On this day in 1912, a riot broke out in Grabow, Louisiana when gunfire was exchanged between organizing lumber workers and private gunmen hired by the Galloway Lumber Company, just one event in the Louisiana-Texas Lumber War. The clash left three union workers and one company gunman dead, wounding an estimated fifty more.
The event took place in the context of workers in the sawmill town of Grabow joining the Brotherhood of Timber Workers (shown), a branch of the Lumber Workers Industrial Union (LWIU), itself affiliated with the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW).
On July 7th, 1912, the union workers held a series of rallies at several different company towns, including Bon Ami and Carson, alongside Grabow.
The group that went to Grabow, around 200 people, spontaneously decided to hold a rally with several speeches - labor leader Arthur L. Emerson spoke on top of a wagon to roughly 25 non-union men, plus the additional union men who had come with him.
Shots began between these workers and a group of four others, including Galloway Lumber owner John Galloway, in the local mill office, all of whom had later been found to be drinking before the incident. It is not known for certain which group fired first. Three union men were killed alongside one member of the private company security force. Approximately 50 more were wounded.
Over the next few days, more than more than 60 workers were taken into custody by police. Although the mill owner himself was arrested, he was released without charges soon afterward. Sixty-five of the timber workers' group were brought up on charges ranging from inciting a riot to murder.
The IWW worked to aid the incarcerated workers, with "Big Bill" Haywood fundraising for their legal fund. The trial lasted until November 8th, and its jury returned a not guilty verdict for all of the union men. All of those arrested were set free.
Although they had limited success in Louisiana, the LWIU successfully organized later, winning an eight-hour day and vastly improved working conditions in the Pacific Northwest after a 1917 strike. Today, there is a historical marker at the site of the riot, located on what is now the property of DeRidder Airport, Louisiana.
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i would prefer to give no advice rather than advice i know is useless brainworms. none of you freaks ever explain where the motivation is meant to come from when part of the problem is that someone's reward pipeline neurology is fucked.
for an extreme case, think about how you'd tell someone to get out of bed and press on when their life isn't worth living. don't share it because it'll be fucking garbage I don't want to read but roll that around in your head for a while and try to consider what it's like to have no hope or agency. Good, useful advice would be something someone can do immediately and that pays off immediately. Bad unhelpful advice requires front-loaded effort to maybe improve something after months of dedication when there's no means or capacity for a protracted and continuous effort.
It needs to not get worse before it gets better because there is no safe or tenable dose of worse and if you can't address that condition then Mao quote because your ideas are useless.
the "first sign of discomfort" is every day, before any effort takes place, so you've accidentally identified that starting is impossible. I also don't think that's the only remaining choice. there may be chemical options, there may be non-resolving alleviations of the systemic barrier, but we'd need to know more about their situation than we do to suggest anything effective and actionable, in good faith, and with compassion.
edit: again the "push through [..] i would choose" is peak ableism and bootstraps.
Fair enough, but if you have zero ideas to offer then don't be so quick to criticize other people's advice. Our comrade asked for advice and I provided a free resource that's proven to work. It's also suited for people who are starting from zero since it very gradually increases the amount of effort that you need to invest.
This sounds great, can you give some examples? A magical cure for depression that requires zero effort and works immediately would make you a lot of money, you should patent it.
If by "chemical options" you mean antidepressants, they do jack shit in my personal experience, having tried them. And they consistently fail to do better than placebo in most studies.
You don't have to explain depression to me, I have been clinically depressed for years. In the end I managed to pull myself out of it with enormous amounts of effort and discomfort.
The catch 22 of depression is that you need energy and motivation to get better, but you don't have the energy and motivation since you're depressed. In the absence of systemic solutions, your only option is either to be slightly more uncomfortable or give up. I decided to be more uncomfortable because it was better than the alternative. That's not ableist, that's the reality of living in hellworld.
i'll explain it after you explain how to hoist yourself up by your bootstraps. If an actual solution is impossible that doesn't make impossible things a solution.