I had previously rented the "American Experience" series "Chicago City Of The Century" from Netflix. I had problems ripping some scenes from the disk due to some scratches. I decided to purchase a copy of my own and take advantage of the "fair use" policies to share some key scenes with my friend. :-)
Disk #2 is the most important disk in the series. It showed me that history does indeed repeat itself. Yesterday's battle between "capital and labor" in Chicago is happening once again. There was:
- Capitalistic owners who took advantage of the laws at the time which allowed them to do with their own "property" as they wished. The workers on that property had few rights
- The radicals, anarchists and socialists were always hovering behind the exploited working class seeking to leverage their poverty and grievances to overthrow capitalism. Some threatened to kill every one of the capitalists
- The Black community was fighting a civil rights struggle. The World's Fair was used as a key opportunity to advance the cause
I learned today that Milwaukee was a hot bed of radical activism. I am sure that Chicago is similar in its history.
Unfortunately both of these cities have lost many of the manufacturing and commercial base for there to be a struggle over in the first place.
Stay tuned.
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