Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff
Speaker 2: the podcast. We're in between parts one and two. We
Speaker 2: talk about our dogs for an extended period of time,
Speaker 2: because dogs are great. I hope that if you have
Speaker 2: a dog in your life, you are nice to it.
Speaker 2: If you're not nice to the dogs in your life,
Speaker 2: I hope redacted. So our guest today is Miriam Him
Speaker 2: Miriam Hi. Our producer is Sophie Hi, Sophie Hi. Our
Speaker 2: audio engineer is Daniel Hi, Daniel Hi, Daniel Hi, Danel.
Speaker 2: Our theme music was written for us by Unwoman. And
Speaker 2: this is part two and a two parter. And you
Speaker 2: know what that means. It means that if you didn't
Speaker 2: listen to part one, it nothing makes sense. And I'm
Speaker 2: as always impressed by your ability to move through the
Speaker 2: world without knowing everything about the thing that came before
Speaker 2: the thing in order to understand the thing. I'm just
Speaker 2: it's really impressive. All you care about is the effects
Speaker 2: of World War One on Local eight in Philadelphia in
Speaker 2: nineteen seventeen and onward. I that's all you care about,
Speaker 2: then this is a good place to start listening. And
Speaker 2: I don't understand you.
Speaker 3: And if you're like, what's Local eight? Go back and
Speaker 3: listen to part one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they'd be like, isn't that band that's Bound for
Speaker 2: the Floor And you're like, no, because that's Local H.
Speaker 2: Just not about Heroin. That was that. I always assumed
Speaker 2: Local H was about Heroin.
Speaker 3: That's it about.
Speaker 2: It's like two ram songs mixed together. Is when they
Speaker 2: got there. I spent up. I looked it up this week.
Speaker 3: You're bringing us absolutely all the context I know.
Speaker 2: Well, okay, so I had this Local eight shirt when
Speaker 2: I was a kid, and the front of it as
Speaker 2: a teenager, and the front of us is Local H
Speaker 2: and the back just says fuck you amazing, And I
Speaker 2: was like the coolest, edgiest kid in the world. Right
Speaker 2: because I had this shirt, I got a concert I
Speaker 2: went to and so one day, I guess I'm committed
Speaker 2: to telling this story. I would wear it to school,
Speaker 2: but I would have to change it before I got home,
Speaker 2: right because if my dad's very upset. No, I actually
Speaker 2: don't tell stories about my family anyway, I'll tell you
Speaker 2: that I wore it at school because I'm that kind
Speaker 2: of cool kid, always been super cool.
Speaker 3: You got away with that if you were in a
Speaker 3: shirt with an offensive statement on it. At my school,
Speaker 3: they would send you to the principal's office and dig
Speaker 3: something out of the lost and found and make you
Speaker 3: wear that instead.
Speaker 2: We had like kind of a competition, me and one
Speaker 2: of my friends where we would like, I had to
Speaker 2: try it out to get caught, right, So I wore
Speaker 2: my like cool army coat over it, you know, so
Speaker 2: you couldn't see the back most of the time. But
Speaker 2: then but then when there's like no teachers around or anything, right,
Speaker 2: I'd take it off and see how, like what high
Speaker 2: percent of the day I could walk around with a
Speaker 2: big fuck you on my back. And then one of
Speaker 2: my friends we would both make our own T shirts
Speaker 2: that'd be as like edgy or whatever and clever as possible,
Speaker 2: and he would always get busted more, and so they
Speaker 2: would go and make him turn his shirt inside out,
Speaker 2: so he started putting other stuff like this school is
Speaker 2: fascist on the inside of the shirt.
Speaker 3: God, I love that. Yeah, I'm so glad teenagers do
Speaker 3: stuff like that. It just it warms my heart every time.
Speaker 3: Do you have to write it backwards if it's going
Speaker 3: to be on the inside.
Speaker 2: I don't know, because you just inside out.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Sure, okay, yeah, that rules.
Speaker 2: I'm yeah, I don't know what happened to him. I
Speaker 2: can't remember whether they at that point. It is probably
Speaker 2: lost and found time. This is a pre Columbine world.
Speaker 2: Then Columbine happened, and they took the doors off of
Speaker 2: the stair while we all hung out in and no
Speaker 2: one was allowed to wear trench goats anymore.
Speaker 3: You want to know what I got in trouble for
Speaker 3: post Columbine at my school?
Speaker 2: What this was.
Speaker 3: I was in study hall. I was very bored, and
Speaker 3: I had a rubber band and some paper clips and
Speaker 3: a chalkboard eraser, and I fashioned the rubber band and
Speaker 3: the paper clips into a little bow and arrow and
Speaker 3: I shot paper clips at the chalkboard eraser. Hell yeah,
Speaker 3: and I got detention. Hell yeah, because it was post
Speaker 3: Columbine and a bow and arrow made out of paper
Speaker 3: clips was a little too violent.
Speaker 2: Hell yeah, sounds super cool, though, I know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, as you can tell, I was extremely cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we were all really cool. No, no one should
Speaker 2: look up anything, but now, yeah, we're just always cool.
Speaker 2: So what was cool was AWW And what wasn't cool
Speaker 2: but was morally complex was World War One. People love
Speaker 2: that I have opinions about the high water mark of
Speaker 2: the labor union in the early twentieth century. This is
Speaker 2: why I get invited to lots of things. The high
Speaker 2: water mark, from my point of view worldwide was immediately
Speaker 2: before World War One. I can definitely hold on to
Speaker 2: that being true when it comes to the United States.
Speaker 2: It's a bit fussier when you look elsewhere around the world.
Speaker 2: But World War One initiated the Red Scare in America,
Speaker 2: and the Russian Civil War initiated the Bolshevik counter revolution
Speaker 2: that shifted the socialist project from one that sought to
Speaker 2: empower the working class to one that sought to empower
Speaker 2: a privileged minority and sucked away energy from working class organizing.
Speaker 2: So the high water mark of the labor movement immediately
Speaker 2: before World War One.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's a solid opinion, and I think
Speaker 3: that that is exactly why people invite you to stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, there were strikes everywhere in the nineteen tens
Speaker 2: in the US at the lead up to and the
Speaker 2: start of the war. The working class even gained some
Speaker 2: relative power because of the warps and so many people
Speaker 2: were off to war. There was more labor to be
Speaker 2: done and fewer people to do it. Sadly, this increased
Speaker 2: power did not last too long. In February nineteen seventeen,
Speaker 2: a couple months before the US entered the war, sugar
Speaker 2: workers went on strike in Philly. It started near the
Speaker 2: docks and then spread out from there because the docks
Speaker 2: were such a hotbed of organizing. Right, Like, it's like
Speaker 2: if you have a place where you're like see organized
Speaker 2: labor working constantly, it's like more in your head that
Speaker 2: that's a possibility, right right. Local eight got involved and
Speaker 2: they helped the strike cross color lines, and they refused
Speaker 2: to unload ships transporting sugarcane to the factories on strike.
Speaker 2: A Wobbly was killed in that fight, I believe by cops.
Speaker 2: The strike won its rays, but it did not when
Speaker 2: pay for the time lost striking, and it was seen
Speaker 2: as kind of a draw. Then the US declared war
Speaker 2: and nationalism swept the country. The working class was divided
Speaker 2: and shit started falling apart. Most of the leadership of
Speaker 2: the IWW was against the war, but there was no
Speaker 2: official Wobbly party line. And I think that this was
Speaker 2: intended as like pragmatic, but it was also basically democratic.
Speaker 2: The IWW might not have seen itself as really capable
Speaker 2: of taking a position on the war that all the
Speaker 2: constituents of it were expected to abide by, right, Like,
Speaker 2: who are we to say that the dock workers have
Speaker 2: to be against us intervention in the war. That's not
Speaker 2: part of what we're talking about necessarily, right, because we're
Speaker 2: not a political organization, we're a labor organization.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's interesting because I think so much of
Speaker 3: the left at the time saw World War One as
Speaker 3: the working class of every country going and killing each
Speaker 3: other at the behest of the ownership class.
Speaker 2: Yep. But so much it also didn't. And that's the
Speaker 2: thing is that that was a very divisive issue. And
Speaker 2: again most of the organizers of the IWW felt exactly that.
Speaker 2: I like, it is divisive of the working class for
Speaker 2: a German worker to be in a shooting war with
Speaker 2: a Russian worker, you know, right, But a majority of
Speaker 2: the rank and file were either in favor of the
Speaker 2: war or they at least comply with the law that
Speaker 2: required them to register for the draft.
Speaker 3: Well, and I wonder also if not having a party
Speaker 3: line on this, and maybe this is jumping ahead a little,
Speaker 3: but I know that among anarchists of the time, arguing
Speaker 3: against the draft was illegal and got you, for example,
Speaker 3: deported if you were not born in the US. And
Speaker 3: so I wonder if not having a party line on
Speaker 3: that was like a way to keep the IWW as
Speaker 3: a whole safe from the accusation that they were encouraging
Speaker 3: people not to register for the draft.
Speaker 2: I believe that I was part of it and at
Speaker 2: one hundred percent did not work.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Local eight was actually one of the most pro war,
Speaker 2: or at least not anti war locals. They voted to
Speaker 2: not strike during the war lest they disrupt the war effort.
Speaker 2: Loading ships, after all, is a pretty major part of
Speaker 2: the logistics of war. The army was segregated, of course,
Speaker 2: and black longshoremen who were drafted often weren't allowed to fight,
Speaker 2: but were instead shipped to Europe to unload boxes off
Speaker 2: of ships to continue to be longshoreman. Ben Fletcher's younger brother, Clarence,
Speaker 2: was a private in an all black infantry unit in France,
Speaker 2: but because they were black, they were forced to dig
Speaker 2: trenches in graves instead of fight, and he survived the war.
Speaker 2: Ben Fletcher himself, along with the rest of Local eight,
Speaker 2: wasn't particularly anti war. Some of their German fellow workers
Speaker 2: were actually wildly pro war because they fucking hated the
Speaker 2: Kaiser and like, just everything's messy, right. This is just
Speaker 2: like probably the biggest, first huge division. I mean, there's
Speaker 2: like other divisions in the labor movement, especially around like
Speaker 2: I'm going to go with the actual labor movement at
Speaker 2: the white supremacist organizations that call themselves labor unions, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm sure they were all pro war. Yeah, they
Speaker 3: were like, yeah, it's good for business, fuck human life.
Speaker 2: I haven't read enough about the AFL and World War One,
Speaker 2: but I've like I expect that to be the case.
Speaker 3: I let's just say I read it and that's what
Speaker 3: it said.
Speaker 2: Yeah, fuck them. Yeah. So, participation in World War One
Speaker 2: completely splintered the left, both into pro and anti war sides,
Speaker 2: because involving yourself in a war well and also because yeah,
Speaker 2: it splinters the working class to have the working class
Speaker 2: shoot itself. Right. Despite the IWW not being an anti
Speaker 2: war organization and both ben and Local eight being indifferent
Speaker 2: at worst to the issue, the state absolutely used World
Speaker 2: War One as an excuse to try to destroy the
Speaker 2: IWW completely, and frankly they kind of succeeded. They obviously
Speaker 2: didn't totally succeed or I wouldn't have joined the IWW today.
Speaker 2: But Joy howdy, did they strike at a blow. As
Speaker 2: we've talked about a couple times on the show, the
Speaker 2: first ever Red Scare was at least as much aimed
Speaker 2: at anarchists and Wobbley's, like, right, like we've talked about
Speaker 2: on the show, and as you pointed out, like a
Speaker 2: lot of anarchists, especially Jewish anarchists, got deported, you know
Speaker 2: during this Red scare, right, And yeah, it was aimed
Speaker 2: as much at anarchists and Wobbley's as it was at
Speaker 2: socialism and communism more broadly. It is the second red
Speaker 2: scare that comes for the communists specifically, on September fifth,
Speaker 2: nineteen seventeen, FEDS and cops rated Local eight and the
Speaker 2: other Wobbly Hall in Philly, plus offices of the Wobblies
Speaker 2: and a dozen other cities, including the main headquarters in Chicago.
Speaker 2: Literally tons of records were stolen by the Feds. They
Speaker 2: even stole the furniture, what like.
Speaker 3: What is their justification for that? Is it seditious furniture?
Speaker 3: Is it like furniture? Where they're going to be like, Oh,
Speaker 3: we're going to really get some information out of this
Speaker 3: or are they just fucking with people?
Speaker 2: I assume they're just fucking with people. They stole a
Speaker 2: wobbly Joe Hill's ashes.
Speaker 3: Holy shit, I can't believe I didn't know that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're like, we're taking your dad. Well, okay, so
Speaker 2: his ashes were like I think, in a bunch of
Speaker 2: different envelopes. I think it was like everyone gets some ashes,
Speaker 2: you know, is the implication.
Speaker 3: Yeah, everyone gets a little bit of Joe Hill.
Speaker 2: Yeah. One hundred and sixty six Wobblies were charged with
Speaker 2: violating the Espionage Act of nineteen seventeen for interfering with
Speaker 2: the draft. Innocence did not save them was an important
Speaker 2: thing to remember, unfortunately, during times of political repression. Mm hmmm.
Speaker 2: The war on the IWW was waged by the government,
Speaker 2: but it was supported by an interesting alliance. The bosses
Speaker 2: got together with the government, and they also got together
Speaker 2: with the white supremacist organization that called uself a labor union,
Speaker 2: the AFL, and they together formed the Adjustment Commission, and
Speaker 2: its goal was to get the IWW out.
Speaker 3: The Adjustment Commission sounds evil, Like.
Speaker 2: I know, straight up, I don't know much more about
Speaker 2: it than the name of it, right, and what it
Speaker 2: did in this particular context, I don't know of it.
Speaker 2: At other broader goals, it was definitely described as this
Speaker 2: is its purpose is to destroy the IWW. Ben Fletcher
Speaker 2: was the only black wobbly brought up on charges during
Speaker 2: the Red Scare Part one. Okay, here's the funny thing. Well,
Speaker 2: there's a bunch of funny. He gets in some good
Speaker 2: jokes around the time he's going to jail.
Speaker 3: You did promise me jokes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, But first the joke is the government. The
Speaker 2: thing about being black in America is that you're somehow
Speaker 2: both the most evil villain imaginable to white people, and
Speaker 2: you're also invisible, which gets the funniest part of this
Speaker 2: whole story. It took them four months to find and
Speaker 2: arrest him. He did not hide.
Speaker 3: Incredible.
Speaker 2: Ben and his family had just moved from Boston to
Speaker 2: Philly in with Ben's dad, and he found work under
Speaker 2: his own name, working on the railroads, and all he
Speaker 2: did was not turn himself in. It took them four
Speaker 2: fucking months.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's incredible. He's so he's not only like working
Speaker 3: under his own name, he is living with his father,
Speaker 3: so like, yeah, the first person you would check with
Speaker 3: if you were looking for somebody.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. I think he just like was like, well,
Speaker 2: if I'm going to go down, I should be near
Speaker 2: my family. You know. It's like the best read I
Speaker 2: have on it.
Speaker 3: I love it. I love that He's like, no, I'm
Speaker 3: not hiding, You're just stupid.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it gets better. So in mid February nineteen eighteen,
Speaker 2: the fence found him and arrested him at his home.
Speaker 2: He spent two weeks in jail before Local eight got
Speaker 2: his bail together and got him out. But the Invisible
Speaker 2: Man shit did not end here. I'm going to quote
Speaker 2: historian Robin D. G. Kelly, who's going to then quote
Speaker 2: Fletcher himself. So it's a quote within a quote, but
Speaker 2: I believe in y'all we can handle it. One and
Speaker 2: a quote within the quote has quotes within it. Oh
Speaker 2: my god. Oh no, it's still very readable. So quote well.
Speaker 2: Out on bail. He received a summons to appear in
Speaker 2: court in Chicago in April first, nineteen eighteen. Delayed by
Speaker 2: a train accident, Fletcher arrived at the court house a
Speaker 2: couple hours late. And then now I'm quoting Ben Fletcher.
Speaker 2: Making my way through the federal agents and police who
Speaker 2: swarmed the corridors. I was blocked at the courtroom door
Speaker 2: by the chief bailiff, who inquired, what do you want
Speaker 2: in here? Well, I belong in here. Oh a wise
Speaker 2: boy from the south Side. Want to see the show? No,
Speaker 2: I'm one of the actors. Take that stuff away. You
Speaker 2: can't get in here. Continuing the quote, but now back
Speaker 2: to the historian quote. He had to produce identification and
Speaker 2: his summons just to prove he was the one and
Speaker 2: only Benjamin Harrison Fletcher. It was enough to finally persuade
Speaker 2: the chief bailiff to let him enter, and then I
Speaker 2: walked into the courtroom and into the federal penitentiary.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, cops are They're so stupid. They're so stupid.
Speaker 2: I know. They're like, there are two races to let
Speaker 2: him get arrested twice, he's twice. The cops are too
Speaker 2: fucking like, oh my god, a wise boy from the
Speaker 2: south Side. Huh.
Speaker 3: Also, like I have within my lifetime still heard cops
Speaker 3: be like, oh, wise guy, huh when like people talk shit,
Speaker 3: which is like amazing, Like you've had one hundred years
Speaker 3: to come up with a better comeback than that, and
Speaker 3: you're still going, oh, wise guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I would like to think that that bailiff was very embarrassed,
Speaker 3: but I suspect that he did not have the capacities
Speaker 3: for Yeah.
Speaker 2: No, the thought never crossed his mind that he did
Speaker 2: anything wrong. The wobblis formed. I think it's their first
Speaker 2: general defense committee, which still often exists, right to defend
Speaker 2: their members. And Fletcher's family got ten dollars a week
Speaker 2: to keep them going while Ben was unable to work.
Speaker 2: This is about twenty five cents an hour at forty
Speaker 2: hours a week, so probably a little bit less than
Speaker 2: when he was brought in when he was working. To
Speaker 2: be clear, twenty five cents an hour is a totally
Speaker 2: normal rate. That is around eleven thousand dollars a year today.
Speaker 2: People were struggling. I think is something that like, obviously
Speaker 2: an awful lot of people are struggling right now, right,
Speaker 2: but I think that people don't quite. The left is
Speaker 2: richer than it was one hundred years ago, and we
Speaker 2: have nothing to show for it, and I think people
Speaker 2: should step it up more. Middle class radicals should be
Speaker 2: giving a higher percentage of their income to like actual organizing. Yeah,
Speaker 2: fundraisers and benefits for individuals and things like that are great,
Speaker 2: but like actual organizing, good, good user help.
Speaker 3: It's all well and good to keep passing around the
Speaker 3: same twenty dollars to different people's healthcare go fundmes, but yeah,
Speaker 3: we gotta we gotta put some money towards actual long
Speaker 3: term change.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you know, I absolutely have friends who
Speaker 2: live off of eleven thousand dollars a year, right, but
Speaker 2: like a lot of people live off of more than
Speaker 2: that too. Anyway, whatever, I'm just I just had like
Speaker 2: this kind of epiphany looking at this, like being like, oh, yeah, right,
Speaker 2: these like people who change the fucking world. Right, You'll
Speaker 2: read about Emma Goldman and then like Emma Goldman will
Speaker 2: be like and then and I was vaguely supported in
Speaker 2: a shitty apartment in France in my old age because
Speaker 2: I couldn't work anymore, and the movement pitched in to
Speaker 2: make sure it did and starve to death. And you're like, oh, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: like there's a working class movement, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Anyway, so this trial was absolutely just about destroying IWW.
Speaker 2: And one of the reasons we know that is because
Speaker 2: they included Ben Fletcher and Local eight organizers because Local
Speaker 2: eight while this is happening, is dutifully loading war cargo
Speaker 2: and a ton of its members were overseas fighting or
Speaker 2: digging ditches due to racism. But like the whole you know,
Speaker 2: the press is just full of like the IWW's agents
Speaker 2: of the Kaiser, you know.
Speaker 3: Right, Anyone I don't like is agents of the Kaiser.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The trial dragged on is the longest federal trial
Speaker 2: up to that point in US history, oh, which is
Speaker 2: only like four months or something like that. And the
Speaker 2: defendants were held in Cook County Jail where the Haymarket
Speaker 2: ruders had been held. The defendants made jokes the entire
Speaker 2: time they were on trial. This is like how wobblies do.
Speaker 2: Is they're just constantly singing and joking as they're like
Speaker 2: dying and like lives are ending around them and shit,
Speaker 2: they're just like singing and laughing to their graves. It's
Speaker 2: kind of it's kind of hot.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I love.
Speaker 2: That they know that this is a farce. One guy,
Speaker 2: Jack Walsh, kept referring to the prosecutor, a guy named Nebacker,
Speaker 2: as fellow worker Nebecker. He's not an owner, he's a worker.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Four months of trial, and the evidence that is used
Speaker 2: against the Wobblies is pretty much just all the anti
Speaker 2: war statements they made before the war started and before
Speaker 2: the law that outlawed anti war statements.
Speaker 3: Hmmm.
Speaker 2: And then after forty five minutes of jury deliberation, all
Speaker 2: of the Wobblis were found guilty on all counts. Classic
Speaker 2: fair trial system as it should. Yeah. Ben Fletcher was
Speaker 2: given ten years and Ben told his friend the judge
Speaker 2: has been using very ungrammatical language. The friend said, how's that, Ben?
Speaker 2: And Ben said, his sentences are much too long?
Speaker 3: Oh my god, it's so good Ben. That rules.
Speaker 2: I know he didn't have his own kids, but he
Speaker 2: brought out the dad energy. He is twenty seven years old.
Speaker 2: I like it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, God, And that's like, I mean, you must have
Speaker 3: had that in his back pocket the whole time, like
Speaker 3: just waiting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I'm certain he is just like giggling to
Speaker 2: himself as he's imagining his life being destroyed. But he's like,
Speaker 2: I got a good joke though, you know.
Speaker 3: Yep, and the worst like punishment you give me, the
Speaker 3: funnier my joke will be so heads.
Speaker 2: Up for that, Yeah, I got you. Eddy direction but
Speaker 2: you know what else the wobbley said?
Speaker 3: What else did the Wobbleys have.
Speaker 2: They put advertising in their newspapers?
Speaker 3: Did they?
Speaker 2: Yeah, a lot of old radical presses and newspapers and
Speaker 2: shit had advertising. It's a thing that people don't talk about.
Speaker 2: But that's how the sausages. This is vegan sausages. Here's ads,
Speaker 2: and we're back. So I actually don't know if all
Speaker 2: of the wobbly newspapers always had it, but I remember
Speaker 2: reading about it specifically when I was doing episode about
Speaker 2: the Spokane free speech fight, and because it like really
Speaker 2: stood out to me, and there's been a couple other times,
Speaker 2: like different black radical papers in the sixties and things
Speaker 2: like that a lot of people have Anyway, it was
Speaker 2: just a thing that I didn't expect. So when I
Speaker 2: like learned about it, I was like, oh, interesting, you know.
Speaker 3: Ooh, a fact that will make for a good ad transition.
Speaker 3: You probably don't run across too many of those.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we'll put that one away.
Speaker 3: Yeah, But before we went on break, I just realized
Speaker 3: what we didn't shout out was Ben's friend, who was
Speaker 3: like playing the perfect straight man to his joke. Because
Speaker 3: Ben said this judge's sentences are very ungrammatical, and the
Speaker 3: friend could have just gone yeah, or who gives a fuck?
Speaker 3: Or okay, but no, he went, how's that Ben? Like
Speaker 3: he was working a fucking vaudeville stage, And I love that.
Speaker 2: Hell yeah. And it's funny because it's like they are
Speaker 2: actually experienced comedians. That's the other thing that I think
Speaker 2: people like, I know we talked about earlier, but it's
Speaker 2: like they are practice showmen, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So most of the Wobbles, including Ben, were sent off
Speaker 2: to Levenworth, Kansas, the first ever federal prison. While they're
Speaker 2: on the train, whenever they're like stopped on the tracks
Speaker 2: near some factories, they would sing wobbley songs so loud
Speaker 2: that the workers from the factories would like come out
Speaker 2: to the tracks to listen, because that's how wobblies do amazing.
Speaker 2: The jail was full of political prisoners, including two different
Speaker 2: types of political prisoners. At the time I didn't know about,
Speaker 2: but I'll get to that. It's not just the Wobbles there,
Speaker 2: and the guards constantly tried and I think sometimes succeeded
Speaker 2: at getting the ordinary criminal prisoners to get into fights
Speaker 2: with the quote political prisoners Jay Edgar Hoover personally made
Speaker 2: sure that Fletcher's correspondence was like extra monitored, both because
Speaker 2: he was a wobbly and extra extra because he's black.
Speaker 2: He was afraid of quote Negro agitation. This didn't stop
Speaker 2: Ben from corresponding with all the black socialists at the time.
Speaker 2: After Marcus Garvey, Ben was the most prominent black political
Speaker 2: prisoner in the country, and most of what we have
Speaker 2: about him in paper comes from the fact that he
Speaker 2: was in prison for two and a half years. That's
Speaker 2: how we know his height and weight five four, one
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty pounds. The Wobblis read books, They taught
Speaker 2: one another. They wrote the outside world as much as
Speaker 2: they could. Their correspondence was being intentionally limited, and they
Speaker 2: were like weren't allowed to like write articles for things,
Speaker 2: and all kinds of limitations on them. They tried to
Speaker 2: organize in prison with some success, and they weren't the
Speaker 2: only political prisoners. One historian, Christina Heatherton called Levenworth at
Speaker 2: the time the University of radicalism, and it had quote
Speaker 2: Bulgarian communists, Indian Gadarites, Mexican and Arco syndicalists, and African
Speaker 2: American socialists.
Speaker 3: That's a party.
Speaker 2: I know, it's an even better party because veteran of
Speaker 2: the POD, one of the greatest anarchist militants in history,
Speaker 2: Ricardo Flores mcgone and his brother Enrique in there with Ben.
Speaker 3: Hell yeah, that is a good party.
Speaker 2: Yeah, imagine, just like it's got to be wild, right
Speaker 2: because you're just like, oh, wait, your movements in here,
Speaker 2: Like he oh shit, I heard of you, you know,
Speaker 2: like yeah, you're like, oh.
Speaker 3: I'm like this sucks. I'm in prison, but like, wait,
Speaker 3: the Floris McGowan brothers are in here. Yeah, like, holy shit.
Speaker 2: Now, had you heard of the Indian Gahataites?
Speaker 3: I had not.
Speaker 2: I hadn't either. I had to look it up. All
Speaker 2: they teach about Indian independence in the US schools is Gandhi.
Speaker 2: Why would you bother telling Americans about the militant revolutionary
Speaker 2: movement founded in Oregon by Diaspris, Sikhs and Hindus that
Speaker 2: worked to smuggle arms in India to try to overthrow
Speaker 2: the empire.
Speaker 3: Holy shit? Yeah, why would anybody want to know about that?
Speaker 2: I know, it's not like it happened in America. Oh wait,
Speaker 2: it fucking did. But no one cares about non white
Speaker 2: people in America.
Speaker 3: So are you going to do an episode on those guys?
Speaker 3: Because I want to know everything.
Speaker 2: Probably, I mean, they might have been awful, but they
Speaker 2: seem pretty cool.
Speaker 3: Only one way to find out, I know, by declaring
Speaker 3: them cool, doing an episode on them, and finding out
Speaker 3: whether they hold up to them.
Speaker 2: And then halfway through being like, ah, shit, Yeah, there's
Speaker 2: also an entire black regiment of the army in there
Speaker 2: with them.
Speaker 3: What the fuck?
Speaker 2: Yeah, sixty two members of the Black twenty fourth Infantry
Speaker 2: were in there. This is not the entire regiment, it
Speaker 2: is a fuck ton of them. They had been imprisoned
Speaker 2: for life because of the Houston riot. You ever heard
Speaker 2: of the Houston riot? I also hadn't.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 2: This is when one hundred and fifty six black soldiers
Speaker 2: mutant need after a white cop beat a black soldier
Speaker 2: who tried to interfere with the violent arrest of a
Speaker 2: black woman in Houston. Because during the war, they like
Speaker 2: stationed a bunch of black soldiers to protect something in Houston,
Speaker 2: and a black soldier saw a white cop being a
Speaker 2: racist piece of shit interfered, so white cops beat the
Speaker 2: shit out of him. So one hundred and fifty six
Speaker 2: black soldiers mutine need They marched on Houston and they
Speaker 2: shot and killed all captain of the Illinois National Guard
Speaker 2: because they thought he was the cop. And then they
Speaker 2: fought a white militia and a bunch of cops. Fifteen
Speaker 2: white people were killed, five black soldiers were killed. After this,
Speaker 2: nineteen of the mutineers were hanged. Another sixty three were
Speaker 2: hanging out with Ben Fletcher and Levenworth for life. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Holy shit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, America likes racist white cops more than it likes
Speaker 2: black Millie Harry people.
Speaker 3: America likes racist white cops more than pretty much anything. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's awful. Yeah, No, I'd never heard of that.
Speaker 2: Yeah I had neither. So outside the jail, people worked
Speaker 2: tirelessly to free the Wobblis and all the other political
Speaker 2: prisoners of the war. The newly created ACLU champion their cause,
Speaker 2: and in nineteen twenty to nineteen twenty one most of
Speaker 2: the prisoners got out, but the US had it in
Speaker 2: for one group in particular. Well, the black soldiers didn't
Speaker 2: get out, but by nineteen twenty two most of the
Speaker 2: remaining political prisoners were the Wobblies. Because these are the
Speaker 2: worst of the worst, even though again they're the ones
Speaker 2: who didn't actually try and fight against the draft.
Speaker 3: Right, they're like the ones who are factually innocent.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and like some of them had been anti draft,
Speaker 2: but they had all kind of like shut up once
Speaker 2: it became illegal to say something about the draft because
Speaker 2: they were busy with labor organizing. You know. Yeah, as
Speaker 2: my best read, I've only read the Ben Fletcher version
Speaker 2: of this story, but I trust him. I do too.
Speaker 2: You have some interesting, fucking hot takes. I'm gonna give
Speaker 2: you the hottest take.
Speaker 3: I can't wait.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna give it to you right now, and then
Speaker 2: I'm gonna prove it later. Do you know this Lennon's fault,
Speaker 2: the IWW fell apart plausible? Go on, Oh, I'll tell
Speaker 2: you later. Yeah, there's one more thing we can point at,
Speaker 2: the fucking Tankies about Ben Flescher did not like Tankies.
Speaker 3: A great I like him more and more every time
Speaker 3: you say a thing about him. I like him more.
Speaker 2: I know eventually they get out. By the end of
Speaker 2: nineteen twenty two, they're all out.
Speaker 3: So how much of his tenure sentence did he do two.
Speaker 2: And a half years? Okay, the war ending and everyone
Speaker 2: being like, wait, is completely illegal to throw people in
Speaker 2: prison for free speech, and then the US is like, well,
Speaker 2: we kind of only need them to shut up because
Speaker 2: we were in the war. You know. It's like the
Speaker 2: way that the state does everything. They're like, well, just
Speaker 2: arrest them, and then by the time that they get
Speaker 2: proven innocent, it's too late, you know. So IWW never
Speaker 2: fully recovers from this blow, or rather from the one, two, three,
Speaker 2: four punch of state repression, boss repression, AFL opportunism, and
Speaker 2: authoritarian communist infiltration and undermining, and a fifth punch that
Speaker 2: actually Ben mostly blames on the communists, and I think
Speaker 2: he's probably right, which is infighting and arguing about complicated
Speaker 2: bureaucratic shit.
Speaker 3: Oh, communists do love.
Speaker 2: That they do. After the war, things almost went back
Speaker 2: to normal for Local eight for a few years, though
Speaker 2: most of their most experienced organizers had been in prison.
Speaker 2: Local eight was trying to cope with a shifting culture
Speaker 2: and an increasing number of the dock workers were black
Speaker 2: workers coming from the US South, where all they'd known
Speaker 2: of unions was that their white supremacist organizations, and the
Speaker 2: white workers, even in Local eight, weren't always proving them wrong. Again, overall,
Speaker 2: pretty fucking good about this stuff. Not always perfect. There
Speaker 2: was also cultural tensions between Local eight and the rest
Speaker 2: of the IWW, because Local eight is like, was more
Speaker 2: racially integrated, and it's also in some ways more moderate, right,
Speaker 2: they're a little bit more likely. The most committed wobblies
Speaker 2: are all these anarchists and socialists of various stripes whose
Speaker 2: primary purpose is to organize the working class into force
Speaker 2: that could end wage labor once and for all. A
Speaker 2: ton of them are unmarried, married only to the movement.
Speaker 2: A lot of the workers, especially in Philly, are like, look,
Speaker 2: I just want to feed my family, right. And there's
Speaker 2: also a bunch of arguments that they start having between
Speaker 2: the Local eight and i WW about how to hold
Speaker 2: onto money. Philly wants to maintain its own war chest
Speaker 2: rather than sending money to Chicago, where they would argue
Speaker 2: it was hard to then requisition the money back when
Speaker 2: they needed it, partly because they went on strike like
Speaker 2: all the fucking time, right, because they were actually, when
Speaker 2: I say they were a little bit more moderate, they're
Speaker 2: still a fighting union and militant is hell, right, But
Speaker 2: so they like they're like, hey, we need some of
Speaker 2: our own money back. More often you know, right.
Speaker 3: Like if your strike fund is in Chicago and it's
Speaker 3: the nineteen twenties, like, you're not getting it when you need.
Speaker 2: It, Yeah, especially if you have to argue for it,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: In nineteen twenty, for some complicated reason, Ben was out
Speaker 2: on bay all waiting an appeal. He went to jail
Speaker 2: for totally two and a half years, but he like
Speaker 2: got out for a little while, I think a couple
Speaker 2: of months during this appeal, But I'm not entirely sure.
Speaker 2: He was very much not allowed to do labor organizing
Speaker 2: or go on strike and shit like that. While he's
Speaker 2: out right he won one hundred percent did labor organizing
Speaker 2: and went on strike and shit like that.
Speaker 3: I expect nothing less.
Speaker 2: His participation was under the radar. He wasn't like, Hey,
Speaker 2: I'm Ben Fletcher and I'm here to say, you know well.
Speaker 3: And I assume again that the cops were just like,
Speaker 3: who's that guy?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that happened too, What are you doing here? Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's another black speaker. Can't tell him apart I'm a racist.
Speaker 3: They know they've already failed to recognize him at his
Speaker 3: own trial. I can't imagine that when he pops up
Speaker 3: doing organizing. They're like, I've put it all together and
Speaker 3: I know who that is.
Speaker 1: I know.
Speaker 2: Also, like the bailiff is like, you literally only have
Speaker 2: to know what one black man looks like. There is
Speaker 2: only one black man on trial, and he's late to
Speaker 2: the trial. You think they'd be like, holy shit, they're.
Speaker 3: Waiting for him, You're looking for him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they might have been, and then just I don't
Speaker 2: know whatever.
Speaker 3: Anyway, I assume that he could have been wearing like
Speaker 3: a name tag, like a hello my name is, like
Speaker 3: a jersey with his name on it, like the whole thing. Yeah,
Speaker 3: in a wobbly pit, and they still would have looked
Speaker 3: right past him.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And So there's this other strike that happens with
Speaker 2: Local eight on the docks in Philly in nineteen twenty,
Speaker 2: and this one was hard as fuck. It dragged on,
Speaker 2: it got really violent, and on June seventh, nineteen twenty,
Speaker 2: during a union workers versus cops and scabs fight, a
Speaker 2: black strike breaker I believe up from Baltimore, killed a
Speaker 2: Polish worker and injured a black worker. And this is
Speaker 2: where some of the racial tensions start to show. I
Speaker 2: believe I'm kind of reading between the lines here. I
Speaker 2: could be more certain about exactly how the racial solidarity
Speaker 2: fell apart, because I also don't totally trust some of
Speaker 2: the white authors who've talked about this in their analysis
Speaker 2: about like, right, some of the white authors talk about
Speaker 2: this are like, Oh, it's those black people from the
Speaker 2: South don't know about being anti racist.
Speaker 3: Well, it would be very convenient for the bosses who
Speaker 3: are trying to break the union if after, you know,
Speaker 3: the dust settles after a conflict, and there's one dead
Speaker 3: white guy and one injured black guy, it would be
Speaker 3: very convenient for the bosses to point to a black
Speaker 3: strike breaker from the South and be like, oh, it's
Speaker 3: definitely him, right. Their whole deal is that division.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it absolutely could have been the black strike
Speaker 2: breaker defending himself, right. Because that's the thing is when
Speaker 2: we're talking about like, oh, all the old unions and
Speaker 2: people are like why do they get treated so bad?
Speaker 2: And like sometimes it's like because they're throwing rocks at people, right,
Speaker 2: Like it's like not legal to throw rocks at key people.
Speaker 2: And I understand that, I'm still okay with it sometimes,
Speaker 2: but it's like conflict is a violent conflict.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's a conflict that has been set in
Speaker 3: motion by the people with all the power in this situation. So, like, absolutely,
Speaker 3: I don't feel in a position to judge anybody in
Speaker 3: this situation, right, Like right, the guy from Baltimore was
Speaker 3: taking whatever work he could get, which he had been
Speaker 3: kept out of union work by white supremacist.
Speaker 2: Unions right in Baltimore. Yeah, totally, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: The ultimate responsibility for this is in the hands of
Speaker 3: the people with the power in the situation.
Speaker 2: I absolutely agree, And so again by my reading between
Speaker 2: the lines, the worker's funeral was like not good in
Speaker 2: terms of some of what came out of it. This
Speaker 2: is like where fault lines appear. The strike continues regardless,
Speaker 2: racial solidarity is not yet broken. Two women who are
Speaker 2: supporting the strikers and the fights on the docks are
Speaker 2: killed by cops. This does not fall along racial lines
Speaker 2: in a way that makes people angry. I don't know
Speaker 2: the races of anyone involved in that.
Speaker 3: I mean it should make like whatever the racial lines
Speaker 3: are there, that should make people angry that the cops.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, no, people are very angry about it. Yeah yeah, No.
Speaker 2: What I'm saying is that it's like I'm not using
Speaker 2: that as evidence of the dissolution of the union. Instead,
Speaker 2: I'm saying, it's just the escalation of violence of what's happening, gotcha.
Speaker 2: After forty one days, negotiations end the strike and it's
Speaker 2: sort of a draw where some folks get some raises
Speaker 2: but no other demands are met. And immediately after the
Speaker 2: strike ends, the bosses rescind the promised raised wages and
Speaker 2: the workers don't have enough power to stop this. Unity
Speaker 2: is starting to fall apart. The strike had killed three
Speaker 2: people and one very little. It's around this point that
Speaker 2: the Bolsheviks start fucking with the left worldwide. They are
Speaker 2: trying to tell everyone what to do. And the IWW
Speaker 2: is Dowa Marxism, and it is down with anarchism and
Speaker 2: is down with socialism. It is not in like ideologically
Speaker 2: formed union right right, They weren't down with what gets
Speaker 2: shorthand called communism like the Communist Party of Russia. The
Speaker 2: Bolsheviks they start off being kind of curious, right, like
Speaker 2: everyone is, and then they're pretty quickly like, oh, this
Speaker 2: is anti democratic, authoritarian bullshit, right. And the IWW is
Speaker 2: far and away the most competent militant leftist organization in
Speaker 2: the US in the nineteen twenties, even after it took
Speaker 2: a b in the war. So the Bolsheviks wants to
Speaker 2: punish the IWW for not supporting them enough, and in
Speaker 2: particular they come after Local eight.
Speaker 3: That's astoundingly petty.
Speaker 2: It's part of a thing where Lenin decides that he
Speaker 2: wants to get the support of the AFL, and so
Speaker 2: he takes the Bolsheviks are now participating in the conflict
Speaker 2: between the moderate not anti capitalist, but authoritarian and power
Speaker 2: hungry AFL. He has more in common with the AFL
Speaker 2: than he does with the IWW. Right, so, oh yeah, no,
Speaker 2: I've never been a big Lenin girl. I'm like just
Speaker 2: super extramat at the Bolsheviks again today, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you don't got to wait till Stalin comes around before
Speaker 2: they fuck everything up.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, no, it was sucked way earlier.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and okay, so they decided to come after Local eight.
Speaker 2: It's possible, but incredibly unlikely that Local eight doc workers
Speaker 2: loaded a military ship bound for supporting the White Army
Speaker 2: in Siberia in the Russian Civil War. Like historians don't know, right,
Speaker 2: there's not a proof that anyone seems to have. We
Speaker 2: do know that they said they wouldn't do such a thing,
Speaker 2: and that Ben says it was a fabrication and that
Speaker 2: this boat was going to Siberia, which is famously not
Speaker 2: close to Philadelphia.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's true. That's one of the things I know
Speaker 3: about Siberia.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if you ever like, hey, what's close to Philly? Like,
Speaker 2: it takes me a while before I get to Siberia,
Speaker 2: you know. Yeah, there's like a whole two continents in
Speaker 2: the way. I don't remember when the Panama Canal got made,
Speaker 2: but it would have loaded from Seattle with the rest
Speaker 2: of the support for the White Army. It seems far
Speaker 2: and away most likely. Regardless, the Bolsheviks in New York
Speaker 2: City told the IWW to suspend Local eight, and the IWW,
Speaker 2: in the biggest l I've ever seen them take in
Speaker 2: the history of writing about them for this show, ignored
Speaker 2: their own rules on how to handle this sort of
Speaker 2: thing and briefly suspended Local eight.
Speaker 3: She is they just they were just like, well, the
Speaker 3: Bolsheviks said it, we gotta go with that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And there's like a little bit more sort of
Speaker 2: bureaucratic arguing going back and forth about it than that.
Speaker 2: But they come to their senses for a moment, and
Speaker 2: they like unsuspend Local eight until they turn around and
Speaker 2: suspend Local eight again.
Speaker 3: This is definitely the most disappointing thing I've ever heard
Speaker 3: about the IWW.
Speaker 2: I know this second one is more of a like
Speaker 2: classic leftist arguing thing that's like not as malicious, it seems,
Speaker 2: although Ben is absolutely like, not the comedies were behind
Speaker 2: this shit too, and like, I don't know he was there,
Speaker 2: he might be right, yeah, but what happened was Local
Speaker 2: eight started charging a like initiation, you know, like membership fee,
Speaker 2: and nationally the IWW says if you charge that, it
Speaker 2: can't be more than two dollars.
Speaker 3: They're charging two fifty, aren't they.
Speaker 2: Thirty five dollars? They're actually charging a fair amount.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, that's that is more.
Speaker 2: And they are consciously doing it for a couple reasons.
Speaker 2: One is that like non union labor is flooding in
Speaker 2: and they're like the labor pool is getting so big
Speaker 2: that they like feel like they're losing control of what's happening. Right,
Speaker 2: They're like, there's not enough work for all of these people.
Speaker 2: We need to like limit the work pool, right, you know,
Speaker 2: And Ben absolutely stands by this and is like this
Speaker 2: is a necessary step. I read some analysis that kind
Speaker 2: of makes sense to me that if you're like looking
Speaker 2: out for the Philly dock workers, this makes sense. If
Speaker 2: you're looking out for building a revolutionary solidarity among the
Speaker 2: working class to overthrow capitalism and wage labor, this does
Speaker 2: not make sense, right, I mean.
Speaker 3: And it definitely sounds like the kind of thing where
Speaker 3: it's like the AWW could be like, hey, stop doing that.
Speaker 3: But it does kind of sound like if they're gonna
Speaker 3: suspend Local eight, it has more to do with what's
Speaker 3: been going on with the Bolsheviks than it has to
Speaker 3: do with this.
Speaker 2: That seems to me to be likely. And there's also
Speaker 2: just like a lot of arguments that are happening about
Speaker 2: Ben Fletcher actually, like nineteen ten, actually used to argue
Speaker 2: for the centralization of the IWW. But as it becomes
Speaker 2: a more experienced organizer or is, it becomes more invested
Speaker 2: in Philly. But he's not even super invested Philly, because
Speaker 2: he's going around all over the place, right, he starts
Speaker 2: arguing more and more for decentralization, and so it's also
Speaker 2: this defense of decentralization. Yeah, much like the decentralized system
Speaker 2: that comes up with advertising for this show, over which
Speaker 2: we also have very little control.
Speaker 3: I snuck up on me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's because I realized how far in the timestamp
Speaker 2: we were. Here's ads and we're back. So basically, the
Speaker 2: Wobblies suspend Local eight and for a year Local aid
Speaker 2: to suspended, and then locally AI it's like fine, whatever,
Speaker 2: will drop it, and they lower their their membership fee.
Speaker 2: Then they rejoin the IWW. Ben Fletcher holds that even
Speaker 2: this fuckery was the result of Bolshevik interference, which is
Speaker 2: hard to prove, but some of this stuff is very real.
Speaker 2: Looking at the US left, the two biggest forces are
Speaker 2: the IWW, which is a bit smaller and way fightier
Speaker 2: but also very democratic, and the AFL, which is moderate,
Speaker 2: not even anti capitalists, but larger and more generally hierarchical.
Speaker 2: Lenin backs the power hungry guy supports the Power Group,
Speaker 2: and at this point, again according to Ben Fletcher, but
Speaker 2: knowing Lenin, I half expect he wrote in it self somewhere,
Speaker 2: and it's like kind of implied in that Lenin piece
Speaker 2: Left communism and infantile disorder, where Lenin gets mad at communists.
Speaker 2: Ben says, at this point Lenin is trying to destroy
Speaker 2: the IWW, and Local eight is a very logical place
Speaker 2: to start, because the other thing that's happening Local eight
Speaker 2: might be the biggest and most powerful part of the IWW. Really,
Speaker 2: I have read a thing that specifically says that it
Speaker 2: does the like, huh, I want to read more sources
Speaker 2: about that before I feel strong saying that. You know,
Speaker 2: but the final destruction of Local eight was in the
Speaker 2: autumn of nineteen twenty two. They were still fighting for
Speaker 2: the eight hour workday, and they decided to strike. And
Speaker 2: they did this strike in the classic wobbly fashion. They
Speaker 2: just showed up an hour late rather than negotiating with
Speaker 2: the bosses ahead of time. And when you're like on
Speaker 2: top of your shit, this is like a really good
Speaker 2: power move. Yeah, the balance of power had shifted. The
Speaker 2: bosses locked them out of work, and instead of bringing
Speaker 2: in non union strike breakers, the bosses brought in can
Speaker 2: you guess.
Speaker 3: Is it AFL strike breakers?
Speaker 2: They did? They brought in union strike breakers.
Speaker 3: Fuck yeah, union strike breakers. They had union strike breakers. Yeah,
Speaker 3: Oh my god.
Speaker 2: It's basically at this point, the bosses, the government, the AFL,
Speaker 2: and the fucking Bolsheviks are all trying to destroy a
Speaker 2: four thousand member fucking inter racial union in Philly.
Speaker 3: I like, how do you, as an AFL aligned worker, Like,
Speaker 3: how do you fucking sleep at night? As a union scab?
Speaker 2: You know. It's like they're just like, we're gonna make
Speaker 2: this a union thing, but it'll be for us instead,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 3: Oh God, what they should have done is kicked their
Speaker 3: own asses.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and basically the union fell. ILA workers from New
Speaker 2: York came in and it lost the monopoly on hiring militants,
Speaker 2: were blacklisted, and most importantly, unity between black and white
Speaker 2: workers was gone for basically good or for decades at
Speaker 2: least in Philadelphia because they absolutely AFL also played racial
Speaker 2: like tensions against everything, and like you start getting these
Speaker 2: like splits where whatever I wrote it out down and
Speaker 2: then I was like, I'm not keeping track of all
Speaker 2: of that. After the ILA broke Local eight, the bosses
Speaker 2: immediately turned on the ILA too.
Speaker 3: Oh no way, I know.
Speaker 2: I voted for the leopards eating other people's faces.
Speaker 3: Party can't believe the bosses didn't show loyalty to their
Speaker 3: workers at the expense of their own finances.
Speaker 2: What even though we're union, we're supposed to know that.
Speaker 3: Oh, my god, I'm so mad.
Speaker 2: I know, I know. For years the docs were ununionized.
Speaker 2: It was only in nineteen twenty eight that the ISLA,
Speaker 2: which was at this point joined by former local aid organizers.
Speaker 2: Because people are like, Ben's a wobbly to his core, right, yeah,
Speaker 2: or he's an industrial unionist to his core, he actually
Speaker 2: forms a in part of the splits, they like, form
Speaker 2: this other thing at some point that I'm not going
Speaker 2: to get into. But overall people are like, I'm a
Speaker 2: union organizer, I'm a doctor. I want a union here.
Speaker 2: This is what exists, right, And so former local aid
Speaker 2: organizers eventually end up joining the ILA, and they won
Speaker 2: the eight hour day and they unionized the docks. But
Speaker 2: within only a couple of years, the ILA lost all
Speaker 2: pretensive workers democracy and became corrupt. The way it was
Speaker 2: phrased is like there were no longer contested elections h
Speaker 2: within it, the workplace was segregated into racial picnics were
Speaker 2: a distant and fading memory. And this didn't stop the
Speaker 2: IWW nationally, and it didn't stop Ben Fletcher in the
Speaker 2: changing landscape of the nineteen twenties. Ben actually started off
Speaker 2: like really early in nineteen twenties before all this shit
Speaker 2: kind of started going down. He started off willing to
Speaker 2: work with the Communist Party. Right, he doesn't have a
Speaker 2: label besides industrial unionist, right that I've been able to
Speaker 2: figure out.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, and the Communist Party hadn't done like ninety percent
Speaker 3: of the bad things the Communist Party would go on
Speaker 3: to do.
Speaker 2: Yeah. He was one of the principal speakers at the
Speaker 2: first American Negro Labor Congress that was put on by
Speaker 2: the Communist Party USA, And originally he was apparently slated
Speaker 2: to be the leader of the an LC, but a
Speaker 2: more solidly Communist like with a capital C, black man
Speaker 2: named Lovett Fort Whiteman blocked it from happening. And the
Speaker 2: history that I read seemed to sum it up as
Speaker 2: a like epigmism, right, like I want to be the
Speaker 2: black guy, but I don't. I don't buy it because
Speaker 2: it's about a black organization within the Communist Party.
Speaker 3: Right, it's a black organization. It's not like.
Speaker 2: There's Yeah, I think it is far more likely that
Speaker 2: love It was just a party line guy and knew
Speaker 2: that Ben was not. Ben was hard to pigeonhole ideologically.
Speaker 2: He was a socialist in the broadest sense, but not
Speaker 2: the political party sense. He was friends with anarchists and
Speaker 2: socialists and syndicalists. He was also anti communist in that
Speaker 2: he was anti Bolshevik. He was, if anything else, a wobbly.
Speaker 2: I know I've already said this, but it's in the
Speaker 2: script of like Free I've just said it randomly before
Speaker 2: and I was in the scripts.
Speaker 3: So just going forward, Sure, wobbled to his core.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the guy who blocked him love at Fort Whiteman.
Speaker 2: He died in the way that more or less all tankies.
Speaker 3: Die murdered by communists.
Speaker 2: He was He was murdered by communists.
Speaker 3: Surprisingly common cause of death among communists.
Speaker 2: I think Nazis and Communists are like just going neck
Speaker 2: and neck about who's killed more Communists. He moved to
Speaker 2: the USSR and then he was accused of being a
Speaker 2: Trotskyist and was caught up in the Great Purge, sent
Speaker 2: off to Siberia, where he died of malnutrition in a
Speaker 2: war camp.
Speaker 1: Damn.
Speaker 2: And I like genuinely feel sorry for this man, right,
Speaker 2: But it's like because people didn't know the Great Purge
Speaker 2: was coming, but like they were watching lots of little
Speaker 2: purges and they were participating in lots of fuckery.
Speaker 3: Right, but like the fuckery of you know, taking leadership
Speaker 3: of this American organization, like that is a level of
Speaker 3: fuckery that is like, eh, sucks. But okay, yeah, you
Speaker 3: do not deserve to die in Siberia.
Speaker 2: For that, now, Jesus, absolutely not.
Speaker 3: But if you're a communist, people deserve to die in
Speaker 3: Siberia for pretty much anything.
Speaker 2: I know, especially communists deserved to die in Siberia. Ben himself,
Speaker 2: he falls out of the Communists pretty quick as he
Speaker 2: starts to realize they're trying to take the IWW over.
Speaker 2: He stays very active with the Wobbles until his death. Well,
Speaker 2: his health starts failing him, but he's like he never leaves, right,
Speaker 2: He's less and less of an organizer for many years,
Speaker 2: he remains a powerful speaker. Sometime in the nineteen twenties,
Speaker 2: he and his first wife divorced. In nineteen thirty one,
Speaker 2: he moved to New York City, where he participated in
Speaker 2: the black political socialist stuff that was happening there in
Speaker 2: the nineteen thirties. In nineteen thirty three, he suffered a
Speaker 2: stroke and never recovered his health. At some point in
Speaker 2: the nineteen thirties, he married his second wife, a black
Speaker 2: woman named Clara. No one is sure what work he
Speaker 2: did after he left the docks. Some folks say he
Speaker 2: sold hand rolled cigars. Others say that he was a
Speaker 2: janitor or maybe a building super. I think is entirely
Speaker 2: possibly did all of these things. He seemed to have
Speaker 2: been happy in his later years. He was surrounded by family,
Speaker 2: he was hanging out with his anarchist friends and old wobbles.
Speaker 2: His health never recovered, and he died at age fifty
Speaker 2: nine in nineteen forty nine, and the author Robin Kelly
Speaker 2: I think sums him up well. Ben Fletcher believed in
Speaker 2: the working class in its capacity to win. He never
Speaker 2: wavered from his belief that capitalism would come to an end,
Speaker 2: but only an organized working class could end it. A
Speaker 2: truly organized working class would have to eliminate all vestiges
Speaker 2: of racism and xenophobia, redirecting our collective anger towards the
Speaker 2: capitalist class. His was not a blind optimism, a naive
Speaker 2: belief that persuasive arguments could wipe away color, prejudice and
Speaker 2: unite the proletariat. Rather, he knew our survival depended on
Speaker 2: the overthrow of capitalism, and Ben himself sums up his
Speaker 2: political beliefs, at least around race and things like that
Speaker 2: very well himself. Quote, no genuine attempt by organized labor
Speaker 2: to rest any worthwhile in lasting concessions from the employing
Speaker 2: class can succeed as long as organized labor, for the
Speaker 2: most part, is indifferent and in opposition to the fate
Speaker 2: of Negro labor. He had respect from both like kind
Speaker 2: of separate ven diagram spheres right of like socialism and
Speaker 2: industrial unionism and anarchism and stuff cyndicalism, as well as
Speaker 2: the black community and not just the black leftist community.
Speaker 2: He was a very important person talking about race in
Speaker 2: America at the time, and that's like the other thing
Speaker 2: that history is forgotten. Right.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: After he died, a conservative black owned newspaper called the
Speaker 2: Atlanta Daily World called him, quote one of the most
Speaker 2: brilliant negroes ever associated with a leftist organization.
Speaker 3: So when even the conservatives have to say nice things
Speaker 3: about you, you're probably doing great.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Wow, that's Ben Fletcher. That's the there's a couple
Speaker 2: figures that I would just like interject into the history books. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, and obviously there's a show about figures that
Speaker 2: I believe should be interjected in the history books. But
Speaker 2: there's like two levels of it, right, There's a way
Speaker 2: that like old black radicals are erased from everyone who
Speaker 2: isn't studying black radicalism, and like old anarchists are erased
Speaker 2: from everyone who isn't studying anarchism. And then there's the
Speaker 2: people who are like erased from those histories too, yeah,
Speaker 2: or rather not included. And I think a lot of
Speaker 2: it is the one too of being both black and leftist,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And also that he like wasn't a like man of letters,
Speaker 2: you know. I mean he wrote a lot, right, I.
Speaker 3: Mean, but he was like a he was a worker,
Speaker 3: Like he really was doing this on the ground organizing
Speaker 3: because he was actually working in these places. He wasn't
Speaker 3: coming in to make a speech.
Speaker 2: It was socialism with his work and pants on.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, he had his working pants on the whole time.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: He's amazing and I'm so happy to know about him
Speaker 3: and about this organizing that he was a part of,
Speaker 3: because yeah, I had no idea about Local eight or
Speaker 3: about any of that. That was amazing.
Speaker 2: Yeah. All I knew is like because I had read
Speaker 2: I've read mostly about the IWW out west, just because
Speaker 2: Hobos and the Mexican Revolution are two things that I
Speaker 2: care a lot about and I've read a lot about,
Speaker 2: you know. Yeah, but I'd always like known. I was like, oh,
Speaker 2: and then there was like a ton of black wobblies
Speaker 2: on the East coast doing doc work stuff. That was
Speaker 2: like what I knew? You know?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think all I knew was that when the
Speaker 3: waterfront would try to get organized, a big thing that
Speaker 3: the bosses would do would be to bring in black
Speaker 3: strike breakers when white unions were organizing. And I never
Speaker 3: knew about a situation where people had actually successfully prevented
Speaker 3: that by having a union that represented everybody.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: That rules.
Speaker 2: It's a cool idea, and it's one that people can
Speaker 2: continue to do. Yeah, because capitalism is kind of trying
Speaker 2: to kill us all.
Speaker 3: Oh, it's it's doing its best.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, guy, anything you want to plug.
Speaker 3: As you mentioned on the last episode, if people want
Speaker 3: to hear more of me, they can come on over
Speaker 3: to live like the world is dying on strangers in
Speaker 3: a tangled wilderness.
Speaker 2: Hell yeah.
Speaker 3: When I first started guesting on this podcast, I was
Speaker 3: very proud to be like the only guest who is like, no,
Speaker 3: I don't have anything to plug on nobody, but like
Speaker 3: around podcasters too long, you just acquire, just like you
Speaker 3: just acquire things to plug. They got me so.
Speaker 2: Real, We got you a mic and it was over.
Speaker 3: I will have to eventually let you turn me into
Speaker 3: a vampire. I've already let you turn me into a podcast.
Speaker 2: Or you know. Hell yeah, that's what the red card
Speaker 2: of the Wobblings is, is the vampire card. No, oh,
Speaker 2: oh my god. I've always held that I would be
Speaker 2: morally I'm incredibly squeamish, but I would absolutely become a
Speaker 2: vampire if I was offered the choice, because I feel
Speaker 2: like I have a moral obligation to like become very
Speaker 2: powerful immortal with which to fight the owning class.
Speaker 3: I think you can come up with whatever political justification
Speaker 3: you want, Magpie.
Speaker 2: I agree. No, I don't actually want to be a
Speaker 2: vampire than that blood is so gross. Yeah, but you are.
Speaker 3: The gothist person I know, and not just like I
Speaker 3: mean I know people who like visually, like walking down
Speaker 3: the street, you'd be like, oh, that person is more goth,
Speaker 3: Like they're wearing more black, they have more eyeliner, But
Speaker 3: like you are goth in your soul. And if offered
Speaker 3: the opportunity to be a vampire, I just don't see
Speaker 3: you being able to turn it down.
Speaker 2: No, I wouldn't be able to turn it down. One
Speaker 2: of my friends tried to name my house Dracula Factory,
Speaker 2: and I was like, what is why that doesn't I
Speaker 2: don't get it. And then like one night I was
Speaker 2: like walking through my hallway where I have electric candelabra
Speaker 2: that come on at eight pm every night and flicker
Speaker 2: w Wisconsins, not Candelabrum, and I was like, oh, oh,
Speaker 2: I get it. I figured it out. Yeah, that's it's
Speaker 2: called like workers come over to like help me with
Speaker 2: my plumbing. And there's like the corner of my house
Speaker 2: that's a stone wall covered in axes. But that's because
Speaker 2: I'm cool.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's you have I think a standard number of
Speaker 3: battle axes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, three, three is true? One two? Yeah, we have
Speaker 2: three battle axes.
Speaker 1: Only three?
Speaker 2: I mean batle axes. You all have one? Okay, okay, I.
Speaker 3: Mean I have none, and that's a problem.
Speaker 2: Well, you did give me a flail with a spiked
Speaker 2: ball on it.
Speaker 3: I did, I mean, because that was yours. Like I
Speaker 3: came across it and was like, well, this belongs to Margaret.
Speaker 3: I don't know what it's doing here. I have to
Speaker 3: get it to Margaret.
Speaker 2: Okay, what do I want to plug? At the end?
Speaker 2: I want to plug two things. One swords. Why not
Speaker 2: own a sword? There's no reason not to. There's so
Speaker 2: many reasons not to. But do any of them really matter?
Speaker 2: Not that I can think of.
Speaker 3: I can't think of a single good reason not to
Speaker 3: own a sword.
Speaker 2: And join the IWW. Why not? What could go wrong?
Speaker 2: It might not be the thing that unites the working class.
Speaker 2: It's certainly not if you don't join it. So that's
Speaker 2: what I gotta plug.
Speaker 3: People with swords join the IWW, and people in the
Speaker 3: IWW acquire swords.
Speaker 2: There you go, yeah, yeah, yeah, and listen to Weird
Speaker 2: Little Guys.
Speaker 1: Yeah, listen to Weird Little Guys. Cool Zone Media's newest podcast.
Speaker 1: It's a weekly show and it's hosted by Molly Conger
Speaker 1: and it takes you behind the headlines to examines of
Speaker 1: the worst people on the planet that none of us
Speaker 1: have ever heard of.
Speaker 2: Whoo the opposite of this show. But it's a good time.
Speaker 2: Oh No, I'm excited about it. I'm very excited about it.
Speaker 3: I bet all of those shitty little guys' lives will
Speaker 3: become a lot worse once people know about them.
Speaker 2: So especially if they have swords. Wait, no, violence is wrong, illegal,
Speaker 2: that's the word. The podcast is sober. Bye Bye Bye.
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 website coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out
Speaker 1: on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts.