September 21, 2022 • 53 mins
In part two of this week's episode, Margaret continues her conversation with Robert Evans about the Spokane Free Speech Fight and the itinerant workers who invented new forms of civil disobedience.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, this is cool. People did cool stuff. Have your host,
Margaret Killjoy. Robert Evans is our guest. Ert. Oh, Margaret,
we have a good time, laughter, fun stuff, mean comedy.
I love a podcast. You know what I love most
about podcast, Margaret? Why do you love that Podcast, Robert?
(00:22):
The fact that every single person can make a six
figure living from podcasts if they just pay fifty eight
hundred dollars for our two day inspirational convention meeting at
the Airport Ramada in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Not the Marriott anymore. No,
they kicked us right the funk out. Margaret, I'M gonna
(00:43):
be honest with you, I was just taking the deposit
money to spend on delatted. Well, I mean, how else
are you gonna get delotted exactly? Doesn't grow on true, well,
it does grow in a plant, kind of, but then
they have to do stuff to it to make it delotted. Yeah,
those people deserve a living wage. Yes, I actually am
here to represent all of the different painkillers, except for coding,
(01:04):
which have unionized in order to demand more of them
be given to me. Yeah, it's a beautiful showing of solidarity.
Hydro Code Own the latted and Sophie okay, yeah, Sop
Hi Ian as our audio editor. Hello, Ian on woman,
(01:25):
wrote our theme song. Hello on woman. You probably not
his name. What if you are? I like to live
in that world. I like to imagine that when you
shout out those people after shouting out sophie and I,
but they're here too and responding, and you're choosing to
cut their voices out of the show as a power move.
Oh yeah, I mean they're on the zoom call right now. Yeah,
they are. They're on every zoom call, which is kind
(01:46):
of weird that we make on women beyond every zoom call.
It is, but you know, I mean, if a woman
wants a podcast, she's got to put in the time
and she also has to start taking our patented magic berries,
just seventy three dollars a day, which increase your vitality. And, uh,
chemicals or chemicals the VF CO? Yeah, yeah, and so, okay.
(02:12):
So today is part two in our seventeen part series
discussing George ramorrow's classic nine one film night writers. Now,
my favorite part of the movie, Margaret, is when he
beats the ship out of his friend nearly to death
with a series of medieval weapons for trying to stop
him from fighting while he has a serious lung injury.
Ed Harris, we're talking about Ed Harris. Yeah, and character
(02:33):
of the George Ra merrow film night writers. It is
a consensual fight. I will say it is. All of
the fights are consensual. Police officer. Yeah, I kind of
consented by having been a bastard earlier. If you have
not watched the nineteen eighty one George Ra merrow film
night writers, which I had not until last night, you
(02:54):
wowe it to yourself or this podcast is about the
spokane free speech fight and the IWW and free speech
fights more broadly. Where we last left our heroes, they
were mostly in jail, but now they're gonna win, which
is it's not every week I get to tell a
story where the good guys win. Yeah, this section is
(03:16):
called the victory. It's not even ironic. In the end,
news about just how awful spoken was and just how
corrupt the city was and how brutals cops were and
all that got around and like cops actually managed to
get fired or asked to resign just over how public
because they were always this brutal right, but this whole
(03:36):
campaign actually paid brought a lot of attention to what
was happening and media across the country was just like
talking ship on Spokane, and Spokane was not happy about it.
The taxpayers in the city weren't happy about it because
they were paying a thousand dollars a week to house
all the Hoboes, about dollars today. And workers and other cities,
including other unions, not just the IWW, started boycotting everything
(03:59):
produced by the spokene merchants Um and also lawsuits from
the wobblies and other cities. Other folks in the city
just started piling up against the city because they would
do things like bring out fire hoses and spray people
fire hoses and stuff, which is like an unpopular thing.
Most people prefer not to be sprayed with fire hoses Um,
and some people sue about it. Other unions started showing
(04:22):
up in solidarity the Western Federation of Miners and court delaine.
They were among the people refusing all the goods coming
out of spokane, and the local AFL actually started getting
on board. Eventually they voted unanimously to demand the speech
band be revoked. The local media, besides, like one conservative paper,
was supporting them. About twelve thousand townspeople were represented in
(04:44):
court through various people, saying this is bullshit, like get
rid of this fucking bullshit, like bring back free speech. Hm.
And in March, about six months, in five months in
the city is beat. They revoked the ordinance, they released
the prisoners. They provoke the business licenses of more than
half of the different employment agencies, the ones that they like,
(05:06):
consider to be sketchier, the city considers to be sketchier. Unfortunately,
this actually leaves most of the major players, but it
does allow, well, want people to organize it against them
more effectively. And then also like there's just other ways
to get jobs besides being sold fictitious jobs. Yeah, and
the conspirators, however, they're still facing time right because their
(05:27):
charges weren't just disorderly conduct, they were conspiracy to break
a law or whatever. The governor actually pardoned them. And
the governor pardoned them because the I W W was
like hey, you should let our people go, and the
city was like no, we don't want to. There their criminals,
and I ww is like should we just do all
(05:47):
of this again? Should we just bring everyone back here?
And the cities, like the governors, like let's pardon you,
and three of the worst cops were forced to resign,
despite their protests. They were like, we don't want to resign.
They're like you're resigning. And maybe, most importantly, more important
than even the job buying show, as far as I'm concerned,
(06:08):
women's rights organizations, both radical and mainstream, sympathetic to the
wobblies and ones that fucking hated the wobblies, forced the
jail to hire a matron, I believe, with the purpose
of ending the sex slavery that was happening in the jail.
And a final note on the A F l, the
Racist Union. There was a major split between the leadership
and the rank and file, Um, which is a good
(06:30):
argument for everyone's leadership. Like in the WW, the A
F L heads like they were like hell yeah, this
this free speech fight. It's going to destroy the wobblies,
like thank God, because you know they're competing for the
same workers, right. Um. The rank and file, however, just
poured money and support into the free speech fights, and
(06:50):
a ton of them, like the shingle makers union, just
quit the A F L and affiliated with the wobblies instead.
And then, after everyone out of jail, this part is
left out of every history I've read except one random
note in one of the People's like this guy who
was part of it in the nine he's like writing
about it in the fifties and he throws it in
(07:12):
at the end after everyone gets out of jail, someone,
somebody just kills the chief of police with a shotgun
in the street and the murder is never solved and
the judge who had convicted all the wobblies, the judge
you hated the wobblies. He's like, you know, that cop
had a lot of enemies. It really couldn't anyone. And
(07:33):
throughout the entire fight there was all kinds of other
sabotage and stuff happening. The wobblies were like, no, that's
not us, it just seems to happen when we're around. Um,
it was almost certainly wobblies who were doing this stuff.
They were smashing out the windows of employment agencies and
at one point, as far as I can tell, again,
this is like one of those things where it's like
included in a random note from the time that a
(07:58):
train car with like seven the arrested wobblies derailed, uh,
and the wobblies were blamed for it, but no one
was actually specifically blamed for it. But like, I guess, theoretically,
like someone was like, I know how to free everyone
off that trail jail car, I will just derail it.
But officially the IWW only takes credit for the civil
disobedience and and it's a kind of a beautiful and
(08:19):
interesting method of diversity of tactics. They only claim certain actions,
but other actions are happening. And the other most interesting
thing that might have to do with how they funded
the entire thing at one point. Well, during all of this,
all of the cops in town are busy dealing with
the wobblies and so, quote, thieves reaped a bounty in
(08:39):
the suburbs Um, and so the I W W might
have had some clever ways how to fund the free
speech fight. They engaged in thirty of these fights, as
you were talking about earlier. Right. They saw this replicable
tactic and they just replicated it between nineteen sixteen. There
are free each fights in the United Canada, Mexico, Panamahiti,
(09:03):
no uh, Seattle, Vancouver, Missoula, Fresno, San Diego, San Pedro, Aberdeen, Seattle, again, Winachie, Wallah, Walla, Everett,
Sux City, Mobile Denver, Grand Junction, Paterson, Newcastle, old forged, Duluth, Minneapolis, Victoria, superior,
Kansas City, another city named Aberdeen, New Bedford and Minnotte
(09:25):
or Mino. Yeah, these are a lot of areas too
that you wouldn't today. You would never think that there
would be like progressive protests of any kind there. Oh yeah,
I mean like Spokane, Washington is not where I would
like go to get vegan food, you know. I mean
if you're a Vegan and spokeane, I'm sorry, and certainly
(09:46):
you wouldn't imagine spokane is like the nexus of like
a national hand Labor Solidarity Movement fighting the cops. Yeah,
that's like specifically anti racist and like and I mean,
and that's one of the things that's so interesting about
this period. Right, you're talking about all of these fucking
lumberjacks and ship which is not normally who you immediately
think of, especially if you live on the east coast.
(10:07):
Not a normally normally who you think of when you
think of leftists, you know. But I also think part
of that is because because it used to be actually
like there's a reason Blair mountain. Blair mountain didn't fucking happen.
Battle of Blair mountain wasn't a bunch of people who
lived in like inner city New York or whatever, right,
like it was. It was a bunch of fucking colass
miners in the middle of goddamn nowhere, Virginia. Um, yeah,
(10:28):
West Virginia. Well, I I don't, I don't, I don't.
I don't consider the other Virginia to be real. Um, no, no,
there's West Virginia and and then the Atlantic Ocean starts. Uh,
I'm a Richardson Rich Richmond, Richmond truther. I kind of
botched that joke by botching the name of the capital
of the wrong Virginia anyway, but no one of the
(10:51):
like missing. I don't know. I would like to see
this done. Well, I I say this knowing we should
probably do something on this. But how this south was
conquered by the reactionaries? Like, how? Not Not just the south,
is the only to put this sorry. How Rule America
was conquered by reactionaries? Um, because that was the fact
(11:12):
that it is now, quote unquote, read. Is Not the
way it always was. Nor was it inevitable that it
would go that way. Yeah, absolutely, and I don't think
it needs to stay that way either. You know, that's
a critical postscript. Yeah, I put all my my a
t M S and one basket a t M, a
T v S. I don't even own a TV. I
(11:33):
live on enough land that I should have an a TV,
but I don't. But yeah, no, I mean as yeah,
as someone who lives rural, I like I hate this conception.
You know that everyone who lives rural is right wing
and and everyone who works with their hands as right wing.
Is the the worst thing we've ever ceded to the right. Um, yeah, Yep,
(11:53):
but I'm gonna talking about some more of these free
speech fights. Unfortunately, you get kind of diminishing returns with
a lot of replicating tactics. Right, and the fight in
Fresno is the most important of these next fights. So
the fight in Fresno, frank little, who is the guy
who trolled by reading the Declaration of Independence Up and spoken?
He'd been organizing, quote unquote, unskilled fruit workers in the
(12:16):
San Joaquin Valley. Then a contractor tried to build a
damn but he couldn't find any exploitable workers because the
I W W had been organizing everyone, and so he
threw a big fit because he was like, but I
want to exploit workers. And so by May the COPS
started breaking up by W W meetings and arrested wobbly's
for vagrancy, which is a really weird law when you
(12:38):
think about it. Vagrancy, you're not allowed to not have anything. Yeah,
you're not allowed to occupy lands that based on our
shared conception of the nation, you own part of right. Like, yeah,
you're not allowed to just like take up space. You
have to have a house that you rent or pay for. Um,
(12:58):
it's kind of you know, here in the Great State
of Oregon, Um one of the two right thinking states,
we make it illegal for people to pump their own gasoline, um,
in order so that people have to have a job. Like,
basically it provides this kind of constant supply of jobs.
They're not particularly difficult pumping gasoline for people. And in
much the same way vagrancy laws or the government being
(13:20):
like hey, landlords, now there's no alternative to you unless
you can buy a house, which, don't worry, we're gonna
make hard to do real soon. Yeah, yeah, so frank
little he's one of the people who gets arrested. I
don't know if he's specifically up on vagrancy charges or
just being a wobblier. I suspect the cops don't not.
They're arresting him for he telephones the wobbly's national office
(13:41):
in Chicago. I think it's like it's like phone call
from jail. I don't know how that really did or
didn't exist in nineteen ten. Yeah, I don't know if
you got gee because they barely had phones. I now. Um,
he calls Chicago. So he asked for a campaign and
then an army of thousands of Hobos from all over
the country bill the jail. And mainstream papers just couldn't
figure it out. Why the funk are these people risking everything?
(14:04):
They're traveling thousands of miles just to get arrested for
a cause that doesn't directly affect them? And the answers
that mainstream papers don't understand solidarity. Um, because this could
be you right, you know you're you're going and doing
this thing because this affects you as well. And so
they they fill up the jails, crowds gather outside, they
start giving speeches through the bars. The cops bring out
(14:24):
fire hoses full of freezing water and they, the people
inside the jails, put mattresses up against the windows and
then like reach out to scream and tell like speeches
out to the crowd outside before they get sprayed with
hoses more and they don't stop until the ice water
is knee high in their cell. Finally, March Eleventh, nineteen eleven,
more fucking hoboes just keep coming and the city gives
(14:45):
up and restores free speech and lets everyone go. And
and there's all this like stuff that we're gonna talk
a little bit about. When sometimes they use violence, the
I W W using some violence and other labor unions
in particular using some violence. But and so people whenever
they use violence as this big fucking deal. But then
the like and some of their rhetoric was very, you know,
(15:08):
militant or whatever. But the other side was saying all
kinds of ship about them. Like specifically mainstream papers would
say things like editorial for the San Diego Tribune said
hanging is none too good for them. They would be
much better dead, for they're absolutely useless in the human economy.
They are waste material of creation and should be drained
off into the sewer of oblivion, there to rot in
(15:30):
cold obstruction like any other excrement, which is a very
poetic way of saying we're gonna liquidate you and murder
everyone you've ever met. The Fresno Herald and Democrat, which
is the name of a paper printed for men to
come here with the express purpose of creating trouble. A
whipping post and a cat of nine tales, well seasoned
(15:51):
by being soaked in salt water, is none too harsher
treatment for the peace breakers. So they've they've given it
some thought about all of the things that they want
to do to the Hobos, much like Ed Harris, the
actor guy with himself he did. This movie doesn't include
a naked Ed Harris, who is like thirty in a
(16:13):
snack in this movie, by the way, whipping himself one
handed with a read while waiting naked into a lake.
It's pretty good. More than once, more than once, George
Romero really needed you to see that. Yeah, yeah, and
George Romero is right. MHM, the San Diego Fight, uh,
that happens in and none of these things are happening
(16:36):
in a vacuum. Right. Um, the Labor movement had been
fighting fucking tooth and nail for decades. At this point
in the US, in southern California, the International Association of
Bridge and Structural Iron Workers, who are thankfully just called
the I w. they're they're no one to funk with
this particular union. Their their job, these bridge and structural
(16:56):
iron workers involves dynamite, so they have a lot of dynamite.
So their protests involved dynamite. Iron workers were generally unskilled
and treated like ship and they're fired all the time.
They're treated like seasonal labor, and so the fighting over
unionizing these shops is so fierce in Los Angeles that
(17:16):
the I w blew up a total of a hundred
and ten iron works between nineteen o six and nineteen eleven.
It is it is represented as the largest domestic terrorist
campaign in US history, although in a hundred and ten
bombings of non union workplaces, they injured or killed zero people.
(17:36):
And they were one of the last unions of any
power in Los Angeles. San Francisco is a huge labor hub,
but basically Los Angeles wasn't and the Anti Union Rich
Fox were too powerful that down there, including the Los
Angeles Times, which was like run on a very anti
union platform. They went on strike for they wanted fifty
cents an hour, which is about thirteen dollars or so today.
(17:59):
The government respond wanted by banning pickets. The strikes continued anyway.
The city government about five picketers were arrested for free
speech violations, for picketing and the I W at the
time they had this guy named Herbert Hockin, who was
in charge of organizing the dynamiting. Like your official union
organizer Job is, you're the guy in charge of, Um,
(18:21):
blowing things up and which is a good job. But
if you want a good job you should try podcasting. MHM, podcasting,
the thing you can only do if you spend seventy
two dollars for a one day conference at the Airport
Hilton in Milwaukee Wisconsin. The Airport Hilton in Milwaukee Wisconsin
(18:42):
the only place that would let us hold a convention.
and Um, who is a? WHO's providing the tax? But
that I can't remember. Um, well, it's B Y O B,
but we do take outs per day for meals, my
my meals. Yeah, well, I have meals. I have a
rare I mean you're I have a rare where if
(19:07):
I if I don't wrap, filet Mignon and original copies
of the United States Constitution. Um, I get I break
out in hives and that that's pretty intrensive. There's not
a lot of those left. I've eaten most of them. Yeah,
and also these other advertisers. And we are back and
(19:29):
we're talking about how union seems to have jobs, like
the guy in charge of dynamite. For us, the problem
is is that when you have a traditionally organized union,
has leaders, etcetera, and you put one guy in charge
of the dynamite in and he goes corrupt, like Herbert
Howkin was corrupt, it's really bad. He starts embezzling the
dynamite money and instead of putting it into dynamite, he
(19:52):
puts it into himself. So that's okay, yeah, fair enough.
He'll come back into the story in a little bit.
And so they decide that the l a times needs
to get got because they are printing too many anti
union things and they need a good dynamiting but they
(20:14):
don't trust Herbert Hackin anymore. They're starting to figure out
that if you give that guy money for dynamite, you
don't get nearly as much dynamite as you want. So
to Socialist Irish American brothers, the McNamara brothers, and they
have basically the same name. One's Jj and one's JB.
I'm just gonna call them the McNamara brothers. You didn't
know if your kids were going to live very long then,
so if you felt like you had a good name,
(20:35):
you could give it to like three of them at
a time. Yeah, I think pretty conscient problems like the
same fucking name, m hm Um. And they're like all right, well,
we're in the I W W, and I mean not sorry,
not the I W W, the regular I w the.
And they're like we've got this, we can do the dynamiting.
(20:55):
One of them is the conspirator who helps organize it,
and one of them is the bomber. The younger brother.
He gets he gets the bomber job. He puts sixteen
sticks of dynamite in a suitcase, he sets it up
on a timer to go off at one am on
October one and he puts it near some flammable INC
at the printing press at the UM L A times.
(21:16):
He then gets on the next train out of town
for San Francisco. So he isn't around when the bomb
goes off. Oh and before that he also set bombs
at two people's houses, the Anti Union Times editor and
the guy in charge of the Anti Union, the merchant
and Manufacturers Association, the thing, like the other thing where
all the people get together and fight unions. But, Robert,
(21:39):
did you know that there's a downside to explosives? Well,
I've heard this, Margaret. I mean I would say that
the clearest one is that when you use them, you
can't use them a second time, which is really the
great which is why I'm working on when I opened
up my Willy Wonka style bomb factories of the world,
we're working on the everlasting gob stoppers of e four Um.
(22:01):
The only problem is that when we tested them out
last time, uh, they kind of created a sort of
gray goo apocalypse situation in which they continue to change
of detonations that ended all life. To cut the multiverse
to a different times we did. We had to carve
out a multiverse Um. But you know, you can't make
an Omelet without killing, you know. But but in the
(22:21):
old one we all got to drive around hot dog trucks.
It was it was awesome. Oh, and climate change wasn't
a thing every yeah, when we jumped into this one
we were quite surprised because those hot dog trucks were electric.
Is Ship? Um, yeah, this one's worse than every way.
There's also a Great Britain in this one, which seems
like a real problem. I thought that was a joke.
(22:43):
There really oh no, no, it's real. Yeah, so did I. Wait,
do they have it? Wait, do they have a queen? Yeah,
they share too, which is really funny, because the actual
whales with rules all of Western Europe in the original
timeline has a has like a joke Queen on holidays, Um.
But but here the Real Great Britain. Um, it's just ridiculous. Anyway,
(23:06):
sorry for the gob stopper bomb that killed the good universe.
It's okay. Well, if Great Britain no longer has a queen,
you know that we've hopped into a different timeline. So, yeah, yeah,
which means the gob stoppers went wrong again. We're still
tweaking those bad boys. Yeah, Um, don't don't worry though.
I mean, you know, the Nice thing about this universe
is that there were an extra twelve good seasons of
(23:27):
star trek the next generation. So unless the Queen recently
died in the universe, your inhabit. Go Watch. Really, season
sixteen is when the show sir. Absolutely. Yeah, I don't
want to give any spoilers. So the NAMARA brothers, they're
playing with explosives, and the problem with playing with explosives,
(23:48):
besides changing timelines. Well, actually the problem is changing timelines.
You often change to a timeline where the wrong people die. Uh,
and this is what happened this time. They set these
bombs up and they set it up near a gas maine.
So their manage, they're trying to like destroy some property
and like stick it to the man and be like,
you know, hey, we blew up part of your printing
(24:09):
press and no one got hurt. They they destroy the
entire building and a hell of fire because the gas
mate explodes and catches on fire and the building burns down.
And the other thing that they didn't know, because they
didn't do their fucking homework, is that there were newspaper
workers there that night because they were putting out a
special edition of the newspaper because of like some horse
race or something. And so they blow up the entire
(24:31):
fucking three story building. They Killed Twenty one people. Um, yeah, whoop,
but OOP. No, this is. This is not the cool
people doing cool stuff part of this, and they as.
As for the bombs that they put outside the assholes houses, uh,
they wound the timers too tightly and they took too
long before they went off and they were safely discovered
(24:51):
and disarmed. It didn't take too long to track down
these brothers. The younger brother, the bomber. He confessed as
part of a plea deal that got him life in prison.
But basically the plea deal was my brother doesn't get
life in prison. Um, he's like. I will say I
did it all. You give my brother fifteen years instead
of life in prison and you took that deal and
(25:13):
his confession. He said it was my intention to injure
the building and scare the owners. I sincerely regret that
these unfortunate men lost their lives. If the giving of
my life would bring them back, I would gladly give it.
And that trial basically, or that bombing rather basically, killed
the L A labor movement for about forty years. So
(25:35):
note to self other people. The older brother, he gets
out of prison, he goes right back to labor organizing
the the younger brother, dyson, dies in prison and yeah,
bombs don't always work like you think you're going to work.
Uh Oh. And the guy who had been running the
bombing campaign prior Hawkin, the one who is in Bezzling,
it turns out he had been a paid informant for
(25:57):
the business association, the entire tie him. Oh, cool. Yeah,
on the other hand, he didn't testify against the McNair
NAMARA brothers because, at least according to a New York
Times article from that from back then, he was like, basically,
are you kidding me? If I testify, the unionists will
literally murder me. There is no way I will testify
(26:18):
against them. Um. So even his paid informing only went
so far. This is not the I W W that
I was just talking about. The I w not to
be confused, but the reason it's important to what we're
talking about is this is the context that, less than
a year later, the wobblies step into and the wobblies
(26:38):
go to San Diego for a free speech fight, UM,
which also it turns out, and back me up on this, Sophie, Um,
San Diego is not part of Los Angeles. It is
not part of Los Angeles. Yeah, which is interesting because
I thought, well, we call it West El a, a
lot back in Los Angeles, which, because it's south, farest
(27:01):
the far South Bay, it is. It is two to
three hours south of Los Angeles. Great Food. Great San Diego,
better known as Little Sacramento. No, nobody says that. It
is a lovely place. That is very expensive. But in
(27:22):
Sonatas nearby, yeah, the the can't, can't understate food. Excellent. Yep,
and that's where they went, southern California. The food. Yes,
it is not a great place to be. A union
organized around this time in Jan San Diego is like,
(27:43):
you know what, fucket, let's not even let them talk.
And they banned free speech in midtown, all of midtown.
Ostensible reason is the same as it always was. Public
gatherings might block traffic. In fact, the actual event that
will be familiar to modern listeners that sparked the entire
thing is when rich asshole tried to run his car
through a crowd of protesters. The crowd stopped him and
(28:05):
slashed his tires and he was like, dear the state,
I was prevented from driving my automobile through a crowd
of people. Please make the people not exist and the
states like yeah, that's true. So a free speech league
forms and it's not full of all right types. It's anarchists, Socialists, wobblies,
(28:26):
most of whom are anarchists or Socialists, and then some
of the less radical unionists from the a f l,
and then the single taxers, who are really interesting. I
only halfway understand them. They're kind of somewhere between a
libertarian and a socialist, but not in a libertarian socialist way.
They're like free market combined with strong welfare state. I
think so. I guess they're the no, they're not really
(28:48):
all right at all. They're actually just their own weird wing.
That thing, the I W W in San Diego had
already been around for a while. Their big success was
that they had organized the Mexican workers of the gas
and electric company a few years earlier. But of course
many of the radical Mexicans left in San Diego left
in to go back to Mexico to fight for that future.
Friend of the pod of the Mexican revolution, two thousand
(29:11):
or five thousand of them, depending on who you ask.
They go off marching in defense of the band. Right
away they're like, oh, we're not to march fun. You
were marching hundreds of them wind up in jail. They're
facing felony conspiracy charges. I think hundreds of them are
facing felonies conspiracy charges. And then when people try to
have solidarity demonstrations, they're broken up by future friend of
your pod fire hoses. I feel like there's got to
(29:33):
have been fire hoses on your podcast. I mean we've
talked about definitely protesters getting ye with fire hoses. Yeah, yeah,
and this leads to one of the more interesting okay,
so basically, like all right, the wobblies are like, all right,
we know how to do this thing right, and this
time it's not just them, but they are a huge
part of it, and they're like, all right, we know
how to do this. We're gonna get hoboes from all
(29:53):
over the place. And so a hundred and twenty hoboes, wobblies,
ride trains down from Portland, Oregon, and they make it. Yeah,
they get to the Oregon California border, where they get
to Ashland and they're like, oh, ship, we'll get busted
by the train cops if we keep going. I think
even though the union workers on the trains were like, Oh,
you'll get busted if you keep going. So they get
(30:14):
out and they start walking. They walk through a snowstorm
in the mountains. They walk two miles on foot and
they're like a self organized small army on the March.
They have different committees, they have doctors with them, they
have security, there's people up ahead scouting for like train
lines and ship locals give them money and food. They
(30:36):
hold rallies everywhere they go. It basically becomes this tour
walking around being like this is what's up, and they're
spreading the word of the eight hour work day, which
is still not actually one by this point. They're talking
about how decent labor conditions are, only not such a
really one by this point. Eight. Yeah, what are you
talking about? I didn't wake up at seven to work
one job before working on this job. Yeah, and so
(31:01):
and they're this fucking Hobo army and their off restore
free speech in California. But they they got the timing wrong.
Walking two forty four miles, it takes a while when
you go through the mountains. By the time they get
to Chico, the fight is over. Ah, and now they're
in Chico, which just makes it worse. I know, that's right,
(31:23):
that's right. Chico Yeah, I think our publisher is based. No,
it's it's a nice it's a very nice place. I
mean it's doomed because of the fires, but it's very pretty.
Unlike that's safe place. Um, yeah, yeah, wherever you live,
that's certainly a safe place. Don't worry. Yeah, yeah, totally
nothing to worry about. Just listen to history. So or
(31:45):
make your future as a pocket note. Okay, so, but
there's still plenty of people who come from all over
the country and pour into San Diego, and they all
get arrested, as is the plan, and the conditions in
jail are fucking terrible, as is what everyone's used to.
People are sleeping on concrete floors, there's no beds. At
least one of the arrestees dies from lack of medical care.
(32:07):
And then something worse happens that will also be familiar
to the modern, modern reader, listener. Whatever. Capitalist Vigilante groups
start patrolling the streets, made up of random citizens and
off duty cops, and they start kidnapping people and beating
the ship out of them and leaving them outside city limits.
They even, like a mainstream newspaper, sides on the side
(32:28):
of free speech for some odd reason, and so these
vigilante groups like kidnapped the head of the newspaper and
beat the ship out of him and take him out
of town. Friend of the pod Emma Goldman, shows up,
the anarchist orator and free speech activist, and here's what
she saw. The vigilantes rated the I W W headquarters,
broke up the furniture and arrested a large number of
(32:49):
the men they found there. They were taking to Sorrento
to a place where a flagpole had been erected. They're
the iwws were forced to kneel, kiss the flag and
sing the national anthems. The incentive to quicker action, one
of the vigilantes would slap them on the back, which
was the signal for a general beating. After these proceedings,
the men were loaded into automobiles and sent to saint
(33:10):
on free near the county line, placed in a cattle
pen with armed guards over them and kept without food
or drink for eighteen hours. The following morning, they were
taken out in groups of five and compelled to run
the gauntlet. As they passed between the double line of Vigilantes,
they were belabored with clubs and Black Jacks. Then the
flag kissing episode was repeated, after which they were told
(33:32):
to hike up the track and never come back. They
reached Los Angeles after a tramp of several days, Sore, hungry,
penniless and in a deplorable physical state. That wasn't very nice.
Emma Goldman had a boyfriend. Emma Goldman had a boyfriend
who was a Hobo and a doctor named Dr Ben Reitman. Doctor,
(33:54):
Oh God, that's a TV premise right there. Oh Yeah, Um,
and actually I leave the TV podcast anarchist Hobo doctor,
Dr Ben Rightman. We're still workshopping the title. Is the
primary sponsor of this show? Yes, the the show which
exists in one of the alternate realities that we have
not ever last in Gob stoppard into an endless series
(34:16):
of explosions. Wouldn't it be awful if, instead of like
choosing all the ads based on things that we actually supported,
if they were just like randomly chosen by machines and
then just like Fed to our listeners? Yeah, you know,
one of the realities we're going to have to jump
to if this next gob stopper experiment fails does it
that way. But don't worry, I'm sure we won't end
up there now that would mean it went all wrong again. Anyway,
(34:40):
here's ads that we all totally support. Care about demon okay,
so a Hobo doctor, Dr Ben Right and overall he
kind of has a good run of it. I don't know,
I guess the day I'm a Goldman. That feels like bonus, right. Um, yeah,
he doesn't have a good run of it. And Sandy
A go. He was kidnapped out of his hotel room
(35:04):
and tarred and feathered. He had the letters I W
W burned into his butt with a lighter. Um. There
was some sexual violence I won't get into. He was
forced to kiss the flag, sing the anthem and run
the gauntlet before they let him go. It's cool because
right around this same period, uh, people are also doing
(35:26):
this on behalf of Zar Nicholas, you know, beating them
and carry out acts of sexual violence and forcing them
to kiss the flag or kiss symbols of the monarchy
and stuff. It's neat that all these bootlickers are the same.
You know, I hadn't heard that and it makes just
so complete sense. It's just so like, Yep, completely tracks. Yeah,
that's like right after the nineteen five yeah, yeah, not
(35:51):
that far. Yeah. And so the governor tries to send
people to investigate the vigilante groups, but the city council
refuses to cooperate with the investigation and they just like
stonewall the fucking governor from investigating what's going on in
their city, and succeed at that. The police break into
the wobbly hall on May seven and they just kill
(36:12):
a guy, a guy named Joseph Michaelish, and the wobblies
drive the cops after they kill this guy. The wobblies
drive the cops out of the hall with a hail
of gunfire and again to a gunfight with the COPS,
which is to say, non violence is and was a
tactic for them, not a moral stance, like they are
choosing non violently approach and try and solve these problems.
But they're all also armed and ship. You know, Um,
(36:35):
and I I want to quote from one of the
arrested wobblies, Jack White. He got six months for conspiracy
after the death of his fellow wobbly, and I'm literally
just quoting it because I think it's cool when people
say bad I shipped to court. There are only a
few words that I care to say, and the court
will not mistake them for legal argument, for I am
not acquainted with the phraseology of the bar nor the
(36:56):
language come into the courtroom. You have become mind and
death to the rights of man to pursue life and happiness,
and you have crushed those rights so that the sacred
right of property shall be preserved. Then you tell me
to respect the law. I do not. I did violate
the law, as I will violate every one of your
laws and still come before you and say to hell
(37:17):
with the courts, because I believe that my right to
life is more sacred than the sacred right to property
that you and your kind so ably defend. I do
not tell you this in the expectation of getting justice,
but to show my contempt for the machinery of law
and Justice as represented by this and every other court.
And just like that, it's UH. And it's interesting because
(37:42):
I have seen this fight depicted as a win and
a loss by Wobblis and other like labor reporters like
both at the time and now. Eventually, the vigilante justice
started to Peter out over the summer of but it
petered out because they'd driven everyone off everyone was in jail.
are like fucking running scared because non violence as a
(38:03):
strategy had been ective effective against the state, but it
was not effective against the vigilantes. Eventually, I believe, free
speech was restored, people were lewed out of prison. None
of the vigilantes were ever brought up on charges. I
think it was mostly the governor's intervention at the end,
but I can't remember and I got really confusing reports
and like all of the different pieces that I've read
(38:24):
about this. So none of the vigilantes are ever brought
up on charges, even though they're the ones who are
doing the actual stuff. As soon as they were released
they went right back to organizing, but I think they
didn't really try soap boxing in San Diego after that,
and so they basically at this point it's starting to
not go so well and I kind of hate to
go with the bummer thing, but I think the way
(38:46):
to describe this tactic is to keep describing this tactic
and see how it the diminishing returns they got for it.
I'm gonna tell one more of these free speech stories. Everett, Washington,
which is just north of Seattle, in late nineteen sixteen,
the shingle workers union was on strike at their sawmill
and I think these is it might be the same
shingle makers union that had quit the a F L
(39:08):
and joined the I W W during the spokane fight,
if I'm not mistaken. UH, shingles were invented in the northwest,
like literally, I used to live in a place called
Shingletown in California. I don't know if it's where they
were inventors, just where they get like made them the most.
But like we have a I don't know, I have
never been bored enough to look too deeply into the
(39:29):
shingle industry and how it spread, but I was told
by people at bars in Shingletown that they were the
town that invented the shingles. Yeah, I'm certain that's not
accurate because nothing I heard in those bars was. But
also the town was named after shingles, so there's gotta
be some history that. Yeah, and it could have been Shingleton,
and I'm a little disappointed in them. Could have been here.
So the Shingleton workers, well, I guess the Everett Shinglers. Yeah,
(39:52):
the shinglers are on strike at their sawmill and the
I W W starts agitating a solidarity because free speech
is like not the thing the I W W is
about right like it's interesting because it's like there are
these huge fights, into the most important free speech fights
in US history as far as I can tell, and
they're like this tiny portion of the stuff that the
IWW does. But they opened up a union hall and
(40:13):
Everett and they start soap boxing and the cops are
like Nope, fuck this, and instead of just like arresting
them and being like Oh, we're gonna fill up the jails,
they're like no, we've seen this, we've seen how that
goes the cops. They cut out the vigilante middleman and
they just start beating the ship out of everyone. They
just start breaking their bones and throwing them out of town.
(40:34):
So on October one wobbly show up from Seattle. They're
all like lumberjacks and ship and they're rounded up by
the Sheriff and Deputies and they're forced to run the
gauntlet between spiked bats this time. The next day locals
come to where the gauntlet had been and they're like,
there's an awful lot of blood on the grass. We're
not convinced that this is above board. What happened. Two
(40:57):
thousand locals show up to a rally demanding that it
all on too far. And it's another thing that I
keep thinking about with all of this. It's like it's
not the hobos versus the town, you know, it's the
hobos versus the city government, with the town divided and
mostly divided among class lines. I mean we you know,
(41:18):
I'm saying this on the day when I think there's
just been an action to try to stop the sweep
of a homeless encampment like this is this is still
going on and it's really easy. It's interesting the way
in which these kind of like itinerant populations with little
access to money, Um, but a lot of time and mobility,
are used continuously in different ways, but continuously Um as
(41:42):
a foil by the ruling class in order to split
up the working class. Right, you have them as strike breakers,
you have them escapegoats, but like whatever the thing is,
these are people who are both easy to make use
of Um in in a couple of different ways, but
propaganda being one of the main ones. Yeah, they like
outside agitators who have come to do everything, the outside agitators,
(42:03):
but also the you know the reason that uh like
like right now. Portland and San Diego actually are two
main big cities with a problem with this. You have
these in Los Angeles. You have these huge, aggressive sweeps
against the homeless, along alongside speeches and advocacy by political
leaders who are all backed by business associations, Um that
(42:24):
these people need to be forced off the street, you know, incarcerated.
A couple of states admitted a felony to camp outside
Um and it's part. What it is is that since
covid a lot of things have gotten worse. A lot
of people have found themselves in more desperate, desperate straits,
a lot of people have long term health issues, a
lot of businesses haven't recovered, and we could blame that
(42:44):
on the fact that all of the wrong decisions were
made and supported by the people who were backed by
moneyed interests in business associations and the like to respond
to that pandemic. or it can be like no, what's
wrong with all these cities? That there's people camping it
and that's what made them danger since, sketchy and unsafe,
and so we have to arrest the home. Yeah, so
(43:08):
on November five more wobblies from Seattle head North on
two passenger boats and they're singing as they go because
they're wobblies and wobbly's rule and everywhere they go like dwarves,
they sing songs about the Lonely Mountain Um. At least
that's what I would sing if I was actually it's
a hard song to sing. They mostly sank really simple songs.
(43:29):
Some of their hits include Hallelujah, I'm a bum Ah,
I'm just gonna go with that. One was one of
my favorites. And so they had north on two passenger boats,
Two d armed vigilantees alongside the sheriff, and I believe
that they're deputies at this point. So connecting, I think
it's just they call them cops along with the sheriff.
They've been tipped off by Pinkerton. So I think had
(43:50):
infiltrated the I W W and the first boat the Verona,
where we lay our scene. Now then, yeah, thanks, thanks.
I know one Shakespeare Um, I got it. Yeah, it
was a real deep cut. I don't know if you've
heard this play called Romeo and Juliet. No, but you know,
you have all of the all of the real punk,
(44:10):
you know, fringe, fringe media that's that. That's your specialty. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
The Shakespeare Guy, I feel like he's gonna blow up
in a year or two. Yeah, I think so. Um,
I mean, if not, we've got that time machine and
those gob stoppers. We can make him blow up. Uh. Well,
we haven't a couple of reality. Yeah, it's all. I
mean the important thing is that he was stopped before
(44:32):
he wrote that one play. Oh, what you do about nothing? Yeah,
that glad. In most timelines. That never came out. No,
that never came out. Um, and we got three sequels tonight. Writers. Yeah, yeah, Utopia,
I believe we call that timeline. Okay, so when the
(44:53):
boat shows up, the vigilantes just sucking open fire. They're
just like, we're just gonna shoot the ship out of
this fucking path, messenger boat. It was proven in court
that they had no idea if they were shooting wobblies
like they were like there's no way they would have known.
They like during the trial that like went and recreated
it and they were like, Oh, yeah, nope, you can't
(45:14):
see well enough. Before they opened fire, the WOBS shot back.
I think they were outgunned. When the shooting cleared, ten
minutes later, at least five wobblies were dead, thirty one
were injured, and on the vigilante side, two were dead
and nineteen were wounded. Yeah, and the Verona turned around
and sailed the fun back and they turned they passed
(45:34):
the second boat and they were like no, no, turn around,
you're just gonna get shot Um. And then when they landed,
all the wobblies on board were arrested. Seventy four of
them were charged with the murder of the vigilantes who
had been shooting at them. The trial, yeah, yeah, the
(45:55):
trial wouldn't last too long, though. It lasted two months,
and the defense hinged on the ideas that vigilantes had
and fire on randomly hint of passenger boats. Yeah, and also,
once again see the haymarket episode, the vigilantes had actually
shot each other because they were just shooting randomly and
had like we're in each other's line of fire and
were completely untrained and didn't like set up any kind
(46:17):
of firing line. Yeah, and this, the actual shocking part
of this, is that all seventy four defendants were acquitted. Well,
that ship. Yeah, that actually is very um good. The vigilantes,
of course, were never put on trial and the prosecution
made a big fucking deal out of how all the
(46:38):
wobblies were all evil bomb throwing anarchists and all across
the country. The the iww has painted as a domestic
terrorist threat, and this was, I think, the last of
the iwwes free speech fights. It was basically the like
you try the tactic and eventually the states like now
we're just gonna start shooting you. You know, and I
don't know if you knew this, but now, teen seventeen
(47:00):
wasn't a great time to be a leftist in the
United States of America. Yeah, I mean in some ways,
in other ways at least, like stuff was getting done. Okay,
fair enough. The the US joints World War One. Iww
moved a lot of its organizing to opposing the draft.
You get the first red scare, N which is kind
(47:21):
of more your, your wheelhouse, than mine. M The the
iww holds on. They're they're heavily targeted by the first
green scare and it like Fox them up real bad.
But they hold on. They're actually their numbers go up
in the twenties but by Um, by the end of
the twenties, their numbers are going down, and it's not
because their message was bad. It's not even that they're
(47:41):
organizing methods are bad, it's that they're like this is
the tiniest tip of the iceberg of the oppression that
they faced. And I also, don't know if you knew,
the US government hasn't been historically very friendly to socialist
and anarchist and communists. And then also in the twenties,
the IWW how to Split, I think, where a lot
of the former wildlies joined the communist party because they
(48:03):
prefer centralization to decentralization. And but the IWW, hundred fucking
years later, it still exists, it's still organizing and they
still do more work with like Gig workers and other
people who are harder to organize in traditional means Um
and whether it happens under their name or not, I
(48:24):
think their ideas are good. Like you know, there is
a little bit of a critique of like modern iww.
It doesn't have to be it. I think it could
absolutely become what it once was. But it's like you know,
sometimes we get caught up in our grand history and
like forget about the president a little bit. Yeah, and
sometimes I think like there's a mistake between reading all
(48:47):
this history and thinking about how rad the iww was
and then assuming that, like, the solution to our current
like problems is to rebuild exactly that rather than to
take lessons from which is not to say like, know
a bunch of people who are in the I W W.
They do great stuff. Um, it made a lot of
things easier for freelance journalists, but they're clearly not the
organization still that was doing all this right. They just aren't,
(49:10):
and that's that doesn't mean that they suck or I
hate them. It just is like, yeah, let's we gotta we.
The solution is not we need to make one big union.
The solution is we need to take the things that
worked from the I W W and figure out something else,
because at the end of the day, all of this
stuff is only successful by degrees and margins as opposed
(49:33):
to accomplishing the goals that they, the people at the time,
would have told you, is where they would have wanted
to be. Yeah, and that doesn't mean it's a failure.
Nothing ever works out the way. That is the dream,
except for our eventual GOB stopperer explosion. Right. Well, it's
just it's always a Fu back and forth. You know,
it's like and yeah, and they successfully. I mean like
(49:57):
it's hard for me to conceptualize what free each in
this country would look like without this right if like
thirty different cities who had tried to pass you know,
and I mean cities, still do this all the time.
There's still like weird free speech zones and limitations on
public assembly and yeah, it's a constant fight, but it
but it continues and I think that they set back
the forces of Mordor or whatever for a very long
(50:19):
time by doing its fighting. I don't think it's cool.
And I will say one thing that the I W
W does currently that I haven't seen anyone else do that.
I think it's just like if there's like one thing
that I'm just like absolutely full support, there's the incarcerated
workers organizing committee, which is prisoners organizing their own labor
(50:41):
as like prison labor, and it's fucking awesome. Yes, Um,
it is very cool. The I W W is still
very cool. You may find use in them and that's good. Um,
they're they're they're pretty fucking dope. I have yeah, so
I don't know, go up. People can donate to that.
(51:04):
I bet that's a good way to sign off. But
if you look up, I walk, you know the incarcerated
workers organizing committee. They do really stuck amazing stuff. They've
put on a ton of like prison strikes, Um, and
just draw attention to the fact that like, and you know,
we're starting to have right now. A bunch of states
have on their ballots. I'm speaking out of my ass
(51:25):
a little bit, but a bunch of states have on
their ballots like let's get rid of the loophole where
you're allowed to force people to work just because they're
in jail or whatever. Yeah, and you can in fact donate.
You can go to incarcerated workers dot org and there's
a donate now button, or you can go to incarcerated
incarcerated workers dot org slash donate. Yeah, right there. And
that is one of the amazing strengths of that ww
(51:47):
is that it's not it's not coming on from on high,
you know, like it's people on the outside and the
people on the inside are coordinating together to organize these things, Um,
rather than it just being like some something that's telling
prisoners what they should do or whatever. But if you're
not in prison, you should go out and buy Robert's book,
(52:09):
because Robert is an author. That's right. It's called after
the Revolution Um, a thing that a lot of people
at the I W W we're talking about also, albeit
with less cyborgs, when they were talking about it. Probably Sophie.
Do you have anything to plug? We're at the end
of the episode. By the way, I ww good people. Huh,
(52:34):
listen to behind the bastards. It's hosted by Robert Evans's
maybe it's a good show. That's all I got. All right, thanks, everyone.
Talk to you next week. Every week by cool people
(52:57):
who did cool stuff is a production of cool zone media.
It for more podcasts on cool zone media, visit our website,
cool zone media DOT COM, or check us out on
the I heart radio APP, apple podcasts or wherever you
get your podcasts.
Hello, this is cool. People did cool stuff. Have your host,
Margaret Killjoy. Robert Evans is our guest. Ert. Oh, Margaret,
we have a good time, laughter, fun stuff, mean comedy.
I love a podcast. You know what I love most
about podcast, Margaret? Why do you love that Podcast, Robert?
(00:22):
The fact that every single person can make a six
figure living from podcasts if they just pay fifty eight
hundred dollars for our two day inspirational convention meeting at
the Airport Ramada in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Not the Marriott anymore. No,
they kicked us right the funk out. Margaret, I'M gonna
(00:43):
be honest with you, I was just taking the deposit
money to spend on delatted. Well, I mean, how else
are you gonna get delotted exactly? Doesn't grow on true, well,
it does grow in a plant, kind of, but then
they have to do stuff to it to make it delotted. Yeah,
those people deserve a living wage. Yes, I actually am
here to represent all of the different painkillers, except for coding,
(01:04):
which have unionized in order to demand more of them
be given to me. Yeah, it's a beautiful showing of solidarity.
Hydro Code Own the latted and Sophie okay, yeah, Sop
Hi Ian as our audio editor. Hello, Ian on woman,
(01:25):
wrote our theme song. Hello on woman. You probably not
his name. What if you are? I like to live
in that world. I like to imagine that when you
shout out those people after shouting out sophie and I,
but they're here too and responding, and you're choosing to
cut their voices out of the show as a power move.
Oh yeah, I mean they're on the zoom call right now. Yeah,
they are. They're on every zoom call, which is kind
(01:46):
of weird that we make on women beyond every zoom call.
It is, but you know, I mean, if a woman
wants a podcast, she's got to put in the time
and she also has to start taking our patented magic berries,
just seventy three dollars a day, which increase your vitality. And, uh,
chemicals or chemicals the VF CO? Yeah, yeah, and so, okay.
(02:12):
So today is part two in our seventeen part series
discussing George ramorrow's classic nine one film night writers. Now,
my favorite part of the movie, Margaret, is when he
beats the ship out of his friend nearly to death
with a series of medieval weapons for trying to stop
him from fighting while he has a serious lung injury.
Ed Harris, we're talking about Ed Harris. Yeah, and character
(02:33):
of the George Ra merrow film night writers. It is
a consensual fight. I will say it is. All of
the fights are consensual. Police officer. Yeah, I kind of
consented by having been a bastard earlier. If you have
not watched the nineteen eighty one George Ra merrow film
night writers, which I had not until last night, you
(02:54):
wowe it to yourself or this podcast is about the
spokane free speech fight and the IWW and free speech
fights more broadly. Where we last left our heroes, they
were mostly in jail, but now they're gonna win, which
is it's not every week I get to tell a
story where the good guys win. Yeah, this section is
(03:16):
called the victory. It's not even ironic. In the end,
news about just how awful spoken was and just how
corrupt the city was and how brutals cops were and
all that got around and like cops actually managed to
get fired or asked to resign just over how public
because they were always this brutal right, but this whole
(03:36):
campaign actually paid brought a lot of attention to what
was happening and media across the country was just like
talking ship on Spokane, and Spokane was not happy about it.
The taxpayers in the city weren't happy about it because
they were paying a thousand dollars a week to house
all the Hoboes, about dollars today. And workers and other cities,
including other unions, not just the IWW, started boycotting everything
(03:59):
produced by the spokene merchants Um and also lawsuits from
the wobblies and other cities. Other folks in the city
just started piling up against the city because they would
do things like bring out fire hoses and spray people
fire hoses and stuff, which is like an unpopular thing.
Most people prefer not to be sprayed with fire hoses Um,
and some people sue about it. Other unions started showing
(04:22):
up in solidarity the Western Federation of Miners and court delaine.
They were among the people refusing all the goods coming
out of spokane, and the local AFL actually started getting
on board. Eventually they voted unanimously to demand the speech
band be revoked. The local media, besides, like one conservative paper,
was supporting them. About twelve thousand townspeople were represented in
(04:44):
court through various people, saying this is bullshit, like get
rid of this fucking bullshit, like bring back free speech. Hm.
And in March, about six months, in five months in
the city is beat. They revoked the ordinance, they released
the prisoners. They provoke the business licenses of more than
half of the different employment agencies, the ones that they like,
(05:06):
consider to be sketchier, the city considers to be sketchier. Unfortunately,
this actually leaves most of the major players, but it
does allow, well, want people to organize it against them
more effectively. And then also like there's just other ways
to get jobs besides being sold fictitious jobs. Yeah, and
the conspirators, however, they're still facing time right because their
(05:27):
charges weren't just disorderly conduct, they were conspiracy to break
a law or whatever. The governor actually pardoned them. And
the governor pardoned them because the I W W was
like hey, you should let our people go, and the
city was like no, we don't want to. There their criminals,
and I ww is like should we just do all
(05:47):
of this again? Should we just bring everyone back here?
And the cities, like the governors, like let's pardon you,
and three of the worst cops were forced to resign,
despite their protests. They were like, we don't want to resign.
They're like you're resigning. And maybe, most importantly, more important
than even the job buying show, as far as I'm concerned,
(06:08):
women's rights organizations, both radical and mainstream, sympathetic to the
wobblies and ones that fucking hated the wobblies, forced the
jail to hire a matron, I believe, with the purpose
of ending the sex slavery that was happening in the jail.
And a final note on the A F l, the
Racist Union. There was a major split between the leadership
and the rank and file, Um, which is a good
(06:30):
argument for everyone's leadership. Like in the WW, the A
F L heads like they were like hell yeah, this
this free speech fight. It's going to destroy the wobblies,
like thank God, because you know they're competing for the
same workers, right. Um. The rank and file, however, just
poured money and support into the free speech fights, and
(06:50):
a ton of them, like the shingle makers union, just
quit the A F L and affiliated with the wobblies instead.
And then, after everyone out of jail, this part is
left out of every history I've read except one random
note in one of the People's like this guy who
was part of it in the nine he's like writing
about it in the fifties and he throws it in
(07:12):
at the end after everyone gets out of jail, someone,
somebody just kills the chief of police with a shotgun
in the street and the murder is never solved and
the judge who had convicted all the wobblies, the judge
you hated the wobblies. He's like, you know, that cop
had a lot of enemies. It really couldn't anyone. And
(07:33):
throughout the entire fight there was all kinds of other
sabotage and stuff happening. The wobblies were like, no, that's
not us, it just seems to happen when we're around. Um,
it was almost certainly wobblies who were doing this stuff.
They were smashing out the windows of employment agencies and
at one point, as far as I can tell, again,
this is like one of those things where it's like
included in a random note from the time that a
(07:58):
train car with like seven the arrested wobblies derailed, uh,
and the wobblies were blamed for it, but no one
was actually specifically blamed for it. But like, I guess, theoretically,
like someone was like, I know how to free everyone
off that trail jail car, I will just derail it.
But officially the IWW only takes credit for the civil
disobedience and and it's a kind of a beautiful and
(08:19):
interesting method of diversity of tactics. They only claim certain actions,
but other actions are happening. And the other most interesting
thing that might have to do with how they funded
the entire thing at one point. Well, during all of this,
all of the cops in town are busy dealing with
the wobblies and so, quote, thieves reaped a bounty in
(08:39):
the suburbs Um, and so the I W W might
have had some clever ways how to fund the free
speech fight. They engaged in thirty of these fights, as
you were talking about earlier. Right. They saw this replicable
tactic and they just replicated it between nineteen sixteen. There
are free each fights in the United Canada, Mexico, Panamahiti,
(09:03):
no uh, Seattle, Vancouver, Missoula, Fresno, San Diego, San Pedro, Aberdeen, Seattle, again, Winachie, Wallah, Walla, Everett,
Sux City, Mobile Denver, Grand Junction, Paterson, Newcastle, old forged, Duluth, Minneapolis, Victoria, superior,
Kansas City, another city named Aberdeen, New Bedford and Minnotte
(09:25):
or Mino. Yeah, these are a lot of areas too
that you wouldn't today. You would never think that there
would be like progressive protests of any kind there. Oh yeah,
I mean like Spokane, Washington is not where I would
like go to get vegan food, you know. I mean
if you're a Vegan and spokeane, I'm sorry, and certainly
(09:46):
you wouldn't imagine spokane is like the nexus of like
a national hand Labor Solidarity Movement fighting the cops. Yeah,
that's like specifically anti racist and like and I mean,
and that's one of the things that's so interesting about
this period. Right, you're talking about all of these fucking
lumberjacks and ship which is not normally who you immediately
think of, especially if you live on the east coast.
(10:07):
Not a normally normally who you think of when you
think of leftists, you know. But I also think part
of that is because because it used to be actually
like there's a reason Blair mountain. Blair mountain didn't fucking happen.
Battle of Blair mountain wasn't a bunch of people who
lived in like inner city New York or whatever, right,
like it was. It was a bunch of fucking colass
miners in the middle of goddamn nowhere, Virginia. Um, yeah,
(10:28):
West Virginia. Well, I I don't, I don't, I don't.
I don't consider the other Virginia to be real. Um, no, no,
there's West Virginia and and then the Atlantic Ocean starts. Uh,
I'm a Richardson Rich Richmond, Richmond truther. I kind of
botched that joke by botching the name of the capital
of the wrong Virginia anyway, but no one of the
(10:51):
like missing. I don't know. I would like to see
this done. Well, I I say this knowing we should
probably do something on this. But how this south was
conquered by the reactionaries? Like, how? Not Not just the south,
is the only to put this sorry. How Rule America
was conquered by reactionaries? Um, because that was the fact
(11:12):
that it is now, quote unquote, read. Is Not the
way it always was. Nor was it inevitable that it
would go that way. Yeah, absolutely, and I don't think
it needs to stay that way either. You know, that's
a critical postscript. Yeah, I put all my my a
t M S and one basket a t M, a
T v S. I don't even own a TV. I
(11:33):
live on enough land that I should have an a TV,
but I don't. But yeah, no, I mean as yeah,
as someone who lives rural, I like I hate this conception.
You know that everyone who lives rural is right wing
and and everyone who works with their hands as right wing.
Is the the worst thing we've ever ceded to the right. Um, yeah, Yep,
(11:53):
but I'm gonna talking about some more of these free
speech fights. Unfortunately, you get kind of diminishing returns with
a lot of replicating tactics. Right, and the fight in
Fresno is the most important of these next fights. So
the fight in Fresno, frank little, who is the guy
who trolled by reading the Declaration of Independence Up and spoken?
He'd been organizing, quote unquote, unskilled fruit workers in the
(12:16):
San Joaquin Valley. Then a contractor tried to build a
damn but he couldn't find any exploitable workers because the
I W W had been organizing everyone, and so he
threw a big fit because he was like, but I
want to exploit workers. And so by May the COPS
started breaking up by W W meetings and arrested wobbly's
for vagrancy, which is a really weird law when you
(12:38):
think about it. Vagrancy, you're not allowed to not have anything. Yeah,
you're not allowed to occupy lands that based on our
shared conception of the nation, you own part of right. Like, yeah,
you're not allowed to just like take up space. You
have to have a house that you rent or pay for. Um,
(12:58):
it's kind of you know, here in the Great State
of Oregon, Um one of the two right thinking states,
we make it illegal for people to pump their own gasoline, um,
in order so that people have to have a job. Like,
basically it provides this kind of constant supply of jobs.
They're not particularly difficult pumping gasoline for people. And in
much the same way vagrancy laws or the government being
(13:20):
like hey, landlords, now there's no alternative to you unless
you can buy a house, which, don't worry, we're gonna
make hard to do real soon. Yeah, yeah, so frank
little he's one of the people who gets arrested. I
don't know if he's specifically up on vagrancy charges or
just being a wobblier. I suspect the cops don't not.
They're arresting him for he telephones the wobbly's national office
(13:41):
in Chicago. I think it's like it's like phone call
from jail. I don't know how that really did or
didn't exist in nineteen ten. Yeah, I don't know if
you got gee because they barely had phones. I now. Um,
he calls Chicago. So he asked for a campaign and
then an army of thousands of Hobos from all over
the country bill the jail. And mainstream papers just couldn't
figure it out. Why the funk are these people risking everything?
(14:04):
They're traveling thousands of miles just to get arrested for
a cause that doesn't directly affect them? And the answers
that mainstream papers don't understand solidarity. Um, because this could
be you right, you know you're you're going and doing
this thing because this affects you as well. And so
they they fill up the jails, crowds gather outside, they
start giving speeches through the bars. The cops bring out
(14:24):
fire hoses full of freezing water and they, the people
inside the jails, put mattresses up against the windows and
then like reach out to scream and tell like speeches
out to the crowd outside before they get sprayed with
hoses more and they don't stop until the ice water
is knee high in their cell. Finally, March Eleventh, nineteen eleven,
more fucking hoboes just keep coming and the city gives
(14:45):
up and restores free speech and lets everyone go. And
and there's all this like stuff that we're gonna talk
a little bit about. When sometimes they use violence, the
I W W using some violence and other labor unions
in particular using some violence. But and so people whenever
they use violence as this big fucking deal. But then
the like and some of their rhetoric was very, you know,
(15:08):
militant or whatever. But the other side was saying all
kinds of ship about them. Like specifically mainstream papers would
say things like editorial for the San Diego Tribune said
hanging is none too good for them. They would be
much better dead, for they're absolutely useless in the human economy.
They are waste material of creation and should be drained
off into the sewer of oblivion, there to rot in
(15:30):
cold obstruction like any other excrement, which is a very
poetic way of saying we're gonna liquidate you and murder
everyone you've ever met. The Fresno Herald and Democrat, which
is the name of a paper printed for men to
come here with the express purpose of creating trouble. A
whipping post and a cat of nine tales, well seasoned
(15:51):
by being soaked in salt water, is none too harsher
treatment for the peace breakers. So they've they've given it
some thought about all of the things that they want
to do to the Hobos, much like Ed Harris, the
actor guy with himself he did. This movie doesn't include
a naked Ed Harris, who is like thirty in a
(16:13):
snack in this movie, by the way, whipping himself one
handed with a read while waiting naked into a lake.
It's pretty good. More than once, more than once, George
Romero really needed you to see that. Yeah, yeah, and
George Romero is right. MHM, the San Diego Fight, uh,
that happens in and none of these things are happening
(16:36):
in a vacuum. Right. Um, the Labor movement had been
fighting fucking tooth and nail for decades. At this point
in the US, in southern California, the International Association of
Bridge and Structural Iron Workers, who are thankfully just called
the I w. they're they're no one to funk with
this particular union. Their their job, these bridge and structural
(16:56):
iron workers involves dynamite, so they have a lot of dynamite.
So their protests involved dynamite. Iron workers were generally unskilled
and treated like ship and they're fired all the time.
They're treated like seasonal labor, and so the fighting over
unionizing these shops is so fierce in Los Angeles that
(17:16):
the I w blew up a total of a hundred
and ten iron works between nineteen o six and nineteen eleven.
It is it is represented as the largest domestic terrorist
campaign in US history, although in a hundred and ten
bombings of non union workplaces, they injured or killed zero people.
(17:36):
And they were one of the last unions of any
power in Los Angeles. San Francisco is a huge labor hub,
but basically Los Angeles wasn't and the Anti Union Rich
Fox were too powerful that down there, including the Los
Angeles Times, which was like run on a very anti
union platform. They went on strike for they wanted fifty
cents an hour, which is about thirteen dollars or so today.
(17:59):
The government respond wanted by banning pickets. The strikes continued anyway.
The city government about five picketers were arrested for free
speech violations, for picketing and the I W at the
time they had this guy named Herbert Hockin, who was
in charge of organizing the dynamiting. Like your official union
organizer Job is, you're the guy in charge of, Um,
(18:21):
blowing things up and which is a good job. But
if you want a good job you should try podcasting. MHM, podcasting,
the thing you can only do if you spend seventy
two dollars for a one day conference at the Airport
Hilton in Milwaukee Wisconsin. The Airport Hilton in Milwaukee Wisconsin
(18:42):
the only place that would let us hold a convention.
and Um, who is a? WHO's providing the tax? But
that I can't remember. Um, well, it's B Y O B,
but we do take outs per day for meals, my
my meals. Yeah, well, I have meals. I have a
rare I mean you're I have a rare where if
(19:07):
I if I don't wrap, filet Mignon and original copies
of the United States Constitution. Um, I get I break
out in hives and that that's pretty intrensive. There's not
a lot of those left. I've eaten most of them. Yeah,
and also these other advertisers. And we are back and
(19:29):
we're talking about how union seems to have jobs, like
the guy in charge of dynamite. For us, the problem
is is that when you have a traditionally organized union,
has leaders, etcetera, and you put one guy in charge
of the dynamite in and he goes corrupt, like Herbert
Howkin was corrupt, it's really bad. He starts embezzling the
dynamite money and instead of putting it into dynamite, he
(19:52):
puts it into himself. So that's okay, yeah, fair enough.
He'll come back into the story in a little bit.
And so they decide that the l a times needs
to get got because they are printing too many anti
union things and they need a good dynamiting but they
(20:14):
don't trust Herbert Hackin anymore. They're starting to figure out
that if you give that guy money for dynamite, you
don't get nearly as much dynamite as you want. So
to Socialist Irish American brothers, the McNamara brothers, and they
have basically the same name. One's Jj and one's JB.
I'm just gonna call them the McNamara brothers. You didn't
know if your kids were going to live very long then,
so if you felt like you had a good name,
(20:35):
you could give it to like three of them at
a time. Yeah, I think pretty conscient problems like the
same fucking name, m hm Um. And they're like all right, well,
we're in the I W W, and I mean not sorry,
not the I W W, the regular I w the.
And they're like we've got this, we can do the dynamiting.
(20:55):
One of them is the conspirator who helps organize it,
and one of them is the bomber. The younger brother.
He gets he gets the bomber job. He puts sixteen
sticks of dynamite in a suitcase, he sets it up
on a timer to go off at one am on
October one and he puts it near some flammable INC
at the printing press at the UM L A times.
(21:16):
He then gets on the next train out of town
for San Francisco. So he isn't around when the bomb
goes off. Oh and before that he also set bombs
at two people's houses, the Anti Union Times editor and
the guy in charge of the Anti Union, the merchant
and Manufacturers Association, the thing, like the other thing where
all the people get together and fight unions. But, Robert,
(21:39):
did you know that there's a downside to explosives? Well,
I've heard this, Margaret. I mean I would say that
the clearest one is that when you use them, you
can't use them a second time, which is really the
great which is why I'm working on when I opened
up my Willy Wonka style bomb factories of the world,
we're working on the everlasting gob stoppers of e four Um.
(22:01):
The only problem is that when we tested them out
last time, uh, they kind of created a sort of
gray goo apocalypse situation in which they continue to change
of detonations that ended all life. To cut the multiverse
to a different times we did. We had to carve
out a multiverse Um. But you know, you can't make
an Omelet without killing, you know. But but in the
(22:21):
old one we all got to drive around hot dog trucks.
It was it was awesome. Oh, and climate change wasn't
a thing every yeah, when we jumped into this one
we were quite surprised because those hot dog trucks were electric.
Is Ship? Um, yeah, this one's worse than every way.
There's also a Great Britain in this one, which seems
like a real problem. I thought that was a joke.
(22:43):
There really oh no, no, it's real. Yeah, so did I. Wait,
do they have it? Wait, do they have a queen? Yeah,
they share too, which is really funny, because the actual
whales with rules all of Western Europe in the original
timeline has a has like a joke Queen on holidays, Um.
But but here the Real Great Britain. Um, it's just ridiculous. Anyway,
(23:06):
sorry for the gob stopper bomb that killed the good universe.
It's okay. Well, if Great Britain no longer has a queen,
you know that we've hopped into a different timeline. So, yeah, yeah,
which means the gob stoppers went wrong again. We're still
tweaking those bad boys. Yeah, Um, don't don't worry though.
I mean, you know, the Nice thing about this universe
is that there were an extra twelve good seasons of
(23:27):
star trek the next generation. So unless the Queen recently
died in the universe, your inhabit. Go Watch. Really, season
sixteen is when the show sir. Absolutely. Yeah, I don't
want to give any spoilers. So the NAMARA brothers, they're
playing with explosives, and the problem with playing with explosives,
(23:48):
besides changing timelines. Well, actually the problem is changing timelines.
You often change to a timeline where the wrong people die. Uh,
and this is what happened this time. They set these
bombs up and they set it up near a gas maine.
So their manage, they're trying to like destroy some property
and like stick it to the man and be like,
you know, hey, we blew up part of your printing
(24:09):
press and no one got hurt. They they destroy the
entire building and a hell of fire because the gas
mate explodes and catches on fire and the building burns down.
And the other thing that they didn't know, because they
didn't do their fucking homework, is that there were newspaper
workers there that night because they were putting out a
special edition of the newspaper because of like some horse
race or something. And so they blow up the entire
(24:31):
fucking three story building. They Killed Twenty one people. Um, yeah, whoop,
but OOP. No, this is. This is not the cool
people doing cool stuff part of this, and they as.
As for the bombs that they put outside the assholes houses, uh,
they wound the timers too tightly and they took too
long before they went off and they were safely discovered
(24:51):
and disarmed. It didn't take too long to track down
these brothers. The younger brother, the bomber. He confessed as
part of a plea deal that got him life in prison.
But basically the plea deal was my brother doesn't get
life in prison. Um, he's like. I will say I
did it all. You give my brother fifteen years instead
of life in prison and you took that deal and
(25:13):
his confession. He said it was my intention to injure
the building and scare the owners. I sincerely regret that
these unfortunate men lost their lives. If the giving of
my life would bring them back, I would gladly give it.
And that trial basically, or that bombing rather basically, killed
the L A labor movement for about forty years. So
(25:35):
note to self other people. The older brother, he gets
out of prison, he goes right back to labor organizing
the the younger brother, dyson, dies in prison and yeah,
bombs don't always work like you think you're going to work.
Uh Oh. And the guy who had been running the
bombing campaign prior Hawkin, the one who is in Bezzling,
it turns out he had been a paid informant for
(25:57):
the business association, the entire tie him. Oh, cool. Yeah,
on the other hand, he didn't testify against the McNair
NAMARA brothers because, at least according to a New York
Times article from that from back then, he was like, basically,
are you kidding me? If I testify, the unionists will
literally murder me. There is no way I will testify
(26:18):
against them. Um. So even his paid informing only went
so far. This is not the I W W that
I was just talking about. The I w not to
be confused, but the reason it's important to what we're
talking about is this is the context that, less than
a year later, the wobblies step into and the wobblies
(26:38):
go to San Diego for a free speech fight, UM,
which also it turns out, and back me up on this, Sophie, Um,
San Diego is not part of Los Angeles. It is
not part of Los Angeles. Yeah, which is interesting because
I thought, well, we call it West El a, a
lot back in Los Angeles, which, because it's south, farest
(27:01):
the far South Bay, it is. It is two to
three hours south of Los Angeles. Great Food. Great San Diego,
better known as Little Sacramento. No, nobody says that. It
is a lovely place. That is very expensive. But in
(27:22):
Sonatas nearby, yeah, the the can't, can't understate food. Excellent. Yep,
and that's where they went, southern California. The food. Yes,
it is not a great place to be. A union
organized around this time in Jan San Diego is like,
(27:43):
you know what, fucket, let's not even let them talk.
And they banned free speech in midtown, all of midtown.
Ostensible reason is the same as it always was. Public
gatherings might block traffic. In fact, the actual event that
will be familiar to modern listeners that sparked the entire
thing is when rich asshole tried to run his car
through a crowd of protesters. The crowd stopped him and
(28:05):
slashed his tires and he was like, dear the state,
I was prevented from driving my automobile through a crowd
of people. Please make the people not exist and the
states like yeah, that's true. So a free speech league
forms and it's not full of all right types. It's anarchists, Socialists, wobblies,
(28:26):
most of whom are anarchists or Socialists, and then some
of the less radical unionists from the a f l,
and then the single taxers, who are really interesting. I
only halfway understand them. They're kind of somewhere between a
libertarian and a socialist, but not in a libertarian socialist way.
They're like free market combined with strong welfare state. I
think so. I guess they're the no, they're not really
(28:48):
all right at all. They're actually just their own weird wing.
That thing, the I W W in San Diego had
already been around for a while. Their big success was
that they had organized the Mexican workers of the gas
and electric company a few years earlier. But of course
many of the radical Mexicans left in San Diego left
in to go back to Mexico to fight for that future.
Friend of the pod of the Mexican revolution, two thousand
(29:11):
or five thousand of them, depending on who you ask.
They go off marching in defense of the band. Right
away they're like, oh, we're not to march fun. You
were marching hundreds of them wind up in jail. They're
facing felony conspiracy charges. I think hundreds of them are
facing felonies conspiracy charges. And then when people try to
have solidarity demonstrations, they're broken up by future friend of
your pod fire hoses. I feel like there's got to
(29:33):
have been fire hoses on your podcast. I mean we've
talked about definitely protesters getting ye with fire hoses. Yeah, yeah,
and this leads to one of the more interesting okay,
so basically, like all right, the wobblies are like, all right,
we know how to do this thing right, and this
time it's not just them, but they are a huge
part of it, and they're like, all right, we know
how to do this. We're gonna get hoboes from all
(29:53):
over the place. And so a hundred and twenty hoboes, wobblies,
ride trains down from Portland, Oregon, and they make it. Yeah,
they get to the Oregon California border, where they get
to Ashland and they're like, oh, ship, we'll get busted
by the train cops if we keep going. I think
even though the union workers on the trains were like, Oh,
you'll get busted if you keep going. So they get
(30:14):
out and they start walking. They walk through a snowstorm
in the mountains. They walk two miles on foot and
they're like a self organized small army on the March.
They have different committees, they have doctors with them, they
have security, there's people up ahead scouting for like train
lines and ship locals give them money and food. They
(30:36):
hold rallies everywhere they go. It basically becomes this tour
walking around being like this is what's up, and they're
spreading the word of the eight hour work day, which
is still not actually one by this point. They're talking
about how decent labor conditions are, only not such a
really one by this point. Eight. Yeah, what are you
talking about? I didn't wake up at seven to work
one job before working on this job. Yeah, and so
(31:01):
and they're this fucking Hobo army and their off restore
free speech in California. But they they got the timing wrong.
Walking two forty four miles, it takes a while when
you go through the mountains. By the time they get
to Chico, the fight is over. Ah, and now they're
in Chico, which just makes it worse. I know, that's right,
(31:23):
that's right. Chico Yeah, I think our publisher is based. No,
it's it's a nice it's a very nice place. I
mean it's doomed because of the fires, but it's very pretty.
Unlike that's safe place. Um, yeah, yeah, wherever you live,
that's certainly a safe place. Don't worry. Yeah, yeah, totally
nothing to worry about. Just listen to history. So or
(31:45):
make your future as a pocket note. Okay, so, but
there's still plenty of people who come from all over
the country and pour into San Diego, and they all
get arrested, as is the plan, and the conditions in
jail are fucking terrible, as is what everyone's used to.
People are sleeping on concrete floors, there's no beds. At
least one of the arrestees dies from lack of medical care.
(32:07):
And then something worse happens that will also be familiar
to the modern, modern reader, listener. Whatever. Capitalist Vigilante groups
start patrolling the streets, made up of random citizens and
off duty cops, and they start kidnapping people and beating
the ship out of them and leaving them outside city limits.
They even, like a mainstream newspaper, sides on the side
(32:28):
of free speech for some odd reason, and so these
vigilante groups like kidnapped the head of the newspaper and
beat the ship out of him and take him out
of town. Friend of the pod Emma Goldman, shows up,
the anarchist orator and free speech activist, and here's what
she saw. The vigilantes rated the I W W headquarters,
broke up the furniture and arrested a large number of
(32:49):
the men they found there. They were taking to Sorrento
to a place where a flagpole had been erected. They're
the iwws were forced to kneel, kiss the flag and
sing the national anthems. The incentive to quicker action, one
of the vigilantes would slap them on the back, which
was the signal for a general beating. After these proceedings,
the men were loaded into automobiles and sent to saint
(33:10):
on free near the county line, placed in a cattle
pen with armed guards over them and kept without food
or drink for eighteen hours. The following morning, they were
taken out in groups of five and compelled to run
the gauntlet. As they passed between the double line of Vigilantes,
they were belabored with clubs and Black Jacks. Then the
flag kissing episode was repeated, after which they were told
(33:32):
to hike up the track and never come back. They
reached Los Angeles after a tramp of several days, Sore, hungry,
penniless and in a deplorable physical state. That wasn't very nice.
Emma Goldman had a boyfriend. Emma Goldman had a boyfriend
who was a Hobo and a doctor named Dr Ben Reitman. Doctor,
(33:54):
Oh God, that's a TV premise right there. Oh Yeah, Um,
and actually I leave the TV podcast anarchist Hobo doctor,
Dr Ben Rightman. We're still workshopping the title. Is the
primary sponsor of this show? Yes, the the show which
exists in one of the alternate realities that we have
not ever last in Gob stoppard into an endless series
(34:16):
of explosions. Wouldn't it be awful if, instead of like
choosing all the ads based on things that we actually supported,
if they were just like randomly chosen by machines and
then just like Fed to our listeners? Yeah, you know,
one of the realities we're going to have to jump
to if this next gob stopper experiment fails does it
that way. But don't worry, I'm sure we won't end
up there now that would mean it went all wrong again. Anyway,
(34:40):
here's ads that we all totally support. Care about demon okay,
so a Hobo doctor, Dr Ben Right and overall he
kind of has a good run of it. I don't know,
I guess the day I'm a Goldman. That feels like bonus, right. Um, yeah,
he doesn't have a good run of it. And Sandy
A go. He was kidnapped out of his hotel room
(35:04):
and tarred and feathered. He had the letters I W
W burned into his butt with a lighter. Um. There
was some sexual violence I won't get into. He was
forced to kiss the flag, sing the anthem and run
the gauntlet before they let him go. It's cool because
right around this same period, uh, people are also doing
(35:26):
this on behalf of Zar Nicholas, you know, beating them
and carry out acts of sexual violence and forcing them
to kiss the flag or kiss symbols of the monarchy
and stuff. It's neat that all these bootlickers are the same.
You know, I hadn't heard that and it makes just
so complete sense. It's just so like, Yep, completely tracks. Yeah,
that's like right after the nineteen five yeah, yeah, not
(35:51):
that far. Yeah. And so the governor tries to send
people to investigate the vigilante groups, but the city council
refuses to cooperate with the investigation and they just like
stonewall the fucking governor from investigating what's going on in
their city, and succeed at that. The police break into
the wobbly hall on May seven and they just kill
(36:12):
a guy, a guy named Joseph Michaelish, and the wobblies
drive the cops after they kill this guy. The wobblies
drive the cops out of the hall with a hail
of gunfire and again to a gunfight with the COPS,
which is to say, non violence is and was a
tactic for them, not a moral stance, like they are
choosing non violently approach and try and solve these problems.
But they're all also armed and ship. You know, Um,
(36:35):
and I I want to quote from one of the
arrested wobblies, Jack White. He got six months for conspiracy
after the death of his fellow wobbly, and I'm literally
just quoting it because I think it's cool when people
say bad I shipped to court. There are only a
few words that I care to say, and the court
will not mistake them for legal argument, for I am
not acquainted with the phraseology of the bar nor the
(36:56):
language come into the courtroom. You have become mind and
death to the rights of man to pursue life and happiness,
and you have crushed those rights so that the sacred
right of property shall be preserved. Then you tell me
to respect the law. I do not. I did violate
the law, as I will violate every one of your
laws and still come before you and say to hell
(37:17):
with the courts, because I believe that my right to
life is more sacred than the sacred right to property
that you and your kind so ably defend. I do
not tell you this in the expectation of getting justice,
but to show my contempt for the machinery of law
and Justice as represented by this and every other court.
And just like that, it's UH. And it's interesting because
(37:42):
I have seen this fight depicted as a win and
a loss by Wobblis and other like labor reporters like
both at the time and now. Eventually, the vigilante justice
started to Peter out over the summer of but it
petered out because they'd driven everyone off everyone was in jail.
are like fucking running scared because non violence as a
(38:03):
strategy had been ective effective against the state, but it
was not effective against the vigilantes. Eventually, I believe, free
speech was restored, people were lewed out of prison. None
of the vigilantes were ever brought up on charges. I
think it was mostly the governor's intervention at the end,
but I can't remember and I got really confusing reports
and like all of the different pieces that I've read
(38:24):
about this. So none of the vigilantes are ever brought
up on charges, even though they're the ones who are
doing the actual stuff. As soon as they were released
they went right back to organizing, but I think they
didn't really try soap boxing in San Diego after that,
and so they basically at this point it's starting to
not go so well and I kind of hate to
go with the bummer thing, but I think the way
(38:46):
to describe this tactic is to keep describing this tactic
and see how it the diminishing returns they got for it.
I'm gonna tell one more of these free speech stories. Everett, Washington,
which is just north of Seattle, in late nineteen sixteen,
the shingle workers union was on strike at their sawmill
and I think these is it might be the same
shingle makers union that had quit the a F L
(39:08):
and joined the I W W during the spokane fight,
if I'm not mistaken. UH, shingles were invented in the northwest,
like literally, I used to live in a place called
Shingletown in California. I don't know if it's where they
were inventors, just where they get like made them the most.
But like we have a I don't know, I have
never been bored enough to look too deeply into the
(39:29):
shingle industry and how it spread, but I was told
by people at bars in Shingletown that they were the
town that invented the shingles. Yeah, I'm certain that's not
accurate because nothing I heard in those bars was. But
also the town was named after shingles, so there's gotta
be some history that. Yeah, and it could have been Shingleton,
and I'm a little disappointed in them. Could have been here.
So the Shingleton workers, well, I guess the Everett Shinglers. Yeah,
(39:52):
the shinglers are on strike at their sawmill and the
I W W starts agitating a solidarity because free speech
is like not the thing the I W W is
about right like it's interesting because it's like there are
these huge fights, into the most important free speech fights
in US history as far as I can tell, and
they're like this tiny portion of the stuff that the
IWW does. But they opened up a union hall and
(40:13):
Everett and they start soap boxing and the cops are
like Nope, fuck this, and instead of just like arresting
them and being like Oh, we're gonna fill up the jails,
they're like no, we've seen this, we've seen how that
goes the cops. They cut out the vigilante middleman and
they just start beating the ship out of everyone. They
just start breaking their bones and throwing them out of town.
(40:34):
So on October one wobbly show up from Seattle. They're
all like lumberjacks and ship and they're rounded up by
the Sheriff and Deputies and they're forced to run the
gauntlet between spiked bats this time. The next day locals
come to where the gauntlet had been and they're like,
there's an awful lot of blood on the grass. We're
not convinced that this is above board. What happened. Two
(40:57):
thousand locals show up to a rally demanding that it
all on too far. And it's another thing that I
keep thinking about with all of this. It's like it's
not the hobos versus the town, you know, it's the
hobos versus the city government, with the town divided and
mostly divided among class lines. I mean we you know,
(41:18):
I'm saying this on the day when I think there's
just been an action to try to stop the sweep
of a homeless encampment like this is this is still
going on and it's really easy. It's interesting the way
in which these kind of like itinerant populations with little
access to money, Um, but a lot of time and mobility,
are used continuously in different ways, but continuously Um as
(41:42):
a foil by the ruling class in order to split
up the working class. Right, you have them as strike breakers,
you have them escapegoats, but like whatever the thing is,
these are people who are both easy to make use
of Um in in a couple of different ways, but
propaganda being one of the main ones. Yeah, they like
outside agitators who have come to do everything, the outside agitators,
(42:03):
but also the you know the reason that uh like
like right now. Portland and San Diego actually are two
main big cities with a problem with this. You have
these in Los Angeles. You have these huge, aggressive sweeps
against the homeless, along alongside speeches and advocacy by political
leaders who are all backed by business associations, Um that
(42:24):
these people need to be forced off the street, you know, incarcerated.
A couple of states admitted a felony to camp outside
Um and it's part. What it is is that since
covid a lot of things have gotten worse. A lot
of people have found themselves in more desperate, desperate straits,
a lot of people have long term health issues, a
lot of businesses haven't recovered, and we could blame that
(42:44):
on the fact that all of the wrong decisions were
made and supported by the people who were backed by
moneyed interests in business associations and the like to respond
to that pandemic. or it can be like no, what's
wrong with all these cities? That there's people camping it
and that's what made them danger since, sketchy and unsafe,
and so we have to arrest the home. Yeah, so
(43:08):
on November five more wobblies from Seattle head North on
two passenger boats and they're singing as they go because
they're wobblies and wobbly's rule and everywhere they go like dwarves,
they sing songs about the Lonely Mountain Um. At least
that's what I would sing if I was actually it's
a hard song to sing. They mostly sank really simple songs.
(43:29):
Some of their hits include Hallelujah, I'm a bum Ah,
I'm just gonna go with that. One was one of
my favorites. And so they had north on two passenger boats,
Two d armed vigilantees alongside the sheriff, and I believe
that they're deputies at this point. So connecting, I think
it's just they call them cops along with the sheriff.
They've been tipped off by Pinkerton. So I think had
(43:50):
infiltrated the I W W and the first boat the Verona,
where we lay our scene. Now then, yeah, thanks, thanks.
I know one Shakespeare Um, I got it. Yeah, it
was a real deep cut. I don't know if you've
heard this play called Romeo and Juliet. No, but you know,
you have all of the all of the real punk,
(44:10):
you know, fringe, fringe media that's that. That's your specialty. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
The Shakespeare Guy, I feel like he's gonna blow up
in a year or two. Yeah, I think so. Um,
I mean, if not, we've got that time machine and
those gob stoppers. We can make him blow up. Uh. Well,
we haven't a couple of reality. Yeah, it's all. I
mean the important thing is that he was stopped before
(44:32):
he wrote that one play. Oh, what you do about nothing? Yeah,
that glad. In most timelines. That never came out. No,
that never came out. Um, and we got three sequels tonight. Writers. Yeah, yeah, Utopia,
I believe we call that timeline. Okay, so when the
(44:53):
boat shows up, the vigilantes just sucking open fire. They're
just like, we're just gonna shoot the ship out of
this fucking path, messenger boat. It was proven in court
that they had no idea if they were shooting wobblies
like they were like there's no way they would have known.
They like during the trial that like went and recreated
it and they were like, Oh, yeah, nope, you can't
(45:14):
see well enough. Before they opened fire, the WOBS shot back.
I think they were outgunned. When the shooting cleared, ten
minutes later, at least five wobblies were dead, thirty one
were injured, and on the vigilante side, two were dead
and nineteen were wounded. Yeah, and the Verona turned around
and sailed the fun back and they turned they passed
(45:34):
the second boat and they were like no, no, turn around,
you're just gonna get shot Um. And then when they landed,
all the wobblies on board were arrested. Seventy four of
them were charged with the murder of the vigilantes who
had been shooting at them. The trial, yeah, yeah, the
(45:55):
trial wouldn't last too long, though. It lasted two months,
and the defense hinged on the ideas that vigilantes had
and fire on randomly hint of passenger boats. Yeah, and also,
once again see the haymarket episode, the vigilantes had actually
shot each other because they were just shooting randomly and
had like we're in each other's line of fire and
were completely untrained and didn't like set up any kind
(46:17):
of firing line. Yeah, and this, the actual shocking part
of this, is that all seventy four defendants were acquitted. Well,
that ship. Yeah, that actually is very um good. The vigilantes,
of course, were never put on trial and the prosecution
made a big fucking deal out of how all the
(46:38):
wobblies were all evil bomb throwing anarchists and all across
the country. The the iww has painted as a domestic
terrorist threat, and this was, I think, the last of
the iwwes free speech fights. It was basically the like
you try the tactic and eventually the states like now
we're just gonna start shooting you. You know, and I
don't know if you knew this, but now, teen seventeen
(47:00):
wasn't a great time to be a leftist in the
United States of America. Yeah, I mean in some ways,
in other ways at least, like stuff was getting done. Okay,
fair enough. The the US joints World War One. Iww
moved a lot of its organizing to opposing the draft.
You get the first red scare, N which is kind
(47:21):
of more your, your wheelhouse, than mine. M The the
iww holds on. They're they're heavily targeted by the first
green scare and it like Fox them up real bad.
But they hold on. They're actually their numbers go up
in the twenties but by Um, by the end of
the twenties, their numbers are going down, and it's not
because their message was bad. It's not even that they're
(47:41):
organizing methods are bad, it's that they're like this is
the tiniest tip of the iceberg of the oppression that
they faced. And I also, don't know if you knew,
the US government hasn't been historically very friendly to socialist
and anarchist and communists. And then also in the twenties,
the IWW how to Split, I think, where a lot
of the former wildlies joined the communist party because they
(48:03):
prefer centralization to decentralization. And but the IWW, hundred fucking
years later, it still exists, it's still organizing and they
still do more work with like Gig workers and other
people who are harder to organize in traditional means Um
and whether it happens under their name or not, I
(48:24):
think their ideas are good. Like you know, there is
a little bit of a critique of like modern iww.
It doesn't have to be it. I think it could
absolutely become what it once was. But it's like you know,
sometimes we get caught up in our grand history and
like forget about the president a little bit. Yeah, and
sometimes I think like there's a mistake between reading all
(48:47):
this history and thinking about how rad the iww was
and then assuming that, like, the solution to our current
like problems is to rebuild exactly that rather than to
take lessons from which is not to say like, know
a bunch of people who are in the I W W.
They do great stuff. Um, it made a lot of
things easier for freelance journalists, but they're clearly not the
organization still that was doing all this right. They just aren't,
(49:10):
and that's that doesn't mean that they suck or I
hate them. It just is like, yeah, let's we gotta we.
The solution is not we need to make one big union.
The solution is we need to take the things that
worked from the I W W and figure out something else,
because at the end of the day, all of this
stuff is only successful by degrees and margins as opposed
(49:33):
to accomplishing the goals that they, the people at the time,
would have told you, is where they would have wanted
to be. Yeah, and that doesn't mean it's a failure.
Nothing ever works out the way. That is the dream,
except for our eventual GOB stopperer explosion. Right. Well, it's
just it's always a Fu back and forth. You know,
it's like and yeah, and they successfully. I mean like
(49:57):
it's hard for me to conceptualize what free each in
this country would look like without this right if like
thirty different cities who had tried to pass you know,
and I mean cities, still do this all the time.
There's still like weird free speech zones and limitations on
public assembly and yeah, it's a constant fight, but it
but it continues and I think that they set back
the forces of Mordor or whatever for a very long
(50:19):
time by doing its fighting. I don't think it's cool.
And I will say one thing that the I W
W does currently that I haven't seen anyone else do that.
I think it's just like if there's like one thing
that I'm just like absolutely full support, there's the incarcerated
workers organizing committee, which is prisoners organizing their own labor
(50:41):
as like prison labor, and it's fucking awesome. Yes, Um,
it is very cool. The I W W is still
very cool. You may find use in them and that's good. Um,
they're they're they're pretty fucking dope. I have yeah, so
I don't know, go up. People can donate to that.
(51:04):
I bet that's a good way to sign off. But
if you look up, I walk, you know the incarcerated
workers organizing committee. They do really stuck amazing stuff. They've
put on a ton of like prison strikes, Um, and
just draw attention to the fact that like, and you know,
we're starting to have right now. A bunch of states
have on their ballots. I'm speaking out of my ass
(51:25):
a little bit, but a bunch of states have on
their ballots like let's get rid of the loophole where
you're allowed to force people to work just because they're
in jail or whatever. Yeah, and you can in fact donate.
You can go to incarcerated workers dot org and there's
a donate now button, or you can go to incarcerated
incarcerated workers dot org slash donate. Yeah, right there. And
that is one of the amazing strengths of that ww
(51:47):
is that it's not it's not coming on from on high,
you know, like it's people on the outside and the
people on the inside are coordinating together to organize these things, Um,
rather than it just being like some something that's telling
prisoners what they should do or whatever. But if you're
not in prison, you should go out and buy Robert's book,
(52:09):
because Robert is an author. That's right. It's called after
the Revolution Um, a thing that a lot of people
at the I W W we're talking about also, albeit
with less cyborgs, when they were talking about it. Probably Sophie.
Do you have anything to plug? We're at the end
of the episode. By the way, I ww good people. Huh,
(52:34):
listen to behind the bastards. It's hosted by Robert Evans's
maybe it's a good show. That's all I got. All right, thanks, everyone.
Talk to you next week. Every week by cool people
(52:57):
who did cool stuff is a production of cool zone media.
It for more podcasts on cool zone media, visit our website,
cool zone media DOT COM, or check us out on
the I heart radio APP, apple podcasts or wherever you
get your podcasts.
Host
Margaret Killjoy
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