June 19, 2015
By LaborPress
A group called the Remember 1934 Committee wants the city of Minneapolis to post a plaque at the site of the “Bloody Friday” shootings of July 20, 1934, when police trying to break up a truckers’ strike killed Henry Ness and John Belor and wounded 65 people, almost all of them shot in the back.
More than 6,000 drivers had been trying to form a union against the wishes of a pro-business group called the Citizens' Alliance, which Remember 1934 Committee member Keith Christensen says “dominated the town as a right-to-work environment, which depressed wages and made conditions really harsh—it was one of the worst in the country." The plaque would describe the strike, in which the drivers won recognition for Teamsters Local 574, as a “watershed moment in the history of the American labor movement” that “made Minneapolis a union town.” Read more
