In these troubled times, around the world people seem to be asking each other, how do we fight back against this madness? In May, 1919 in Winnipeg, the working class answered this question by shutting down the city and running it themselves. I was born in 1967, and for many people my age, who turned 13 in 1980 or so, I felt like I was growing up in the shadow of a massive, exciting, really earth-changing social movement that I had missed out on -- what we have come to refer to as "the Sixties" in shorthand. But as I grew up and became more and more interested in history, I increasingly came to realize that the most significant period of earth-shattering social movement activity around the world that I missed, at least as far as the twentieth century goes, took place a half century before I was born, one hundred years ago, with this month, the month of May, of 1919, being an especially iconic moment of the period.
The Winnipeg General Strike
The Winnipeg General Strike
The Winnipeg General Strike
In these troubled times, around the world people seem to be asking each other, how do we fight back against this madness? In May, 1919 in Winnipeg, the working class answered this question by shutting down the city and running it themselves. I was born in 1967, and for many people my age, who turned 13 in 1980 or so, I felt like I was growing up in the shadow of a massive, exciting, really earth-changing social movement that I had missed out on -- what we have come to refer to as "the Sixties" in shorthand. But as I grew up and became more and more interested in history, I increasingly came to realize that the most significant period of earth-shattering social movement activity around the world that I missed, at least as far as the twentieth century goes, took place a half century before I was born, one hundred years ago, with this month, the month of May, of 1919, being an especially iconic moment of the period.