“They Try to Create Despair Among the Miners”

One of the small treasures I brought back to New York from Lake Superior is Hannu Leppanen and Daniel Schneider’s 2013 letterpress edition of Tyomies, the Finnish workingman’s newspaper published during the strike of 1913. I’ve mentioned the project here before. Daniel set up his Chandler & Price Pilot Press…

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Check Out This Performance of ‘1913 Massacre’

After seeing our film, composer Rob Garcia was so taken with Woody’s song that he developed this original setting of “1913 Massacre.” Here’s Rob Garcia’s Soap Box performing the song at the Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture last month. http://youtu.be/cAq6uSFxsGg&w=420&h=315 The Soap Box ensemble features: Jean Rohe – vocals Michel…

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Everyone Was In It

One of the enduring and iconic images of the 1913 strike is this photograph, of a boy carrying a sign that reads, “Papa Is Striking For Us.” Both the sign and the photograph were probably created by WFM organizers, who were pretty savvy when it came to media relations. (So,…

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“Unfinished Business”

Mike Ragogna interviews Nora Guthrie today on Huffington Post about her father and his music. MR: Were there certain topics brought up in his material, such as the plight of the Mexican worker in “Deportees,” that resonated with you more than others? NG: Woody wrote over 3000 songs for every…

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A Theme from Labor Day 1913

One hundred years ago today, in 1913, a crowd of almost 3000 people gathered in the sweltering heat at the municipal park in Hancock, Michigan for a Labor Day rally. It had been a difficult, violent summer, and there was no indication that the strike on the Copper Range was…

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Women on the Verge of a Social Breakdown

By late August of 1913, authorities in Calumet were facing a problem that was “becoming more perplexing each day.” Women were mixing it up with strikebreakers, scabs, deputies and national guardsmen. “This development is perplexing,” read an article dated August 28th, “as the men are timid in resisting such attacks.”…

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First TV Broadcast of 1913 Massacre – Labor Day, 2013

We’re very happy to announce that 1913 Massacre will air on Twin Cities Public Television (tpt) over the 2013 Labor Day holiday.  This is the first television broadcast of the film. Showtimes: On tpt Channel 2.1: Monday, September 2nd, at 11:00PM and Tuesday, September 3rd at 5:00AM. On the Minnesota Channel (locally tptMN Channel 2.2): Monday at 12:00am, 6:00AM, 12:00PM, and 6:00PM The online…

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Woody Guthrie, Mother Bloor and The New Marker at the Italian Hall Site

Here’s a recent local news story about the changing of the Michigan historical marker at the Italian Hall site in Calumet. The sign at the site no longer says that the doors of the Hall opened “inward,” as it did for years. As author Steve Lehto sees it, the story…

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Where Is Calumet?

It’s uncanny how this notice from a 1913 newspaper anticipates the opening scene of 1913 Massacre: “Where is Calumet?” That is a simple question, apparently. Almost anybody will say it is a thriving city up in the country where they blow open the earth with dynamite and wrest copper there…

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Murder, Mother Jones and the Militia

By August of 1913, things in the Copper Country were really starting to heat up. The miners had been on strike since the end of July, and the strike was “gradually drifting,” in the words of the Calumet News, “towards its second stage, a period of guerilla warfare.” The Michigan National…

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