On this day in 1898, the Battle of Virden began when armed members of the United Mine Workers of America (UMW) surrounded a train full of strikebreakers and exchanged fire with company guards. 13 people were killed, dozens more wounded.
After a local chapter of the UMW began striking at a mine in Virden, Illinois, the Chicago-Virden Coal Company hired black strikebreakers from Birmingham, Alabama and shipped them to Virden by train.
The company hired armed detectives or security guards to accompany the strikebreakers, and an armed conflict broke out when armed miners surrounded the train as it arrived in town. A total of four detectives and seven striking mine workers were killed, with five guards, thirty miners, and an unrecorded number of strikebreakers wounded.
After this incident, Illinois Governor John Tanner ordered the National Guard to prevent any more strikebreakers from coming into the state by force. The next month, the Chicago-Virden Coal Company relented and allowed the unionization of its workers.
“When the last call comes for me to take my final rest, will the miners see that I get a resting place in the same clay that shelters the miners who gave up their lives on the hills of Virden, Illinois…They are responsible for Illinois being the best organized labor state in America.”
Mother Jones
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Watching Generation Kill cause I needed some mindless slop to lift to at home and man.
Besides everything else that’s been said about this fucking show, I’m pretty sure there’s not a single shot of any non-American shooting a rifle properly.
All competent enemy fire is either off screen or from a vehicle, but the second they are on camera, they are doing the squat and shooting over their heads.
Like literally just racist to the most basic elements of the show, the incidental battle footage is filled with incompetent less than humans getting mowed down without a real fight.
It’s been a constant complaint from US soldiers that non-NATO allied forces don’t know how to shoot. I’ve heard it since the beginning of the GWOT. Idk if it’s pure racism or what, though I suspect that part of it is that many US allies just aren’t as interested in killing people and don’t consider accurate fire as much of a priority as US infantry do. It takes a fair amount of training to convince people that they want to hit their target. Allegedly during WWII and Korea the US Army observed that many US troops would not fire at enemy soldiers, instead firing over or near them. They didn’t actually want to kill someone. This (allegedly) resulted in a lot of development in training methods that would train US soldiers to deliberately target and kill people. For instance, I’m told that the Army switched from round or abstract targets one shooting ranges to increasingly human shaped targets to acclimate soldiers to aiming at and shooting a human silhouette. I believe this is also where the innovation of silhouette targets that fall down came from. Americans are trained not just to shoot accurately, but to shoot at people with the intent to kill them.
Probably also a factor; Firearms use is deeply ingrained in American men from a young age, even if they never actually handle them. Games and media constantly depict men with rifles shouldering them and aiming down the sights. There’s a very deeply etched cultural belief in how rifles are to be used and what they are to be used for. But this doesn’t actually make Americans good shooters; That comes from lots of expensive training in the US army, and even then many soldiers aren’t especially impressive shots. Using a rifle in battle is a whole ass martial art and requires regular training and practice like any other martial art. Ammo isn’t cheap. The maintenance and usage of rifles isn’t intuitive. I imagine that to some degree many people who have fought Americans over the years of the GWOT simply did not have access to the large amounts of ammo and other resources necessary to practice rifleman skills on a regular basis.
Sorry but just feels kind of besides the point, like the show has uniformed soldiers be unable to shoulder a rifle when firing it for no good reason.
They launch plenty of sophisticated ambushes with RPGs or machine guns offscreen, once in a while an RPG might actually be shown firing onscreen, they have no issues wanting to hit their targets.
The show might even have US soldiers commend the dead bodies of Iraqis for being brave or clever, but the second one is shown fighting on camera they adopt some mandated jihadi firing stance that involves squatting and firing wildly over their heads.