I woke up at 10:30 and decided to do what I'd been doing for a while most Saturdays which is read a book. I read "Pau Hana" by Ronald Takaki, one of my Little Free Library finds. It's an amazing book and it was really interesting seeing family names I knew, places I knew and went to school, took Aikido lessons, etc., and reading "hidden history" about the strikes and collective actions the plantation workers did especially in the 1920s when there were some major strikes.
Hawaii's always been more pro-Union than most of the US and growing up I thought that was just natural but it actually came from some bitter fights with the capitalists. This book was about plantation workers but I seem to remember many years ago on public TV in Hawaii, coming across a lecture by an Australian guy about the history of strikes and collective actions by other workers in Hawaii. Yet another reason to love the place, people in Hawaii are like the French, they have more guts than mainstream Americans.
No comments:
Post a Comment