11.11.03 armistice

On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, the treaty ending World War 1 was signed. That was the Great War, the war to end all wars.

Now we call it Veteran's Day, and the old men who sold poppies in front of the Merit Mart are all dead. I don't like the designation of Veteran's Day because it assumes future generations killed or maimed by war. I prefer remembering the Armistice, and the hope that an atrocity of such terrible scope might teach us something, might guide us toward an optimistic future.

After the war ended, when working men and women were continuing their fight for safety and fair wages (the eight hour day, basic standards of hygiene, and similar rights we take for granted were achieved within living history; if your grandparents don't agree, you can ask mine), the IWW pulled off the first general strike in the United States. On November 11, 1919, a much-disputed event occured in Centralia between the IWW and Legionnaires. Nobody is in agreement about the sequence of events, but many people died, and an IWW member was taken from jail and executed by a mob.

These are the facts I will think about today.

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