of their own strength. would have no need to conspire. They needed only to rise up and shake themselves like a horse shaking off flies.”

This Monday's Labor Express Radio program focuses on an interview with historian Peter Pero, author of the book Chicago Italians at Work. You can find out more about the book and order a copy at the following links...

http://www.kentlaw.edu/ilhs/booklist.htm

http://www.amazon.com/Chicago-Italians-Work-Images-America/dp/0738561878/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1260688048&sr=8-1

http://www.arcadiapublishing.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=9780738561875&Store_Code=arcadia&search=pero&offset=0&filter_cat=&PowerSearch_Begin_Only=&sort=name.asc&range_low=&range_high=

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Sunday, December 13, 2009

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