WEBVTT - Part One: The IWW and the Hobos Who Saved Free Speech 0:00:01.040 --> 0:00:04.720 Hello, and welcome to C p W D c S. 0:00:04.760 --> 0:00:06.400 The show that's easier to say the full name of 0:00:06.440 --> 0:00:09.680 than the acronym floor or for the penance in the 0:00:09.760 --> 0:00:16.800 audience the initialism because an acronism, which is the most 0:00:16.840 --> 0:00:19.040 annoying thing of the world. I guess I'm de penitive 0:00:19.040 --> 0:00:21.520 the audience. I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy, and every week 0:00:21.560 --> 0:00:23.440 I tell you about some cool people who did cool stuff. 0:00:23.840 --> 0:00:27.520 This week we've got a returning guest, Robert Evans. Robert Evans, 0:00:28.080 --> 0:00:31.520 who are you? That's a great question, Margaret, who is 0:00:31.560 --> 0:00:34.400 any of us? Are any of us really here? Or 0:00:34.600 --> 0:00:37.800 we just reflections on a cave wall being looked at 0:00:37.840 --> 0:00:42.159 by Greeks in a story I half remember because I 0:00:42.200 --> 0:00:45.040 don't I don't. Yes, Margaret, I'm the host of a 0:00:45.080 --> 0:00:49.240 podcast behind the Bastards. There we go, Margaret, I have 0:00:49.280 --> 0:00:53.120 a question for you. Okay, show you've got butterflies on 0:00:53.159 --> 0:00:55.560 your face? Is that a reference to a character in 0:00:55.560 --> 0:00:57.800 a movie that we watched last night. We're gonna We're 0:00:57.800 --> 0:01:01.920 gonna get to that. We're gonna get to that. X it. Okay. 0:01:02.560 --> 0:01:05.880 So we also have our producer, Sophie Lichtman on the call, Sophie, 0:01:06.120 --> 0:01:12.319 who are you? Who am I? Or how am I? Currently? 0:01:12.360 --> 0:01:15.479 I'm somebody who feels like I'm that that like person 0:01:15.520 --> 0:01:19.120 who has the devil and the Angel on each shoulder. Um, 0:01:19.520 --> 0:01:23.800 and um, you're the angel and Robert is you know, 0:01:24.000 --> 0:01:28.080 the devil, and um, that's who I am? Is? Just 0:01:28.360 --> 0:01:32.640 you know, I'm here, okay, okay, And that tracks because 0:01:32.640 --> 0:01:35.000 both Robert and I are still wearing the renfair garb. 0:01:35.040 --> 0:01:41.320 But that we got yesterday my sword. Oh my god, Robert, 0:01:41.520 --> 0:01:47.880 that's beautiful and then immediately handed it to a seven 0:01:47.960 --> 0:01:51.920 year old in the parking lot. That sounds like Robert. 0:01:52.520 --> 0:01:54.560 If I learned one thing from the movie we watched 0:01:54.640 --> 0:01:57.320 last night, it's that the greatest act of any hero, 0:01:57.880 --> 0:02:01.040 you have a child a sword. Yes, exactly, well one 0:02:01.080 --> 0:02:04.280 of the two great acts, ideally while dripping with the 0:02:04.280 --> 0:02:07.280 blood of a police officer in in an elementary school. 0:02:08.000 --> 0:02:11.800 So also, Ian does our audio editing, and on woman 0:02:11.840 --> 0:02:15.639 wrote our theme song. And and this week we're going 0:02:15.720 --> 0:02:22.600 all the way back to the year Yea released the 0:02:22.639 --> 0:02:26.560 best movie of the twentieth century, Night Riders. It's fucking 0:02:26.600 --> 0:02:29.680 incredible movie. I had never seen this. The last night 0:02:30.000 --> 0:02:33.880 I did not realize what a goddamned treasure this film was. 0:02:34.200 --> 0:02:38.400 That's amazing. Yeah, it's actually talking about night Writers today 0:02:38.400 --> 0:02:41.360 because it is to talk I kind of wish, um 0:02:41.520 --> 0:02:44.160 we can we can interject here and there and compare 0:02:44.600 --> 0:02:46.480 the events that we're going to talk about to the 0:02:46.520 --> 0:02:50.440 events of night Rider. But night Riders. Sorry that we 0:02:50.480 --> 0:02:52.560 are not talking about the night Writers show with the 0:02:52.600 --> 0:02:57.840 talking car. This is much cooler. But I tried to 0:02:57.880 --> 0:02:59.560 take the butterflies off my face and it took me 0:02:59.600 --> 0:03:02.239 too long, and so now and I got distracted. Okay, 0:03:02.280 --> 0:03:05.760 So this week, though, Robert, how do you feel about 0:03:05.800 --> 0:03:11.919 free speech? Is a nice, loaded, easy, easy question. The 0:03:12.120 --> 0:03:15.560 actual thing, which is people being able to speak and 0:03:15.720 --> 0:03:20.440 express their thoughts and feelings free of government censorship, is 0:03:20.480 --> 0:03:25.359 great free speech. The buzzword is a real problem. I 0:03:25.360 --> 0:03:29.000 I agree on both counts, and that's why I'm excited 0:03:29.040 --> 0:03:32.440 to tell you that the largest and fiercest fight over 0:03:32.480 --> 0:03:35.440 free speech in US history, which I never learned anything 0:03:35.440 --> 0:03:39.960 about in school, was not anything like the buzzword version 0:03:39.960 --> 0:03:43.640 of it today. Instead, that's great came from the left, 0:03:44.960 --> 0:03:46.960 and in order to tell you about free speech and 0:03:47.000 --> 0:03:49.600 the fights for free speech that happened across the West, 0:03:49.680 --> 0:03:53.240 and about nineteen nine and nineteen sixteen, I get to 0:03:53.240 --> 0:03:55.800 tell you about basically the coolest union the US has 0:03:55.800 --> 0:03:59.040 ever produced, the Industrial Workers of the World, the i 0:03:59.360 --> 0:04:05.520 w W, the Wobblies, and I want to do one 0:04:05.560 --> 0:04:08.040 day the Wobblies will. I mean, you could really just 0:04:08.080 --> 0:04:10.080 do an entire podcast it just talks about the Wobblies. 0:04:10.160 --> 0:04:13.840 They did so much. But the really brief introduction to 0:04:13.880 --> 0:04:17.560 the i w W five a whole bunch of socialists 0:04:17.560 --> 0:04:20.520 and anarchists and other trade unionists. They got together and 0:04:20.560 --> 0:04:22.320 they were like, you know what, the U S should 0:04:22.320 --> 0:04:24.320 have a cooler union than the ones we have, which 0:04:24.320 --> 0:04:27.880 are not cool enough. So they were like, what would 0:04:27.920 --> 0:04:31.359 make a union cooler. Some of the founders include alumni 0:04:31.360 --> 0:04:34.160 of the podcast, like the Irish Goths, socialist Mother Jones, 0:04:34.640 --> 0:04:37.480 and the formerly enslaved black anarchist Lucy Parsons, who is 0:04:37.880 --> 0:04:40.360 on the very first episode of this show. They also 0:04:40.400 --> 0:04:43.000 had future friend of the pod, James Connolly, who popped 0:04:43.000 --> 0:04:49.280 over from Yeah, Yeah, he's He's not even American or 0:04:49.320 --> 0:04:53.120 even an immigrant. He's a you know, Irish nationalist, Irish 0:04:53.120 --> 0:04:56.000 as hell. He's the person I most wish had Twitter 0:04:56.040 --> 0:05:00.160 for the queen's death, we would have gotten some great 0:05:00.240 --> 0:05:06.120 James absolutely and and so he popped over to the 0:05:06.160 --> 0:05:08.599 US for a while to help, you know, he paused 0:05:08.600 --> 0:05:11.520 fomenting rebellion in Ireland to come talk about syndicalism and 0:05:11.560 --> 0:05:14.600 ship and help the US get cool, which I didn't 0:05:14.600 --> 0:05:20.159 know about until more recently that James Connolly numbers. Yeah. 0:05:20.320 --> 0:05:22.039 And they came up with some answers about how to 0:05:22.040 --> 0:05:24.160 make a cooler union than the unions that are around. 0:05:24.800 --> 0:05:26.840 And they're good answers. Anyone out there who's like, how 0:05:26.839 --> 0:05:28.680 do you make a union cool? I think that these 0:05:28.720 --> 0:05:31.240 are some good answers that at least applied in five 0:05:31.279 --> 0:05:32.960 and may or may not apply now, while some of 0:05:33.000 --> 0:05:37.040 them absolutely do apply now. One of them. The kind 0:05:37.040 --> 0:05:39.599 of the founding idea was no more splitting up the 0:05:39.640 --> 0:05:43.240 workers by trade everyone into one big union. Um the 0:05:43.320 --> 0:05:45.839 motto is an injury to one is an injury to all. 0:05:46.240 --> 0:05:48.400 And of course to fight against the fact that they're 0:05:48.400 --> 0:05:52.839 now centralizing everything, they're like one big union. It's all decentralized. 0:05:53.160 --> 0:05:54.720 So you can only have one big union in an 0:05:54.720 --> 0:05:57.880 ethical way if there's no so were on at the top, right, 0:05:58.760 --> 0:06:02.080 and the most important thing that they did in contrast 0:06:02.120 --> 0:06:03.720 to the rest of the US, not the rest of 0:06:03.720 --> 0:06:06.400 the U. S. Labor movement, but the like large federated 0:06:06.760 --> 0:06:09.600 parts of the labor movement at the time. I ww 0:06:09.760 --> 0:06:13.040 weren't a bunch of fucking racists. That's always the bummer 0:06:13.040 --> 0:06:15.039 when you talk about the coolest A lot of the 0:06:15.080 --> 0:06:18.080 coolest parts of American labor history, like Blair Mountain, where 0:06:18.080 --> 0:06:21.400 it's like, got their fucking red bandanas, they're shooting at 0:06:21.400 --> 0:06:24.400 the National Guard, they're going to Oregon and they don't 0:06:24.400 --> 0:06:27.520 like letting black people. Well that's not true. And with 0:06:27.560 --> 0:06:30.279 Blair Mountain, one of the names that they had on 0:06:30.320 --> 0:06:32.200 their lips as they went into battle, I don't remember 0:06:32.240 --> 0:06:34.599 his name right now, but I mean, I'm certain that 0:06:34.600 --> 0:06:36.120 there were races. It was it was it was a 0:06:36.320 --> 0:06:41.880 it was a fight with organizing Blair Mountain to like yeah, yeah, yeah, 0:06:42.080 --> 0:06:46.000 totally yeah. And you also get these like this difference 0:06:46.000 --> 0:06:48.080 in both directions between the rank and file and the 0:06:48.200 --> 0:06:50.920 organizers and all that stuff. But but yeah, and so 0:06:51.000 --> 0:06:52.880 the i w W. One of their founding principles is 0:06:52.960 --> 0:06:55.960 let's not be racists. Will take white people, black people, 0:06:56.000 --> 0:07:00.400 Irish people, whatever. They also unified the anarchist and the 0:07:00.440 --> 0:07:02.719 socialists and the Marxist which is the thing that seems 0:07:02.760 --> 0:07:06.000 impossible in the modern context. It sure does to be 0:07:06.040 --> 0:07:09.080 fair this and the Bolsheviks hadn't started killing all their 0:07:09.080 --> 0:07:12.560 political opponents, like the socialists and the anarchists. Yeah, there's 0:07:12.600 --> 0:07:14.840 a little bit less bad blood. Yeah, and the other 0:07:14.880 --> 0:07:18.280 Marxists anyway, um, as I as I present some of 0:07:18.320 --> 0:07:21.960 my bad blood about all of this. Uh. And the 0:07:22.000 --> 0:07:24.000 way they unified the left was that they did it 0:07:24.040 --> 0:07:26.920 in a way they by minimizing hierarchy as much as 0:07:26.960 --> 0:07:28.760 possible if you have all of these different types of 0:07:28.800 --> 0:07:31.480 people coming together. The main way that you can do 0:07:31.520 --> 0:07:33.720 that in an ethical way is that everyone is equals 0:07:34.360 --> 0:07:38.560 um and so different ideas and so basically prevent power 0:07:38.760 --> 0:07:41.840 grabs by distributing power every wobbly as a leader, every 0:07:41.840 --> 0:07:46.200 wobbly as an organizer. They also just the checklist of 0:07:46.200 --> 0:07:48.880 how to be a cool union. They organized the unemployed, 0:07:49.440 --> 0:07:52.920 They organized women as well as men. They were really 0:07:52.960 --> 0:07:55.920 forthright that their goal was the destruction of the wage system, 0:07:56.000 --> 0:07:58.160 and that any reforms that they came across were just 0:07:58.160 --> 0:08:00.400 to step along the way towards the end of capitalism. 0:08:02.720 --> 0:08:04.440 They had this whole big fight where some of them 0:08:04.440 --> 0:08:06.800 wanted to take the union more reformist and more more 0:08:06.800 --> 0:08:09.880 politically focused and less direct action focused, and that faction 0:08:09.960 --> 0:08:13.280 lost because you don't join the Wobblies because you don't 0:08:13.320 --> 0:08:17.480 want to do direct action. Um. And they scared the 0:08:17.560 --> 0:08:20.920 ever loving hell out of the elite basically when they 0:08:20.960 --> 0:08:23.920 were founded. But we're going to talk about free speech 0:08:24.800 --> 0:08:28.400 in a moment, But first, I know what you're wondering, Robert. 0:08:28.400 --> 0:08:32.320 Are you wondering where they're called the fucking Wobblies? Isn't 0:08:32.320 --> 0:08:34.960 it just because there's I w W and it's kind 0:08:35.000 --> 0:08:37.400 of like wobbly. I don't know. I assumed it had 0:08:37.440 --> 0:08:40.920 something to do with all the dubs. It does possibly 0:08:41.600 --> 0:08:45.199 if you ask the actual like the Okay, the answer 0:08:45.240 --> 0:08:48.920 is no, one knows. Someone might know. This another situation 0:08:48.920 --> 0:08:51.600 where're gonna tell me there's a cool fucking name and 0:08:51.679 --> 0:08:55.800 there's nobody who can tell us why this is a trend? 0:08:56.040 --> 0:08:58.800 This is this is this is this is like tuberculosis 0:08:58.840 --> 0:09:01.640 pops up every episode. Yeah, and you know what, that's 0:09:01.679 --> 0:09:04.480 fucking cool and I'm okay with it. Yeah. And there's 0:09:04.520 --> 0:09:09.480 there's a couple of bests is called tuberculosis, so no 0:09:09.559 --> 0:09:12.559 one knows what I thought. It was named after Johnny Tuberculosis. 0:09:13.240 --> 0:09:15.920 He was the Johnny after seate of tuberculosis traveled around 0:09:15.920 --> 0:09:21.360 North America giving everyone tb oh. Okay, okay, well that 0:09:21.400 --> 0:09:24.839 makes the heroes. And also the Wobblies were founded by 0:09:24.960 --> 0:09:29.839 John Wobbly. Yeah yeah, I thought I thought he went 0:09:29.960 --> 0:09:34.280 by Johnny Wobbly John Bulls, they called him when he 0:09:34.320 --> 0:09:39.439 got drunk. If someone knows why the Wobblies are called 0:09:39.440 --> 0:09:41.520 the Wobblies, they're not telling. And since we're talking about 0:09:41.559 --> 0:09:44.719 hundred fifteen years ago, if they're still alive and they 0:09:44.720 --> 0:09:47.520 know they're either dead or a vampire, like like the 0:09:47.600 --> 0:09:49.360 Queen of England who was also in a dead or 0:09:49.360 --> 0:09:54.520 a vampire. It was a vampire. That makes sense. I've 0:09:54.559 --> 0:09:58.079 I've outlined a book around this, well, actually was about 0:09:58.080 --> 0:10:00.040 the person who threw the bomb at Haymarket still and 0:10:00.120 --> 0:10:02.720 around hundred fifty years later as a vampire. But anyway, 0:10:03.040 --> 0:10:05.280 the main theories as to why they're called Wobblies is 0:10:05.280 --> 0:10:07.280 that it was being used against them as an epithet 0:10:08.200 --> 0:10:12.199 and it has to do with racism, and it has 0:10:12.240 --> 0:10:14.480 to do with racism around the fact that the IWW 0:10:14.559 --> 0:10:16.640 had a ton of Chinese members at a time, where 0:10:16.679 --> 0:10:19.079 like that is one of the main categories of people 0:10:19.080 --> 0:10:21.000 that were being excluded from the working class on the 0:10:21.000 --> 0:10:25.240 West coast right or being excluded from labor unions, and 0:10:25.320 --> 0:10:29.080 so it was probably someone like a boss making fun 0:10:29.120 --> 0:10:31.880 of the Chinese immigrant ac accent as they tried to 0:10:31.880 --> 0:10:40.040 pronounce IWW. Oh but the but then the Wobblies were like, yeah, fuck, 0:10:40.120 --> 0:10:44.280 you will take that, you know, because they were also that, 0:10:44.720 --> 0:10:46.960 you know, the Chinese Wobblies were also the wobblies, and 0:10:46.960 --> 0:10:49.000 so everyone's like, yeah, no, like a whole fucking thing 0:10:49.080 --> 0:10:50.559 is an injury to one is an injury at all. 0:10:51.320 --> 0:10:53.360 So they probably they called themselves wobblies. That is the 0:10:53.400 --> 0:10:56.560 most likely story. Um. And also, if you had a 0:10:56.640 --> 0:10:58.199 union card and good standing, there are a bunch of 0:10:58.280 --> 0:11:00.280 Chinese food restaurants you could walk into and show your 0:11:00.360 --> 0:11:04.920 Union card and get free food, which also rules yeah. Um. 0:11:05.000 --> 0:11:07.520 The other theory, which actually has less evidence about it, 0:11:07.559 --> 0:11:10.120 is that lumberjacks would make their sls wobble in order 0:11:10.160 --> 0:11:15.480 to slow down production when they were in a labor dispute. Okay, yeah, 0:11:16.440 --> 0:11:18.440 but we're not but we are going to talk about lumberjacks. 0:11:19.880 --> 0:11:22.640 All right, let's do it. Okay, I'm time about Spokane, Washington. 0:11:22.679 --> 0:11:25.280 We're gonna start with a quote from eight from a 0:11:25.360 --> 0:11:29.000 radical unionists from the i w W named James walsh Am. 0:11:29.040 --> 0:11:31.880 I to die starving in the midst of plenty, or 0:11:31.920 --> 0:11:35.040 shall I die fighting for my part? A thousand times over? 0:11:35.160 --> 0:11:39.400 I'll die fighting before I die starving, because it was 0:11:39.440 --> 0:11:42.439 a really shitty time to be a worker in the US, 0:11:44.000 --> 0:11:45.280 and now I'm trying to think of a time it 0:11:45.320 --> 0:11:49.360 wasn't really shitty to be a working class anyway. In 0:11:49.400 --> 0:11:53.079 early Spokane, Washington, which is in eastern Washington, is this boomtown. 0:11:53.120 --> 0:11:56.080 There's this whole like inland empire that is basically where 0:11:56.120 --> 0:12:00.480 all of the like lumber stuff is coming from. They 0:12:00.559 --> 0:12:03.520 found the most beautiful forests the world has ever produced 0:12:03.559 --> 0:12:07.720 and turned turned it into a an industry into Yeah, 0:12:07.720 --> 0:12:09.440 it was good stuff. Which is why I always had 0:12:09.520 --> 0:12:13.079 very complicated feelings about this particular story, because it's heroes 0:12:13.120 --> 0:12:15.440 are the people who got down to old growth forests, 0:12:15.880 --> 0:12:19.240 are the people who destroyed for like a dollar a 0:12:19.320 --> 0:12:23.240 day because they didn't want to starve to death. Yeah, 0:12:23.320 --> 0:12:26.000 they're not the people who capitalized. Yeah, I don't blame 0:12:26.040 --> 0:12:31.080 them specifically, it is it is sad, yeah. Yeah. And 0:12:31.120 --> 0:12:34.120 so Spoken is a boomtown and has legalized gambling in 0:12:34.160 --> 0:12:36.679 sex work, and it's like the kind of place that 0:12:36.760 --> 0:12:38.880 workers show up in between jobs to blow all their 0:12:38.920 --> 0:12:42.080 money and look for other jobs. And one of the 0:12:42.120 --> 0:12:43.800 anecdotes that you get is that we have a lot 0:12:43.840 --> 0:12:46.319 of the Wobbles Road a lot. And so you hear 0:12:46.360 --> 0:12:48.840 about Spokane at the time, and basically they were like, 0:12:48.840 --> 0:12:51.000 if you flash too much money, you'll get the knockout 0:12:51.080 --> 0:12:53.680 Special from the bartender, where the bartender just gives you 0:12:53.720 --> 0:12:55.240 a drink with a bunch of fucking drugs and it 0:12:55.320 --> 0:12:58.480 knocks you unconscious so they can all rob you. Oh well, 0:12:58.880 --> 0:13:01.000 so that kind want to start a bar now, that's 0:13:01.040 --> 0:13:03.480 actually a pretty pretty good money making idea. Yeah. And 0:13:03.559 --> 0:13:05.079 also it kind of sounds like the kind of town 0:13:05.120 --> 0:13:07.679 that would be fun to hang out in. Yeah it does. Yeah, 0:13:08.559 --> 0:13:10.800 it sounds like it would have some strong deadwood vibes. 0:13:12.679 --> 0:13:16.440 Stevens Street and Spoken was covered in employment agencies, which 0:13:16.440 --> 0:13:21.000 got called sharks and leeches, and they would basically sell 0:13:21.080 --> 0:13:23.760 you a job. You'd walk into an employment agency give 0:13:23.800 --> 0:13:26.719 him a dollar and they'd sell you a job, and 0:13:27.760 --> 0:13:31.000 at least half the time it was a lie. They 0:13:31.000 --> 0:13:32.480 were like, oh, yeah, it's a job. And then you 0:13:32.520 --> 0:13:33.959 get to the work site and they give you a 0:13:34.040 --> 0:13:35.640 job for a day and then they send you home 0:13:35.720 --> 0:13:38.599 like you've literally just made back your dollar, so you 0:13:38.679 --> 0:13:40.959 have enough money to come spend and spend another dollar 0:13:41.120 --> 0:13:45.160 on another job. And among the people who did this 0:13:45.200 --> 0:13:48.640 sort of work, the employment agency work is second time 0:13:48.720 --> 0:13:52.040 villains of the pod No, mostly now known for their gyms, 0:13:52.480 --> 0:13:57.280 the y m c a AH, as well as several 0:13:57.280 --> 0:14:00.000 other Christian organizations that like would set up and pross 0:14:00.160 --> 0:14:02.440 ties but then just be like and give us a 0:14:02.480 --> 0:14:04.440 dollar and we'll give you a job. Just kidding. I 0:14:04.480 --> 0:14:08.000 read one take one person say that like literally one 0:14:08.040 --> 0:14:12.640 out of fifty people got the job that they paid for. Um, 0:14:12.679 --> 0:14:13.959 so you'd be like, oh, I'm gonna go be a 0:14:14.000 --> 0:14:16.120 lumber not bad, and they send you a job like 0:14:16.200 --> 0:14:18.880 doing something completely unrelated. If you got a job at all, 0:14:20.880 --> 0:14:23.360 and the people behind all these grips were fucking millionaires, 0:14:23.440 --> 0:14:25.240 is another job that would work really well for you. 0:14:25.800 --> 0:14:28.160 And yeah, I mean, honestly, Sophie, what if we tried 0:14:28.200 --> 0:14:32.240 to do this with podcasts. People pay us and then 0:14:32.280 --> 0:14:37.000 we give them a podcast. But not really wait that's 0:14:37.040 --> 0:14:40.400 what you did with me though, well but not not 0:14:40.440 --> 0:14:46.040 with you, Margaret, of course. Not no, no, not at all. Okay. 0:14:46.040 --> 0:14:48.680 By the way, that that that check of yours still 0:14:48.720 --> 0:14:54.160 hasn't cleared. I'm sure it's corporate's fault. Don't worry, don't worry, 0:14:54.160 --> 0:15:00.240 I trust you. So anyway, the Cool Zone him an 0:15:00.280 --> 0:15:04.760 agency of Spokene, Washington. They're fucking millionaires, and they're millionaires 0:15:04.760 --> 0:15:07.520 in nineteen o nine money, which is still millionaires and 0:15:07.680 --> 0:15:10.680 modern money, but it's like thirty five millionaires, more millions. 0:15:11.440 --> 0:15:14.480 And they're driving around in fancy cars or in nineteen 0:15:14.680 --> 0:15:17.920 nine terms, a car at all. And to lay the scene, 0:15:17.920 --> 0:15:20.440 I'm gonna quote from a memoir written by a participant 0:15:20.440 --> 0:15:23.240 who later spent five years in prison for his organizing 0:15:23.280 --> 0:15:27.240 like I think in the twenties, named John pans Pan Pansner, 0:15:27.520 --> 0:15:31.200 not not Tank, not John Tanka not not. That's a shame, 0:15:31.960 --> 0:15:34.440 So John Tank said, before telling you the story of 0:15:34.440 --> 0:15:36.360 the spoken free Speech fight, I must say a few 0:15:36.360 --> 0:15:38.240 words about the situation in the West at the time. 0:15:38.600 --> 0:15:41.240 West of the Mississippi River, there were about two million 0:15:41.280 --> 0:15:45.480 migratory workers, sometimes called hoboes. They harvested the wheat, corn, 0:15:45.760 --> 0:15:48.160 hay and picked the fruit and even planted most of 0:15:48.160 --> 0:15:51.920 the crops. They built the railroads, damn powerhouses, They did 0:15:51.960 --> 0:15:56.200 the logging in the woods, and I I think people 0:15:56.240 --> 0:16:00.400 don't necessarily recognize like how much the hobo is how 0:16:00.480 --> 0:16:04.440 the infrastructure of the US was built. Yeah, and they 0:16:04.480 --> 0:16:08.000 weren't treated really kindly. Uh, you'll be shocked to know 0:16:08.080 --> 0:16:12.160 once they did get jobs. Yeah, go ahead, that that 0:16:12.240 --> 0:16:14.480 was my what my grandpa did. You know, his family 0:16:14.560 --> 0:16:17.440 wasn't able to feed him, so he like walked across 0:16:17.480 --> 0:16:20.000 two states with cornbread in his pocket to like get 0:16:20.000 --> 0:16:23.960 a job building national parks and stuff. Like. We never 0:16:24.000 --> 0:16:26.440 talked about him as having been a hobo, but that's 0:16:26.480 --> 0:16:29.200 essentially what was going on, right Like he was he 0:16:29.280 --> 0:16:34.000 was living on the street, uh, working you know in jobs, 0:16:34.040 --> 0:16:36.800 building up what is still the infrastructure of the country 0:16:36.800 --> 0:16:40.800 because we've never actually invested more money and it's which 0:16:40.840 --> 0:16:43.920 is why it's all going to ship right now. Yeah, 0:16:43.960 --> 0:16:46.680 that's that's actually what my granddad did too. He wrote 0:16:46.720 --> 0:16:50.720 around trains in the Great Depression and did like agricultural work. Um, 0:16:50.800 --> 0:16:52.800 and I only found out because once again, the family 0:16:52.840 --> 0:16:54.560 didn't like talk about that, Whereas I think that's the 0:16:54.560 --> 0:16:57.160 coolest thing my grandfather did that I'm aware of, you know, 0:16:57.240 --> 0:17:02.120 like well, if foughtom World War two, but you know, 0:17:02.280 --> 0:17:05.320 like well, and when I started riding freight trains, that's 0:17:05.359 --> 0:17:07.680 when my family told me that my grandfather also wrote 0:17:07.720 --> 0:17:10.879 freight trains, which I have not successfully. My goal is 0:17:10.920 --> 0:17:12.480 to get my father on a freight train, just to 0:17:12.520 --> 0:17:17.359 sort of complete though the ark. But so once you 0:17:17.400 --> 0:17:20.040 get a job, I didn't. I didn't ride freight trains 0:17:20.040 --> 0:17:22.000 to work. To be real, I actually wrote freight trains 0:17:22.040 --> 0:17:23.880 more like the Wobblies that we're going to talk about 0:17:23.920 --> 0:17:27.399 today road freight trains. But that's foreshadowing. That's what I'm 0:17:27.400 --> 0:17:30.560 gonna call spoilers from now on, foreshadowing. So once you 0:17:30.600 --> 0:17:33.600 get a job, it's fucking awful. You have to bring 0:17:33.600 --> 0:17:36.200 your own blankets. You sleep in tents and cabins. There's 0:17:36.280 --> 0:17:39.400 licensed bed bugs everywhere, as cockroaches in the kitchens. There's 0:17:39.440 --> 0:17:42.840 no mattresses. You're sleeping on straw. At one power line 0:17:42.880 --> 0:17:45.080 building camp, the workers had to walk three to four 0:17:45.080 --> 0:17:47.840 miles to work from their camp then work twelve hours, 0:17:47.840 --> 0:17:50.320 then walk three to four miles back home. It's some 0:17:50.440 --> 0:17:53.800 like real uphill both ways. Ship they get two dollars 0:17:53.800 --> 0:17:57.399 a day. They then have to pay almost half of 0:17:57.400 --> 0:18:01.760 that five fifty a week for room and word. Basically 0:18:01.840 --> 0:18:04.000 they make about thirty five dollars a day in today's 0:18:04.119 --> 0:18:07.720 terms for walk working twelve hour shifts with like two 0:18:07.720 --> 0:18:11.159 hours a walk in each direction. The Hobos mostly had 0:18:11.160 --> 0:18:14.680 no families, they had no church. They functionally couldn't vote 0:18:14.720 --> 0:18:17.520 since they weren't residents anywhere long enough to register to vote, 0:18:17.760 --> 0:18:19.399 and they only had each other. And so you have 0:18:19.440 --> 0:18:25.080 this whole fucking massive dispossessed people. And the big mainstream 0:18:25.200 --> 0:18:27.040 union at the time, the a f L, the American 0:18:27.040 --> 0:18:31.440 Federation of Labor, they don't even try to organize the Hobos, 0:18:32.040 --> 0:18:36.840 the wobblies, they were mostly Hobos themselves, and they called 0:18:36.880 --> 0:18:39.439 the a f L the Aristocrats of Labor, which I 0:18:39.440 --> 0:18:42.160 have a feeling like when you're riding arown freight trains 0:18:42.160 --> 0:18:45.119 and sleeping on straw, everyone who, like I don't know, 0:18:45.240 --> 0:18:50.720 has a house is an aristocrat. Yeah, but I mean certainly, yeah, 0:18:50.760 --> 0:18:52.879 if you're if you're if you're riding the rails. Anybody 0:18:52.920 --> 0:18:57.000 who's got a roof is an aristocrat. Yeah, And the 0:18:57.080 --> 0:18:59.600 a f L they saw the masses of the unemployed 0:18:59.640 --> 0:19:02.000 as a pole. I'm not a solution because huge groups 0:19:02.040 --> 0:19:04.359 of unemployed people make it harder to unionize in the 0:19:04.400 --> 0:19:06.800 traditional ways that they were used to. Well. Yeah, because 0:19:06.800 --> 0:19:09.600 it's also it is a vulnerability if you're like organized labor, 0:19:09.640 --> 0:19:11.639 because they get brought in as strike breakers and stuff 0:19:11.640 --> 0:19:14.640 a lot totally, which is the same as the racism 0:19:14.640 --> 0:19:16.800 of the a f L. A f L s notoriously 0:19:16.880 --> 0:19:22.879 racist at this time. It's the same, Yeah, like constantly different. Um, 0:19:22.960 --> 0:19:24.840 you know, presidents and ship would just be like, oh 0:19:24.880 --> 0:19:27.560 well go send you know, Italian people or black people 0:19:27.640 --> 0:19:30.400 or whatever to go break up a strike, um and 0:19:30.600 --> 0:19:33.280 use race and ethnic tensions against it all. And you 0:19:33.280 --> 0:19:35.000 can just do the same when you have two million 0:19:35.080 --> 0:19:38.919 unemployed people wandering around. Yeah, it is because like the 0:19:38.960 --> 0:19:42.400 obvious solution is if you help those people out so 0:19:42.440 --> 0:19:46.359 that they're like inclined to act in solidarity with you 0:19:46.440 --> 0:19:48.280 rather than just see you as another group of people 0:19:48.320 --> 0:19:51.160 fucking with them, then the bosses have nobody to pull 0:19:51.200 --> 0:19:55.679 for when they're trying to replace you. Yeah, And it 0:19:55.680 --> 0:19:59.440 it works when people remember to do that, you know. Yeah, 0:19:59.480 --> 0:20:01.280 I mean we could say the same thing about like 0:20:02.000 --> 0:20:06.399 the international situation regarding labor right now. But yeah, well absolutely, 0:20:06.440 --> 0:20:08.560 and I mean and a lot of that ties into 0:20:09.280 --> 0:20:11.840 you know, Okay, so like the a f L. Uh, 0:20:11.880 --> 0:20:15.159 you know, their racism was based in nationalism. It was 0:20:15.200 --> 0:20:19.600 based in like the word I forget for old timey, 0:20:19.760 --> 0:20:21.879 I hate immigrants. It's a different word than now, I 0:20:21.920 --> 0:20:25.280 don't remember. And they they met and the a f 0:20:25.400 --> 0:20:30.120 L meets in in April to specifically condemn the invasion 0:20:30.160 --> 0:20:33.040 of the US by the Japanese, not the country, but 0:20:33.240 --> 0:20:37.399 you know, workers and talked openly about the eradication of 0:20:37.440 --> 0:20:41.720 brown men from industrial competition. So this is the Yeah, 0:20:41.760 --> 0:20:43.960 this is the level of like when I'm saying a 0:20:44.160 --> 0:20:48.120 FL sucked back then, That's where I'm at. But what's 0:20:48.160 --> 0:20:52.719 interesting to me is all of the things that don't suck. Robert. 0:20:53.400 --> 0:20:56.879 We are show sponsored entirely actually apparently responsored by me 0:20:56.960 --> 0:21:00.960 paying for this show to exist. But beyond beyond the Margaret, 0:21:01.000 --> 0:21:02.960 it will work out for you. Yeah, yeah, yeah totally. 0:21:03.080 --> 0:21:05.960 And actually, listeners, if you pay me, you can have 0:21:06.000 --> 0:21:10.080 a podcast on cool Zone Media. It's this new multi 0:21:10.119 --> 0:21:15.879 tiered system. Yeah. Now, so here's here's the way it works, folks. 0:21:16.560 --> 0:21:21.680 You get contracted two make a podcast, and you give 0:21:21.720 --> 0:21:24.200 money to Margaret, Margaret gives the money to me. Then 0:21:24.280 --> 0:21:27.359 you find two new podcasters underneath you who give you 0:21:27.520 --> 0:21:29.879 money to podcast, which you give to Margaret, which Margaret 0:21:29.920 --> 0:21:33.800 gives to me, and we eventually have a fully sustainable 0:21:33.840 --> 0:21:40.200 business operation. Yeah. Yeah, um and where it's yeah called 0:21:40.200 --> 0:21:46.440 a tapered rectangle scheme. Yeah. Yeah, a three sided as 0:21:46.440 --> 0:21:49.520 the strongest shape. Actually, yeah, a three sided rectangle that 0:21:49.600 --> 0:21:53.920 is the strongest shape of nature. Yeah, so we're supported 0:21:53.960 --> 0:22:02.560 by you. And also these ads, wow, Margaret, those products. 0:22:02.880 --> 0:22:05.600 Boy doesn't just want to make you run out and 0:22:07.400 --> 0:22:12.440 join the police. Yes, I have become a Washington State 0:22:12.560 --> 0:22:18.760 Highway Patrol officer, and I also am using better Help 0:22:18.800 --> 0:22:28.000 online therapy. Alright, so the IWW. So one of the 0:22:28.040 --> 0:22:31.600 things that I I noticed is whenever we talk, especially historically, 0:22:31.600 --> 0:22:34.040