twin-cities

In my inevitable quest to learn more about the history of our new home in the Twin Cities, I recently read Teamster Rebellion by Farrell Dobbs as a primary source on the Minneapolis general strike of 1934. That strike was a significant moment in US labor history, beginning a shift towards industrial unionism – the idea that all workers in a given industry should be part of the same union, rather than organizing unions by trade. It also, not coincidentally, triggered real growth for the Teamsters and was one of the turning points leading American Trotskyists to split from the Stalinist Communist Party USA. ...

I’m sitting on the Coho Ferry on the way to Victoria; I’ve got one last Ingress key drop to make before we leave the area. Admittedly this is also serving the purpose of checking off one more ferry we hadn’t tried in the past. There’s something kind of romantic about driving to a small city on the edge of America to take a small ferry to a city that always feels like a lost outpost of the British Empire. Naming their big luxury hotel the Empress probably has something to do with that feeling. ...