From Pullman to Pomona: Cycles of Resistance in Southern California

Local Struggles, Global Echoes

Los Angeles is often portrayed as a city of freeways and fantasies — a place where the future is scripted on screens. But beneath the glamour lies another history, one built by workers whose labor made the city and whose resistance shaped its character.

From the sweatshops of the early 20th century to the walkouts of East LA students in the 1960s, from the tents of Occupy LA in 2011 to today’s delivery drivers fighting for fair pay, Southern California has been a frontline in the long struggle for dignity at work.

These stories are not isolated. They are echoes of a broader cycle of revolt that runs through American history. The Pullman Strike of 1894, when rail workers resisted wage cuts and company-town debt, is a template. The March on Washington in 1963 tied civil rights to labor rights. Occupy Wall Street in 2011 challenged finance capital, and LA became one of its largest encampments. Each moment shows us the same thing: when workers are denied dignity, revolt follows.

Here in Los Angeles, that cycle has a distinct character — immigrant, multiracial, often led by young people, and deeply rooted in community. It is a history worth remembering, because it helps us see today’s fights not as isolated skirmishes, but as the next chapter in a long, unfinished revolt.

Pullman’s Shadow in Early LA

When George Pullman cut wages in 1894 while charging the same rent in his company-owned housing, his workers revolted. Their strike paralyzed the railroads until federal troops intervened. The logic was clear: keep workers dependent, and crush them when they resist.

That same logic shaped early Los Angeles. At the turn of the 20th century, LA boosters promised it would be a “union-free” city. Employers’ associations coordinated to blacklist union members. Police arrested picketers. Newspapers portrayed organizers as radicals.

Yet workers kept organizing. Garment factories became notorious sweatshops, where immigrant women — often Mexican, Japanese, or Chinese — sewed long hours in unsafe conditions. Strikes in the 1910s and 1920s demanded fair wages and better conditions, echoing Pullman’s defiance.

Dockworkers in San Pedro faced their own battles. In 1923, a longshore strike was met with brutal force: company guards and hired deputies beat strikers and raided union halls. The lesson was the same as in Chicago: capital would do anything to preserve control.

And in the fields surrounding Pomona and the Inland Empire, migrant farmworkers lived in shacks and labor camps, dependent on growers for housing and wages. Their struggles foreshadowed the later rise of César Chávez and the United Farm Workers (UFW), who made Delano and the Central Valley symbols of resistance.

Los Angeles may not have had a Pullman town, but it had plenty of Pullman logics: housing tied to wages, bosses controlling every aspect of life, workers trapped in dependency. And like Pullman’s workers, Angelenos resisted.

East LA Walkouts and the Fight for Dignity

The 1960s were a turning point nationwide, and East LA was no exception. In 1963, the March on Washington demanded both Jobs and Freedom. Here in LA, those themes resonated deeply among Chicano students and working-class families.

In 1968, thousands of students in East LA staged walkouts, leaving their classrooms to demand bilingual education, smaller class sizes, and respect for Mexican American culture. Many of their parents were garment workers, janitors, or service employees who knew firsthand that racism and economic exploitation went hand in hand.

These walkouts weren’t just about education; they were about labor. Poor schools were pipelines to poor jobs. Students understood that without dignity in the classroom, there would be no dignity in the workplace.

Two years later, in 1970, the Chicano Moratorium brought 30,000 people into the streets to protest the Vietnam War and economic injustice. Police repression turned the event violent, with journalist Rubén Salazar killed by a tear gas canister. The protests tied global struggles to local realities: workers sent to die abroad, while their families labored in poverty at home.

These movements paralleled national struggles. Just as Dr. King tied civil rights to jobs in 1963, East LA tied racial justice to labor justice. Both insisted that democracy was hollow without dignity at work.

Occupy LA: The 99% in City Hall’s Backyard

Fast-forward to 2011. While Occupy Wall Street captured headlines in New York, Los Angeles became one of the largest Occupy encampments in the country. Hundreds pitched tents around City Hall, protesting foreclosures, student debt, and economic inequality.

The language of the “99% versus the 1%” resonated in LA, where foreclosures had gutted neighborhoods and rents were soaring. Students burdened with debt camped alongside union members, activists, and unhoused residents.

The encampment lasted two months before police cleared it. But its impact endured. Occupy LA didn’t just protest Wall Street; it highlighted LA’s own inequalities — the vast wealth of Beverly Hills contrasted with working poverty in South LA and East LA.

Occupy’s spirit fed into later movements, including the Fight for $15. When fast-food workers walked off the job in South LA demanding a living wage, they carried Occupy’s defiant energy. What began as small strikes spread nationally, reshaping policy. By 2022, California had passed a law raising fast-food wages to $20 an hour.

In this sense, Occupy’s tents may be gone, but its slogans are alive in every paycheck fight, every rent control campaign, and every demand for student debt relief. LA, once again, was at the center.

From Janitors to Gig Workers: The New Frontlines

The 1990s saw the rise of the “Justice for Janitors” movement, led largely by Latino immigrants in Los Angeles. Janitors marched through Century City and downtown, demanding recognition and fair pay from cleaning contractors who exploited their undocumented status. Police beatings in 1990 shocked the public and galvanized support. Eventually, janitors won contracts that raised wages and set new standards for immigrant labor organizing.

That legacy flows directly into today’s gig economy. Rideshare drivers at LAX, delivery workers in Pomona, and warehouse workers in the Inland Empire face new versions of old struggles. They don’t punch a time clock, but they answer to apps that monitor every move. They don’t pay rent to a company boss, but they shoulder car leases, gas, and insurance — costs shifted onto their backs.

In 2020, gig workers in California won a legal victory to be classified as employees, only to see it reversed by Proposition 22, funded by Uber, Lyft, and DoorDash with over $200 million. The pattern is familiar: when workers win, corporations rewrite the rules.

Just like Pullman’s workers, today’s gig workers are told they are “lucky” to have flexibility, even as they are trapped in cycles of debt and dependency. And just like Pullman’s workers, they are organizing anyway.

Los Angeles in the Long Arc

From garment workers in the 1920s to janitors in the 1990s, from student walkouts in East LA to fast-food strikes in South LA, Los Angeles has always been part of labor’s unfinished revolt.

The names change — Pullman, Wall Street, Uber — but the logic does not. Employers seek to control, to extract, to deny dignity. Workers resist, sometimes losing in the moment, but always leaving behind new language, new movements, new hope.

Today’s struggles in Southern California — for housing, for wages, for fair treatment of gig workers — are not isolated. They are part of a cycle that stretches back through Haymarket and Pullman, through Blair Mountain and Memphis, through Occupy and the Fight for $15.

History tells us one thing: when workers move, the world shifts. And here in Los Angeles, Pomona, and East LA, the world has shifted many times before. It will again.