To Struggle and Strive: The Combined Syndicates of America in 1932. A Kaiserreich Quest

Negotiate with the Co-Ops: 1 Influence, 14+25=39
You go in looking to make a few simple deals and bring the co-ops back into the fold. You didn't expect it to be easy, but you did think it would not be a complicated affair. As soon as you began trying to organize a meeting, you were disabused of that motion.

The Fix the Price movement is a chaotic, disorganized one that makes the SPA look like a well-disciplined army. There are Red Grange organizers, rural petit bourgeoisie, destitute farmers, dissolute speculators, co-op representatives, and more. And all of them are united by some vague demands, a general array of tactics, and little else. The only leaders are a few figureheads who rallied others to the cause. Some of them haven't even met each other! Their goals and grievances vary wildly and they have effectively non-existent centralization. And you quickly realize that unless you simply capitulate, someone will try and keep the movement going. And capitulation may well embolden them.

That would be bad enough, except the CSA is an uproar over you "surrendering" to "rightist anti-socialist agitation and profiteering." Your defenders are being drowned out on the debate floor as people begin seizing on the opportunity to smear you. Some of them are genuinely opposed to the Fix the Price movement, some of them are angling to gain power within the CSA, some are hoping to get concessions of their own. There might even be a few fools hoping to replace you.

Your supporters are many, and they rally to your cause. How can the socialists turn away from the rural proletariat when they have begun developing class consciousness? Is seeking to prevent another Dust Bowl Famine truly such an unacceptable demand? If they have aligned themselves with the bourgeoisie, then clearly they must be levered from that, just as we have begun levering away the labor aristocracy!

In the end, you aren't able to handle the negotiations alone. A great many CSA representatives are sent with you, each of them with their own goals you will need to manage as well.

You and a dozen others, plus a strong detachment of Revolutionary Guards, take a train out to Des Moines. Multiple times you are forced to halt or change trains, and once the Guards see action as bandits attempt to exact a toll from your train. But finally, you arrive in the heart of the Iowa Socialist Party. Greeted by applause and protests, you are ushered from the station to a fine hotel, where another dozen men are waiting for you.

You apologize for the delay and make some polite conversation as you take them in. They are as mixed a lot as you expected: sun-wizened farmers, calloused laborers, a scarred man you recognize as a friend of Ben Stevens, a fleshy man in a suit.

The representatives of the Fix the Price movement are friendly to you, by and large. They know you have fought for farmers before, and that efforts to address at least some of their grievances are already in their works. The CSA representatives are mostly surly and mistrustful, but they will bow to your will. You have made sure of it.

So you sit down and begin making agreements. You know who you are dealing with and you know what they want.

The Red Grange and some segments of the AFL-CIO and IWW lobbied to get involved in this but were largely overruled and outvoted by those less favorably inclined towards farmers, who announced their intention to come along to ensure you would not be gentle on potential counterrevolutionaries. With them came several more members from the Midwest who are less hostile. All of them are interested in getting some pork spending, and you suspect many of them have less pure financial motivations. Many of the more hostile group wants punishment for members of the Fix the Price movement and the collectivization of agriculture. Both factions are also interested in getting more food.

The Fix the Price movement has three main factions. There is a loose alliance of small farmers, medium farmers, and some farmworkers, another alliance between the more radical farmworkers and those whose farms have been turned into co-ops, and an extremely tense alliance between the wealthiest farmers, bankers, and landowners.

All are interested in escaping retaliation, and seem suspicious of many local SPA offices who they think are riddled with corruption. They also all want investments in agriculture and an end to price ceilings. The farmers want your help in ending foreclosures, the co-ops want better political representation, and the bankers are hoping you will compensate them for the losses you have inflicted upon them.

After a great deal of wrangling, you finally manage a final offer:

(I will roll a 1d100+25. The current DC is 0. Success means the offer you propose will be broadly accepted. The greater the margin of success, the more it is accepted, the more you gain support from the Red Grange, etc. A failure means that a significant portion of the Fix the Price movement will reject the offer and continue striking. The greater margin of failure, the worse the consequences.)

[]Punishment and Retaliation
-[] Agree that no one will be charged for their actions during the Farmer's Strike (-20 DC, will anger the hostile faction of the CSA)
-[] Push for token criminal penalties (-10 DC)
-[] Push for moderate criminal penalties (0 DC, will please the hostile faction of the CSA)
-[] Push for severe criminal penalties (+30 DC, will greatly please the hostile faction of the CSA)
-[] Agree to push for the formation of farmer's militias to prevent any Red Guards getting...ideas (-25 DC, will greatly anger the hostile faction of the CSA)
[] Finance and Subsidies
-[] Agree to expand financial investments in agriculture (-10 DC)
-[] Agree to establish agricultural colleges (Will require further actions)
--[] in the Midwest (-15 DC.)
--[] in the Steel Belt (-10 DC, will please the neutral faction of the CSA)
--[] Use access to incentivize collectivization (+10 DC, will please the neutral faction of the CSA)
-[] Agree to establish tractor and harvester factories (Will require further actions)
--[] in the Midwest (-15 DC.)
--[] in the Steel Belt (-10 DC, will please the neutral faction of the CSA)
--[] Use access to incentivize collectivization (+10 DC, will please the neutral faction of the CSA)
-[] Agree to adjust price controls
--[] Agree to end some ceilings (-5 DC, will anger the hostile faction of the CSA)
--[] Agree to end all ceilings (-20 DC, will greatly anger the hostile faction of the CSA)
--[] Agree to purchase portions of agricultural products at set prices (-10 DC)
---[] Push for these rates to be better for collectivized enterprises (+5 DC, will please the neutral faction of the CSA)
--[] Push to remove price floors (+20 DC, will please both factions of the CSA)
-[] Agree to push for further anti-foreclosure measures or to enable the farmers to do so themselves by helping them establish militias (-25 DC)
[] Politics (Everything here requires an action)
-[] Agree to invest in the Red Grange to allow them to help organize more co-ops and farmers (-10 DC, will anger the hostile faction of the CSA)
-[] Allow for the creation of non-co-op farming associations which can be represented by the Red Grange (-15 DC, will greatly anger the hostile faction of the CSA)
-[] Allow for some form of territorial representation in the CSA (-25 DC, will have political consequences.
-[] Launch an anti-corruption investigation
--[] Make it thorough (-20 DC, will greatly anger the CSA)
--[] Make it standard (-10 DC, will anger the CSA)
--[] Make it token (-5 DC, will slightly anger the hostile faction of the CSA(

Write-ins will be vetted.

Send Union Organizers to California Cities: 1 Influence, 1 Gravitas, 21+55+30=106, Report from Ben Stevens: 2 Influence on Send Socialist Agitators To California Farms, 77+61+20=158
California is constantly being flooded with immigrants. Chinese workers escaping the terror of the warlords, Indonesian and Filipino and Indian guest laborers hoping to send money home, poor American farmers fleeing the Dust Bowl, Mexican refugees running from Revolution and Cristeros. They pour in in their thousands every month.

Very few leave. Long hours, poor working conditions, expensive food, atrocious rent, abusive bosses, corrupt police, and dangerous neighborhoods all take their toll. They live and die in crowded slums or wander from rural flophouse to rural flophouse, always looking for steady work and never finding any.

If they dare to ask for better, at best they are beaten. Many aren't that lucky, and find themselves blacklisted, deported, imprisoned, or murdered. But that stops very few.

And when hundreds of organizers and agitators poured into the state, they found fertile soil in which to plant their seeds.

Katherine stood on a box in the middle of the farm. "Where did Creel's promises get you? Did your pay go up? Did your work get easier? Did it get safer? Or did his negotiation organizations take your money and help your bosses fuck you harder?" she demanded, scornful and snarling.

Some of the men flinched at hearing a woman talk so, but most were too caught up. "We got nothing!" someone shouted.

"You got nothing! You did what you were asked and you got nothing! Well, I say it's time to stop doing what you're asked. Start doing the asking! Make them react to you, because there are more workers than there are bosses. This is America, the group with the most voters wins! And you all outvote the scum you work for!"

As she spoke, a band of hard-eyed men carrying truncheons approached. Katherine fell silent for a moment, then kept on roaring, riling up the crowd. Someone noticed her pause and followed her gaze.

They shouted a warning and the hundred-something band of workers turned to face their boss's enforcers.

Their leader did some very quick math. "We just heard the noise and got worried there was trouble. Carry on," he said, turning and heading back the way he came.

And as rich as the countryside proved to be, there was steady conflict between those who had already found their own organizations and those newly recruited to the red banner. Workers fought among each other as often as they fought the police and the Pinkertons. There were great gains, but many felt they could have been greater.

In the cities, the Longists were fewer and the socialists were stronger. The Chinese scabs had found themselves cast as foreign agitators and many had described the "inherently authoritarian and devious mind of the Oriental man."

They had endured harassment, rejection, and humiliation, they had been attacked by police and private militias. But the constant anti-nativist rhetoric of the SPA meant that few of those militias wore red armbands.

And so the Chinese scabs were more than willing to listen when men and women came to offer them justice and freedom and help, food for their hungry and clothes for their needy, and shelter for their homeless. More and more of them began wearing red.

And all the while, workers on farms and factories kept organizing and kept asking. By some accounts from excitable organizers, nearly 50% of the workers were in SPA unions by the end of the month.

They wrote letters and signed petitions and held protests and organized strikes and sit-ins. And they kept asking for more.

All they received was silence, scorn, and steel.

The asking turned into demanding. Groups that had stayed underground started rising up. They marched through neighborhood after neighborhood, daring the authorities to stop them. They kicked out the owners of farms and seized the property. They shot their bosses and beat their police and arrested their politicians.

Creel's promises had lost their luster, his propaganda had stopped ringing true. And all he had left was force.

And a very clever cartoonist draws a map of California with powder kegs scattered everywhere.

Send Covert Organizers to the Black Belt: 2 Influence, 1 Gravitas, 65+43+97+30=235
TW: Racism, physical and sexual violence, blood

July 2nd

If some spirit was keeping track of every town in the South, it would find it strange that more than a third of them had wandering salesmen or traveling ministers or vagabonds come in on one particular day, and most of the rest had the same trickle in over the next few days.

They would find it even stranger that people gathered in churches and homes to hear these mysterious wanderers speak. But if the spirit looked at who was doing the listening and who was doing the speaking and what was being spoken on, it might understand.

For those listening were the black men and women of the South, painfully growing old under a rain of a thousand insults and humiliation, under a reign of terror of the white sheet and the noose and the policeman's baton. And those speaking were men and women just as black who had fought to free themselves of such things, and who had succeeded.

July 10th

It's blisteringly hot in the church, even with the sun setting. Pastor James wiped his forehead, the white kerchief already stained with his sweat. It's not just the humid Georgia weather that's making things so uncomfortable. People are getting heated.

"You think you'll get anything more than scraps from that capitalist bastard in New Orleans?" their guest speaker raged at a pair of Minutemen officers.

His accent had sounded educated, Northern, but had quickly turned into something very familiar to the pastor as he had grown angrier.

"Long's done more for us than any Red. The KKK haven't come 'round in months because of his Minutemen, and some of us own our own farms now, and the rest of us are on the way there!"

"He'll betray you as soon as it's profitable for him!"

Their anger made the whole building tremble and shake as they fought back and forth, trading shouts and barbs. Their audience looked on, increasingly uncertain.

Pastor James started to rise, to demand they calm themselves.

Then a rifle butt slams into the church doors, and an all-too-familiar voice leaks in through the dying noise.

"Well, we heard you niggers were getting uppity. So we're going to remind you of your places. Turn out the Reds and the Minutemen, and we'll let you off easy."

Their guest speaker stands up. "I'm going to go out. It might spare you."

The two Minutemen pull out pistols. "No, you aren't. The whiteys aren't going to get away with this."

One glances over. "Pastor, take the women and children out the back please."

The men take up weapons as the knocking intensifies. As the Pastor ushered out everyone else, he looked back and saw them all standing together, as comrades ready to fight.

July 15th
They've traveled throughout the country, from the Mississippi to the Atlantic coast, speaking in churches and concert halls and open fields. They've traveled in the dead of night, disguising themselves, avoiding every scrap of attention they could.

They are beginning to realize they needn't have bothered.

Because it seems like the KKK can barely do anything about the increasingly restive people they were supposed to preach to.

And so they travel openly, marching into towns, giving their speeches, establishing unions, pushing to cross the color line. They organize militias and make demands, they seek support and offer testimony of the way they are treated under socialism.

And when cops, Klansmen, or Pinkertons try to stop them, they fight back.

Samuel ducked behind a tree, his heart in his throat. He fumbled with the shotgun, trying to slide the shell in.

"Come out, you filthy Red nigger, we just want to talk," a malevolent voice taunted.

Gunshots echoed through the trees as a figure draped in white fired into the air. Others drifted behind him, barely visible in the predawn darkness. They cackled and mocked him, promising all manner of terrible things.

"We'll string you up with a noose of your own guts if you make us come find you, we'll cut off your black balls and shove them in your mouth. You got a mother? We'll hunt her down and make our dogs fuck her!"

Samuel let out a soft curse. He had wanted to stretch his legs, nothing more. And now he was going to die. He cursed again as he failed to get the shell in once more, his hands shaking in terror.

And then there was another barrage of gunshots. The taunts turned into cries of alarm as muzzle flashes lit up the night like fireflies. White sheets turned red as they turned to flee, the terror of surprise overtaking them.

One, the leader who had first spoken, blundered towards Samuel just as he ducked out from the tree, still trying to load his shotgun. They collided, the shell flying from his hands. "Bastard!" the Klansman hissed, and then he punched Samuel in the face.

Of the two of them rolled across the ground, snarling and spitting. Samuel used the empty gun to pry him away as the Klansman snatched at a knife. The blade was blackened except for a pair of initials: E. E.

Samuel swung the shotgun. The butt crashed into the man's arm. The knife spun through the air. The Klansman tried to stand, tried to flee, but his feet were tangled in his robes and he collapsed to the ground.

"I surrender," he shouted, throwing his hands up.

Samuel raised the shotgun and brought it down. Again. And again. And again. The skull caved in and blood spattered him. He brought it down again. Brains covered the end of the shotgun. He brought it down one final time. Then he bent over and threw up.

His stomach empty, he heard his comrades shouting for him and left the corpse behind. He had work to do.

July 27th.

The enemies of socialism and Longism and democracy and equality are coming, people whisper. They are gathering in Atlanta, and they are going to march out and kill everything in their path, they say.

We're not going to let them, they declare.

And in a half-dozen towns, newly-formed Red Guards and veteran Minutemen units of every color decide to take pre-emptive action. Police stations are stormed. Armories are seized. The leaders of various racist organizers are dealt with. Sometimes they are locked in jail. Sometimes they are put on trial. Sometimes, strange fruit is left hanging from the poplar trees, with a skin made of white cloaks.

A terror spreads across the South. Rumors fly faster than sound. Self-defense groups organize. Lynch mobs form. Men are killed. Women are raped. Homes are destroyed. Stores are looted. Churches are burned.

It's chaos, but amongst the chaos, there are islands of order. And in these islands, the American flags begin to come down.

In some towns, they are replaced with the Socialist-Syndicalist-Anarchist red-black banner and the Garveyite red-black-green flag, with the IWW Globe and the ASA Grain and Gear.

In others, they are replaced with the Stars and Bars.

Out marches the US Army under General Joyce. Tanks and machine guns and flamethrowers could overwhelm rifles and shotguns and flimsy barricades, but they have different orders.

Looters are arrested. Rapists and murderers are executed. The militias still fighting are defeated and destroyed. Those that have won are offered amnesty.

And so the militias disband. But they do not disarm. They appeal to their patrons. They need weapons, training, support.
And another clever cartoonist draws a map of the United States with every state in the south turned into some kind of powder keg.

Free Action: Meet with Long
You are suspicious about this offer. Quite reasonably so, you think. But Long has let you pick the time and place, and so you are confident it's not some sort of bizarre assassination attempt. And you doubt it is some scheme to make you confess to plotting to overthrow the government. So you can't figure out what he wants.

You decide to find out. On the 1st of July, you tell him to meet.

On the 2nd, he comes to you, meeting you in your DC office. He brings four Minutemen with him, but leaves them outside the building, glaring at your Red Guards, who return the favor.

He sits down in your office. You are writing. He glances around and then begins to speak.

"You know, Mr. Reed, I admire the hell out of you. I might not always agree with you, but you have your principles and I think they are fair enough. There's not much difference between seizing the means of production and making every man a king, after all!

And to be frank, we have a mutual problem. Less of one now, that Ford had his unfortunate accident," he says, giving you a sharklike grin.

You put down your pen. "An accident?" you ask.

He nods. "And the police won't find anything else. But it's not Ford who is the big problem. It's other fellows, like Bilbo and Talmadge. And that sonofabitch MacArthur. For all Mac's high and mighty talk, he's not all that different."

"Bilbo and Talmadge? The men you gave speeches for? The men you stood on stage with? Your allies?" you ask, barely holding back a snort.

Again he nods, and you think you might see the barest trace of shame on his expression. Although you can't imagine a man like Long being ashamed of anything.

"When I was getting the AFP off the ground, some Democrat party bosses had offers to make me. They thought I would do better than the head-in-the-sand fools who had control. But their backing had a price. Talmadge and the KKK were part of it, there were all sorts of bastards I had to deal with. They wanted me to be their puppet. But the Kingfish dances on no one's strings!"

He pounds his fist on your desk for emphasis, loud enough that it causes Flora to open the door. She very quickly closes it again, although you catch a glimpse of metal in her hand.

"Anyway, I got rid of them as soon as I could, and I think I made my stance on them clear enough. Even as we speak, some more rats are being taken care of. There won't be a single Klansmen left in Arkansas or Louisiana by August, or my name isn't Huey Long. And I want your help making sure of that. You tell your boys not to fight mine, and I do the same. And when KKK thugs or Pinkertons show up, we both give them what for. That's free, all you gotta do is get your people to do it. Sound good?"

Before you can answer he plows on.

"And there's another offer I have to make you. You and you socialists and syndicalists and communists and what-have-you have done a lot of good, more than I reckoned you would. I don't much like the idea of a revolution, seems like it would hurt more people than it helps, but if MacArthur or Hearst or Zemurray or those Standard Oil pricks make one necessary, you'll have my help in it."

You are about to thank him but he keeps going. You wonder if he ever breathes.

"If we're allies. That's my price. We form a fusion ticket, work together, and you agree not to start any revolution unless they cross a line. And you'll have me and my party working with you and yours. That's my offer."

Finally, he is silent, and you have to decide how to respond to that...speech.

[] "Welcome to the fold, Comrade Long." Full acceptance.
[] "We'll stand against the KKK together. Nothing more." Accept his first offer, but not the second.
[] "I can't trust a man who's worked with Voynists like Pelley and Ford for so many years. Flora will show you out." Reject him.
[] "How about this?" Write-in

The RAF's Report: Prison Break, 98+20 = 118

They didn't bother sneaking in. The guards would be watching for that. And they didn't need to.

They were driven in by a chauffeur, four men and four women exiting the car, wearing elegant suits and dresses, looking like they had gotten lost on the way to the opera.

They said they were lawyers here for a few prisoners, and when a guard questioned them, they demanded the name of his supervisor with such haughty disdain he fell over himself apologizing.

Another guard led them in to be searched. And the one doing the searching seemed to be very clumsy. He missed everything there was to find. One of the lawyers nodded at him and passed him a slip of paper. "You'll find your sweetheart here, safe and sound. The money will be there too. We stick to our bargains."

On the other side, there was an address on the far side of town. By the time he got there and came back, whatever would have happened would be over. The guard did not hesitate.

His superior wondered where the asshole had gotten to and vowed to tear a strip off him for skiving. The father of three sickly children and husband to a rosy-cheeked wife he lavished all his tenderness on would never get a chance to do so.

He fell dead with six bullets in his chest about a half-hour later. He died doing something that wasn't quite sobbing and wasn't quite choking as pink foam frothed along his lips.

His corpse lay on the ground, stepped over by bare and by booted feet. Some of the escaped prisoners ran, some were carried. Bullets stitched through the air, sparking off concrete. Shouts of alarm and shrieks of terror rang through the air. Those who were left in their cells hollered for freedom, banging on the bars, begging for rescue.

They were left behind.

As the escapees and their rescuers fled through the prison, a van came smashing into the prison gate, smashing it off its hinges. Bullets lashed out of it, spraying the guards scattered throughout the courtyard before turning to those who manned the walls and towers. Inside the prison a warden bawled into a phone, begging for reinforcements.

The escapees crossed the courtyard, paying no attention to the dead and the dying. Bullets struck some down. They were shot in the head, and the group kept running.

They got out the broken gate. They got down the road. They ducked into waiting cars. They escaped.

Behind them, an explosion rippled through the air as one last surprise was left behind for the enemies of the people.

Focus: Form Spartacus Columns

With your organizers and agitators, you send guns and supplies. In hidden compartments beneath truck cargos, stocks of ammunition and explosives are smuggled south. In church basements and isolated hideouts in the woods, small depots are formed.

And first in the dead of night, then in the light of day, black men and women march and shoot and drill, learning to fight. The crack of gunfire stops being something to fear as they learn of their own strength, and make the price of attacks and lynchings far higher than it has been since the most radical days of Reconstruction.

Any who are willing to fight are welcomed to the cause. And the ranks of the Spartacus Columns swell, turning from a whisper in the winds to a multi-thousand strong organization within mere weeks. And the growth isn't slowing down any time soon.

Result: Focus completed.

A/N: There was lots of synergies this turn, including some with stuff you hadn't known was happening.