Download or read book Wobblies of the World written by Peter Cole and published by Pluto Press (UK). This book was released on 2017 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A history of the global nature of the radical union, The Industrial Workers of the World

Download or read book Wobblies written by Paul Buhle and published by Verso. This book was released on 2005-04-17 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A vibrant history in graphic art of the Wobblies, published for the centenary of the founding of the Industrial Workers of the World.

Download or read book Wobblies on the Waterfront written by Peter Cole and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2010-10-01 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The rise and fall of America's first truly interracial labor union For almost a decade during the 1910s and 1920s, the Philadelphia waterfront was home to the most durable interracial, multiethnic union seen in the United States prior to the CIO era. For much of its time, Local 8 was majority black, always with a cadre of black leaders. The union also claimed immigrants from Eastern Europe, as well as many Irish Americans, who had a notorious reputation for racism. This important study is the first book-length examination of how Local 8, affiliated with the Industrial Workers of the World, accomplished what no other did at the time. Peter Cole outlines the factors that were instrumental in Local 8's success, both ideological (the IWW's commitment to working-class solidarity) and pragmatic (racial divisions helped solidify employer dominance). He also shows how race was central not only to the rise but also to the decline of Local 8, as increasing racial tensions were manipulated by employers and federal agents bent on the union's destruction.

Download or read book Wobblies and Zapatistas written by Staughton Lynd and published by PM Press. This book was released on 2008-09-01 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wobblies and Zapatistas offers the reader an encounter between two generations and two traditions. Andrej Grubačić is an anarchist from the Balkans. Staughton Lynd is a lifelong pacifist, influenced by Marxism. They meet in dialogue in an effort to bring together the anarchist and Marxist traditions, to discuss the writing of history by those who make it, and to remind us of the idea that “my country is the world.” Encompassing a Left-libertarian perspective and an emphatically activist standpoint, these conversations are meant to be read in the clubs and affinity groups of the new Movement. The authors accompany us on a journey through modern revolutions, direct actions, antiglobalist counter-summits, Freedom Schools, Zapatista cooperatives, Haymarket and Petrograd, Hanoi and Belgrade, “intentional” communities, wildcat strikes, early Protestant communities, Native American democratic practices, the Workers’ Solidarity Club of Youngstown, occupied factories, self-organized councils and soviets, the lives of forgotten revolutionaries, Quaker meetings, antiwar movements, and prison rebellions. Neglected and forgotten moments of interracial self-activity are brought to light. The book invites the attention of readers who believe that a better world, on the other side of capitalism and state bureaucracy, may indeed be possible.

Download or read book The Centralia Tragedy of 1919 written by Tom Copeland and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2011-07-01 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On November 11, 1919, the citizens of Centralia, Washington, gathered to watch former servicemen, local Boy Scouts, and other community groups march in the Armstice Day parade. When the marchers swung past the meeting hall of the Industrial Workers of the World, a group of veterans broke ranks, charged the hall, and were met by gunshots. Before the day was over, four of the marchers were dead and one of the Wobblies had been lynched by the mob. Through a wealth of newly available primary source material including previously sealed court documents, FBI records released under the Freedom of Information Act, and interviews with surviving witnesses, Tom Copeland has pieced together the events of that day and has traced the fate of the men who were accused and convicted of murdering the marchers. Copeland focuses on Elmer Smith, the local attorney who advised the Wobblies that they had the right to defend their hall against an anticipated attack. Although he never belonged to the IWW, Smith sympathized with their interests, championing the rights of working people, and speaking on their behalf. He was originally arrested with the Wobbles and then took up their cause in the courts, beginning a life-long struggle to free the men who were charged with murdering the Centralia marchers. Copeland recounts Smith’s disbarment and eventual reinstatement, his run for political office, his speeches throughout the Northwest, and his unyielding support for the workers’ cause. This book is a balanced treatment of the Centalia tragedy and its legal repercussions written by a practicing lawyer. It is also a compelling human drama, centering on the marginal life of an industrial frontier labor lawyer, a study of radical politics of the 1920s, and a depiction of conditions of life in the lumber camps and towns. It is thus biography as well as legal, political, and social history.

Download or read book Oil Wheat Wobblies written by Nigel Anthony Sellars and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Industrial Workers of the World, or Wobblies, a radical labor union, played an important role in Oklahoma between the founding of the union in 1905 and its demise in 1930. In Oil, Wheat, & Wobblies, Nigel Anthony Sellars describes IWW efforts to organize migratory harvest hands and oil-field workers in the state and relationships between the union and other radical and labor groups such as the Socialist Party and the American Federation of Labor. Focusing on the emergence of migratory labor and the nature of the work itself in industrializing the region, Sellars provides a social history of labor in the Oklahoma wheat belt and the midcontinent oil fields. Using court cases and legislation, he examines the role of state and federal government in suppressing the union during World War I. Oil, What, & Wobblies concludes with a description of the IWW revival and subsequent decline after the war, suggesting that the decline is attributable more to the union's failure to adapt to postwar technological change, its rigid attachment to outmoded tactics, and its internal policy disputes, than to political repression. In Sellars's view, the failure of the IWW in Oklahoma largely explains the failure of both the IWW and the labor movement in the United States during the twenties.

Download or read book Harvest Wobblies written by Greg Hall and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Increased Mechanization and the expansion of new markets transformed the face of American farming in the early decades of the twentieth century, especially in the American West. These changes demanded a new kind of agricultural worker--gone was the local farmhand, replaced by a cheap and temporary labor force of migrant and seasonal workers. Greg Hall's fascinating book analyzes how "harvest Wobblies," members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), organized these men, women, and sometimes children who had become so essential and yet so exploited on the farms of the West. Although harvest Wobblies worked in nearly all the western states, their stongholds were the Great Plains, California, and the Pacific Northwest, regions where harmers developed monocrop agriculture and where seasonal labor was indispensable come harvest time. Like their IWW brethren in logging camps and mines, the harvest Wobblies combined an effort to improve the lives of workers with harger revolutionary goals. Harvest Wobblies personified most of the indelible features of IWW membership: they were the militant casual laborers of the American West, riding the rails, living in hobo jungles, preaching revolution, and facing repression with innovative strategies, impassioned speech, humor, and song. Through trial and error, Wobbly organizers eventually implemented the idea of an industrial union in agriculture and helped the IWW to establish itself as a powerful force to be reckoned with by employers in the West. In tracing the rise and the eventual fall of the harvest Wobblies, Greg Hall examines the diverse and changing nature of the agricultural work force. He offers a social and cultural history of a union uniquely suited to organizing tens of thousands of migrant and seasonal workers. Harvest Wobblies will appeal to a broad audience of readers interested in labor history, the American West, U.S. agricultural history, and the history of the IWW.

Download or read book Big Red Songbook written by Archie Green and published by PM Press. This book was released on 2016-05-01 with total page 673 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1905, representatives from dozens of radical labor groups came together in Chicago to form One Big Union—the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), known as the Wobblies. The union was a big presence in the labor movement, leading strikes, walkouts, and rallies across the nation. And everywhere its members went, they sang. Their songs were sung in mining camps and textile mills, hobo jungles and flop houses, and anywhere workers might be recruited to the Wobblies’ cause. The songs were published in a pocketsize tome called the Little Red Songbook, which was so successful that it’s been published continuously since 1909. In The Big Red Songbook, the editors have gathered songs from over three dozen editions, plus additional songs, rare artwork, personal recollections, discographies, and more into one big all-embracing book. IWW poets/composers strove to nurture revolutionary consciousness. Each piece, whether topical, hortatory, elegiac, or comic served to educate, agitate, and emancipate workers. A handful of Wobbly numbers have become classics, still sung by labor groups and folk singers. They include Joe Hill’s sardonic “The Preacher and the Slave” (sometimes known by its famous phrase “Pie in the Sky”) and Ralph Chaplin’s “Solidarity Forever.” Songs lost or found, sacred or irreverent, touted or neglected, serious or zany, singable or not, are here. The Wobblies and their friends have been singing for a century. May this comprehensive gathering simultaneously celebrate past battles and chart future goals. In addition to the 250+ songs, writings are included from Archie Green, Franklin Rosemont, David Roediger, Salvatore Salerno, Judy Branfman, Richard Brazier, James Connell, Carlos Cortez, Bill Friedland, Virginia Martin, Harry McClintock, Fred Thompson, Adam Machado, and many more.

Download or read book Keep the Wretches in Order written by Dean Strang and published by University of Wisconsin Press. This book was released on 2019-06-18 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Before World War I, the government reaction to labor dissent had been local, ad hoc, and quasi-military. Sheriffs, mayors, or governors would deputize strikebreakers or call out the state militia, usually at the bidding of employers. When the United States entered the conflict in 1917, government and industry feared that strikes would endanger war production; a more coordinated, national strategy would be necessary. To prevent stoppages, the Department of Justice embarked on a sweeping new effort—replacing gunmen with lawyers. The department systematically targeted the nation’s most radical and innovative union, the Industrial Workers of the World, also known as the Wobblies, resulting in the largest mass trial in U.S. history. In the first legal history of this federal trial, Dean Strang shows how the case laid the groundwork for a fundamentally different strategy to stifle radical threats, and had a major role in shaping the modern Justice Department. As the trial unfolded, it became an exercise of raw force, raising serious questions about its legitimacy and revealing the fragility of a criminal justice system under great external pressure.

Download or read book The Wobblies written by Patrick Renshaw and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Battling for American Labor written by Howard Kimeldorf and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1999-12 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This riveting, nuanced book takes seriously the workplace radicalism of many early twentieth century American workers. The restriction of working class militancy to the workplace, it shows, was no mere economism. Organizational rather than psychological in orientation, Battling For American Labor accounts for both the early preference of dockworkers in Philadelphia and hotel and restaurant workers in New York for the IWW rather than the AFL and for the reversal of this choice in the 1920s. In so doing, it points the way to a fresh reading of American labor history."—Ira Katznelson, Columbia University "Howard Kimeldorf's book, based on sound and solid historical research in archives, newspapers, journals, memoirs and oral histories, argues that workers in the United States, regardless of their precise union affiliation, harbored syndicalist tendencies which manifested themselves in direct action on the job. Because Kimeldorf's book reinterprets much of the history of the labor movement in the United States, it will surely generate much controversy among scholars and capture the attention of readers."—Melvyn Dubofsky, Binghamton University, SUNY "Howard Kimeldorf's new book is a very exciting accomplishment. This book will surely leave a major imprint on labor history and the sociology of labor. Kimeldorf's focus on repertoires of collective action and practice instead of ideology is a particularly important contribution; one that will force students of labor to rethink many worn-out arguments. After reading Battling For American Labor, one will no longer be able to assume the IWW's defeat was inevitable, or take seriously psychological theories of worker consciousness."—David Wellman, author of The Union Makes Us Strong

Download or read book Frank Little and the IWW written by Jane Little Botkin and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2017-05-25 with total page 535 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Franklin Henry Little (1878–1917), an organizer for the Western Federation of Miners and the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), fought in some of the early twentieth century’s most contentious labor and free-speech struggles. Following his lynching in Butte, Montana, his life and legacy became shrouded in tragedy and family secrets. In Frank Little and the IWW, author Jane Little Botkin chronicles her great-granduncle’s fascinating life and reveals its connections to the history of American labor and the first Red Scare. Beginning with Little’s childhood in Missouri and territorial Oklahoma, Botkin recounts his evolution as a renowned organizer and agitator on behalf of workers in corporate agriculture, oil, logging, and mining. Frank Little traveled the West and Midwest to gather workers beneath the banner of the Wobblies (as IWW members were known), making soapbox speeches on city street corners, organizing strikes, and writing polemics against unfair labor practices. His brother and sister-in-law also joined the fight for labor, but it was Frank who led the charge—and who was regularly threatened, incarcerated, and assaulted for his efforts. In his final battles in Arizona and Montana, Botkin shows, Little and the IWW leadership faced their strongest opponent yet as powerful copper magnates countered union efforts with deep-laid networks of spies and gunmen, an antilabor press, and local vigilantes. For a time, Frank Little’s murder became a rallying cry for the IWW. But after the United States entered the Great War and Congress passed the Sedition Act (1918) to ensure support for the war effort, many politicians and corporations used the act to target labor “radicals,” squelch dissent, and inspire vigilantism. Like other wage-working families smeared with the traitor label, the Little family endured raids, arrests, and indictments in IWW trials. Having scoured the West for firsthand sources in family, library, and museum collections, Botkin melds the personal narrative of an American family with the story of the labor movements that once shook the nation to its core. In doing so, she throws into sharp relief the lingering consequences of political repression.

Download or read book Solidarity Forever written by Robert Lawson and published by FriesenPress. This book was released on 2024-10-17 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Solidarity Forever is the definitive account of the musical journey of the music legend of Disciples of Soul, Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, and anti-apartheid project Sun City fame, Little Steven Van Zandt. Following Van Zandt’s unforgettable sixty-year (and counting!) career from his beginnings with the Asbury Jukes and Springsteen to leading the Disciples of Soul, from touring, arranging, and producing timeless music to playing an onscreen gangster in The Sopranos and Lilyhammer, Solidarity Forever is packed with a level of detail that will impress devotees and enchant new fans. Every song, every album, every single, live shows; bootlegs, production credits, covers, activism—everything is covered here and presented alongside fascinating interviews of over forty past and present band members and Van Zandt himself. A stunning work of music journalism and love letter to rock ‘n’ roll, Solidarity Forever delivers Little Steven’s story and the timeless messages of his music like never before. “This is no time to be fighting each other What we need, what we need is solidarity.”

Download or read book Joe Hill written by Franklin Rosemont and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 639 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Joe Hill (1877-1915) is the best-known figure in the heroic history of the Industrial Workers of the World (a.k.a. Wobblies). US labour's most world-renowned martyr and celebrated songwriter, he is remembered above all for his songs in the Little Red Song Book: "The Preacher and the Slave" ("Pie in the Sky"), "Mr Block," "There Is Power in a Union," and many more that are still popular on picket lines today. A monumental work that explores the issues that Joe Hill raised--capitalism, white supremacy, gender, religion, wilderness, law, prison, industrial unionism--and their enduring relevance and impact in the century since his death. Collected too is all of his art, plus scores of other illustrations featuring Hill-inspired art by IWWs from Ralph Chaplin to Carlos Cortez, as well as other labour artists.

Download or read book Red November Black November written by Salvatore Salerno and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 1989-07-15 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Red November, Black November is a study of the culture of the I. W. W. movement at the turn of the twentieth century. It analyzes the Wobblies’ use of cultural expressions such as songs, poems, and cartoons as a means of educating and unifying workers, and as weapons in the struggle against the repressive social conditions of industrial development. The book emphasizes the important role played by immigrant activists, Wobbly artists, and intellectuals, offering a fascinating portrait of the complexity of pre-World War I labor radicalism.

Download or read book A Shoeleather History of the Wobblies written by Steve Thornton (union organizer) and published by . This book was released on 2013-09-02 with total page 151 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Who were the Wobblies? They were a labor union like no other: the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). These militant, courageous men and women, from all races and ethnic groups, changed the way working people of the early 20th century responded to the growing gap between the rich and everyone else. The Wobblies' campaigns achieved respect and dignity for those who performed dangerous, grueling work in sweatshops, factories and mills. By focusing on previously unknown IWW organizing in Connecticut, A Shoeleather History of the Wobblies takes the reader into the lives of ordinary people who faced extraordinary challenges to win economic justice. This book explores the IWW's innovative and powerful strategies which were used by Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Joe Ettor, Big Bill Haywood and lesser known local organizers. The IWW established a model for future unions, civil rights groups and other movements: effective cross-ethnic organizing, mass nonviolent direct action, community coalition building, and an inspiring vision of the future. These are the lessons we can still learn from the Wobblies.

Download or read book The Cold Millions written by Jess Walter and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2020-10-27 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “One of the most captivating novels of the year.” – Washington Post NATIONAL BESTSELLER A Best Book of the Year: Bloomberg | Boston Globe | Chicago Public Library | Chicago Tribune | Esquire | Kirkus | New York Public Library | New York Times Book Review (Historical Fiction) | NPR's Fresh Air | O Magazine | Washington Post | Publishers Weekly | Seattle Times | USA Today A Library Reads Pick | An Indie Next Pick From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Beautiful Ruins comes another “literary miracle” (NPR)—a propulsive, richly entertaining novel about two brothers swept up in the turbulent class warfare of the early twentieth century. An intimate story of brotherhood, love, sacrifice, and betrayal set against the panoramic backdrop of an early twentieth-century America that eerily echoes our own time, The Cold Millions offers a kaleidoscopic portrait of a nation grappling with the chasm between rich and poor, between harsh realities and simple dreams. The Dolans live by their wits, jumping freight trains and lining up for day work at crooked job agencies. While sixteen-year-old Rye yearns for a steady job and a home, his older brother, Gig, dreams of a better world, fighting alongside other union men for fair pay and decent treatment. Enter Ursula the Great, a vaudeville singer who performs with a live cougar and introduces the brothers to a far more dangerous creature: a mining magnate determined to keep his wealth and his hold on Ursula. Dubious of Gig’s idealism, Rye finds himself drawn to a fearless nineteen-year-old activist and feminist named Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. But a storm is coming, threatening to overwhelm them all, and Rye will be forced to decide where he stands. Is it enough to win the occasional battle, even if you cannot win the war? Featuring an unforgettable cast of cops and tramps, suffragists and socialists, madams and murderers, The Cold Millions is a tour de force from a “writer who has planted himself firmly in the first rank of American authors” (Boston Globe).