Don Palabraz

Doin’ Time for Throwin’ Limes?

In Riverside, neo-Nazis squared off with counterprotesters yesterday for the second time in as many months. Twenty members of the National Socialist Movement assembled to rally against immigration and the presence of day laborers in the city that I once called home for three years. Greatly dwarfing the haters, an estimated 600 hundred counterprotesters came [...]

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Subversive Historian – 08/03/09

The Wheatland Hop Riot Back in the day on August 3rd, 1913, the Wheatland Hop Riot took place in Northern California. Nearly two-thousand agricultural hop pickers toiled at Durst Ranch working long hours in the hot sun for low pay. Many of the workers slept a mile from the ranch in the open air without blankets [...]

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What’s Your “Gates” Moment?

Everyone has chimed in on the arrest of African-American scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr by the Cambridge, Massachusetts police almost two weeks ago as a “teachable” moment. If there are any lessons to be taught, its solely for those who have been under illusions about the reality of race relations in the United States. Whether [...]

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Subversive Historian – 07/27/09

Albert “Ginger” Goodwin Back in the day on July 27th, 1918, labor leader Albert “Ginger” Goodwin was shot to death in Canada. Originally from Yorkshire, Goodwin immigrated to Canada and worked as a coal miner. When his travels took him to Cumberland on Vancouver Island, the future martyr cut his teeth as an organizer and effective [...]

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Subversive Historian – 06/04/09

Arthur League and the Black Panthers in OC Back in the day on June 4th, 1969, Santa Ana police officer Nelson Sasscer was shot while on duty and eventually died as a result. The shooting, which took place exactly forty years ago, resulted in the arrest of Black Panther Party member Michael Lynem the very next [...]

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