These headlines recall the early years of the 20th century when, for working people, the U.S. was at best an aspirational democracy. Back then the carrot-and-stick methods that DeJoy used—repaying loyalty to his political causes with bonuses and favoring those employees who stood with him—were utterly commonplace.
That was also an era of rampant voter suppression. African-American men had been stripped of the vote in most southern states by 1910, thanks in large measure to the U.S. Supreme Court’s infamous *Williams v. Mississippi *(1898) decision, which opened the door to literacy tests, grandfather clauses, and a host of other mechanisms to block the black vote. After more than a half century of struggle for suffrage, women had only won the right to vote in a handful of states. And even white male workers often struggled to get equal access to the ballot box. Many states used poll taxes or barred those who received public assistance from voting in local elections, as historian Alex Keyssar <https://ash.harvard.edu/publications/right-vote-contested-history-democracy-united-states> has shown. And when more strenuous methods were needed to minimize workers’ political voice, employers did not hesitate to use them. During labor conflicts in the coalfields of Huerfano County, Colorado, in 1914, mine operators collaborated with sympathetic local officials to redraw the maps of seven electoral precincts so they were entirely on company property. On election day, armed guards simply prevented anyone <https://georgetown.box.com/s/tr8e0exfot8kv49lbcvzpb126gg6d7xo> seen as potentially “disloyal” from entering those precincts to vote. https://workingclassstudies.wordpress.com/2020/09/14/undelivered-the-dejoy-scandal-and-democracy-in-the-balance/ -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#1563): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/1563 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/76844094/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
