Labor History Bike Tour

From the pre-urban history of Indian Slavery to the earliest 8-hour day movement in the US, the ebb and flow of class war is traced. SF's radical working class organizations are shaped in part by racist complicity in genocide and slavery, but from the 1870s to the 1940s there are dozens of epic battles between owners and workers, culminating in the 1934 General Strike and its aftermath. This is an entirely different look, during a four hour bike tour, at San Francisco labor history.

By Michael Rhodes

4:33 PM PDT on August 28, 2009

From the pre-urban history of Indian Slavery to the earliest 8-hour day movement in the US, the ebb and flow of class war is traced. SF’s radical working class organizations are shaped in part by racist complicity in genocide and slavery, but from the 1870s to the 1940s there are dozens of epic battles between owners and workers, culminating in the 1934 General Strike and its aftermath. This is an entirely different look, during a four hour bike tour, at San Francisco labor history.

Michael Rhodes

Michael Rhodes is a former reporter for Streetsblog San Francisco. He lives in the Mission Dolores neighborhood and is a graduate of UC Berkeley's Department of City and Regional Planning.

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