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