Happy Frog Jump! Here's a little repeated quote from Mark Twain!

Twain looking tough.
From wikimedia commons.

"Who are the oppressors? The few: the King, the capitalist, and a handful of other overseers and superintendents. Who are the oppressed? The many: the nations of the earth; the valuable personages; the workers; they that make the bread that the soft-handed and idle eat…

When all the bricklayers, and all the machinists, and all the miners, and blacksmiths, and printers, and hod-carriers, and stevedores, and house-painters, and brakemen, and engineers, and conductors, and factory hands, and horse-car drivers, and all the shop-girls, and all the sewing-women, and all the telegraph operators; in a word all the myriads of toilers in whom is slumbering the reality of that thing which you call Power ... when these rise, call the vast spectacle by any deluding name that will please your ear, but the fact remains a Nation has risen."
   ~Mark Twain in an 1886 address to the early union Knights of Labor

The Teen and the Tryon(t): Guest Post by Kati Giblin

Note from David: Kati Giblin is a Calaveras High School senior who proposed with the schools Earth Club that Calaveras County adopt an official “Earth Week” to the Board of Supervisors. Supervisor Tom Tryon met the proposal with a bizarre tirade about the evils of environmentalism. The Calaveras Enterprise, The Record, and The Union Democrat all picked up the story. In this exclusive Mother Lode Progressive guest post, Kati discusses how the incident changed her perspective of rural culture and politics.

About the Author:
I am eighteen years old and personally
quite liberal. I currently attend Calaveras
High School. I live in Valley Springs on
weekdays and Stockton on weekends.
In the Fall, I will move to
Northampton, MA to attend Smith College.



Weeks before I presented the Earth Club’s Earth Week resolution to the Calaveras County Board of Supervisors, I heard rumblings of controversy over the word “sustainability.” However, being an out-of-touch high school student, I firmly believed that nobody would question this resolution, despite its use of the word. After all, nobody in my realm of communication has doubted the existence of global warming or questioned the need for new sources of energy since around, say, 2006. And after all, this is California; we are only a few hours away from San Francisco, the city that banned plastic bags. Only the most out-of-touch, anti-progress, paranoid Tea Party patriots would raise any objection to the concept of sustainability, and they never leave their homes. Right?

The Ground We Walk On: A History of The Jackson Miners Union (Post 10)

The union organizer as a noxious weed that
blooms every spring, from the conservative
Democrat "Puck Magazine."

By David Roddy

Note: See previous posts here.

STRIKE!
April 17^th, 1903        
They posted the notices all around the mines of Sutter Creek and Jackson, up and down the main streets of those towns, tacked onto church and city hall walls. The April rain smudged the ink, but the stark clarity of the message remained intact.

Strike Notice-Notice is hereby given to all men of Jackson district that a strike is declared on all mines and mills of Oneida, Zeila, Gwin, Kennedy, Central Eureka, and South Eureka Mines.

  Crews of around two mineworkers each guarded all the roads and trails leading to the mines, turning around men on foot and horseback on their way to work in the morning. The strike was on.

Young in Amador: Guest Post by Nolan Davis

By Nolan Davis

They say everyone is entitled to their opinion.

About me:
19 years old, raised in Amador County, liberal...
almost socialist. My beliefs came from watching
the economy crumble and seeing
the rich get all the tax breaks.

However, when the opinion is against what is considered the norm the group, does the opinion really matter?

Jackass Hill Convention: Guest Post by Will Moore

About the author:
I was born in the labor movement.
My father was a depression survivor,
Roosevelt Democrat, and union organizer
for the CIO in the 1930’s.

  They were organizing a furniture factory
in Upper Michigan, The Lloyd Company.
They took Lloyd out on a long strike
.Nine months after the Lloyd strike there
was a baby-boom in that town.

I was one of those “strike babies,” and I’m still there.

By Will Moore

 
Hello Fellow Democrats,

This is a proposal that we put together a Mother Lode Counties Democratic Party picnic/fund raiser/convention event at Jackass Hill in Tuolumne County in 2012.

May Day Rally, Sacramento 2011

Immigrant and Worker Rights March in Sacramento.

"What's in a word?" Guest Post by Lola Blevins

By Lola Blevins
"Sustainability.” This seems to be a loaded word these days, especially in Amador County.