Friday June 19, 1903
From The New York Times: Lowell Textile Laborers Ready to End Strike
The New York Times is reporting this sad news from Lowell, Massachusetts:

The end of the Lowell textile strike seems to be near. The rank and file of the strikers are planning to enter the mill gates Monday morning.

The local Cotton Manufacturing Association received today a communication from the Textile Council asking for a conference with the mill agents. The strikers refuse to discuss the contents, but the mill men regard the note as an overture for peace. It is said that in their communication the strikers ask only for their old places.

You..ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age. Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones

Thursday June 18, 1903
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania - Mother Jones Leads March of 30,000 to City Hall
30,000 striking textile workers, fighting for a 55-hour week, marched through the city of Philadelphia yesterday. Mother Jones was at the head of the march with a little girl striker on each side of her. The streets were full of banners and signs:

We want justice!

We want to go to school!

We want time to eat our meals and think!

Mother described her speech for us:

I put the little boys with their fingers off and hands crushed and maimed on a platform. I held up their mutilated hands and showed them to the crowd and made the statement that Philadelphia's mansions were built on the broken bones, the quivering hearts and drooping heads of these children. That their little lives went out to make wealth for others. That neither state or city officials paid any attention to these wrongs. That they did not care that these children were to be the future citizens of the nation.

The officials of the city hall were standing in the open windows. I held the little ones of the mills high up above the heads of the crowd and pointed to their puny arms and legs and hollow chests. They were light to lift.

I called upon the millionaire manufacturers to cease their moral murders, and I cried to the officials in the open windows opposite, "Some day the workers will take possession of your city hall, and when we do, no child will be sacrificed on the altar of profit."

The officials quickly closed the windows, just as they had closed their eyes and hearts.

Focus on the Family, while speaking out in opposition to a bill progressing in the California legislature (AB 1266) that recognizes the identities of California's transgender young people in school settings, had this to say:

The reality is that humans are born male or female. At birth we don’t “assign” sex to a child arbitrarily, as the analysis of this bill implies. We recognize the child’s sex – it is a physical reality. But in the world of this bill, that reality doesn’t matter. Like Cinderella in a fantasy world, a person may choose or change his sex, saying, “I can be whatever I want to be.”

--Jeff Johnson, FoF's resident "ex-gay"

Time and again people have told me that they don't understand why we have such a difficult time having our human rights and civil liberties recognized in law. There it is…plain for all to see.

The Social Security Administration announced on Friday that all that is now required to change the gender identity on their Social Security records is for individuals to submit government-issued documentation reflecting a gender change or certification from a physician confirming that they have undergone appropriate clinical treatment for gender transition.

Previously complete sex reassignment surgery had to be documented in order for the SSA to change the records.

Many trans people never undergo such procedures, either because they are too expensive, because they do not want to lose their procreative ability, or because it simply isn’t an important change for them to make to find authenticity in their identities. The SSA change eliminates this high standard for trans people to obtain the appropriate documentation for the gender that reflects how they live their daily lives.