Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff,
Speaker 2: your weekly reminder that where there's bad things, there's good things,
Speaker 2: and some things are neither good nor bad, but are
Speaker 2: instead your host like me, Marta Kiljoy and my guest
Speaker 2: who is good. I don't know why I'm ontologically describing
Speaker 2: everything all of a sudden, but Hi, Miriam, how are you?
Speaker 3: Hi? I think you're good.
Speaker 2: Oh. Thanks. I got called a paladin by my ex
Speaker 2: and I think it was like in parentheses, derogatory, but
Speaker 2: so it goes.
Speaker 3: I could see it. I could see it.
Speaker 2: You know, it's just actually accurate. It took me by surprise.
Speaker 2: I thought it was a bard, but it turns out
Speaker 2: I'm a paladin.
Speaker 3: I know a lot of paladins who think they're rogues,
Speaker 3: and it's like, listen, yeah, just because you do a
Speaker 3: lot of crime doesn't mean you're not a paladin.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, we do like talking about people who live
Speaker 2: and die by their moral code. But before I introduce
Speaker 2: what this episode is about, first I want to say, Miriam,
Speaker 2: you might recognize from this show or as my new
Speaker 2: co host on Live Like the World Is Dying, my
Speaker 2: individual Community Preparedness podcast, or rather our individual Community Preparedness podcast.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Also you might recognize from this very podcast our producer
Speaker 2: Sophie Hi, Sophie, Welcome back, Hi, happy to be here.
Speaker 3: Hi, Sophie.
Speaker 1: Hi.
Speaker 2: Miriam, our audio engineers Daniel Hi, Danel Hi, Daniel Hi, Danel.
Speaker 2: Our theme music is written forced by unwoman. And before
Speaker 2: we tell Miriam what we're talking about, a fun preamble. Yay.
Speaker 2: No one can see as I gesticulate except the people
Speaker 2: who are on the call with me.
Speaker 3: Margaret just made a gesture that should have been accompanied
Speaker 3: by like twinkly music and like animated sparkles.
Speaker 2: Fame, prominence, notoriety. These are fickle things. Time and time
Speaker 2: again in my research, I'll run across this thing that's
Speaker 2: like the best selling novel of its generation and I
Speaker 2: have never heard of it, right, And they'll be like
Speaker 2: the most prominent revolutionary in all of sixteenth century France,
Speaker 2: and I'll be like, I, Nope, I've never heard of
Speaker 2: this person whatsoever. And what or who we remember is
Speaker 2: a political choice made by historians, because I often find
Speaker 2: things that are pretty recent that were a very big
Speaker 2: deal at the time, that are completely gone. Now. The
Speaker 2: story we're going to talk about today is not a
Speaker 2: story that's well known, even though it's about one of
Speaker 2: the most prominent black men in America in the nineteen
Speaker 2: tens and nineteen twenties. It's a story about a labor
Speaker 2: organizer who pulled together the most diverse union the country
Speaker 2: had ever seen, who went to prison for doing that
Speaker 2: work and became the second most prominent black political prisoner
Speaker 2: of his generation after Marcus Garvey, who is more remembered today,
Speaker 2: although not enough people remember things. But of course I
Speaker 2: say that because my job is to read history books,
Speaker 2: and I'm very convinced that it matters.
Speaker 3: If we all already remembered these things. Margarete, you would
Speaker 3: have no job.
Speaker 2: So oh interesting, Well, okay, hear me out. It could
Speaker 2: be like folklore, or we just tell the same stories
Speaker 2: over and over again.
Speaker 3: Okay, Like we'd all just be sitting around the fire
Speaker 3: and we'd be like, tell us about the IWW.
Speaker 2: Again And you would be like, I will you read
Speaker 2: the script? How do you know that?
Speaker 3: So I still don't know who we're talking about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the man we're going to talk about today, we
Speaker 2: know very very little about his life. We know a
Speaker 2: little bit more about his work because he was a
Speaker 2: working class black man who kept no journal and had
Speaker 2: no children, so there was no one specifically like who
Speaker 2: made it their job to try and make sure he
Speaker 2: was remembered. And also the political positions that he took
Speaker 2: became very unpopular from both the right and the left,
Speaker 2: and so he's not remembered so much. Most of the
Speaker 2: letters we have from him are ones that he wrote
Speaker 2: in prison. I'm gonna tell you who he is, but
Speaker 2: I'm not gonna tell you yet. We know that he
Speaker 2: was funny, we know that he was fierce. We know
Speaker 2: that he fought tirelessly for class solidarity across racial lines,
Speaker 2: and we know that he fought hard for Dear listener,
Speaker 2: get ready to either take a drink or mark off
Speaker 2: a space on your Bengo cards. He fought hard for
Speaker 2: his union, the Industrial Workers of the World.
Speaker 3: Thank god you didn't say tuberculosis the other square on
Speaker 3: the Bigo card.
Speaker 2: There is no tuberculosis in today's episode, so I'm afraid
Speaker 2: you're gonna have to play without your free space. Everyone incredible.
Speaker 2: Today we're going to talk about Ben Fletcher. You ever
Speaker 2: heard of Ben Fletcher?
Speaker 3: I have not heard of Ben Fletcher, and that surprises
Speaker 3: me because I've read, you know, not as much as you,
Speaker 3: but I've read about the iww a bit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, people don't know or talk about Ben Fletcher. I
Speaker 2: wouldn't have remembered his name a year ago. If you
Speaker 2: had told me the outline of this story, I'd be like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: that guy. And you know, it's been a like little
Speaker 2: thing on my list of potential subjects for a very
Speaker 2: long time, right, and like always, like I started reading
Speaker 2: about this and I'm like, no, seriously, why don't I
Speaker 2: know more about this? Why don't more people know about this?
Speaker 2: Ben Fletcher was one of the organizers of the infamous
Speaker 2: at the time and completely not remembered today. Philadelphia Dock
Speaker 2: Workers Union Local eight and I absolutely picked this because
Speaker 2: it has boats in it.
Speaker 3: I love boats. I love a Philadelphia dock Workers Union
Speaker 3: for sure.
Speaker 2: I thought about giving you more Pirates just to troy you,
Speaker 2: and then I was like, no, I'm going to be nice.
Speaker 3: I like pirates too.
Speaker 2: One day I'll give you more Pirates. Local eight is
Speaker 2: not where the one hit wonder band Local AH from
Speaker 2: the nineteen nineties got its name. No one thought that
Speaker 2: except me, But what was their one hit Bound for
Speaker 2: the floor. This is I'm just older than everyone in
Speaker 2: the world. Okay, were a perfectly fine alt rock band
Speaker 2: of the late nineteen nineties that had a song that
Speaker 2: was on the radio.
Speaker 3: Anyway, honestly perfectly fine alt rock bands. We didn't know
Speaker 3: how lucky we were in the nineties. We were spoiled
Speaker 3: for perfectly fine alt rock bands. They were everywhere, you.
Speaker 2: Mean, because they weren't like Nazis or whatever or like,
Speaker 2: cause they.
Speaker 3: Were just like were on the radio and stuff. I
Speaker 3: feel like you don't hear that stuff anymore.
Speaker 2: I hate it. I hate alt rock. I grew up
Speaker 2: in like the worst time musically from my point of view, like.
Speaker 3: Your contrarian music point of view, you're accordionist music point
Speaker 3: of view, but.
Speaker 2: In my mind, like pop music was better ten years
Speaker 2: earlier and ten years later. But whatever. Anyway, nothing to
Speaker 2: do with Local eight. We can't piece together an entire
Speaker 2: biography for him, but historian Peter Cole has done the
Speaker 2: closest that can be done with his book Ben Fletcher,
Speaker 2: The Life and Time Is of Black Wobbly, And that
Speaker 2: was probably the core of my research, supplemented by a
Speaker 2: bunch of articles written by the labor historians, mostly mostly
Speaker 2: on Libcom and a few other places that get into
Speaker 2: the broader context around some of the other unions that
Speaker 2: were going on and things like that, and strikes in
Speaker 2: Philadelphia in general. But what we do know about him,
Speaker 2: we know, for example, that Benjamin Harrison Fletcher was born
Speaker 2: on April thirteenth, eighteen ninety in Philadelphia. Do either of
Speaker 2: you know who Benjamin Harrison Fletcher is named after.
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm assuming somebody named Benjamin Harrison.
Speaker 2: But did you know that we had a president of
Speaker 2: the United States named Benjamin Harrison? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Wait, No, I knew about William Henry Harrison because he
Speaker 3: was had the best presidential.
Speaker 2: Tim Oh, this makes so much more sense. Okay, we
Speaker 2: had William Henderson. I guess I take your word for it.
Speaker 3: I mean, I know, you know there was that Simpsons
Speaker 3: where they had the song about the mediocre presidents, and
Speaker 3: one of them was William Henry Harrison. I died in
Speaker 3: thirty days, you know.
Speaker 2: No, I looked it up Benjamin Harrison. I was right.
Speaker 2: My script was right. The twenty third president of the
Speaker 2: United State dates was named Benjamin Harrison.
Speaker 1: Oh shit, I'm like doing the song in my head
Speaker 1: of all the presidents that my mom had to learn
Speaker 1: in school and would sing to me and there he is.
Speaker 3: Wow, Wait did I make up William Henry Harrison? Did
Speaker 3: the Simpsons make up William Henry Harrison.
Speaker 2: I have no idea who William Harrison is. Maybe there
Speaker 2: is one. I don't know. I don't know all the presidents.
Speaker 2: This is what everyone's learning.
Speaker 3: I mean, fuck presidents whatever.
Speaker 1: No William Henry, No, William hen I'm doing the song
Speaker 1: about it was like the ninth president. There's two Harrisons. Oh, okay, okay,
Speaker 1: get an original last name people.
Speaker 2: I know.
Speaker 3: If there's one thing that America seems to love doing,
Speaker 3: it's electing people with the same last name as previously
Speaker 3: elected people and then wondering why nothing ever changes now.
Speaker 1: I want to know if they're related.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: William Henry Harrison is the ninth president and Benjamin Harrison
Speaker 1: was the twenty third.
Speaker 2: Twenty third, so there's a big space.
Speaker 1: Then.
Speaker 3: Sorry, Margaret, your podcast has been hijacked by us trying
Speaker 3: to solve the mystery of the Harrisons.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, this is now a Benjamin Harrison podcast.
Speaker 2: We are actually just going to talk about the original
Speaker 2: Benjamin Harrison. Instead are they related.
Speaker 1: Benjamin Harrison was the grandson of Old Tip a Canoe
Speaker 1: Henry Harrison, ninth President of the United States.
Speaker 3: Oh, we're just making things up now, Old tip a Canoe.
Speaker 2: We're just gonna be.
Speaker 3: Making up facts about presidents. Now, that's a word I've
Speaker 3: never had to say out loud.
Speaker 1: So if I said it wrong, I'm sorry. I've never
Speaker 1: even seen that in writing.
Speaker 3: You know, you know what, I just unbidden. The campaign
Speaker 3: slogan tipp a Canoe and Tyler too has entered my head,
Speaker 3: and I realized I have read about that president at
Speaker 3: some point. This is so I don't want to I
Speaker 3: don't care about this. I want to know about this guy.
Speaker 2: No, we're gonna go onward.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's get away from this weird, fucking authoritarian nepotism.
Speaker 2: So I'm going to tell you a little bit about
Speaker 2: the president really quickly.
Speaker 3: Cool.
Speaker 2: I described him in the script as AKA the president.
Speaker 2: That made me be like, there was a president named
Speaker 2: Benjamin Harrison, And I had to put that back in
Speaker 2: because it's like my best joke in the script, so
Speaker 2: I had to like shoehorn it in. Anyway, President Harrison
Speaker 2: was a Republican and that party was riding high on
Speaker 2: the were the party that freed the slaves. Thing just then, right,
Speaker 2: So Republicans were understandably popular with Black Americans, popular enough
Speaker 2: that Ben was named after the guy. That's it. That's
Speaker 2: all we're going to talk about, the president.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm desperately hoping for us to get away from
Speaker 3: these presidents.
Speaker 2: Yeah. No. His parents were Dennis and Esther, and they
Speaker 2: were born before emancipation in Virginia and Maryland, respectively. The
Speaker 2: overwhelmingly most likely scenario here is that they were enslaved.
Speaker 2: There's no evidence one way or the other about this,
Speaker 2: and they were most likely freed by the thirteenth Amendment.
Speaker 2: Many people have claimed that Ben Fletcher also had indigenous
Speaker 2: ancestry as well. This would not be surprising based on
Speaker 2: where his family was from, but the historian who talked
Speaker 2: about it wasn't able to confirm Its and Esther fled
Speaker 2: their respective states to get the fuck away from the
Speaker 2: failure of reconstruction in the South. They had both given
Speaker 2: it a shot, and they were like, oh, okay, emancipations,
Speaker 2: all right, this is going all right. And then they're like, oh, fuck,
Speaker 2: here comes the end of reconstruction. This is bad. The
Speaker 2: races are taking over. We're getting the fuck out here.
Speaker 2: So they went to Philly sometime in the eighteen eighties.
Speaker 2: They got married in eighteen eighty nine. They only met once.
Speaker 2: They were in Philly separately, and they had little Ben
Speaker 2: in eighteen ninety. His mom passed away sometime between nineteen
Speaker 2: hundred and nineteen oh five. He was like ten to fifteen,
Speaker 2: but his dad stayed very much a figure in Ben's
Speaker 2: life most of the time. I'm aware of Ben living
Speaker 2: somewhere as an adult, it's with his father and his
Speaker 2: wife in a multi generational household. As a little kid,
Speaker 2: Ben Fletcher who always went by Ben and not Benjamin
Speaker 2: Harrison or whatever. Ben was smart as fuck, but there
Speaker 2: weren't exactly a lot of educational opportunities available to him,
Speaker 2: and he never graduated high school. He was incredibly well
Speaker 2: read and worldly, and it was all self taught. Therefore,
Speaker 2: I like him. He's cool.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he sounds great.
Speaker 2: So far. He grew up to be all of a
Speaker 2: towering five foot four tall, a short king, just like
Speaker 2: our man John Henry. Inasmuch as anywhere in America could
Speaker 2: be a decent place to grow up as a black
Speaker 2: person from the working class. At the turn of the century,
Speaker 2: Philly was a decent place. There had been a healthy
Speaker 2: black community in Philly for a very long time. It
Speaker 2: was also one of the most segregated. I'm not trying
Speaker 2: to paint a rosy picture here, right, but there had
Speaker 2: been a healthy black community in Philly for a very
Speaker 2: long time. Pennsylvania has Quaker roots, and the Quakers were
Speaker 2: pretty big into the like what if owning people is
Speaker 2: the wrong idea morally? So eighteen thirties, Philly was one
Speaker 2: of the centers of the abolitionist movement. By the time
Speaker 2: Fletcher was born in eighteen ninety, Philly had the largest
Speaker 2: black community in any US city besides the South. It
Speaker 2: was still racist as fuck structurally, more or less, the
Speaker 2: only job black men could get was laborer because white
Speaker 2: people only hired white people. Skilled labor mostly went to
Speaker 2: native born white Americans of English, Irish and German descent,
Speaker 2: while textile factory work was mostly Italian and Eastern European
Speaker 2: Jewish immigrants, which left black men in particular with laborer
Speaker 2: or sometimes long Shorman. And we'll get to that. We
Speaker 2: don't know a lot about Ben's teenaged years. We know
Speaker 2: when he was twenty, so he kind of like appears
Speaker 2: in history when he's twenty fully formed from the brain
Speaker 2: of I don't know enough mythology to know what I'm
Speaker 2: trying to say here, of the like people who appear
Speaker 2: fully formed. Sure, yeah, great, he told the census his
Speaker 2: job was laborer in nineteen ten, and that's like kind
Speaker 2: of like where he shows up in the historical record.
Speaker 2: As was fairly typical of pre redlining Philly. He lived
Speaker 2: in a racially diverse neighborhood and his next door neighbor
Speaker 2: was white, which I always think is like kind of
Speaker 2: worth pointing out, just because I think people have this
Speaker 2: conception of racial progress as linear in the United States
Speaker 2: and forget that there was this massive back turn in
Speaker 2: the beginning of the twentieth century. Yeah, one of the
Speaker 2: primary sources of employment for black workers in Philly was
Speaker 2: the docks. A longshoreman basically means someone who loads and
Speaker 2: unloads cargo off of boats. You might know this better
Speaker 2: than me. I tried to do a whole thing about
Speaker 2: the difference between Steve ADOR's longshoremen and dockers, and then
Speaker 2: I was like, no, I'm not trying to learn.
Speaker 3: My Yeah, I mean my understanding is Steve Adoor's work
Speaker 3: on ships. Long Shoremen work on docks, and I've always
Speaker 3: thought dockers and long shoremen were kind of the same thing, but.
Speaker 2: That maps with the like I just didn't want to
Speaker 2: be wrong. Yeah, it seems like the stevedors are the
Speaker 2: people who go with the boat to where it's going yea,
Speaker 2: and the longshoremen slash dockers take stuff on and off
Speaker 2: the boat.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're a long shore.
Speaker 2: You want to hear me talk shit on the labor
Speaker 2: movement of the early twentieth century late nineteenth century.
Speaker 3: Love to what do you think I showed up for?
Speaker 2: Most of the docks on the East Coast at this
Speaker 2: time were unionized. Technically. I'm going to call this technically
Speaker 2: because the more I'm reading about these unions, the more
Speaker 2: accurate I think it would be to describe the American
Speaker 2: Federation of Labor at this time as a white supremacist
Speaker 2: organization instead of a labor organization. It was a segregated union.
Speaker 2: Many unions that were whites only entirely were part of it,
Speaker 2: and the unions affiliated with the International Longshoreman's Union the ILA,
Speaker 2: which is actually a totally separate origin than the modern
Speaker 2: ILW whatever, the current Longshoreman's Union, which is like way
Speaker 2: more red. By and large, the ILA served as job
Speaker 2: trusts for people of certain ethnicities, the quote historian Peter Cole,
Speaker 2: because the role of unions was to protect white workers,
Speaker 2: and at least as much to protect them from non
Speaker 2: white workers as for the bosses. You would think point
Speaker 2: of a union is to protect you from the bosses,
Speaker 2: But nah, just maintaining white supremacy.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I know.
Speaker 3: For a while, the move among white union organizers was like,
Speaker 3: let's not let black people into the union, and then
Speaker 3: black people would work non union and they'd be like,
Speaker 3: oh my god, they're scabs. Yeah, and it's like, do
Speaker 3: you see how you have created this problem by being
Speaker 3: a racist piece of shit?
Speaker 2: And they were like, no, no, I don't understand. Why
Speaker 2: would I think that you don't understand they've offered me whiteness.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. I just got this and it's great.
Speaker 2: Yeah. All I had to do was give up everything
Speaker 2: about everything that I love from where my family comes from,
Speaker 2: and then in exchange, I get to be better than
Speaker 2: someone else.
Speaker 3: No one will regret this, No, it'll.
Speaker 2: Never go badly. We're going to talk a lot about
Speaker 2: how it went badly. There's this idea in systems theory
Speaker 2: that I learned about recently that I love. I don't
Speaker 2: know shit about systems theory, but I know this quote.
Speaker 2: The purpose of a system is what it does, and
Speaker 2: it is the way of looking at something where you
Speaker 2: can be like, I don't care what you claim that
Speaker 2: this system has as a purpose. The thing that the
Speaker 2: system does is the purpose of the system, and it
Speaker 2: is like useless to pretend otherwise.
Speaker 3: Yeah, No, that tracks.
Speaker 2: Therefore, I'm arguing the purpose of the AFL at this
Speaker 2: point in history was white supremacy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that sounds exactly right.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, in the eighteen forties, the Irish had physically
Speaker 2: fought to take over working the docks in Philly, but
Speaker 2: they never actually formally unionized in Philly, unlike in Baltimore
Speaker 2: and New York, where the Irish took over the docks
Speaker 2: and unionized with the ILA. So this an ununionized workplace,
Speaker 2: actually wound up better. Black migrants from the South and
Speaker 2: Eastern European immigrants showed up willing to work for less,
Speaker 2: and the docks were diversified right, which meant that the
Speaker 2: Philly dock workers by the time that they wanted a union.
Speaker 2: They wanted an anti racist union. They wanted the Industrial
Speaker 2: Workers of the World, the IWW aka the Wobbleys. Much
Speaker 2: like you, dear listener, want to take advantage of all
Speaker 2: of the things the offers services. Advertisement is exciting to you,
Speaker 2: just like this. It's the same. Here's ads and we're back.
Speaker 2: So we you talked about the IWW a thousand times
Speaker 2: on this show, and so we're not going to deep
Speaker 2: dive it, but it's worth understanding. We have to do
Speaker 2: it enough. For this is the first time you've listened
Speaker 2: to this show. I want you to be able to
Speaker 2: understand what we're talking about. The IWW is going to
Speaker 2: go on to change the face of the world in
Speaker 2: a way that I didn't realize before I started doing
Speaker 2: this show. Right, they're like, Oh, it's a cool old
Speaker 2: radical union from back in the day that's technically still around.
Speaker 2: The more you see how all of these things are connected,
Speaker 2: the more you realize that this idea that came out
Speaker 2: of the United States of the IWW changed twentieth century history.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they were. I mean they don't just like pop
Speaker 3: up in everything like in that way of It's not
Speaker 3: like random that they pop up in everything. They pop
Speaker 3: up in everything because they were involved in everything, because
Speaker 3: they were awesome.
Speaker 2: Right, and they inspired everyone, And they introduced revolutionary unionism
Speaker 2: that organizes across national, gender, racial, and ideological lines. The
Speaker 2: core idea of the IWW is summed up in the
Speaker 2: preamble of its constitution, quote, the working class and the
Speaker 2: employing class have nothing in common. There can be no
Speaker 2: peace as long as hunger and want are found among
Speaker 2: the millions of working people, and the few who make
Speaker 2: up the employing class have all the good things in life.
Speaker 2: Between these two classes, a struggle must go on until
Speaker 2: the workers of the world organize as a class, take
Speaker 2: possession of the means of production, abolish the wage system,
Speaker 2: and live in harmony with the earth. You know, I'm
Speaker 2: in my head, I like go with like owning class
Speaker 2: rather than employeing class, right because like middle management's not
Speaker 2: my issue. They're working for a living. If you make
Speaker 2: your money by working, That's what I'm looking for as
Speaker 2: compared to making your money by owning shit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, do you work for a living is like really
Speaker 3: the fundamental question that I think divides people Like I'm
Speaker 3: sure Elon Musk probably says he works for a living,
Speaker 3: but like, you know, like just because you go into
Speaker 3: a place and do stuff like that's not why you
Speaker 3: have money.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. The IWW is formed nineteen oh five by
Speaker 2: a collection of socialist anarchists and Marxists who are all
Speaker 2: fed up with the racist, sexist, and gradualist labor organizing
Speaker 2: that was going on around them. Among its founders were
Speaker 2: veterans of the POD, Lucy Parsons, who is a black
Speaker 2: and indigenous anarchist who kind of changed everything, and James Connolly,
Speaker 2: another veteran of the POD, who is a Catholic socialist
Speaker 2: who did at least as much as anyone in history
Speaker 2: to free Ireland from England and therefore promote the dissolution
Speaker 2: of the British Empire.
Speaker 3: So, according to star Trek, this is the year the
Speaker 3: Irish Unification of twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2: It's oh shit, that's true.
Speaker 3: We got a few months left, but got to make
Speaker 3: this happen.
Speaker 2: Where's our next James Connolly or mass movement whatever?
Speaker 3: I mean. I don't know how it's going to happen.
Speaker 3: I just note that data isn't usually wrong about things,
Speaker 3: So that's true.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love that every time there's like things eke
Speaker 2: a little bit more towards I mean, Ireland is closer
Speaker 2: to uniting now than it was twenty years ago. Absolutely,
Speaker 2: and Brexit did a real number on it, right because
Speaker 2: a lot of people were like, wait, what, No, we
Speaker 2: like being European. What why do we need to do
Speaker 2: what you fuckers want?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I think it made a lot of people like,
Speaker 3: look at the options around them.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The IWW fights for industrial unionism and I always
Speaker 2: misunderstood this. I always was like industrial workers of the world.
Speaker 2: I was like, oh, it's like people who like listen
Speaker 2: to throbbing gristle. No, like people who like I.
Speaker 3: Should have known you were gonna make that joke, And
Speaker 3: yet it caught me completely off guard.
Speaker 2: That was perfect, excellent. No, Like I always assumed, it
Speaker 2: was like, Oh, it means people who like work in
Speaker 2: industry where they are there's gears involved in like smelting.
Speaker 3: You know, yeah you have a wrench.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if you don't have a wrench, are you an
Speaker 2: industrial worker? And the answer is yes, by old timey standards.
Speaker 3: Oh, I have.
Speaker 2: You heard this? The difference between industrial unionism and trade unionism.
Speaker 2: It's the kind of thing that everyone talks about at parties.
Speaker 3: Tell me more, let's party.
Speaker 2: Okay. So, prior to industrial unionism, unions would be like
Speaker 2: the brakeman's union, and that is separate than the conductor's union,
Speaker 2: and that's separate than the like schmoe who lays the
Speaker 2: tracks union. Right, hmm, okay. Industrial unionism is instead of
Speaker 2: organizing by trade, you organized by industry. Oh so now
Speaker 2: it's like rail workers.
Speaker 3: Union, right, one big union as it.
Speaker 2: Were, because one of the primary tools of the bosses
Speaker 2: is to privilege certain classes of workers over other classes, right,
Speaker 2: And so then the conductors will be like, I got mine,
Speaker 2: fuck you schmoe who lays the track union, because if you're.
Speaker 3: Driving a train, you really want to piss off the
Speaker 3: guy laying the track.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, fair enough. But you know, it's like when
Speaker 2: you tangle power in front of people, people usually fall
Speaker 2: for it.
Speaker 3: People fall for it every goddamn time. It's just very
Speaker 3: disappointing and stupid when they do.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, So the IWW fights for industrial unionism and
Speaker 2: they also fight for anti racist and anti sexist unionism
Speaker 2: for the exact same reason. It is both a moral imperative,
Speaker 2: but it's also a strategic one. You do not want
Speaker 2: to give fault lines to your enemy. I've been talking
Speaker 2: about the IWW on the show for years. So guess
Speaker 2: what I did today, Miriam.
Speaker 3: In the IWW.
Speaker 2: I did. I joined the IWW today. Yay. There's a
Speaker 2: freelance journalist union as part of the IWW.
Speaker 3: Hell yeah, you're a wobbley.
Speaker 2: I know.
Speaker 3: Love that for you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they haven't sent me the welcome pack yet, but
Speaker 2: they took my money. I'm not actually complaining about this.
Speaker 3: Step one. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Literally, the reason I never joined the union is that
Speaker 2: I like, don't particularly like need to. I don't like
Speaker 2: I'm fine, you know. And then I was like, oh right.
Speaker 2: The whole point of unions is to not just look
Speaker 2: for what's good for you, but to you know, yeah,
Speaker 2: try and create something. Hell yeah, so you, dear listener
Speaker 2: can join the IWW.
Speaker 1: Two.
Speaker 2: It excels at organizing and fields that traditional unions won't touch,
Speaker 2: such as freelancers, prisoners, and sex workers. But there are
Speaker 2: wobblies organizing in every industry.
Speaker 3: They've been doing some good work on organizing Starbucks employees
Speaker 3: right most recently.
Speaker 2: I think, so I don't pay attention to things that
Speaker 2: happened in the twenty first century.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, good point.
Speaker 2: I'm not trying to sho the modern WW. They actually do
Speaker 2: a lot of good work.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're great.
Speaker 2: But I read more about the IWW from one hundred
Speaker 2: years ago.
Speaker 3: You know, well in one hundred years check back. Let
Speaker 3: me know how the IWW's done with Starbucks workers.
Speaker 2: I will once you finally let me convince you to
Speaker 2: make you a vampire. Two the sun is. You don't
Speaker 2: need it. You'll be fine.
Speaker 3: I really really don't like working the night shift.
Speaker 2: I know, but you'll get used to it. Just take
Speaker 2: some cognitive behavioral therapy to adjust to the changes.
Speaker 3: All right, I'm on the fence. I'll get back to.
Speaker 2: You, Okay, Okay. So the IWW sets up in nineteen
Speaker 2: oh five and they hit the ground running. They've been
Speaker 2: on the show a bunch of times because they did
Speaker 2: a bunch of cool shit. There was the militant free
Speaker 2: speech fights on the West Coast, especially in Spokane, Washington,
Speaker 2: where a bunch of hoboes showed up and like insisted
Speaker 2: on the right to organize and went to prison in
Speaker 2: mass and it was beautiful and wild. We also talked
Speaker 2: about the wobblies who crossed the border to join in
Speaker 2: the anarchist revolution in Mexico with rifles. They were in
Speaker 2: conflict not just with the bosses and the government, but
Speaker 2: also the white supremacist organizing that call itself Unionism, including
Speaker 2: at the docks. So Ben Fletcher we know about him
Speaker 2: because he's a wobbling as far as we can tell,
Speaker 2: he gets political in nineteen ten he joins two organizations.
Speaker 2: He joins the IWW Local twenty seven, which is sort
Speaker 2: of the catch all wobbly union that was Wobbly Union,
Speaker 2: Tall Local, whatever the fuck that was in Philly at
Speaker 2: the time. He also joined the Socialist Party. The IWW
Speaker 2: is not an electoral organization and it doesn't fuck around
Speaker 2: with party politics. But there's also like you're allowed to
Speaker 2: do a different organization and be you know, you can
Speaker 2: sure you can cross class that's a D and D reference,
Speaker 2: not a classes of capitalism thing. Also, I got it wrong.
Speaker 2: It's a multi it's called multi classing and D and D.
Speaker 2: I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry everyone. A lot of
Speaker 2: Wobblis started off in the Socialist Party and a lot
Speaker 2: of Wobbley's left Socialist Party. Not all of them did.
Speaker 2: Some people went the other way. Some people started in
Speaker 2: both and left the wobblies and joined the Socialists.
Speaker 4: Whatever.
Speaker 2: The Socialist Party was better than average at race politics
Speaker 2: in the US, and this is not saying much. W. E.
Speaker 2: Du Bois, for example, left the Socialist Party after two
Speaker 2: years because he was sick of all the racism within it. Also,
Speaker 2: the Socialist Party was far more middle class, just like
Speaker 2: literally in terms of who was in it. Some folks
Speaker 2: called the IWW socialism with its working clothes on.
Speaker 3: Ooh, I like that.
Speaker 2: I know, it's such a good zing too, Like, oh,
Speaker 2: you want to put on overalls and get some shit done.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like some socialism that's actually working. I am working
Speaker 3: in both senses of the term.
Speaker 2: Uh huh. The two groups soon started to drift apart.
Speaker 2: The IWW was fine with sabotage. The Socialist Party was
Speaker 2: not fine with sabotage. The Socialist Party was concerned first
Speaker 2: and foremost with electoral politics. The IWW's line on it, well,
Speaker 2: they kind of didn't have an official party line, but
Speaker 2: Ben for example, put it in nineteen twenty quote, well,
Speaker 2: I do not countenance against the working class striking at
Speaker 2: the ballot box. I am firmly convinced that first and foremost,
Speaker 2: the historical mission of labor is to organize as a
Speaker 2: class industrially, which is to say, voting is fine, it's
Speaker 2: not where change comes from. Right, we could learn a
Speaker 2: lesson from Ben Fletcher.
Speaker 3: Yeah, every few years, I guess every four years round
Speaker 3: about this time, there's just like the endless discourse around
Speaker 3: should should an anarchist vote? Should an anarchist not vote?
Speaker 3: And it's like the most boring conversation and the most
Speaker 3: pointless one, because the issue isn't whether anarchists do or
Speaker 3: do not vote. The issue is what they do in
Speaker 3: addition to voting or not voting.
Speaker 2: Right, yep, I firmly believe that electoral politics is not
Speaker 2: the way to make change. That does not, from my
Speaker 2: point of view, mean that electoral politics don't matter and
Speaker 2: don't impact the world like it seems an ahistorical perspective
Speaker 2: to take. And so it's just not where change comes from.
Speaker 2: Sometimes change for the worst things would get worse than
Speaker 2: the ballot box. That happens a lot. Oh yeah, So
Speaker 2: Ben Fletcher is in the IWW and right away he's
Speaker 2: a speaker and an organizer, but there's scant documentation about
Speaker 2: what he's up to and that's probably because he was
Speaker 2: probably a sault.
Speaker 3: Oh cool, that's like the coolest thing you can be.
Speaker 2: I know, it's a little like it's funny because I'm
Speaker 2: very into being honest about shit, and there's like a
Speaker 2: little bit of like sketchiness with salts. But like the
Speaker 2: idea of assault is that you go get a job
Speaker 2: to organize it, and you're like, oh, hello, I'm just
Speaker 2: here because I needed a job, and oh wow, you
Speaker 2: don't seem to have a union. I do have some cards,
Speaker 2: would you like some information?
Speaker 3: I think it's like absolutely the coolest thing, and I
Speaker 3: would suck at it so bad.
Speaker 2: Yeah, me too.
Speaker 3: I would be like at the job interview like, hello,
Speaker 3: I'm here to be exploited. Y yes, I enjoy being
Speaker 3: exploited and will not say that we are being exploited
Speaker 3: to anybody else here. I'm sure they love their job,
Speaker 3: thank you.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: I would.
Speaker 3: I would just suck at it.
Speaker 2: I would love to sell my precious hours that I
Speaker 2: have on this planet for as little as possible, please, just.
Speaker 3: Like just like at the orientation meeting and you're like, sneezing,
Speaker 3: organize that?
Speaker 1: What?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, so that's probably what he's doing, because we
Speaker 2: know there's a bunch of other places he's popping up
Speaker 2: in documentation, but not at the place where the strike
Speaker 2: is about to kick off.
Speaker 4: Like always six months before the strike kicks off. Well okay,
Speaker 4: so it's like a different place. Like we just don't
Speaker 4: know whether or not he worked at the docks. I mean,
Speaker 4: we know eventually works at the docks, right, okay, and
Speaker 4: we suspect he primarily worked at the docks, but.
Speaker 2: He's not in a lot of that. He's not being like, hello,
Speaker 2: I'm Ben Fletcher, and I would like to say, you
Speaker 2: know whatever. But he's speaking at rallies. He's the secretary
Speaker 2: of the local of Local twenty seven, which is not
Speaker 2: the dock workers union, it's the catchall union. And he's
Speaker 2: going to the IWW national convention in Chicago. So he
Speaker 2: is like doing the thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's very involved.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay. So the Wabbles start specifically as an anti
Speaker 2: racist and anti sexist union, right, there are not a
Speaker 2: lot of black wobbleys at first. The interracial nature of
Speaker 2: the union has been more proven out West, where there
Speaker 2: are Chinese and Mexican wobblies of plenty. I think that
Speaker 2: Fletcher was one of two men at the nineteen twelve
Speaker 2: convention in Chicago. This doesn't mean there's only two black Wobblis.
Speaker 2: It means that two locals had the representatives that they
Speaker 2: sent be black.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's still a very very low number.
Speaker 2: It is absolutely Ben's going to change that, or maybe
Speaker 2: Philly's going to change it, depending on how you want
Speaker 2: to you want to say, the Wobblies of all races
Speaker 2: were working hard to organize black workers. They wrote articles
Speaker 2: that hold up today about how white employers would play
Speaker 2: white and black workers off of each other in order
Speaker 2: to build white solidarity instead of class solidarity. Right, they
Speaker 2: knew what was happening. They're around for the creation of whiteness.
Speaker 2: I mean, whiteness has been around for a long time,
Speaker 2: but they're around to watch it expand you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they it was happening right in front of them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and antagonistically against their organizing and against many of
Speaker 2: the individuals within their movement, you know.
Speaker 3: And this is like also, this is the era when
Speaker 3: like bosses are like dudes with like cigars and gold
Speaker 3: diamond studied watch chains who like publicly say things like, well,
Speaker 3: what we have to do is get all the white
Speaker 3: workers to turn against the black workers. Wahahahaha, Like they're
Speaker 3: they're not subtle villains, these guys.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're not subtle. Yeah, but you know it is
Speaker 2: subtle the insistent, constant stream of advertising that shapes our
Speaker 2: perspective about what is possible, this stream of advertising. And
Speaker 2: we're back and I'm always wondering whether I still have
Speaker 2: a job. So have you.
Speaker 3: Gotten calls from advertisers before? Have you gotten complaints?
Speaker 1: Not a once on this or any show?
Speaker 3: Yeah, then you're killing it and they love what you're doing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, or they know it just doesn't matter, or they
Speaker 2: don't listen and just keep sending money.
Speaker 1: Ideal.
Speaker 3: Yeah, either way, a win is a win.
Speaker 2: Yep. So soon the IWW starts organizing on the docks.
Speaker 2: The life of a longshoreman at the turn of the
Speaker 2: century was this will be shocking to you, Miriam, not great. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it was not a really good job.
Speaker 3: I mean, if I can speak personally as somebody with
Speaker 3: experience in the maritime industry, still the worst injuries that
Speaker 3: I've ever seen a person get on the job was
Speaker 3: a dock worker. Like it's a rough job today, still.
Speaker 2: Makes sense to me and I am very glad that
Speaker 2: it is a primarily unionized job in the US, because
Speaker 2: then theoretically, at least if someone gets injured on the job,
Speaker 2: they at least get like some pay for it. I hope,
Speaker 2: that's my hope. I haven't paid attention.
Speaker 3: You're you know, you're operating incredibly heavy machinery, often over
Speaker 3: or adjacent to water. Like there's everything, like stuff is
Speaker 3: under incredible amounts of strain. It's just like it's incredibly
Speaker 3: dangerous and like, yeah, and that's in an era that
Speaker 3: like has safety regulations and yeah, you know, people paying
Speaker 3: attention to that stuff ostensibly.
Speaker 2: So if you're listening to this in about fifteen years,
Speaker 2: it's more like what you're dealing with now than what
Speaker 2: we were dealing with while we recorded this, because we
Speaker 2: still have some safety regulations. Okay, So their jobs involved
Speaker 2: a bit of job in security. They would have long
Speaker 2: days of unemployment followed by endless twelve hour shifts. Sometimes
Speaker 2: they had twenty four hour shifts.
Speaker 3: Oh, everyone loves those.
Speaker 2: Sometimes they had thirty six hour shifts. Oh oh no,
Speaker 2: I can't imagine how people got hurt.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what could go wrong when a sleep deprived person
Speaker 3: is handling things that weigh more than a car, like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's fine.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you probably don't start to hallucinate until hour thirty seven, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm trying to remember I have hallucinated from lack
Speaker 2: of sleep before. It was right around the thirty six
Speaker 2: hour mark. I think, Yeah, I.
Speaker 3: Have also hallucinated from lack of sleep, and I don't
Speaker 3: remember what hour it was because I was a little
Speaker 3: disoriented by lack of sleep at the time. Yeah, but
Speaker 3: I wouldn't have trusted myself to operate heavy machinery, I
Speaker 3: tell you what.
Speaker 2: No, but I was running security on a social space
Speaker 2: surrounded by police. That's why I wasn't sleep is that
Speaker 2: it makes sense everyone else is sleeping elsewhere, and I
Speaker 2: was like a squatter, and so I was like, I'm
Speaker 2: used to getting woken up by cops. I'll sleep in
Speaker 2: the space that's under siege by the police. It's fine.
Speaker 2: And by sleep, I mean stay up all night. Anyway,
Speaker 2: Being twenty was fun. So dock workers have no permanent contracts,
Speaker 2: not even month to month. They are working shift to shift.
Speaker 2: You are told to stand around the docks and wait
Speaker 2: unpaid for when ships arrive, and then they start paying you. Jesus,
Speaker 2: there's three shifts per day. You basically like show up
Speaker 2: and try to get hired. Each day at seven am,
Speaker 2: there's like a hiring at seven am, one pm, and
Speaker 2: seven pm. And in Philly at this point they're not unionized.
Speaker 2: Half of Philly's longshoremen were black, so it wasn't a
Speaker 2: great fit for the ILA. Most ILA unions were whites only,
Speaker 2: while those like in New Orleans that had to allow
Speaker 2: black workers because otherwise it wouldn't have worked. They kept
Speaker 2: black people segregated and like you know, second class workers.
Speaker 2: One day in nineteen thirteen, the Philly dock workers had
Speaker 2: decided they'd had enough. How much of this was pure
Speaker 2: spontaneous revolt and how much of it was the result
Speaker 2: of agitation of Ben and other people like him. We
Speaker 2: will likely never know exactly how the strike began, Like
Speaker 2: the first day of it. I'm having trouble sorting out.
Speaker 2: Here's the most likely version that I can piece together.
Speaker 2: Dockers weren't organized yet, not formally, but they were agitated,
Speaker 2: whether entirely organically or otherwise. Soon enough, in May nineteen thirteen,
Speaker 2: they wanted to strike. On May fourteenth, they put down
Speaker 2: their cargo hooks and walked off the job. Hell yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm excited for them. I know, fifteen hundred of them
Speaker 2: start Within hours, they were talking about how they should
Speaker 2: organize soon enough they have all about four there's about
Speaker 2: four thousand dock workers for most of time we're going
Speaker 2: to be talking about I think it peaks at six
Speaker 2: thousand or so in about ten years or we're talking.
Speaker 2: And as soon as they're talking about organizing, both the
Speaker 2: ILA and the IWW are like, all right, vote for us,
Speaker 2: we'll organize it.
Speaker 3: Is the ILA like, vote for us, we'll represent like
Speaker 3: half of you. Is that like their selling point?
Speaker 2: Their selling point is literally, we brought you free booze, compelling,
Speaker 2: and we will pay salaries to branch officers.
Speaker 3: White supremacy and free booze.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which has worked. And if it had been a
Speaker 2: majority white place, you know, it would have worked.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah.
Speaker 2: And they were willing to organize the black workers just
Speaker 2: it would have been segregated.
Speaker 3: Okay, So they were offering a deal, but a shitty
Speaker 3: deal yes to black workers.
Speaker 2: The IWW's promise was radical equality, that they all fellow workers,
Speaker 2: men and women. There's no women dockers, but there's women
Speaker 2: in the IWW black and white would advance towards a
Speaker 2: world without wage labor. The ILA would have formed segregated unions,
Speaker 2: leaving black workers and second class members. So the dockers
Speaker 2: formed the Industrial Workers of the World Local number eight.
Speaker 3: Hell yeah, I'm so proud of them for not being
Speaker 3: swayed by the free booze. That's I know. I'm so
Speaker 3: glad they were better than that.
Speaker 2: I know, better than how the Simpsons would have done it.
Speaker 3: You know, you just I mean, you just know that
Speaker 3: that has to have worked a bunch of times.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, they're probably like, oh, just do what we
Speaker 2: always do. What could go run? I keep saying ILA
Speaker 2: and ILU, and I don't remember which one it is,
Speaker 2: and I put it in the script both ways. And
Speaker 2: I'm terribly sorry, old racist union, but we're gonna get
Speaker 2: your name wrong. You don't exist anymore.
Speaker 3: Like we could just say, like ILS for international long
Speaker 3: short shitheads, like we don't care, we don't like them.
Speaker 2: Ilkkk. Yeah. So the workers went on strike and they
Speaker 2: did it fucking right. The most privileged workers, the deep
Speaker 2: sea dockers, they got paid a little better, they like,
Speaker 2: got treated a little better. The these are the people
Speaker 2: who started the strike, the first people who walked off
Speaker 2: the job, and when they did, they said, the demands
Speaker 2: that we're making are for everyone. Everyone will be treated
Speaker 2: as well as we are going to be treated at
Speaker 2: the end of the strike, not just how good we
Speaker 2: have it. Now, we're going to get it better, and
Speaker 2: everyone else is also going to get it better equal
Speaker 2: to us.
Speaker 3: Nice, we're bringing everybody with us.
Speaker 2: Because right away the owners were like, our understand, we
Speaker 2: would have just if it had been a normal strike,
Speaker 2: we would have just paid off the deep sea doggers
Speaker 2: and it would have ended.
Speaker 3: You know, It's like these guys have seen the playbook.
Speaker 3: They know what the strategy is.
Speaker 2: Yeah. They demanded thirty five cents an hour, which works
Speaker 2: out to roughly like eighteen thousand dollars a year in
Speaker 2: modern money.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, that still sucks.
Speaker 2: Oh, Like they're basically asking for the poverty line, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're like, oh, we would like to do this
Speaker 3: backbreaking and dangerous job for like shit money. And I
Speaker 3: guess at this point we're getting half shit money, Like damn.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And they want a radical reduction in their hours.
Speaker 2: They only want to work ten hours a day. They
Speaker 2: want night work, paid time and a half. They want
Speaker 2: double pay on Sundays and holidays, and they want recognition
Speaker 2: of the union.
Speaker 3: That is like tragically reasonable demands.
Speaker 2: I know, I know. Decisions were made democratically by the
Speaker 2: rank and file workers. The IWW organizers who showed up
Speaker 2: didn't tell people what to do, They just helped facilitate it.
Speaker 2: The strike committee of fifteen people was elected, with at
Speaker 2: least one representative from each nationality, so that all languages
Speaker 2: were represented. Oh that rules, Yeah, no, I like fucking
Speaker 2: did it right. The day they organized a one hundred
Speaker 2: ships were prevented from loading or unloading.
Speaker 3: And what's cool about a dock workers strike is that
Speaker 3: those ships are being loaded and unloaded, a lot of
Speaker 3: them with perishable goods.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that's gonna come up, yeah, okay, yeah.
Speaker 3: And like it's one of those like there are some
Speaker 3: types of strike where like if you're at a factory
Speaker 3: or whatever and you're like, we're not going to make
Speaker 3: the objects. Yeah, then it's like okay, well then those
Speaker 3: won't be made for a while, you know. But if
Speaker 3: you're a farm worker or like a transport worker, stuff
Speaker 3: just keeps piling up and chaos ensues and it fucking rules.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a fucking good point. The next day, the
Speaker 2: bosses attack physically. One wobbly organizer, a guy named Mkelvey,
Speaker 2: was beaten unconscious and then jailed for two months. And
Speaker 2: only three years earlier, he'd been involved in the Spokane
Speaker 2: free speech fight and been prisoned in that that we
Speaker 2: talked about the show a while ago. Oh wow, we'd
Speaker 2: like seeing people die in the jails out there while
Speaker 2: he was fighting, you know. Yeah, the boss has used
Speaker 2: every dirty trick they could. The owners of the various
Speaker 2: shipping and docking companies. There's a thing that happens time
Speaker 2: and time again, where like capitalism pretends to be in competition,
Speaker 2: they're like, oh, I'm a company in your company, so
Speaker 2: we hate each other, you know, Like, no they have
Speaker 2: class solidarity, why don't we is basically what's happening, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: the rich the owners of the various companies united to
Speaker 2: form at Owners Union of sorts.
Speaker 3: Wow, I hate that.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The other dirty trick they would always use they
Speaker 2: hired black strike breakers from Baltimore. And to be clear,
Speaker 2: this is on white supremacist labor organizing that this works
Speaker 2: so well, right, Like if they weren't white supremacist organizations.
Speaker 2: It would not work to hire black which is why
Speaker 2: it doesn't work this time. Yay, they hire pinkertons to
Speaker 2: like infiltrate and agent provoctur and shit, there's gun battles
Speaker 2: with the strikers and they re route their ships so
Speaker 2: they like send the ships to Baltimore and New York.
Speaker 2: And Ben Fletcher actually goes down to Baltimore to help
Speaker 2: convince dockers there not to touch hot cargo.
Speaker 3: Awesome.
Speaker 2: Meanwhile, the ISLA is trying to snipe workers into its
Speaker 2: own ranks, but had no success at that. And when
Speaker 2: I say that we have won all the rights we
Speaker 2: have in this country by fighting, I mean with violence.
Speaker 2: A week into the strike, on May twenty first, six
Speaker 2: hundred strikers and their supporters fought off seventy five scabs
Speaker 2: by the police. Hundreds of women were throwing bricks at cops,
Speaker 2: most likely the family members of the all Mail workforce.
Speaker 3: Amazing. Yeah, that's a supportive family thing to do. I know,
Speaker 3: somebody is trying to interfere with a member of your
Speaker 3: famili's you know, yeah, way of making a living, Like, yeah,
Speaker 3: you might need to throw bricks at that person.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then on May twenty eighth, solid already cracked
Speaker 2: among the bosses. Ah, the companies that transported perishable goods
Speaker 2: were the first to crack. I bet yeah, And once
Speaker 2: the owning class was splintered, the rest of the companies
Speaker 2: fell to The strike was one in two weeks.
Speaker 3: Hell yeah, which is probably about as long as it
Speaker 3: takes for the ship full of whatever it was they
Speaker 3: were trying to ship to start to smell terrible.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. The pace stayed at thirty cents an hour
Speaker 2: for the but I think that's a raise for most
Speaker 2: of the workers and the rest of their demands, which
Speaker 2: were actually more important to and then even their base rate.
Speaker 2: The overtime, the recognition of union's anti discrimination, all that shit,
Speaker 2: all that was one. The overtime was particularly important, of course,
Speaker 2: because people were working twenty four and thirty six hour shifts. Yeah.
Speaker 2: The joke I wrote in here is what are they doctors?
Speaker 2: I don't want a sleepy doctor.
Speaker 3: I mean I don't want a sleepy nurse either. I
Speaker 3: don't want anybody sleepy. I don't want a sleepy guy
Speaker 3: making a sandwich. Like, we should all be at our
Speaker 3: best when we do things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, dreamer is a good job for sleepy. But actually
Speaker 2: I don't want to work a twenty four hour shift sleeping.
Speaker 3: Mm hm.
Speaker 1: The other time I want to sleepy guys. When it's
Speaker 1: you know, a puppy, a puppy's tired, he can be
Speaker 1: a sleepy guy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like my dog's job is mostly I
Speaker 3: mean he does a few part time things, but like
Speaker 3: mostly couch snuggles.
Speaker 1: Who he's a sleepy guy.
Speaker 3: He's a sleepy guy. He does he crushes it, you know.
Speaker 1: Great job.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So the strikes, the union forms, and local aid
Speaker 2: does not waste any time. In IWW fashion, they don't
Speaker 2: sign contracts with employers because they don't want to give
Speaker 2: up any right to strike and things like that. Right,
Speaker 2: they're like, instead of being like, hey, we won't strike,
Speaker 2: into our contracts up, they're like, now you treat us
Speaker 2: like shit, we're gonna strike. What the fuck do you want?
Speaker 2: And their contracts are oral and renewed yearly. Anytime the
Speaker 2: bosses would treat them like shit, the doctors would hoist
Speaker 2: the goods up off the ship and then walk away.
Speaker 3: Hell yes, yeah, oh my god, I love that. Yeah,
Speaker 3: just leave them in suspense there, uh huh oh literally
Speaker 3: because this suspended.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, And the Wobblies did a lot more than
Speaker 2: just interrupt work. They planned strategically. They fought to maintain
Speaker 2: unity between different races of workers, and they organize cultural
Speaker 2: events for the workers, doing that thing that organized workers
Speaker 2: have done so well in history, which is making sure
Speaker 2: that the working class has as much of an opportunity
Speaker 2: for education and culture as the owning class. As always
Speaker 2: at the time, the racial tension that they were dealing
Speaker 2: with was a three way thing. There were white people
Speaker 2: who were Protestants, then there were black people, and then
Speaker 2: there were the Catholics in the Slavs, who are neither
Speaker 2: white nor black. Local eight worked hard to keep them
Speaker 2: all united by having like family picnics and shit. Right,
Speaker 2: everyone comes, everyone gets to know each other, All the
Speaker 2: languages of different people are there and hanging out.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: By August nineteen thirteen, they supported the tugboat sailors in
Speaker 2: a strike for fifteen dollars a week, ten hour days,
Speaker 2: six days a week. Nice, So twenty five cents an
Speaker 2: hour is what they thought had to fight for what
Speaker 2: radical demands.
Speaker 3: Tugboat workers are also some of the most hardcore people
Speaker 3: you will ever meet.
Speaker 2: I believe it. This strike was successful and soon the
Speaker 2: sailors were in Local eight. By November they also had
Speaker 2: the docks firefighters in the union. Nice yeah. Local eight
Speaker 2: solved the hiring problem and got DOC workers monthly contracts
Speaker 2: instead of daily ones, and they reversed the power dynamics
Speaker 2: of how hiring worked before. If you're a docker, you
Speaker 2: had to line up to get hired every day, and
Speaker 2: the system is called the shape up, and all the
Speaker 2: workers are basically in competition with each other. It's like
Speaker 2: you know, schoolroom recess soccer. Now the employers have to
Speaker 2: come to the union hall, show up and be like, hey,
Speaker 2: I need one hundred and twenty people today, and only
Speaker 2: workers with an iwwpen on their clothes could work. Most
Speaker 2: of the docks. There was like one or two on
Speaker 2: unionized docks on the docks. Peer, I don't know how
Speaker 2: the terminology works. The union hall was open every day
Speaker 2: of the week and they offered free classes on all
Speaker 2: sorts of topics for the workers and all sorts of languages.
Speaker 2: Any important meetings they had were live translated or I
Speaker 2: guess interpreted as the word for that into Polish, Lithuanian, Spanish,
Speaker 2: and Italian. The Spanish, apparently was the tugboat sailors. Interesting,
Speaker 2: whenever radicals from other countries passed through the port, they
Speaker 2: were invited to come talk. So the working class doc
Speaker 2: workers were like worldly and abreast of the politics of
Speaker 2: the world because like, here's an Argentinian socialist talking about
Speaker 2: what's going on there? Yeah, and by general agreement. So
Speaker 2: leadership is very constantly rotated in the wilds at least
Speaker 2: this time period. The president of the union was always
Speaker 2: black and the secretary was always white, and that was
Speaker 2: like a conscious choice that they made. Cool about fifty
Speaker 2: two percent I think of the workers are black in
Speaker 2: this union. On the first anniversary of the union, they
Speaker 2: decided to throw themselves a party, and the bosses were like, no,
Speaker 2: you got to come to work, And they were like, no, i'
Speaker 2: is just not going to come to work. What are
Speaker 2: you going to do?
Speaker 3: I think they've established pretty well that the bosses cannot
Speaker 3: make them come to work if they don't want to.
Speaker 2: Yeah, twenty five hundred of the workers decided to go
Speaker 2: to the party instead.
Speaker 3: Good call.
Speaker 2: None of them got fired. They marched through Philly with
Speaker 2: three bands in tow and now, like the content of
Speaker 2: their chance, but I can't work it out rhythmically. One
Speaker 2: of their chants was no creed, no color can borrow
Speaker 2: you from membership.
Speaker 3: Oh yep.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 3: It was doing well for the first couple syllables there
Speaker 3: and then it really went off the rails.
Speaker 2: Yep. The other motto is a chance, was the classic.
Speaker 2: An injury to one is an injury to all, and
Speaker 2: that one that one could probably work.
Speaker 3: That one works, yeah, yeah, not if you mess with us,
Speaker 3: we'll turn your goods into giant pinatas hanging over the ocean.
Speaker 2: Maybe it works really well in another language, you know,
Speaker 2: like could have been the Italian chant. Yeah, and there
Speaker 2: would be like speeches given, which you know, it's like
Speaker 2: now like when you go to a thing and their
Speaker 2: speech is at it, you're like, oh god, damn it.
Speaker 3: Right, Oh I tune out. Unfortunately I'm the worst.
Speaker 2: But it's a world without the internet and TV.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, good point.
Speaker 2: Everyone's used to listening to people give talks as that's
Speaker 2: how bad their entertainment were. Wait we podcast totally listening
Speaker 2: to people was great. Everyone should do oh wit, well.
Speaker 3: This, you know, I'm guessing also there are people who
Speaker 3: were giving speeches that those are good at it and
Speaker 3: not always. Is it the case that when you go
Speaker 3: to a rally, Yeah, the people who will get up
Speaker 3: to give a speech are good at that. Often they are,
Speaker 3: but not always.
Speaker 2: I actually think that that's an important thing because like
Speaker 2: old fashioned speech, like soapboxers, and that's how Ben Fletcher
Speaker 2: gets a start, right as soapboxing. You're a stand up comic, Yeah,
Speaker 2: like your job is to keep the audience paying attention
Speaker 2: and laughing at the bosses. And like I only have
Speaker 2: a few of Ben Fletcher's jokes in here. It'll be
Speaker 2: mostly in the second half, but they're good, you know.
Speaker 2: So speeches were probably good. And they also played baseball
Speaker 2: and they also danced. They had three bands with them.
Speaker 3: Baseball's terrible, but the rest of that sounds great, I know.
Speaker 2: But it's like Philly in America in the like old
Speaker 2: America times. Like I'm sure everyone likes it. They probably
Speaker 2: have like striped outfits and.
Speaker 3: Those baseball caps with little like little tiny.
Speaker 2: Brim Yeah, and they're like slow pace of it somehow
Speaker 2: works for them. It's hard to overstate how big of
Speaker 2: a deal the fact that they weren't segregated was like
Speaker 2: it's one of those things where you like look back
Speaker 2: and you're like, oh, yeah, they hit the bare minimum, right,
Speaker 2: because that is kind of the bare minimum we ask
Speaker 2: for people in history, at least white people, is to
Speaker 2: like not be segregated. Right, This is a really fucking
Speaker 2: big deal. This scares people. Philly is one of the
Speaker 2: more segregated cities in the country, according to wb du Boys.
Speaker 2: And it's nineteen fourteen in the US. This is a
Speaker 2: segregated time.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Most every year, for the nine years of the union's heyday,
Speaker 2: they went on strike to celebrate their birthday.
Speaker 3: That's great, you know what that we should bring back,
Speaker 3: just like annual strikes because like, no, we're not striking
Speaker 3: for anything, we're just reminding you that we can.
Speaker 2: I don't know if it's still the case, but the
Speaker 2: trash union in Amsterdam would strike. I think every year.
Speaker 2: They'd like basically be like no, there's just not gonna
Speaker 2: be any trash pick up next week, and the city
Speaker 2: of Amsterdam fills with garbage, Like the streets are just
Speaker 2: full of garbage, and it works. Everyone's like, ah, yeah,
Speaker 2: we should probably treat the trash workers pretty good.
Speaker 3: Huh, yeah, we sure do. Suddenly appreciate the work you
Speaker 3: guys put in.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so they go on strike to celebrate their birthday
Speaker 2: almost every year. There's I feel like I've read both
Speaker 2: ways about whether or not during the war they went
Speaker 2: on strike every year of the war or just one
Speaker 2: year of Oh, the US was only involved in the
Speaker 2: war for one year, that's why. Yeah, I'm smart. So
Speaker 2: I used to reading about European countries in World War
Speaker 2: One that I'm like, World War One was many years, But.
Speaker 3: Weren't strikes illegal during World War One? How did they
Speaker 3: get did they?
Speaker 2: Oh, we'll get to that, Okay. Meanwhile, Ben Fletcher and
Speaker 2: the other organizers go around the Eastern Seaboard and they're
Speaker 2: trying to organize the dock workers there into the IWW.
Speaker 2: They never managed to unseat the ILA, though they managed
Speaker 2: to sign up hundreds of workers, mostly black. Since the
Speaker 2: Baltimore ILA was a white supremacist organization, was pretty easy
Speaker 2: to get black workers to sign up for the union.
Speaker 3: That'll let them come, Yeah, I would imagine.
Speaker 2: So Ben was down in Norfolk, Virginia, which I keep
Speaker 2: wanting to call like Nuffolk or something. I don't know,
Speaker 2: it just looks so British. Anyway, when he ran a
Speaker 2: foul of the other enemy of black organizers, racist white mobs,
Speaker 2: a black man and a labor organizer both this is
Speaker 2: too much for sensitive white Southern racists. He was giving
Speaker 2: a speech in an open air meeting that some racists
Speaker 2: came to heckel A Matt and they asked him, quote,
Speaker 2: do you approve of intermarriage or sexual intercourse between whites
Speaker 2: and blacks? Heavin enward marry a white woman. Fletcher responded,
Speaker 2: I don't see anyone as black as I am, but
Speaker 2: we all damn no. Well the reason, oh damn yeah,
Speaker 2: because he's he's not light skinned, right, yeah, and so
Speaker 2: he's the racists don't like hearing that miscegenation had been
Speaker 2: the norm consentially or otherwise for hundreds of years.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he basically said. Instead of answering whether he approved
Speaker 3: of it, he said, well, it sure looks like some
Speaker 3: of your dad's approved of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: So they decided to lynch him. He does not get lynched,
Speaker 2: And all I know is he has one sentence about this.
Speaker 2: This is what the historical record seems to have on it.
Speaker 2: He said, quote oh not quote paraphrase. His friend smuggled
Speaker 2: him onto a ship bound for Boston. Great.
Speaker 3: I like that he devoted more time to telling us
Speaker 3: about his good z sick line. Yeah that like he was, like,
Speaker 3: I had a really good singer. You're gonna hear it
Speaker 3: in its entirety. And then yeah, I got to Boston.
Speaker 2: Yeah fucked off. Yeah I left. Yeah. So by March
Speaker 2: nineteen seventeen, he's living up in Boston doing his organizing. There,
Speaker 2: he starts working in a soap factory and he gets
Speaker 2: married to a white widow named Carrie Dano Bartlett from
Speaker 2: New York City.
Speaker 3: Working in the soap factory is handy for a soapbox speaker.
Speaker 2: Oh that's true, access to boxes.
Speaker 3: He has seized control of the means of production.
Speaker 2: Oh that's true. That's why he did it. Uh, his
Speaker 2: personal life, doesn't. I have hints of his personal life
Speaker 2: here and there, but not a lot about it.
Speaker 3: Wife's guy of history.
Speaker 2: Not bad to either of his wives. Oh, he does
Speaker 2: not stay. He's married to Carrie for about five years.
Speaker 2: His second wife happy with to the end of his days. Great,
Speaker 2: and he seemed to be also supportive of Carrie had
Speaker 2: a six year old daughter. They all lived together with
Speaker 2: his dad for a while in Baltimore. His married life however,
Speaker 2: did not start off super easy. He was only married
Speaker 2: two weeks when the law came after him because of
Speaker 2: the war. Right, And we'll talk about that on Wednesday.
Speaker 2: There's my cliffhanger, and Wednesday's so far away.
Speaker 3: I don't want to wait till Wednesday.
Speaker 2: Well you can wait like five minutes, Magpie.
Speaker 1: I personally think you need like a cliffhanger sound effect.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like like an old trashy like TV like I
Speaker 2: don't even know what it'd be like.
Speaker 1: I was thinking, like, but it's just on my brain
Speaker 1: from the Creature in the Black Lagoon when the monster
Speaker 1: comes out and it's.
Speaker 3: Like baa yeah, absolutely, yeah, Daniel, like a scare cord.
Speaker 2: Daniel, what you got?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: It plays now? Okay, So you know anything you want
Speaker 2: plug here at the end of part one, or anything
Speaker 2: you want to say about our man Ben.
Speaker 3: I'm excited to see where this goes. I love him
Speaker 3: so far, and I like you, surprised that I hadn't
Speaker 3: heard all about this guy before. I know for plugs.
Speaker 3: As you mentioned, I'm podcasting over it live like the
Speaker 3: world is dying from strangers in a tangled wilderness. Check
Speaker 3: it out. Yeah, it's cool.
Speaker 2: You can also find me also on Love like the
Speaker 2: World Is Dying, published by Strangers and Tanglederness. It's another podcast.
Speaker 2: If you're like I don't here Margaret enough and you
Speaker 2: already listen to this and you also listen to Cools
Speaker 2: on Media Book Club, well, I'm one of three year
Speaker 2: four hosts of Love like Doorlstein, so I'm sometimes on it.
Speaker 3: And we got other podcasts over there.
Speaker 2: Too, That's true. If you like nerd stuff and hate cops,
Speaker 2: we have the Spectacle and if you like weird cultural think, God,
Speaker 2: how do I describe the podcast Rangers in the Tangled Wlderness?
Speaker 2: You think I know the elevator pitch for our podcast
Speaker 2: with our name in it. Who knows. But we're a
Speaker 2: collectively run publisher and we publish things, and every zne
Speaker 2: that we put out we put out also an audio format,
Speaker 2: so you can listen to all kinds of scenes of
Speaker 2: like poetry and fiction and theory and fun things also
Speaker 2: unlike those boring things like poetry and history and oh wait, hmmm, Sophia,
Speaker 2: you got anything.
Speaker 3: I mean, if you understood the part about whether people
Speaker 3: were paladins or whatever, then you should probably just come
Speaker 3: on over to Strangers in a tangled wilderness.
Speaker 2: It's true. Yeah, I think sovy.
Speaker 1: Yeah. We at Coolcar Media have a new podcast. It
Speaker 1: is called Weird Little Guys and it is hosted by
Speaker 1: investigative journalist Molly Conger, who has been on this podcast
Speaker 1: and is at socialistog Mom on Twitter, which a lot
Speaker 1: of people know. Molly as and Mollie will take you
Speaker 1: beyond the headlines to examine some of the worst people
Speaker 1: on the planet, most of whom you've never heard of.
Speaker 1: These are the weird little guys trying to ruin life
Speaker 1: as we know it. And it's really good. I don't
Speaker 1: mean to brag, but it's really good. Mollie's so good.
Speaker 2: I'm so excited.
Speaker 3: This is actually the first time hearing about this, and
Speaker 3: this rules. I can't wait.
Speaker 1: You have Mollie's a delight.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Weird Little Guys trailer August first, so it should be
Speaker 1: out already if you're listening on the day this drops,
Speaker 1: and then episodes weekly, not a limited run, but a
Speaker 1: continuous weekly show. Hell yeah until the wheels fall off.
Speaker 2: Hell yeah.
Speaker 3: Awesome.
Speaker 2: We we gotta go, but we'll see you all on Wednesday.
Speaker 1: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts on cool Zone Media,
Speaker 1: visit our upsite folezonemedia dot com, or check us out
Speaker 1: on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts.