2024-12-18 - Wobbly Walk Through The Siskiyous

I found an interesting local article: Wobbly Walk Through The Siskiyous [2].

Wobbly is slang for Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) [3].

While reading this article, i learned a few things. I had always thought of the IWW as historical, but apparently it still operates. Anyone, anywhere can join. If there is not a local chapter, then one can be a member "at large." Chapters exist in Eugene, Corvallis, and Portland.

IWW local 66 had been organizing construction and power plant workers in Fresno and offered to include agricultural workers as well. Fresno officials considered exhortations to "struggle" and seize "that which they produce" to be sufficient grounds for arrest. When the IWW journal Industrial Worker urged members "to go to Fresno and break the law," one hundred twelve Wobblies responded in Portland. In the previous year, 1910, Wobblies successfully conducted a passive resistance campaign that filled Spokane jails with speakers who defied a prohibition on street corner speaking, so they targeted Fresno with the Spokane tactics.

Like the Black Panthers a couple of generations later they were judged more for what they said than by what they did.

For the duration of the Fresno campaign, each member was assigned a number, and the wobblies used their numbers instead of names. At the end of the campaign, they burned their records.

I was surprised to read how much the railroad employees cooperated with the 112 Wobblies going from Portland through to Ashland.

The conductor's decision to add a car in Albany for the convenience of the Wobblies suggests that a rapport was developing with the trainmen.

The Eugene Daily Guard reported:

Meanwhile the train crew declared that the Southern Pacific had added two boxcars in Portland "to avoid a confrontation."

Below [4] are links to historic IWW songs and a documentary.

Footnotes

[4] IWW songs and documentary

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