“The Wobblies—Setting
the Record Straight About Syndicalism”
This documentary evoked a complex array of emotional
and intellectual reactions in me. I left the theater feeling like the world hasn’t
changed much in the last 100 years in some very basic and fundamental ways. The
same distinction between the haves and the have-nots still prevails as the
fundamental order. In fact, I think that the situation is much worse because
the stakes are much higher. Now governments and multinational corporations have
the power through technology to destroy the entire planet in their quest for
greater power, riches, and control. This country was founded on certain
principles that the Wobblies believed in namely free
speech, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. However, the Wobblies
are presented as criminals in the opening sequence of this documentary, because
that is how they were perceived by the general public due to efforts by the
media to vilify them through the use of political cartoons and slogans.
Although the Wobblies struggles didn’t necessarily
result in their own immediate happiness (many of the individuals interviewed
recounted how they were inhumanely treated by people in positions of power), it
paved the way for future generations to better pursue the American dream of
equality. The IWW and the Wobblies represented an
important movement in American history—the labor movement. What shocked me most
of all, in the films portrayal of historical events, was how quickly the Bill
of Rights could be dismissed by our government and that the Wobblies
could be treated with such disregard in the political, social, and economic
climate of the time. It seems clear to me that the intention of this
documentary is to construct sympathy for the ideas represented by the IWW and
to clarify long held misconceptions about this noble organization. The main
question this documentary challenged me to consider is whether or not the dream
of equality is attainable now, or ever given how firmly entrenched the ruling
class has become.
There were many original ideas credited to the IWW in
the beginning of the film. We meet Big Bill Haywood (one of the founding
leaders of the IWW and chief orator) and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn (female
activist and organizer who was attracted to the communist party) through the
use archival images and dramatic vocal reenactments. We also meet Roger
Baldwin, a former Wobblie and founder of the ACLU. He
serves as the main narrator in the film. The IWW believed that workers
shouldn’t be divided by specialty, they believed in one big union. They also
tried to eliminate class distinctions based on gender, race, and external
markers of class (wealth). We are told by the film that the IWW wanted to
abolish the wage system and believed that working for wages was tantamount to
slavery. Their idea that an international brotherhood
of men and women from all possible races and nationalities could become as one
huge extended family is not new. Many cultures and civilizations that preceded
ours have dreamed, even hoped for such a reality to manifest on this earth, but
usually the fulfillment of this dream was reserved for some future afterlife where all wrongs are made
right. The IWW conducted its affairs in a kind of messianic utopian manner that
was almost religious in nature. They published a little red song book that we
are told by one of the subjects was a collection of songs that unite and teach
members about IWW ideals. Several of the songs from this book are carefully
placed throughout the film and help to establish the mood. However not every Wobblie was convinced that their goals were attainable.
Even one of the subjects from the documentary ventured to affirm that “It will
never be real it’s only just a dream.”
Before seeing this documentary I had a negative idea
of unions and union life. I had been a victim of the notion that such things
were the ideas of communists and socialists. I had grown up believing that
words like solidarity, collectivism, and anarchy were not American words or
ideals. This documentary forced me to look into the faces and lives of people
who reminded me of my own family’s struggle to belong to this country. My
father was an immigrant from
In this documentary I saw many parallels between the
world of the early 1900s and the world of today. I saw courageous men and women
willing to die for what they believed in. Moving from east to west across the
country and through a time frame from 1905 to 1922 we learned of the strikes
they organized, how they stood on boxes in cities to be heard, and how they met
with sometimes bloody resistance to their efforts to continue their syndicalism
(I learned in class that this word means to organize around an idea, but my
preconception of this word was negative). In one of the enactments in the film
showing images from a rally I became aware that the IWW was extremely
progressive for their time in that they counted women and people of color as
part of their constituency. From
This documentary is a collage of elements that tells
the story in many voices, and hearing the Wobblies
speak about their experiences made me realize that they were everyday American
people. The IWW organizers and
demonstrators from the documentary, and their struggles reminded me so much of
the recent protests against the World Trade Organization WTO. The WTO seems to
me to be the inheritors of former Barons of industry who have themselves
organized into a collective, and
through treaty and international administrative law seek to unite the world in
one huge common market to increase their coffers while the IWW is like our
modern day anarchist movement; the individuals who on face value are concerned
with issues such as the environment and economic globalization. People then (in
the time of the Wobblies) and now (environmentalists
and anarchists) feel that their selfhood, identity, and right to
self-determination are threatened. This is how our world has come full circle
and we are once again faced with a similar dilemma—to rebel or not to rebel?
How do we both force a change in the current order through networking
(organizing) and peaceful demonstrations (striking), which are totally
appropriate means to express democracy, and not be labeled terrorists or
subversives (saboteurs)? How can modern day anarchists overcome the distorted
image created by the media? Just like the image of the Wobblies
was distorted through the creation by the Disney Company of an animation called
“The Little Red Henski.”
In the time of the Wobblies,
working class people were confronted with extremely low wages and poor working
conditions. They had become “slaves” to the wage system and essentially did not
know how to bring about a change in their situations. This film shows us how
the IWW rose to prominence through the work of individuals inspired by the
socio/political theorists of the time congregating in large numbers to bring
about a general strike in which the wheels of commerce are brought to a
screeching halt. We learn from their testimony that many of these
disenfranchised citizens were unaware of the response the industrial Barons
were willing to prosecute and on several occasions these citizens were thrust
into violent confrontations with company and government paid enforcers as when
the Wobblies were gunned down in
This country was supposed to be of the people, by the
people and for the people, but the reality that this documentary attempts to
make us realize is that what we call a democracy is really an oligarchy. And
that those individual families, those Barons of industry, who consolidated
their wealth and power during the Industrial Revolution, did so while deluding
the masses into believing in lies about the IWW and exploiting their fear and
their hunger. This is how the IWW failed in its pursuits. They were unable to
abolish the wage system, and they were unable to abolish capitalism. But they
did bring about improved consideration for worker safety and they succeeded in
getting the average work day reduced from