Billboard in Oklahoma

Last week someone mentioned this billboard on the Turner Turnpike near Bristow,OK.

As promised, I stopped and snapped a pic of it on the way to work today. It is very inspiring to drive by and see this in the middle of Konservativ Kountry.



I couldn't remember whether the thread was in GD or here,so I posted to both.

we need more of these around the country

how much does it cost to do and rent a billboard?

I think this one may be privately owned and maintained by the property owner,but am not sure. It's been there quite a while.

Good idea snapping a picture of it. I never thought of doing that.

Thought of it either except someone mentioned passing by it on their way through last week. I can't remember who it was and my search is turning up zip.

According to Howard Zinn in his "People's History of the United States", Okla. was the most Socialist state during the years leading up to WWI.

What happened??!!

.....and Jaysus...that would be my guess.

Yup, that's got a lot to do with it.

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The resolution was approved by a huge majority. But there was also a considerable minority of 50 opposed to the forthright anti-imperialist position taken at the St. Louis convention. They basically reflected the fear, intimidation, hysteria, and chauvinism manufactured by the capitalist press and the Wilson administration. But while chauvinism and capitulationism were growing in some areas as a result of the pressures exerted by the capitalist class, in other areas socialists took an entirely different cue in the struggle against the war.

Some took the road of arming themselves to resist. This took place in several areas, especially in the South. Socialists were arrested in Dallas, Texas, for possession of arms. In North Carolina, farmers in Chatham County organized an armed revolt against the draft. Outside Toledo, Ohio, someone fired on a troop train. These were scattered and unorganized efforts against the war, often not well directed. However, one very significant and dramatic struggle, really an armed rebellion, took place in the heart of Oklahoma.

The Green Corn Rebellion of August 1917 was a genuine working class attempt at an anti-war insurrection in what had formerly been called the Indian Territory of Oklahoma. It had in its ranks mostly poor tenant farmers, dispossessed people who had been forced off their land, and former railroad workers who had lost their jobs when the railroad strike led by Debs was broken in the 1890s. Among the participants were many Black people as well as Native people from the Seminole nation.

The rebellion was organized by the Working Class Union, the left wing of the Socialist movement in Oklahoma and Arkansas. It had a strong affinity if not direct ties to the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), a syndicalist union movement which also opposed the war and was a vigorous part of the socialist movement.

The Working Class Union had a membership estimated as high as 35,000, and may have had many more than the 2,000 armed men and women they are given credit for today. A conspiracy of silence and an effort to obliterate them from history has characterized events since the rebellion.
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http://www.workers.org/marcy/cd/sambol/bolwar/bolwar05.htm

Contemporary reports indicated that anti-war and COs in federal prisons were treated with exceptional brutality. These farmers were, for the most part, naive and really innocent of anything that could be termed "criminal". Many of the "fundies" in that region trace back to them. The memory of that Green Corn Rebellion must have lingered in the public consciousness for a long time. The Dust Bowl exodus of the Thirties further radicalized many, especially the brutality and discrimination they received in destinations such as California.

But "what happened?" The short answer was WW II, relatively well paid employment ... and in a cash economy for the first time fior most of them. Opportunities for upward advancement in the post-war era were many (for White, Anglo-Saxon Protestant).

pnorman

Say it isn't so. Our conservative fundies here with their 50K suv's and multi million dollar churches can trace their roots to poor socialist farmers? Their headswould explode!