Part Two: The IWW and the Hobos Who Saved Free Speech

the Airport Ramada in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Not the Marriott anymore. No, they kicked us right the funk out. Margaret, I'M gonna 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, 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, 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 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. 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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. 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, 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 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 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 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, 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

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 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, 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 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 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?

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 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

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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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. 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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. 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. 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, 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. 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 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. 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, 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

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, 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 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 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 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 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

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

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 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 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 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 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, 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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,

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

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. 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 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 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 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 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,

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

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,

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 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 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 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 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, 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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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.

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 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, 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 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, 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 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 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 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. 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 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, 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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.

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 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 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,

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, 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 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.