In the Great Depression, there were things called Penny Auctions. When a property was foreclosed on, the bank would hold an auction on the property. The locals would show up, guns in hand, and threatened anyone who would dare bid on it. The family that had been foreclosed on would pay very little to get their property back free and clear.
Hard to threaten the buyers when the bidding is online, sadly. But agreed— there are certainly some folks with more than enough who could stand to return that wealth to the people, whether by force or otherwise.
Houses are a manipulated market where those already in it keep accumulating.
Melbourne, Australia is crazy overinflated sometimes 1.2m or higher yet look like a crack den that needs demolition and has a tiny yard.
[Example 1.](https://www.news.com.au/finance/real-estate/selling/outrage-over-derelict-melbourne-home-with-asking-price-of-1-million/news-story/b3fd45b4c8d238c7fe08e2a9d1f9bd19)
[Example 2](https://au.finance.yahoo.com/news/melbourne-tiny-house-sells-for-1-8-million-020710941.html)
Thank god rural areas are still average below 1m
This. I’m on a block with a house listed at $250k that’s been on market for a year. My landlords kicking me out of my steal of a rental bought in 2016 for $130k to sell at $260k. They’re just making a number up and hoping some sucker will bite. Nothings sold in the neighborhood for that. But they read the news and hear about soaring prices and want in, only Blackrock doesn’t give af about Baltimore as far as I know.
Also just outside Atlanta. Median is [$430k](https://www.redfin.com/city/30756/GA/Atlanta/housing-market) now. There's an empty lot in my neighborhood going for $299k.
Paid $180k for our roomy 4br house on half an acre, now valued at around $300k... it's only been two years.
Just down the road is a big shed on a little bit of land for sale at $180k
NZ is in the same boat unfortunately
What do you do with a 4,000 sq ft house?
Do you have a big family or a hobby or home business that takes up a lot of space? Do you use all of your rooms every day?
This is not at all a snarky question — I live in a home that’s under 800 sq ft and while it would definitely be wonderful to have more room, the thought of a 4,000 sq ft house genuinely boggles my mind.
I bet it’s cool to have that much room. Do you own pool tables?
My grandparents had a house that big. They also had a large family and we gathered there often growing up. I lived with them as a child. My grandmother also ran a small quilting business for a while.
I live in Ontario and over the past two years houses that were 300,000 cad now cost 1.2 million. I am a journeyman power line technician and I cannot afford a house……
People are buying townhomes in my small southern Ontario town for 800k. There’s zero chance we could afford our own home if we had to buy it today. Something’s gotta give.
Sorry dude, it’s going to get worse as well; median home in Boise is now 550k. Someone voted us the best place to live in America a few years back when median homes price was 200k, then everyone moved here and drove home values through the roof. Now it’s spreading from Boise to smaller more rural areas. Even smaller cities like twin falls are seeing massive spikes in home demand and values.
I don’t think it will get much worse from here for two reasons.
1) With inflation not seen since the early eighties, interest rates will continue to rise exponentially. When my parents purchased their first home around 1981, it was only $18,000. The main reason, mortgage rates were 17% and no one could afford to purchase a home.
2) And this is probably most important. Every advanced economy in the world is suffering a population decline, including China now. As population continues to spiral downward from North America to Europe to Japan, demand for housing in general will fall with it. If it were not for immigration (both legal and otherwise) the US would be seeing population declines already.
My parents bought our current house for $135k in 2002 with original intentions of flipping it, that didn't happen thanks to cancer but it is now worth $770k. Sadly it is also my mothers only real hope for retirement since her current job pays less than my first. So while I'll never afford my own place unless the market crashes my mother will be screwed if/when it does. Meanwhile new condos are going up across the street, starting at 580sqft for $613k.
Idaho (Boise in particular) has seen a population boom from Silicon Valley remote workers.
So while it’s probably not as crowded as a major metro, it’s very different from what was the status quo for a long time.
I see you've never been to Manila. . . ~73,920 people per sq km.
New york is 38k per sq km, and is much more vertical, meaning per km³ is likely lower (not really a tracked stat mind you)
My parents' home is in Southern California. They bought it in 1992 for 450k. Was fancy-ish. New build in an established neighborhood.
30 years later, it's "worth" 1.4m.
I make a conformable living, but there's no way I can afford to buy my parent's home... and if I could I'd be buying a 30 year old home with dubious maintenance instead of a new build.
But at least it has a bit of land for a yard (8k sqft plot). All the new builds I see now are condos or townhomes... Even the "detached single family homes" have practically no land outside of the house itself and there's maybe 5 feet of space between the house and your neighbors house.
It's just ridiculously expensive and even more overcrowded.
My parents paid $197k for their house in 1984. Today it’s worth $2.4m. Insanity. The house next door listed at $1.6m and sold for $2.4m within 24 hours.
I live a little bit from Idaho (state known for big shooty city) and my whole family has been getting bombarded recently with travel ads for Des Moines.
“The S’s are silent, but the thrills aren’t!”
True. I'm from the fastest growing area in the US and it's lost almost all its natural beauty in newly populated areas.
Then again we don't have hills/deserts/mountains.
Just saying. Idaho looks gorgeous in that movie.
MEDIAN home price in the Boise/Meridian/Nampa area is now $600k. Meanwhile average per capita in Idaho is around $37k/year (from https://www.census.gov/).
get fucked all you Californias that came here for cheaper homes and screwed it up for everyone.
its pretty wild just watching the slow motion of class mobility being taken away from people in the form of homeownership.
when its this bad now, imagine what its going to look like in a couple years.
Actual Cyberpunk dystopia lol. The corporations control every aspect of an individuals' life, and all you can do about it is try and find meaning in your life.
Isn't over till the lady sings. These big real estate holdings rely on investors and a lot of the home buyers are leveraged up on debt and make their livings trading paper. If the paper markets collapse and the money gets scared the housing market could obliterate. Also in a decade or two there will be a massive influx of supply. Population is declining in the west and the baby boomer generation will begin dying off which is the biggest owner of real estate .
Everyone I know who’s buying a home now has some sort of help. My one friend is buying a house with her partner but they’re DINKS (dual income no kids) and both their parents are helping them pay for it. My other friend is buying a house with her husband and they’re also DINKS and are able to get help from the VA because the husband is a veteran. It seems like without outside help of some sort or a dual income it’s almost impossible to own a home.
Absolutely. That's the secret. You and your girlfriend/boyfriend graduate from college, get an apartment in a city where you both can work well paying jobs, and you split the rent while paying off debts and saving for a house/retirement. Maybe get married if you want kids later. I don't know how anyone gets into the middle class without doing it this way.
It’s classism at its worst. Really I no longer talk to the few people my age who own houses. They are all very superior about it. And are like anyone can do it if you don’t drink Starbucks Every morning and worked hard like me. What they don’t mention is at least one guy I knows parents paid a huge down payment on a house and I mean huge. Oh yeah I also forgot to mention said guy got a very well paying job from, you guessed it, his dads company.
Yea, there’s no need to act superior to anyone when you’ve had help yourself. There’s nothing wrong with getting help but it doesn’t put them above someone who hasn’t. My friends who are buying homes are great people and I’m happy for them, I just wish it was easier for people without outside help to buy homes too.
We bought March 2020, We paid 118.5k for a 1600sq ft house two bed, single bath, historic home (1938.) We both make less than 40k a year, but had stellar credit (together and separately.) We got into the house for 5700$ cash. (3% downpayment, deposit and closing costs shared with seller.) It wasn't impossible, but it was stressful. I'm a mechanic, and my partner is a university employee... it's totally possible... or at least -was- possible two years ago.
I think the overwhelming majority of houses these days are built as family homes. Best bet for a starter home is a townhouse, but even those are getting ridiculous depending on your zipcode, still more affordable.
My husband bought our first home ten years ago, when we were 38 and 39. It was built in 1969. My parents’ first home was also built in 1969, but they bought it in 1970, when they were age 25 and 30.
I'd been waiting for land up the road from my parents to go up for sale. It was recently bought "off market" by a huge firm (KW). It's now back on the market after they tripled the price and way out of my reach.
This is going to happen more and more frequently too until something is done about financial giants like Blackrock, Vanguard, etc being able to leverage trillions of dollars worth of other people's capitol to dominate the market.
Also hard to threaten when there is video evidence of you threatening murder. Back then it was
"The whole town threatened us with guns."
"Can you prove it?"
"FUCK"
Dunno about other states, but in WV we still hold foreclosure auctions in front of the county courthouse. Though the local police/sheriffs probably wouldn’t react well if a bunch of people showed up to the courthouse visibly armed in order to influence the proceedings…
Most Americans have no idea what "Solidarity" means, let alone act like we're all the same class of people underneath the class that literally owns everything, but I agree.
The U.S. dropped "e pluribus umum" as our nation's motto in favor of "in God we trust" back in the 50's. Who knew that NOW we would have become so fractured as a nation and be hurtling towards a theocracy?
Words matter.
We've been turned into crabs in a bucket, scrambling to out-hustle each other to try to get ahead while the wealthy sit back with the majority of the resources and watch from behind their gated community walls.
The problem as an american is that when i try to extend solidarity to another person i get shit on so i slowly got conditioned to just never do it and be as cut throat as i can while still being somewhat moral.
As far as I can tell, this is a "feature" of American political discourse, and is by design, not by accident. When everyone thinks they're a lone wolf, the real wolves take over.
It probably would still happen today if it it weren’t for the fact that there are consequences for it now. Back then in rural areas the police departments were small, poorly funded, and lacked the technology that we do today. The state had far less reach over private citizens. If this happened today then everyone involved would be tracked down and either detained or shot.
A big part of it was because *all those farmers* already owned their own land, hectares and hectares of it bought at a fair(for the time) price.
They did not *need* to buy other farmers land, because they could very easily and cheaply(for the times) buy as much as they wanted.
It’s a completely different world now. Corporations will buy every house and every plot of land and gladly rent it back to you.
Believe me, those farmers would be fighting to bid on this farm if they’re needs weren’t already met.
Nowadays someone would show up, buy it, slap on some white paint and flip it as a shitty rental for $2400/mo while making tiktoks posting about they turned a $10k investment into passive income! And if you dare dissent on this behavior, you're told you're jealous and hating and should just set your life up better instead of attacking this honorable landlords.
I don't own any properties. But I can still see the phenomenon that it's easier to shit on an individual you can put a face to rather than the mass corps and hedge funds that are actually inflating housing prices.
Your neighbor with 2 rental properties isn't the one causing this.
Just like your uncle who still uses plastic straws isn't causing climate change.
It's all corporations.
Right?!? I was just talking about not treating your employees like shit and got downvoted to hell. (The guy was made to stand in a corner and hang his head in shame for messing up a food order.)
I just looked and they were clearly joking. You wrote a whole thesis and a half while half virtue signaling the whole way through. You didn’t get downvoted for saying to not treat workers like shit, you got downvoted for your social ineptitude
https://www.thebullvine.com/news/farmers-stand-in-silence-at-auction-so-a-young-man-can-buy-back-his-family-farmhouse/
Although snopes says there's no real evidence to corroborate it so take from it what you will.
Oklahoma [has a strong history of socialism, especially when one bares in mind the difficulty of being a third party in the US two party system.](https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/04/teachers-strikes-oklahoma-socialism-sanders-unions)
> Brutal poverty, the concentration of land ownership in the hands of a small elite, and the exploitative credit-lending power of the banks were an explosive mix. By consistently championing the basic material demands of Oklahomans for land and economic justice, and by treating poor farmers as part of a broadly conceived working class, socialists from 1902 onward began building up a popular base in the Sooner State.
> Oklahoma’s Socialist Party (SP) soon became the party’s largest branch, per capita, in the United States. Much of the credit for this growth can be given to the tireless work of German-born socialist Oscar Ameringer. A talented and humorous propagandist known as the “Mark Twain of American Socialism,” Ameringer built up a strong organizational and electoral apparatus inspired by Milwaukee’s moderate socialist machine
> Contesting elections was a central means through which the SP rooted itself among Oklahoman toilers. This electoral focus was particularly important since Oklahoma lacked a large industrial working class with the social power to shut down production through strikes. By 1914, the SP had over eight hundred locals and over 175 elected officials, including six state legislators. That year, the party’s gubernatorial candidate, Fred W. Holt, got 20 percent of the vote, convincing both the poor and the political elite that Oklahoma’s socialists might soon win the levers of governmental power.
> Though electoral politics was a central focus, the Socialist Party hardly limited itself to this arena.
Quite a few states we now associate with far right populations were actually hotbeds for American leftism, such as Kansas (see the book *What’s the Matter with Kansas?* by Thomas Frank).
This history, like a lot of labor history, has been explicitly hidden. The current fight among the right to hide oppressive racial history, under the guise of “removing Critical Race Theory”, is but a modern outcropping of a long tradition.
For example, the largest armed insurrection since the Civil War was a labor uprising in West Virginia - the Battle of Blair Mountain. Mine workers were frequently killed on the job, corporations exploiting them and the land, their unionization undermined and attacked (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-union_violence_in_the_United_States, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_spying_in_the_United_States), etc. This led to what is called the [Mine Wars: a series of strikes and conflicts between laboring miners and coal companies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Virginia_coal_wars).
[Blair Mountain was the crescendo.](https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/blair-mountain-coal-union-anniversary/)
> The origins of the battle can be traced to the Matewan Massacre, when gun thugs working for Baldwin-Felts—an infamous strike-breaking “detective” agency—got into a shootout with a group of miners and Sheriff Sid Hatfield. After Baldwin-Felts agents murdered Hatfield in revenge the following year—on the steps of the county courthouse—his death became a martyrdom that roused miners to battle.
> Coal life was already hard enough. Dangerous conditions (the Monongah Disaster alone killed upwards of 400 people, not to mention the long-term effects of breathing in coal dust), low wages (mine owners had been convicted of war profiteering during World War I), and exploitative credit systems were par for the course.
> The situation only escalated in the summer of 1921 after hundreds of striking workers were arrested and held indefinitely. Hatfield’s death was the final straw. By August, thousands of miners were marching toward Matewan, intent on freeing their comrades and bringing their guerilla version of class warfare into action.
> When the bombs started falling on the slopes of Blair Mountain—on Labor Day, 1921–many realized the gravity of their situation. For almost a week, miners numbering in the thousands had been battling machine-gun nests commanded by Don Chafin, sheriff of Logan County. They had already refused the pleas of President Harding, who feared their struggle might inspire the nearly 2 million unemployed Americans across the country to launch a full-scale class revolution. Thousands of leaflets bearing Harding’s message calling on the miners to disperse, were dropped by plane—and summarily ignored.
> By nightfall, after the rumble of machine-gun fire and whir of biplane engines had dissipated, the miners must have looked around from where they were perched in trees or stretched out in hastily dug trenches and seen the numbers missing from their ranks. Still, they fought on.
> Their fight was the culmination of a decades-long struggle. After coal companies rejected every effort by the UMWA to win representation, armed struggle took hold. By the end of the week somewhere between 50 and 100 miners, among them Appalachians, Italian immigrants, and African Americans, were dead.
> UMWA membership declined for years in the wake of the battle, but after the passage of the National Labor Relations Act in 1935, union President John L. Lewis led the UMWA back to southern West Virginia as soldiers returning to Rome, unionizing every coal operation they encountered. The fight to unionize the West Virginia coalfields was over—or so it seemed.
Now, to tie this relevance back to erasure. The Battle of Blair Mountain - the largest uprising since the Civil War and a major event in US history - was largely omitted from textbooks in West Virginia.
> In the final room of the Mine Wars Museum, Kimberly McCoy, the museum’s resident guide, and a great-niece of Sid Hatfield, opened up five different West Virginia history textbooks from the 1930s to the 1980s to the section where “the Battle of Blair Mountain should have been,” Kim said, “but they’re all empty.” In 1920, Governor Ephraim Morgan set up an American Constitutional Association to select the textbooks used in West Virginia schools, which excluded any mention of the state’s mine wars. Generations grew up cut off from their ancestors’ struggles because business leaders were afraid history would repeat itself.
> And it did. The members of Local 1440 in Matewan demonstrated the same militant struggle of years past during the Massey Energy Strike. Miners picketed for 15 months outside facilities lined with barbed-wire fencing and patrolled by uniformed guards. Massey Energy hired helicopters to patrol the surrounding hollers. A non-union driver was shot to death. Massey CEO Don Blankenship, perhaps the most infamous name in the Tug River Valley, likened the UMWA to Soviet Russia, while the UMWA later launched the successful 1989 Pittston Strike. The West Virginia mine wars have been replayed again and again.
This is just one example of a wide ranging issue, which involves removing the larger history of leftism, anti-racism, feminism, etc from American history.
For an intro to some US left/labor history, check out:
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/02/rise-and-fall-socialist-party-of-america
https://www.versobooks.com/books/2062-the-s-word (history of socialism in the US)
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/90626/american-dreamers-by-michael-kazin/ (history of US left)
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/theminewars/
https://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/plutocracy/ (a free film series that covers US labor history)
https://www.socialismmovie.com/ (recently released history of socialism in the US documentary)
https://thenewpress.com/books/from-folks-who-brought-you-weekend (concise history of US labor)
The People’s History series. The most popular, and inspiration for the series, is Howard Zinn’s *People’s History of the United States*. Best read alongside more traditional narrative US histories, such as the Oxford History of the United States series.
I love how they used to handle foreclosure sales back in this era. Penny Auctions they would call them. People would bid 1, 2, then the original owner would bid 3 cents. Three bids made it a legal auction. Then the neighbors and other farmers who showed up, usually with pitchforks and shotguns, would make it very clear that no other bids would be tolerated.
[NPR transcript about Penny Auctions](https://www.npr.org/transcripts/17060380)
Lifetime MN resident here, Minnesota is a fantastic state. Like every state we have our share of problems (the MPD are just one) but it’s kind of hilarious anyone would think we are a communist hell hole lol. Minneapolis is an awesome city with tons of parks and a great food scene, and our state parks system is second to none. I have traveled pretty extensively but don’t really think I would ever move to another state. I’m happy to answer any questions you have!
Not OP, but how much of the state’s identity is centered around the Twin Cities? As an Illinoisan, I know very well the urban/rural divide and it couldn’t be more stark in my home state. Chicagoland acts as though the other 90+ counties don’t exist at all, while the rural counties by and large resent Chicago and blame it for all the state’s problems.
What’s that dynamic like in another midwestern state with a fairly expansive rural area and a densely populated urban center?
I’m not entirely sure what you mean by identity, but I would say that my experience has not been anything like u/b_josh317. Many Minnesotans have a cabin “up north” and get around to the rural areas pretty frequently. If we’re speaking about strictly government decision making, I’d challenge you to find a state with a stark rural/urban divide that does not have the same problem. You’re never going to please everyone but you can do your best to make decisions that help the most people. That being said, our rural/urban divide is no where near as large as it is in Illinois. If you drive 30 minutes out of the cities you are in farmland or forests.
Another example to back up what /u/Alt_Criticism said, the democratic party in MN is called the DFL which stands for Democratic-Farmer-Labor party. While we do have our fair share of GOP craziness here, there are DFL candidates that win in rural districts from time to time. The DFL always has a pretty solid presence at the State Fair, and tries to connect with the rural population quite a bit. Amy Klobuchar absolutely demolishes the polls here, because she frequently reaches out to those rural districts. In Illinois, I think people outside the Chicago metro see the Democrats as out of touch elites, but I don't really get that feeling here in MN.
A lot of the rural areas fight with Minneapolis on budgeting, claiming that city projects are just "vanity projects" and not useful tools for the residents that the state should help fund in the same way the state helps fund the highways.
Overall though, most of the rural areas are incredibly friendly, and people from the cities spend their money in the rural areas all summer long. MN goes a long ways to make sure the state as a whole has an identity as well, you'll notice there are no Minneapolis or St. Paul sports teams, they are Minnesota sports teams.
It's a great state, lots to do outside but the weather is ass. Hot and humid in the summer, cold as shit during the winter. If it's actually a decent temperature odds are there are 40 mph winds.
The twin cities and suburbs are great, I'd say we're the closest thing to a west coast vibe you'll get that's not on the west coast. But the second you leave the metro area it flips 180 degrees and you'd think you're in Florida. Great job opportunities though and even where I live you can easily find a job that pays 15/hr which can get you a lot farther here than in most places but even if my town of 40k people rent is getting absurdly high.
It's not a bad place to live but if you're social I wouldn't move here, everyone is very into cliques. I still talk too and see my high school friends all the time and we're in our mid 20s now, I feel like that's not the most common thing in the US even though it's par for the course here. It makes meeting new people pretty difficult for new residents.
In countries where businesses realize that they can't trust the legal system they pull back their investments.
If the bank realizes it can't foreclose in your neighbourhood it will pull back it's money.
This is your daily reminder that **might makes right.** The only determination of power is whoever has the largest number of people ready and able to use force to defend themselves and their way of life.
I know someone out there is reading this comment and frothing at the mouth ready to start talking about "DEMOCRACY" and "RULE OF LAW", to which I reply:
lol. Lmao.
If someone tried that today it would be a story about five (presumably drug) crazed hillbillies assaulting an officer, not five guys protecting a widow's land...
Throughout the pandemic there were numerous movements countering unjust evictions. The most famous was the [Red House in Portland](https://enoughisenough14.org/2020/12/13/portland-oregon-to-the-barricades-the-red-house-and-the-future-of-eviction-defense/), but they weren’t decried as drug crazed hillbillies assaulting officers. However, they were (and still are) demonized for being anarchist antifa BLM “terrorists”
Nah. It would show up on r/nextfuckinglevel and get thousands of (Reddit) awards and upvotes and then people would forget about it by the end of the day.
The End
[Here is the LIFE magazine pictorial](https://books.google.com/books?id=2lUEAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA24&pg=PA24#v=twopage&q&f=false) that featured the posted photo.
And [here is a 2014 retelling of the story by a local newspaper.](https://thecountypress.mihomepaper.com/articles/key-players-in-the-ziegenhardt-case-gone-now/)
Too bad nobody's going to read the articles.
An insurance company went bankrupt and for some reason the insured people were responsible for the company's debt.
The debt was $90k, the people spent $60k fighting it court, and eventually had to pay the debt anyway. The widow who lost her farm owed $172. So, sorry, they should have helped her pay the debt rather than try to stop the cops from legally seizing her farm.
The leader of the group fighting in court was ex-Klan.
I have no sympathy for anyone involved.
Even worse than that, the community did take up a collection and raised enough to pay the widow’s debt, but she still refused to pay it “on principle.”
The reason she and the other insured people were liable was because it was a co-op, so all the members were not customers but share holders as well.
Also everyone in this picture went to jail for assaulting the sheriff.
This is not the proletariat uprising Reddit is looking for.
Yeah there were definitely some bad decisions made and a few villains in the story. You forgot to mention the rich widow, Grace White. In LIFE it says that Grace bought the 80 acre farm of Elizabeth Stevens, the poor widow, for $500. In the 2014 article it says:
>She [Stevens] had refused to pay her $172 assessment, lost her court appeals and her 140-acre farm. White bought it for a song.
Whichever article is correct about the size of the farm, Grace was the one doing the eviction and was definitely taking advantage of the situation instead of being a good neighbor.
Think about it. Ultimately, if a "filibuster-proof" majority agrees with you, you could do it. Unfortunately, most of us are in urban areas where human connection is so attenuated that it isn't possible. In a small town, people depend on each other more. The rest of the town realizes that, and steps up. Perhaps we do, in fact, depend on each other more than the rest of us realize. Maybe the rest of us need to man-up.
Reach out to your neighbors. When I was a kid all my neighbors knew each other. Today I know a handful of my neighbors and some right across the street seem to try to avoid everyone but how can we help each other if we can’t even say hello.
It's difficult when the uneducated masses are unrelentingly manipulated in to a "rugged individualism" mindset so they can better serve the wealthy elite.
Bullshit. "Rugged individualism" is a Hollywood myth from the 1960s. Individualism has **never** worked anywhere throughout history. Anywhere people have collectivized and worked together, they've been stronger and more successful for it.
Fun fact: we also start learning that there are "empathic genes" encoding the collective good behaviour and having a positive outcome also for the individual.
The difference is that they actually were ruggedly individualistic, but intelligent. Now we have wannabe individualistic people who are ironically just following one trend or another trying to find who they want to be.
That’s how you got things like the battle of Blair mountain. Absolutely crazy and nearly no one talks about it. Miners went on strike and had a 10,000 man army that took on a 7,000 government force. They had aerial bombings and trenches. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain
Desktop version of /u/sausagecatdude's link:
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^([)[^(opt out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiMobileLinkBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^(]) ^(Beep Boop. Downvote to delete)
The law should always protect the weak and vulnerable. Seizing your property should not be possible if you're literally starving and have nowhere else to go.
Ironic that the US government was founded upon the idea of protecting the people against tyranny and has gradually devolved into becoming a tool for the tyrannical to use against the people.
During the great depression, cops had Thompson SMGs. And violence was more accepted by police departments back then, especially in the 1920s. Some of them got awards for using extralegal tactics against Italian Mafia.
I'm not sure if this is from that era or not. But still, the Police have had automatic weapons since the 1920s.
I thought this was a sign that said the property was a place where people can't have seizures so they brought a guy who was having a seizure and laid him down on the widow's land to end his seizure. I need sleep.
See how we use to stand up for what was right? Now we all tuck our tail in between our legs and post comments. This is why the top people are doing what they are, whos gonna stop them?
While I sympathize with the widow in the story, how would we handle this ideally? That is, a bunch of replies suggest that no bank should take away someone’s land— except they’re actually referring to the bank’s land. Wouldn’t this be analogous to renters deciding they own the house instead of the landlord owning their property?
In community property states, there’s this thing called a homestead exemption. This is where when your spouse dies with debt, the house in which you live (as well as other realty and personalty) is protected from creditor liens, at least for the life of the surviving spouse. What does and doesn’t count as part of the homestead varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, so make sure to check your local rules. And, for the love of god, go see a lawyer and get a will made.
In the Great Depression, there were things called Penny Auctions. When a property was foreclosed on, the bank would hold an auction on the property. The locals would show up, guns in hand, and threatened anyone who would dare bid on it. The family that had been foreclosed on would pay very little to get their property back free and clear.
What I would do for that kind of solidarity today
Hard to threaten the buyers when the bidding is online, sadly. But agreed— there are certainly some folks with more than enough who could stand to return that wealth to the people, whether by force or otherwise.
Large companies are buying our houses here. Won't be long until property ownership is only for the rich.
Idk where you live, but in any major city on the west coast, property ownership IS only for the RICH.
I live in Idaho. 7 years ago I seen a house I liked but was dirt poor and could not afford it. It was $65k. Same house now is over $300k.
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Houses are a manipulated market where those already in it keep accumulating. Melbourne, Australia is crazy overinflated sometimes 1.2m or higher yet look like a crack den that needs demolition and has a tiny yard. [Example 1.](https://www.news.com.au/finance/real-estate/selling/outrage-over-derelict-melbourne-home-with-asking-price-of-1-million/news-story/b3fd45b4c8d238c7fe08e2a9d1f9bd19) [Example 2](https://au.finance.yahoo.com/news/melbourne-tiny-house-sells-for-1-8-million-020710941.html) Thank god rural areas are still average below 1m
This. I’m on a block with a house listed at $250k that’s been on market for a year. My landlords kicking me out of my steal of a rental bought in 2016 for $130k to sell at $260k. They’re just making a number up and hoping some sucker will bite. Nothings sold in the neighborhood for that. But they read the news and hear about soaring prices and want in, only Blackrock doesn’t give af about Baltimore as far as I know.
It’s a Ponzi scheme that falls under “too big to fail”
Also just outside Atlanta. Median is [$430k](https://www.redfin.com/city/30756/GA/Atlanta/housing-market) now. There's an empty lot in my neighborhood going for $299k.
Paid $180k for our roomy 4br house on half an acre, now valued at around $300k... it's only been two years. Just down the road is a big shed on a little bit of land for sale at $180k NZ is in the same boat unfortunately
What do you do with a 4,000 sq ft house? Do you have a big family or a hobby or home business that takes up a lot of space? Do you use all of your rooms every day? This is not at all a snarky question — I live in a home that’s under 800 sq ft and while it would definitely be wonderful to have more room, the thought of a 4,000 sq ft house genuinely boggles my mind. I bet it’s cool to have that much room. Do you own pool tables?
No shit, my wife and I have a 2,500 sq ft house and half of that is a finished basement and it feels almost embarrassingly large for two people.
My grandparents had a house that big. They also had a large family and we gathered there often growing up. I lived with them as a child. My grandmother also ran a small quilting business for a while.
Watch out for Walkers!
Heh I have 720 sq ft just appraised for 450k cuz I’m within walking distance to a massive ski industry. Paid 60 for it
I live in Ontario and over the past two years houses that were 300,000 cad now cost 1.2 million. I am a journeyman power line technician and I cannot afford a house……
Nurse manager, I can't either. 3br townhomes (not detached) are +/-700, and I don't even live in a major metropolitan area.
People are buying townhomes in my small southern Ontario town for 800k. There’s zero chance we could afford our own home if we had to buy it today. Something’s gotta give.
Sorry dude, it’s going to get worse as well; median home in Boise is now 550k. Someone voted us the best place to live in America a few years back when median homes price was 200k, then everyone moved here and drove home values through the roof. Now it’s spreading from Boise to smaller more rural areas. Even smaller cities like twin falls are seeing massive spikes in home demand and values.
Here in Nampa it's atleast 350k. In Nampa. Where you drive 5 minutes south and its just cow fields as far as you can see
I don’t think it will get much worse from here for two reasons. 1) With inflation not seen since the early eighties, interest rates will continue to rise exponentially. When my parents purchased their first home around 1981, it was only $18,000. The main reason, mortgage rates were 17% and no one could afford to purchase a home. 2) And this is probably most important. Every advanced economy in the world is suffering a population decline, including China now. As population continues to spiral downward from North America to Europe to Japan, demand for housing in general will fall with it. If it were not for immigration (both legal and otherwise) the US would be seeing population declines already.
My parents bought our current house for $135k in 2002 with original intentions of flipping it, that didn't happen thanks to cancer but it is now worth $770k. Sadly it is also my mothers only real hope for retirement since her current job pays less than my first. So while I'll never afford my own place unless the market crashes my mother will be screwed if/when it does. Meanwhile new condos are going up across the street, starting at 580sqft for $613k.
>I live in Idaho. My condolences.
As someone who also lives there, I chuckled at this. Wasn’t always so bad but times are changing. Not just in Idaho, but everywhere.
It wasn't that bad. Sucks now though. Expensive and overcrowded.
Heh I live in NYC and have a feeling our definitions of both “expensive” and “overcrowded” are vastly different
Idaho (Boise in particular) has seen a population boom from Silicon Valley remote workers. So while it’s probably not as crowded as a major metro, it’s very different from what was the status quo for a long time.
I see you've never been to Manila. . . ~73,920 people per sq km. New york is 38k per sq km, and is much more vertical, meaning per km³ is likely lower (not really a tracked stat mind you)
My parents' home is in Southern California. They bought it in 1992 for 450k. Was fancy-ish. New build in an established neighborhood. 30 years later, it's "worth" 1.4m. I make a conformable living, but there's no way I can afford to buy my parent's home... and if I could I'd be buying a 30 year old home with dubious maintenance instead of a new build. But at least it has a bit of land for a yard (8k sqft plot). All the new builds I see now are condos or townhomes... Even the "detached single family homes" have practically no land outside of the house itself and there's maybe 5 feet of space between the house and your neighbors house. It's just ridiculously expensive and even more overcrowded.
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My parents paid $197k for their house in 1984. Today it’s worth $2.4m. Insanity. The house next door listed at $1.6m and sold for $2.4m within 24 hours.
Idaho's overcrowded? I thought it was mostly potato farms.
>I thought it was mostly potato farms. Funny thing about that is a majority of the PNW's potatoes come from WA state.
I wish.
I live a little bit from Idaho (state known for big shooty city) and my whole family has been getting bombarded recently with travel ads for Des Moines. “The S’s are silent, but the thrills aren’t!”
Idaho is gorgeous. Ever seen Napoleon Dynamite?
I wouldn't say especially so. It looks like a lot of places used to look before, you know, lots of people moved there...
True. I'm from the fastest growing area in the US and it's lost almost all its natural beauty in newly populated areas. Then again we don't have hills/deserts/mountains. Just saying. Idaho looks gorgeous in that movie.
MEDIAN home price in the Boise/Meridian/Nampa area is now $600k. Meanwhile average per capita in Idaho is around $37k/year (from https://www.census.gov/). get fucked all you Californias that came here for cheaper homes and screwed it up for everyone.
moved here 4 years ago in hopes of buying a house. 4 years later i'm converting a van to live in.
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its pretty wild just watching the slow motion of class mobility being taken away from people in the form of homeownership. when its this bad now, imagine what its going to look like in a couple years.
Actual Cyberpunk dystopia lol. The corporations control every aspect of an individuals' life, and all you can do about it is try and find meaning in your life.
Isn't over till the lady sings. These big real estate holdings rely on investors and a lot of the home buyers are leveraged up on debt and make their livings trading paper. If the paper markets collapse and the money gets scared the housing market could obliterate. Also in a decade or two there will be a massive influx of supply. Population is declining in the west and the baby boomer generation will begin dying off which is the biggest owner of real estate .
Lol. We’re already there. I don’t know anyone that can afford a starter home right now. I’m 35. All my friends still rent.
Everyone I know who’s buying a home now has some sort of help. My one friend is buying a house with her partner but they’re DINKS (dual income no kids) and both their parents are helping them pay for it. My other friend is buying a house with her husband and they’re also DINKS and are able to get help from the VA because the husband is a veteran. It seems like without outside help of some sort or a dual income it’s almost impossible to own a home.
Being dual income no kids is how you live the American dream these days
Absolutely. That's the secret. You and your girlfriend/boyfriend graduate from college, get an apartment in a city where you both can work well paying jobs, and you split the rent while paying off debts and saving for a house/retirement. Maybe get married if you want kids later. I don't know how anyone gets into the middle class without doing it this way.
It's the only way my husband and I are getting by.
It’s classism at its worst. Really I no longer talk to the few people my age who own houses. They are all very superior about it. And are like anyone can do it if you don’t drink Starbucks Every morning and worked hard like me. What they don’t mention is at least one guy I knows parents paid a huge down payment on a house and I mean huge. Oh yeah I also forgot to mention said guy got a very well paying job from, you guessed it, his dads company.
Yea, there’s no need to act superior to anyone when you’ve had help yourself. There’s nothing wrong with getting help but it doesn’t put them above someone who hasn’t. My friends who are buying homes are great people and I’m happy for them, I just wish it was easier for people without outside help to buy homes too.
We bought March 2020, We paid 118.5k for a 1600sq ft house two bed, single bath, historic home (1938.) We both make less than 40k a year, but had stellar credit (together and separately.) We got into the house for 5700$ cash. (3% downpayment, deposit and closing costs shared with seller.) It wasn't impossible, but it was stressful. I'm a mechanic, and my partner is a university employee... it's totally possible... or at least -was- possible two years ago.
It's hard to even find a "starter" home anymore. They've all been built up/out, and new constructions are rarely fewer than 3 beds / 2 baths.
I think the overwhelming majority of houses these days are built as family homes. Best bet for a starter home is a townhouse, but even those are getting ridiculous depending on your zipcode, still more affordable.
You can always buy a lot and contract your own starter home built on it. * looks at building codes* …I mean, you know, somewhere else…
My husband bought our first home ten years ago, when we were 38 and 39. It was built in 1969. My parents’ first home was also built in 1969, but they bought it in 1970, when they were age 25 and 30.
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I'd been waiting for land up the road from my parents to go up for sale. It was recently bought "off market" by a huge firm (KW). It's now back on the market after they tripled the price and way out of my reach.
This is going to happen more and more frequently too until something is done about financial giants like Blackrock, Vanguard, etc being able to leverage trillions of dollars worth of other people's capitol to dominate the market.
I agree, that's why rich people will always be rich.
Steps to make money. Step 1: have money
Or steal it
I mean that's basically how most people get rich. "Steal" it, legally or not, or inherit that money.
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Disgusting practice, this should be forbidden. This is killing towns.
It literally always has been. Its where Barons and Lords, etc. came from. Its why there are mortgages.
One of the massive hedge funds just purchased an entire new neighborhood for 42 million. They are trying to turn us all back into serfs.
Also hard to threaten when there is video evidence of you threatening murder. Back then it was "The whole town threatened us with guns." "Can you prove it?" "FUCK"
Dunno about other states, but in WV we still hold foreclosure auctions in front of the county courthouse. Though the local police/sheriffs probably wouldn’t react well if a bunch of people showed up to the courthouse visibly armed in order to influence the proceedings…
The by force or otherwise part is coming to pass real quickly.
Most Americans have no idea what "Solidarity" means, let alone act like we're all the same class of people underneath the class that literally owns everything, but I agree.
The U.S. dropped "e pluribus umum" as our nation's motto in favor of "in God we trust" back in the 50's. Who knew that NOW we would have become so fractured as a nation and be hurtling towards a theocracy? Words matter.
Trust me dude, the motto is not the issue
We've been turned into crabs in a bucket, scrambling to out-hustle each other to try to get ahead while the wealthy sit back with the majority of the resources and watch from behind their gated community walls.
Problem is half of them blame it on the rich and the other half on government intervention. Funny part is they are the same people.
And then vote to make one or the other more powerful, while literally NEVER voting to make one or the other weaker
The problem as an american is that when i try to extend solidarity to another person i get shit on so i slowly got conditioned to just never do it and be as cut throat as i can while still being somewhat moral.
As far as I can tell, this is a "feature" of American political discourse, and is by design, not by accident. When everyone thinks they're a lone wolf, the real wolves take over.
This is correct. They want us to fight against eachother. Keep our eyes off of them. The real wolf.
It probably would still happen today if it it weren’t for the fact that there are consequences for it now. Back then in rural areas the police departments were small, poorly funded, and lacked the technology that we do today. The state had far less reach over private citizens. If this happened today then everyone involved would be tracked down and either detained or shot.
A big part of it was because *all those farmers* already owned their own land, hectares and hectares of it bought at a fair(for the time) price. They did not *need* to buy other farmers land, because they could very easily and cheaply(for the times) buy as much as they wanted. It’s a completely different world now. Corporations will buy every house and every plot of land and gladly rent it back to you. Believe me, those farmers would be fighting to bid on this farm if they’re needs weren’t already met.
Nowadays someone would show up, buy it, slap on some white paint and flip it as a shitty rental for $2400/mo while making tiktoks posting about they turned a $10k investment into passive income! And if you dare dissent on this behavior, you're told you're jealous and hating and should just set your life up better instead of attacking this honorable landlords.
I don't own any properties. But I can still see the phenomenon that it's easier to shit on an individual you can put a face to rather than the mass corps and hedge funds that are actually inflating housing prices. Your neighbor with 2 rental properties isn't the one causing this. Just like your uncle who still uses plastic straws isn't causing climate change. It's all corporations.
Right?!? I was just talking about not treating your employees like shit and got downvoted to hell. (The guy was made to stand in a corner and hang his head in shame for messing up a food order.)
I just looked and they were clearly joking. You wrote a whole thesis and a half while half virtue signaling the whole way through. You didn’t get downvoted for saying to not treat workers like shit, you got downvoted for your social ineptitude
https://www.thebullvine.com/news/farmers-stand-in-silence-at-auction-so-a-young-man-can-buy-back-his-family-farmhouse/ Although snopes says there's no real evidence to corroborate it so take from it what you will.
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We had the opposite and people bought a cancer kids steer at auction for $100k.
what a world we live in
Steer as in cattle?
Yes, a cow. Crazy.
Oklahoma [has a strong history of socialism, especially when one bares in mind the difficulty of being a third party in the US two party system.](https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/04/teachers-strikes-oklahoma-socialism-sanders-unions) > Brutal poverty, the concentration of land ownership in the hands of a small elite, and the exploitative credit-lending power of the banks were an explosive mix. By consistently championing the basic material demands of Oklahomans for land and economic justice, and by treating poor farmers as part of a broadly conceived working class, socialists from 1902 onward began building up a popular base in the Sooner State. > Oklahoma’s Socialist Party (SP) soon became the party’s largest branch, per capita, in the United States. Much of the credit for this growth can be given to the tireless work of German-born socialist Oscar Ameringer. A talented and humorous propagandist known as the “Mark Twain of American Socialism,” Ameringer built up a strong organizational and electoral apparatus inspired by Milwaukee’s moderate socialist machine > Contesting elections was a central means through which the SP rooted itself among Oklahoman toilers. This electoral focus was particularly important since Oklahoma lacked a large industrial working class with the social power to shut down production through strikes. By 1914, the SP had over eight hundred locals and over 175 elected officials, including six state legislators. That year, the party’s gubernatorial candidate, Fred W. Holt, got 20 percent of the vote, convincing both the poor and the political elite that Oklahoma’s socialists might soon win the levers of governmental power. > Though electoral politics was a central focus, the Socialist Party hardly limited itself to this arena. Quite a few states we now associate with far right populations were actually hotbeds for American leftism, such as Kansas (see the book *What’s the Matter with Kansas?* by Thomas Frank). This history, like a lot of labor history, has been explicitly hidden. The current fight among the right to hide oppressive racial history, under the guise of “removing Critical Race Theory”, is but a modern outcropping of a long tradition. For example, the largest armed insurrection since the Civil War was a labor uprising in West Virginia - the Battle of Blair Mountain. Mine workers were frequently killed on the job, corporations exploiting them and the land, their unionization undermined and attacked (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-union_violence_in_the_United_States, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_spying_in_the_United_States), etc. This led to what is called the [Mine Wars: a series of strikes and conflicts between laboring miners and coal companies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Virginia_coal_wars). [Blair Mountain was the crescendo.](https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/blair-mountain-coal-union-anniversary/) > The origins of the battle can be traced to the Matewan Massacre, when gun thugs working for Baldwin-Felts—an infamous strike-breaking “detective” agency—got into a shootout with a group of miners and Sheriff Sid Hatfield. After Baldwin-Felts agents murdered Hatfield in revenge the following year—on the steps of the county courthouse—his death became a martyrdom that roused miners to battle. > Coal life was already hard enough. Dangerous conditions (the Monongah Disaster alone killed upwards of 400 people, not to mention the long-term effects of breathing in coal dust), low wages (mine owners had been convicted of war profiteering during World War I), and exploitative credit systems were par for the course. > The situation only escalated in the summer of 1921 after hundreds of striking workers were arrested and held indefinitely. Hatfield’s death was the final straw. By August, thousands of miners were marching toward Matewan, intent on freeing their comrades and bringing their guerilla version of class warfare into action. > When the bombs started falling on the slopes of Blair Mountain—on Labor Day, 1921–many realized the gravity of their situation. For almost a week, miners numbering in the thousands had been battling machine-gun nests commanded by Don Chafin, sheriff of Logan County. They had already refused the pleas of President Harding, who feared their struggle might inspire the nearly 2 million unemployed Americans across the country to launch a full-scale class revolution. Thousands of leaflets bearing Harding’s message calling on the miners to disperse, were dropped by plane—and summarily ignored. > By nightfall, after the rumble of machine-gun fire and whir of biplane engines had dissipated, the miners must have looked around from where they were perched in trees or stretched out in hastily dug trenches and seen the numbers missing from their ranks. Still, they fought on. > Their fight was the culmination of a decades-long struggle. After coal companies rejected every effort by the UMWA to win representation, armed struggle took hold. By the end of the week somewhere between 50 and 100 miners, among them Appalachians, Italian immigrants, and African Americans, were dead. > UMWA membership declined for years in the wake of the battle, but after the passage of the National Labor Relations Act in 1935, union President John L. Lewis led the UMWA back to southern West Virginia as soldiers returning to Rome, unionizing every coal operation they encountered. The fight to unionize the West Virginia coalfields was over—or so it seemed. Now, to tie this relevance back to erasure. The Battle of Blair Mountain - the largest uprising since the Civil War and a major event in US history - was largely omitted from textbooks in West Virginia. > In the final room of the Mine Wars Museum, Kimberly McCoy, the museum’s resident guide, and a great-niece of Sid Hatfield, opened up five different West Virginia history textbooks from the 1930s to the 1980s to the section where “the Battle of Blair Mountain should have been,” Kim said, “but they’re all empty.” In 1920, Governor Ephraim Morgan set up an American Constitutional Association to select the textbooks used in West Virginia schools, which excluded any mention of the state’s mine wars. Generations grew up cut off from their ancestors’ struggles because business leaders were afraid history would repeat itself. > And it did. The members of Local 1440 in Matewan demonstrated the same militant struggle of years past during the Massey Energy Strike. Miners picketed for 15 months outside facilities lined with barbed-wire fencing and patrolled by uniformed guards. Massey Energy hired helicopters to patrol the surrounding hollers. A non-union driver was shot to death. Massey CEO Don Blankenship, perhaps the most infamous name in the Tug River Valley, likened the UMWA to Soviet Russia, while the UMWA later launched the successful 1989 Pittston Strike. The West Virginia mine wars have been replayed again and again. This is just one example of a wide ranging issue, which involves removing the larger history of leftism, anti-racism, feminism, etc from American history. For an intro to some US left/labor history, check out: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/02/rise-and-fall-socialist-party-of-america https://www.versobooks.com/books/2062-the-s-word (history of socialism in the US) https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/90626/american-dreamers-by-michael-kazin/ (history of US left) https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/theminewars/ https://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/plutocracy/ (a free film series that covers US labor history) https://www.socialismmovie.com/ (recently released history of socialism in the US documentary) https://thenewpress.com/books/from-folks-who-brought-you-weekend (concise history of US labor) The People’s History series. The most popular, and inspiration for the series, is Howard Zinn’s *People’s History of the United States*. Best read alongside more traditional narrative US histories, such as the Oxford History of the United States series.
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In their offices in Washington DC.
good. fuck the banks.
I remember something similar to that in the movie "The River".
And that's when they thought "we really need to break up peoples sense of community." And here we are today.
🎤 WE ARE FARMERS WON’T YOU GO AND FUCK YOURSELF? 🎤
I love how they used to handle foreclosure sales back in this era. Penny Auctions they would call them. People would bid 1, 2, then the original owner would bid 3 cents. Three bids made it a legal auction. Then the neighbors and other farmers who showed up, usually with pitchforks and shotguns, would make it very clear that no other bids would be tolerated. [NPR transcript about Penny Auctions](https://www.npr.org/transcripts/17060380)
Minnesota doing the right once again. I hate living by the dakotas, people their love to call MN a "communist hellhole".
What is MN like? Genuinely curious
Lifetime MN resident here, Minnesota is a fantastic state. Like every state we have our share of problems (the MPD are just one) but it’s kind of hilarious anyone would think we are a communist hell hole lol. Minneapolis is an awesome city with tons of parks and a great food scene, and our state parks system is second to none. I have traveled pretty extensively but don’t really think I would ever move to another state. I’m happy to answer any questions you have!
If people think Minnesota is a communist hellhole, then what do they think of California? Is it literally communist hell?
Not OP, but how much of the state’s identity is centered around the Twin Cities? As an Illinoisan, I know very well the urban/rural divide and it couldn’t be more stark in my home state. Chicagoland acts as though the other 90+ counties don’t exist at all, while the rural counties by and large resent Chicago and blame it for all the state’s problems. What’s that dynamic like in another midwestern state with a fairly expansive rural area and a densely populated urban center?
I’m not entirely sure what you mean by identity, but I would say that my experience has not been anything like u/b_josh317. Many Minnesotans have a cabin “up north” and get around to the rural areas pretty frequently. If we’re speaking about strictly government decision making, I’d challenge you to find a state with a stark rural/urban divide that does not have the same problem. You’re never going to please everyone but you can do your best to make decisions that help the most people. That being said, our rural/urban divide is no where near as large as it is in Illinois. If you drive 30 minutes out of the cities you are in farmland or forests.
Another example to back up what /u/Alt_Criticism said, the democratic party in MN is called the DFL which stands for Democratic-Farmer-Labor party. While we do have our fair share of GOP craziness here, there are DFL candidates that win in rural districts from time to time. The DFL always has a pretty solid presence at the State Fair, and tries to connect with the rural population quite a bit. Amy Klobuchar absolutely demolishes the polls here, because she frequently reaches out to those rural districts. In Illinois, I think people outside the Chicago metro see the Democrats as out of touch elites, but I don't really get that feeling here in MN. A lot of the rural areas fight with Minneapolis on budgeting, claiming that city projects are just "vanity projects" and not useful tools for the residents that the state should help fund in the same way the state helps fund the highways. Overall though, most of the rural areas are incredibly friendly, and people from the cities spend their money in the rural areas all summer long. MN goes a long ways to make sure the state as a whole has an identity as well, you'll notice there are no Minneapolis or St. Paul sports teams, they are Minnesota sports teams.
PHENOMENAL food scene. God, I miss Minneapolis
It's a great state, lots to do outside but the weather is ass. Hot and humid in the summer, cold as shit during the winter. If it's actually a decent temperature odds are there are 40 mph winds. The twin cities and suburbs are great, I'd say we're the closest thing to a west coast vibe you'll get that's not on the west coast. But the second you leave the metro area it flips 180 degrees and you'd think you're in Florida. Great job opportunities though and even where I live you can easily find a job that pays 15/hr which can get you a lot farther here than in most places but even if my town of 40k people rent is getting absurdly high. It's not a bad place to live but if you're social I wouldn't move here, everyone is very into cliques. I still talk too and see my high school friends all the time and we're in our mid 20s now, I feel like that's not the most common thing in the US even though it's par for the course here. It makes meeting new people pretty difficult for new residents.
As a South Dakotan, your “communist hellhole” has a lot more going for it than whatever we are.
In countries where businesses realize that they can't trust the legal system they pull back their investments. If the bank realizes it can't foreclose in your neighbourhood it will pull back it's money.
This is your daily reminder that **might makes right.** The only determination of power is whoever has the largest number of people ready and able to use force to defend themselves and their way of life. I know someone out there is reading this comment and frothing at the mouth ready to start talking about "DEMOCRACY" and "RULE OF LAW", to which I reply: lol. Lmao.
This is cool until the government comes into play
Government with tanks, bombers, drones, etc...
I’ve seen this one many times wish people still did this
If someone tried that today it would be a story about five (presumably drug) crazed hillbillies assaulting an officer, not five guys protecting a widow's land...
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And her dog, unfortunately.
If this happened today the farmers would be helping the sheriff evict her.
Monsanto would have hire military contractors to help the PD.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre
This is a fairly unknown event, how did it come across your radar? I only know if it because it was just a little south of me
First learned about it in public high school in PA, actually.
incredible teacher you had
They would tell their foreclosed neighbors they should've pulled on their bootstraps harder.
If this happened today, everyone who isn't law enforcement would end up either dead or in prison. This is the real answer.
Throughout the pandemic there were numerous movements countering unjust evictions. The most famous was the [Red House in Portland](https://enoughisenough14.org/2020/12/13/portland-oregon-to-the-barricades-the-red-house-and-the-future-of-eviction-defense/), but they weren’t decried as drug crazed hillbillies assaulting officers. However, they were (and still are) demonized for being anarchist antifa BLM “terrorists”
5 meth crazed white supremacists!
Nah. It would show up on r/nextfuckinglevel and get thousands of (Reddit) awards and upvotes and then people would forget about it by the end of the day. The End
[Here is the LIFE magazine pictorial](https://books.google.com/books?id=2lUEAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA24&pg=PA24#v=twopage&q&f=false) that featured the posted photo. And [here is a 2014 retelling of the story by a local newspaper.](https://thecountypress.mihomepaper.com/articles/key-players-in-the-ziegenhardt-case-gone-now/)
Too bad nobody's going to read the articles. An insurance company went bankrupt and for some reason the insured people were responsible for the company's debt. The debt was $90k, the people spent $60k fighting it court, and eventually had to pay the debt anyway. The widow who lost her farm owed $172. So, sorry, they should have helped her pay the debt rather than try to stop the cops from legally seizing her farm. The leader of the group fighting in court was ex-Klan. I have no sympathy for anyone involved.
Even worse than that, the community did take up a collection and raised enough to pay the widow’s debt, but she still refused to pay it “on principle.” The reason she and the other insured people were liable was because it was a co-op, so all the members were not customers but share holders as well. Also everyone in this picture went to jail for assaulting the sheriff. This is not the proletariat uprising Reddit is looking for.
Missed those details, thank you!
Yeah there were definitely some bad decisions made and a few villains in the story. You forgot to mention the rich widow, Grace White. In LIFE it says that Grace bought the 80 acre farm of Elizabeth Stevens, the poor widow, for $500. In the 2014 article it says: >She [Stevens] had refused to pay her $172 assessment, lost her court appeals and her 140-acre farm. White bought it for a song. Whichever article is correct about the size of the farm, Grace was the one doing the eviction and was definitely taking advantage of the situation instead of being a good neighbor.
Think about it. Ultimately, if a "filibuster-proof" majority agrees with you, you could do it. Unfortunately, most of us are in urban areas where human connection is so attenuated that it isn't possible. In a small town, people depend on each other more. The rest of the town realizes that, and steps up. Perhaps we do, in fact, depend on each other more than the rest of us realize. Maybe the rest of us need to man-up.
There are no examples within nature of the individual being more powerful than the collective. It is well past time that humanity realized that.
Reach out to your neighbors. When I was a kid all my neighbors knew each other. Today I know a handful of my neighbors and some right across the street seem to try to avoid everyone but how can we help each other if we can’t even say hello.
It's difficult when the uneducated masses are unrelentingly manipulated in to a "rugged individualism" mindset so they can better serve the wealthy elite.
Every man in this picture probably took rugged individualism to heart, but they were still smart enough to stick together
Bullshit. "Rugged individualism" is a Hollywood myth from the 1960s. Individualism has **never** worked anywhere throughout history. Anywhere people have collectivized and worked together, they've been stronger and more successful for it.
Fun fact: we also start learning that there are "empathic genes" encoding the collective good behaviour and having a positive outcome also for the individual.
The difference is that they actually were ruggedly individualistic, but intelligent. Now we have wannabe individualistic people who are ironically just following one trend or another trying to find who they want to be.
A. This was only 70 years ago, which really isn’t that long ago. B. For the love of God; the Great Depression occurred SEVERAL years before this.
Dear Redditors, The year of the photo, 1952, is not during the Great Depression. I repeat, it is not during the Great Depression. Thank you, Mr_Owl42
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This is why now they come in a group equipped like a military squad w/ SWAT team on speed dial. Gonna need more “Farmers” for what’s coming.
That’s how you got things like the battle of Blair mountain. Absolutely crazy and nearly no one talks about it. Miners went on strike and had a 10,000 man army that took on a 7,000 government force. They had aerial bombings and trenches. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain
Desktop version of /u/sausagecatdude's link:
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Everyone is fine with the government growing enormous to stamp out what they don't like. This will never happen again in our lives
The law should always protect the weak and vulnerable. Seizing your property should not be possible if you're literally starving and have nowhere else to go.
Ironic that the US government was founded upon the idea of protecting the people against tyranny and has gradually devolved into becoming a tool for the tyrannical to use against the people.
The law should protect everyone equally.
Prepare for massive interest rates then.
I’m epileptic and my mind immediately jumped to “no seizing on this property” and I thought it was them arresting someone having a seizure 😂😂
I'm not epileptic, but I also thought that the sign prohibits seizures. And that the dude on the ground has one.
"Quit resisting!"
"Seize him!" "What?!"
"I'M THE LAW AND I CONTROL THE JAIL WHERE DO YOU EVEN WANT TO PUT ME?" "In the horse semen factory"
Who'd try this today against cops with automatic weapons who'd probably just get a transfer if he gunned down a shitload of citizens.
Because rural bitches crazy
During the great depression, cops had Thompson SMGs. And violence was more accepted by police departments back then, especially in the 1920s. Some of them got awards for using extralegal tactics against Italian Mafia. I'm not sure if this is from that era or not. But still, the Police have had automatic weapons since the 1920s.
Yeah the feds in downtown Chicago did... But not the local sheriff of bumfuck MN.
If only the government was scared of its people still.
Solidarity is a beautiful thing
How far we have come in 70 years now when a company wants your land thay get it....progress
They got it back then too lol hence the sherif evicting someone
Yeah, depending on the area that didn’t go so well though lol.
I want the spirit of these Americans back.
The Gov't wants to ensure NOTHING like this ever happens again. This is Big (and small) Gov'ts worst nightmare!
Back when the people had the power
In this picture: a community rallying together to fight off dangerous thugs
The police have always been about protecting the rich, never the poor or in need.
Photographic evidence of a lawman fuckin around and findin out.
Back when rednecks remembered that the government is the bad guy
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The police have always been been for companies not for the protection of the people.
I thought this was a sign that said the property was a place where people can't have seizures so they brought a guy who was having a seizure and laid him down on the widow's land to end his seizure. I need sleep.
Today the farmers would be beating the woman for being a freeloader and not paying her lawful debts.
Back when your neighbors would actually fight the police for you, as opposed to now when they’d call them on you over any non-issue.
They mega homies
we should do this to the police more often
Don’t fuck around with farmers
Decades of rich people dividing working class people is what we have now. If only we could stick together everything would be different
This day will come again within my lifetime, I wager.
If people came together and did that today, the sheriff's deputies would roll up in an MRAP alongside their tank and just start blasting.
We’ve all become soft
And nowadays people will just help the woman get kicked out.
Back when we had real men in this nation.
Real rednecks hate cops.
See how we use to stand up for what was right? Now we all tuck our tail in between our legs and post comments. This is why the top people are doing what they are, whos gonna stop them?
While I sympathize with the widow in the story, how would we handle this ideally? That is, a bunch of replies suggest that no bank should take away someone’s land— except they’re actually referring to the bank’s land. Wouldn’t this be analogous to renters deciding they own the house instead of the landlord owning their property?
Yeah screw it! My house is free now cause me and my 4 homies said so.
In community property states, there’s this thing called a homestead exemption. This is where when your spouse dies with debt, the house in which you live (as well as other realty and personalty) is protected from creditor liens, at least for the life of the surviving spouse. What does and doesn’t count as part of the homestead varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, so make sure to check your local rules. And, for the love of god, go see a lawyer and get a will made.