Rev Left Radio - The Wobblies: Breht Goes on NPR to talk about the IWW

Episode Date: May 1, 2022

Breht was invited onto the local NPR station in Omaha to discuss the classic documentary from 1979 "The Wobblies" to help promote its remastering and re-release in theaters across the country this May Day! Find a showing near you here: https://kinomarquee.com/film/venue/624202eb7b0e1200011ce8c3 Find the original version of The Wobblies for free on YT here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tr7U9wQ7La4&ab_channel=TretanoTrampo Support Rev Left Radio: https://www.patreon.com/RevLeftRadio

Hello everybody and welcome back to Rev Left Radio. On today's episode, I'm going to share with you an episode I did on our local NPR affiliate here in Omaha on a documentary that is old but is being re-released. The documentary is from 1979, and it's called The Wobbles, and it's actually about the history of the IWW. This was a breakthrough documentary film when it first came out in 1970. and really is one of the godfathers of the modern documentary. So just on its own film attributes, it's a very interesting, important film for the history of documentaries broadly. But of course, as its content is just, you know, left-wing history of the IWW. And because it was shot in 1979, you get actual interviews with IWW members who were active during the teens and 1920s,

who are in by the 70s, you know, in their 70s, 80s, or 90s. And they're actually, that's the last basically chunk of time where you could interview people who are still alive from that time. So that documentary is fascinating for that reason as well. But I went on as the, you know, local left-wing expert to talk with some film people about the film, about its substance, and to help promote a local nonprofit cinema here in Omaha called Film Streams, that they're, doing a re-release, remastering of this 1979 documentary, releasing it in theaters, one of which is

film streams, and they have a whole event planned around it for May Day. So this episode's coming out on May Day, so obviously if you're in the Omaha area and you hear this quick enough, you can go check it out. But the film is being re-released around the country. So if you're interested, you can go find if a wobbly showing in your local art theater, whatever it may be, small cinema mostly you can go try to check that out hopefully it'll be around beyond just mayday but this is a really interesting conversation we've done in episodes on the iww we've done episodes on ben fletcher which is mentioned um in this episode and about labor history in the u.s in general so you can always go back to the revelv catalog and find those episodes but this is a standalone

episode that goes out to a different audience right this is the local omaha mpr affiliate that goes out to people driving to and from work here in omaha and so So I really love the opportunity to go out and talk to a more general audience as opposed to, you know, the sort of left-wing intellectual audience that I've cultivated here on Rev. Left. So it's interesting to try to speak to that new, different, mostly liberal audience without sacrificing, you know, my radical politics, which I never do. So with all that said, here is this episode where I'm one of the guests talking about the film. And yeah, it's really interesting. go check it out. It actually is free on YouTube. So if you want to watch the original 1979 documentary, not remastered, you can just go find it on

YouTube. But if you have a theater near you that's playing it in its remastered form, definitely take the opportunity to go check it out. And if you're in an organization, especially if you're in the IWW, this is a really cool organizational film to watch, whether you go to the theater or just watch it with your comrades in a meeting or whatever. It's a great film night. And it's just really, really inspiring. It brings you to tears. I mean, getting the firsthand accounts from workers who actually squared off with the militias and the companies and the bosses. It's fascinating. So without further ado, here's my discussion with some local film people about the Wobbley's documentary and so much more. Enjoy. Welcome to On Documentary presented by K-IOS at the Movies. I'm your

host Joshua LeBior, and today we're talking about the 1979 documentary, The Woblies. What's your name? Sam Scottlett. What's your religion? The I-W-W. That ain't no religion. The only one I got. Are you a citizen? No, I'm an industrial worker of the world. One who was a working man could not be denied membership for any reason, as long as he was a national wage worker, race, trade, color, for any reason, sex, whatever. Industrial workers of the world work, good wages, and respect. That's what they wanted for the workers. to be people, not nobody.

In the grain fields, we harvested every major grain that grew in North America, wheat, oats, barley, rye. The heat was 110 to 112 to 114 degrees temperature out in the sun, and you could look across the plains and see a freight train from miles away. The wobble is power in the band of working men, but they stand and in hand, that's a power, that's a power that's true. The wobblies were a group of workers who were fighting for dignity and work against the new industrial society and capitalist tendencies to treating workers like machines. They were seeking to build one big union for all workers, regardless of race, gender, class, or skill. The organization, which was founded in 1905, was called the IWW, or the International Workers of the World.

The documentary that shares the IWW members' nickname, The Wobbles, came out in 1979 at the New York Film Festival and was made by Stuart Bird and Deborah Schaefer, who IndiWire quotes is saying, When we started production on the Woblies in 1977, our goal was to rescue and record an almost completely neglected chapter of American history. as told by its elderly survivors. They go on to say we never imagined then that the themes of labor exploitation, anti-immigration legislation, and racial and gender discrimination would resonate as strongly as today.

I think that sentiment is apt. Throughout the film, I couldn't get the image of health care, service, and hospitality workers out of my head, especially in the last couple years. It also feels more relevant than ever as workers are making history and winning unions at places like Starbucks and Amazon.

Places that employ more and more people as skilled labor jobs are automated and moved overseas. This rising movement fits right into the ethos of IWW. The film features rare archival footage, a wide array of beautiful union songs from the era, and on-camera interviews from the rank-and-file members who were there. The restoration looks and sounds beautiful, and this is a film that I hope a new generation of workers will see and be inspired by. Today on On Documentary, I discuss the Woblies with a panel of incredible folks here at Film Streams in Omaha, Nebraska.

I'll let them introduce themselves here. Hi, everyone. This is Bill Uso. I'm the community programming manager at Film Streams. And I'm Patrick. I'm the director of marketing for film streams. And I am Brett. I host a series of podcasts that are interested in left-wing history and philosophy.

So today I kind of want to start off with Brett. can you give us a little bit of a history of your understanding of the Wobblies in IWW, like a brief history just to kind of introduce people for who maybe aren't familiar? Sure, yeah. I think it's important to contextualize them in their time. So this is in the early 19 teens leading up to the initiation of World War I and then well into the 20s. So, you know, this is a period of time right before, you know, the Great Depression, right before World War II. It's in the midst of World War I, at least part of it.

The story starts a little bit before that. But this is a time in American history, much like our own, that is mired in extreme wealth and equality. This is the era of the Rockefellers and the Carnegie's, and this is a time when a lot of European immigrants and black laborers were, you know, really exploited to the max in a highly unequal economy. And so the IWW was one of many sort of labor formations that arose. but it separated itself from other labor formations by being one more radical and being opened to non-white, non-male participants, and being open to unskilled labor in particular. So it really set IWW apart from other labor formations in the United States, and it was a crucial part of labor history.

So one of the main reasons why we're talking about this film is that there is going to be a May Day screening at film streams, and, you know, I'm just curious how did this film screening come about to Bilgus Yu? Is that how I say it? Okay. So it was a distributor that approached us with this new restoration that is coming out nationwide and they're organizing May Day screenings all over the U.S. actually. And, you know, my director, you know, sent me the film saying, are you interested in this? I'm like, yeah, this is actually like a really important piece of like history that is kind of like usually not known a lot, even in like a lot of like left factions and I really

like the way that the documentary like approached this history which is not like a top-down kind of like academic like piece of like history telling but something that really like focuses on people who were part of the movement who were at the time of the documentary

in their 80s, sometimes in their 90s telling their story with their own words and kind of like showing the spirit of like the rebellion that came to basically put mark on the on the time so i wanted to do something for mayday because i think it's a really beautiful day to celebrate the labor of us all and i couldn't find a better like alternative to this yeah and it does seem like there is not a lot of uh you know in other countries mayday as a huge

holiday and in the united states it's not so much because they turned it into labor day and moved it to kind of separate it from the workers history in a lot of ways so i appreciate that it does seem like there's more awareness happening now. But with that, let's get into the film itself. Was this everybody's first time seeing this, or have you seen this before? First time. First time. New experience. So Patrick, what were your initial thoughts of the film? Yeah, I think, well, knowing a little bit of the impact of it, I was really responding in a way that was like, wow, the fact that this film kind of shaped this form of documentary filmmaking was really impressive throughout. I mean, I guess people say that Ken Burns was really influenced by this film

in the way that it is very much about firsthand people, the words of eyewitnesses, and the way that it's a collage of archival materials over those accounts, and even down to, like, sort of pan and scan, and I think we can get way into this. I think we all have something to say about this, but also the use of music. I think coming from that standpoint, as well while I was watching it, I was extremely impressed overall. Actually, Bilgousi, you mentioned before that the Ken Burns connection or as far as, like, creating this type of documentary. Can you speak to that a little bit more?

Yeah, so it was really just, like, revolutionary in terms of, like, the form of documentary filmmaking, because, you know, we are so accustomed to, like, see now these, like, archival images, like, populate the screen when it's a documentary. but we have to like remember first of all how hard it is to find the archival documentation to make this documentary like the interviews that I was like reading with the filmmakers was really highlighting

first of all like the inaccessibility of these like archival materials and when they were accessible or when they seemed accessible they were actually destroyed and no one even made a note saying that this this like film canister is actually like in the garbage has been in the garbage for 30 years so like what they did like really like seeking out

the people, that's new because before that, it was a little bit more like a top-down approach to like telling how it is from like a more, I don't want to say academic necessarily, but from a more kind of like novital, like the subject that knows it, kind of like point of view. And here we are seeing the coming together of like first tent accounts as well as like archival data as well as like, you know, an emotional arc into the documentary, right? We're not only seeing these like different episodes of like, you know, like strikes and like organizing, but we're actually like following some kind of like story arc, if you could say, that tells us the beginning of the IWD and the unfortunate kind of like decline, which also

we can like talk about as the consequence of like these like raids and the imprisonment of like it's like significant like leaders. Yeah, I thought it was especially like extremely effective to use because at this point most of the eyewitnesses, most of the people interviewed for the documentary are in their 80s. so it was extremely humanizing to be able to really identify with these elderly folks and just sort of like because a lot of the content of the films about how they were radicals about how people were afraid of them and to I don't know that seems like something we hear about now but then 60 years on these same people as sort of you get to see them from a different perspective I thought it was smart yeah it was incredibly interesting to see

you know, to be kind of crude about it, like older white American people who in today's day and age, you just saw those people the way they were dressed and talking on the street, you would kind of assume they're on the far right and then just very radical left-wing anti-capitalist pro-worker sentiment coming out of their mouths.

And even like the little old lady who had to, you know, striking, went to jail and one of the cops that arrested her assed her out. She said, you know, I don't date cops, and had this, like, really adorable smile. Legend material. So I really enjoyed that sort of, you know, asymmetry between what one might expect living in the current political era and the actual realities of their lived experience.

You know, growing up in Texas, as I did, you know, you kind of have a certain view of, like, what an American person was or a Southerner or a worker, you know, and especially in, like, professions like a lumberjack or something like that um so it's really interesting to see you know that kind of history and then you also see like patrick kind of mentioned there's a lot of we see the repression happening we see a lot of propaganda against iww throughout the film which was really interesting to see um one that really stuck out to me was like there was this specific cartoon about a rat

that comes out that comes out like yeah yeah exactly and I think that really they started making that connection between the Russian Revolution and then and what was already happening

in the worker movement and they made it the same thing and not only that but you really see the beginnings of you know McCarthyism and what ended up being like the Cold War and stuff like that and I don't know this is

something you talk a lot about on on rev left so I'm curious to hear your thoughts on this yeah well one thing that jumps to mind is how much this history has been sort of eradicated from popular knowledge and part of that a large part of that has to do with what came after which was as you said McCarthyism the Red Scare then after World War two you had the Cold War and then you know you had even beyond that the Reagan revolution in the 80s and so there's really no time in American history from that point forward where being you know militantly pro-worker was largely accepted or even talked about or taught to people. So, you know, I think a lot of Americans have a huge, you know, hole in their, you know, understanding of

American history where labor history fits in, and it's been eradicated through those processes of reaction to it. And there's another connection there, which is like, you know, when the First World War is starting, NFL makes a basically like concession with the government saying there won't be a strike during the war. But IWW holds on to its, like, radical. approach of like, no, the real war is between the classes here. Therefore, we're not going to stop our activities because of this. And therefore, they are branded as, like, anti-U.S., you know, traitors even, which is another, like, reason, or one other way in which they were basically, like, seen as, like, the evil and kind of, like, associated with, like, Soviet Russia.

And just the long-lasting history of, like, general Russophobia and hatred of the Russians in American history throughout, you know, right, right. or indifferent. It's just this long strain in American politics. And when you can tie a domestic, you know, pro-worker movement to a foreign, scary enemy, so successfully, you can really

do damage to that movement. And they did that. And what you really see, and throughout that documentary and even into today's world, is how big corporate power, the state, military and police, as well as the mainstream corporate media, sort of unconsciously or not,

you know, form a buttress and a bulwark against radicalism of any sort and specifically against radical workers' movements of the time. And even today, we still see the media and big corporate power and the state often coming together to squash left-wing, particularly liberation movements, Black Lives Matter, pro-worker movements, or whatever it may be, especially if those movements refuse to fit nicely into polite PC political activity and actually want to get a little bit more direct in their action. Yeah, I think there's a quote that really stands out to me that relates to this. It was from Jay Gould, and he was like a really rich person at the time, and he said,

I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half. So you see the systematic dehumanization of these workers. They were not seen as humans. They were machines at best, pawns for the exploitation and accumulation of huge amounts of capital. And yeah, they were literally treated worse a lot of times than our pets are than farm animals. And so what did they do? They had the dignity to unify and fight back. And that should be something that anybody in America, right, left or center,

as long as you're not super, super rich, should be able to find some pride in. Like, that's in a part of American history that Americans should be proud of, but we just don't know about it. And even into, like, small examples, like, saying that IWW stood for I Want Whiskey, which is, like, barely coded. You know, it's just, like, astounding to see, you know, it's a through line that stuff is still going on. Yeah, I'm a bum.

Hallelujah, I want to give us a hand down to revive us to him. Yeah, but they were proud to be bums. Yes. And that's like, that's one of the things that was kind of like significant in terms of like how, you know, trade unions were differentiating themselves from this like rebel unruly, basically, like, kind of like working class because they were saying, okay, these people, they just won't like anarchy. which is not bad in so many I'm talking about it but yeah

so like we talk about respectability politics it didn't have that kind of like concept back in the day but that's what it was because if you're like

a migratory worker you work when there is work and when there is no harvest to make you have to like live on your own means you have to hop on trains to go from one place to another place

because you don't have money you have to live with others in the forest like you have to like survive basically but you know the designation of like IWW basically as a group of bombs

as a group of like unruly people who just want to like destroy and distribute chaos it's very propagandic or are working for our enemies in Germany or Russia yeah exactly but that was refreshing like again these older folks talking are their

three dimensional people who are also like they could defy stereotypes but they could also embrace parts of themselves that are not as acceptable or friendly again like the respect of it, they're not afraid to acknowledge those parts of themselves that are a little rough around the edges, which is refreshing. Absolutely. And you had to be rough around the edges to

put up with what they put up with, the onslaught of violence from, you know, thugs working for the boss or the militia or the police. Like, these are fistfights. These are people being brutalized. These are people being killed. And, you know, at some point you have to fight back. And another thing that made it really radical and even made the more mainstream unions turn away, as I kind of alluded to earlier, is the prominence and the acceptance of black people of women and of unskilled labor. And some of the biggest figures in the IWW were like Mother Jones, right, who we still hear about today. There's, there's, you know, publications in her namesake. She was a radical, you know, feminist and pro-worker, sort of activist, and Ben Fletcher.

We've done episodes on Rev. Left Radio about Ben Fletcher in his life, you know, a black wobbly. And just the, the race line when it came to unionism at that time, you know, black people specifically and women were not allowed in these mainstream unions. And the IWW saying, you're all welcome and we're all comrades here, that not only pissed off the government, not only pissed off the bosses, but made angry the more mainstream unions, you know. That's the rebel girl, the rebel girl, to the working class, she's a precious pearl.

She brings courage, pride, and joy. To the fighting rebel boy, we've had girls before, but we need some more. And the industrial workers of the world For it's great to fight for freedom With a rebel girl I think one of my favorite parts is one of the women in the film And she said that, oh, you get, y'all are just putting the women up front To like, I forgot why she said, you know,

But she was like, no, it's that we were, you know, allowed to be in the front. So we went up front. Yeah, we weren't kept in the back. So we went to the front. She said, we weren't kept in the back, so we went up front. That was one of my favorite parts. It was so good.

Sure, yeah, I just want to touch on the anarchism a little bit because, you know, there's two different conceptions of this term, and there were not all anarchists. The IWW had socialist, communist, anarchist, progressives, you know, left wing, but not any one sect. But, you know, the image used against them to denigrate them was the classic image of the foreign anarchist bomb thrower, right? A guy, like, with a twirly mustache and a black coat with a bomb. in his hand. But really what they meant by anarchism was something like anarcho-syndicalism,

which is that the workers should democratically own and operate the businesses that they toil under, that they should have a say in how their workday is, they should collectively and freely associate to be able to determine what to do with the profits. Their labor creates, and that

is a radical idea to be sure, but it's not synonymous with bomb throwing and violence and anarchy in the colloquial sense. It's about radical democracy, and that's probably the best term for it. The extension of real democracy into the workplace and the economy itself, which America has never, has never allowed. Yeah, and I think the loss of that history is detrimental, and it has been detrimental to, you know, younger working folks. And especially as we

are entering this era of radical inequality again, it looks different, but it's the same. because now, you know, maybe the lower classes have more stuff, but that's because they're, you know, packed with more debt. And we've had more access to debt while wages have stagnant since the 70s. We, you know, can talk about that all day. But, you know, talking about this time now, this film is coming out and it's playing here at film streams on the first. And we're also entering this era where there's historic wins with, you know, Amazon, you

know, finally in Amazon factory getting unionized multiple Starbucks now. I remember watching a documentary about Starbucks workers back in like 2006, you know, from a brave new films or whatever. And ever since then being aware that Starbucks is labeled one of the best places to have a service job because it is accepting of, you know, people of color and queer people in having jobs there. but with that, they've always been, you work just enough hours, but you're not full-time, you know, like, we're not going to give you benefits, but. I don't know if you haven't, like, seen the leaked videos by the CEO, which basically, like, says managers, like, you have the job to, like, union bus.

Yeah. So. And I worked at Whole Foods, you know, and it was a similar experience at Whole Foods where I worked there for five years. I was made to go to benefits training classes, which was. literally look at all these benefits we give you you don't need a union unions are bad and this is why unions are bad and we've ever made to go to those um but at the same time they were being branded by like magazines as being like one of the best places to work for while if you looked at hard numbers

whole foods on average hourly workers made less money than every grocery chain in the u.s especially if they were unionized if it was unionized safeway or a croger they made way more money on average than the Whole Foods Worker did our turnover rate was incredibly high with all of that in mind were these things you were thinking about when you decided to bring the film in no absolutely because like i think we are seeing like really like eerie similarities between like now and then and also because like labor history unless like you go into like academia to like study it is non-existent in public discourse. So I think it's actually like really important for like younger audiences to see a documentary like

this. Because, you know, the fight hasn't started yesterday. I'm not saying people don't know that, but people do tend to forget that because we tend to like, you know, fall into the illusion of the present that what we're doing now is like novel, that it has never been done before. But this is literally what IWW was doing, bringing in like unskilled labor and saying no we don't need like external structures to like tell us how to like organize we can do it ourselves so i think it's like really important to kind of like seep these ideas back into public consciousness and to like think about like what we can learn from the past and like bring into the present I think that's really an important thing, too, that we always think it's novel. I can't help but ever think about Uber.

And I'm like, all Uber is doing is exactly what the taxi companies did when they first started. And it took workers fighting for their rights to be able to have health care and safe working conditions and to not be responsible for their car, you know, like paying for their car and their gas and all that stuff, you know, like that all took work. And then a company like Uber comes in and it has the veil of being new, but it's the same thing. It's a taxi company that's doing exactly what taxi companies did at the beginning of taxi companies. Yeah, so I wanted to touch on that really quickly. And I think one of the things that IWW can be relevant for us today is that, you know, there was this dichotomy, as we've talked about, between skilled and unskilled labor. And they're like willing to organize the unskilled across industry, which is much more difficult

than organizing workers in one single factory or in one single industry, especially if it's skilled versus unskilled. But that kind of reflects today because with the gig economy and with more precarious work, with multiple jobs, which is the norm now for a lot of working Americans, it's a lot different than when you go to the factory floor or even with like Amazon and Starbucks still requires workers to show up in a confined space every day for a certain period of time.

And that allows organization to take place much more efficaciously. The gig economy is much tougher, but the IWW figured out in their own version of the gig economy, which is like this nomadic laborer that goes across the country searching for jobs. That's not in factory every day necessarily. They still figured out how to organize them, and that's the task, I think, and part of the labor movement today. And then the other thing I just wanted to mention about working people today, having more creature comforts, having more commodities, more access to, like,

we have iPhones and TVs, and even if you only make 20K a year, you probably have a TV and a smartphone. And, you know, a lot of, like, reactionaries or people on the right or defenders of the status quo will point to that and say, please shut up. You know, your life is getting better. So it doesn't matter if we have a lot more than you. Your life is still getting better. But what working people want is not new flashy gadgets every year.

What we want is dignity over our own lives, control over our own lives, and access to the necessities of life, like education, housing, and health care, which we are systematically being shut out from. so certain people can make a lot more money than if that was offered to people as a human right. So, again, we should reject this idea that all we want is new gadgets and flashy things. No, we don't want more commodities.

We want dignity, control over our own lives, and democratic access to the basic necessities of a good life. And in the richest country that's ever existed in human history, working class people should at least have that. Solidarity forever. Solidarity forever. For the union makes us strong. And maybe what we have worse is that the individualistic ethos is like way more entrenched

in everyone's consciousness than how it was back then. Because like this feeling of solidarity, it's not just a catch word that they use, that people actually like find themselves in the union and saying, you're my brother, you're my sister, you're my fellow worker. Like, that's really strong. Like, that's like a quality of life thing, feeling that kind of like bond with your fellow human beings. And that, and that right there, that solidarity, that real solidarity, is what bridges the

gap between different individuals, different identities. Yes, you may be, you know, a black trans woman, you may be a white guy from rural Iowa, you may be this or that, but we can all unite around our shared need to support our families and support ourselves with dignity. and that can get past a lot of the petty individualistic divisiveness that plays no role in bringing people together but just separate, separate, separates. I acknowledge that your lived experience is different than mine. You face different oppression based on your identity than I do as a straight white guy,

and I am there for that. I will fight next to you, but when push comes to shove on the picket line, we're all fighting for each other's families, and that really brings people across life experiences and across identities together to fight for something in common. and that's the beauty of solidarity. I agree. I think we need the tunes.

That's what we're lacking. Yeah, I mean, I think that there is just such a beautiful tradition of American folk music and labor music. I mean, I think about Joe Hill, you know, you think about the most popular one was Woody Guthrie. And this film is like wall-to-wall, just these beautiful renditions of these labor songs. It's like, is there, I'm sure there is, I could look for this, but is there like a, like a Smithsonian Folkways collection of these songs?

There has to be, there has probably like eight volumes, but like, it was the, that was another experience of watching the film was just sort of enjoying it for the music. I mean, there's a lot of, like, songwriters that are known from that tradition, but there's a lot that kind of, like, got, like, disappeared. They became anonymous, like, labor songs, basically. there's a beauty to that there's like a sadness to that too but yeah whenever something happened someone over there was able to make a song about it so that's

kind of like great one of the scenes in the movie when they ban like IWW leaders to like speak in public basically but let the Salvation Army do their own kind of like you know call ins they wrote this song about the

Starvation Army and how we can all have pie in you know in the land above the So, yeah, there is a revolutionary, I guess, aesthetic here, which we also like so with, like, Tom Morello's, like, sport of the strike at Kellogg's, like. Yeah, the music and culture and art always come hand in hand with any, you know, radical liberation movement, whatever it may be. That was true for, you know, slaves in America, that was true for immigrants, and that was true for low-wage workers. like this and the the legacy of that music then bleeds into the next several decades and goes on to inform many genres that we enjoy today that you know we don't know can be traced back at least to some extent to these earlier very folksy very down-to-earth music that was part and parcel

with the labor struggle it's really cool yeah punk of today yeah exactly right songs basically exactly yeah i mean i think of you know like what those things those people inspired, you know, obviously there was like the Piziers and stuff that came later and then later was like Billy Bragg and then, you know, then there was like the punk rock like the clash and

later stuff like propaganda and then hip hop like the coup and there's just so much there. It's just this history of like beautiful protest music folk punk is a genre now that can be traced directly back to that music. I remember

during the 2008 convention and somebody got their bike confiscated by the cops because it had a, this bike is a pipe bomb sticker, which is a folk punk band. That's hilarious. It's from Hot Topic, I swear. It's just a sticker.

I'll say, yeah, I lived in Denver during the Democratic convention. It did feel like a dystopian society. Speaking of music, I am trying to put together a small playlist of like worker songs to be played in our lobby and in the house before the screening. So if you come a little bit early,

you can also enjoy that and take a look at May Day Posters coming internationally from all decades. I also did, after Patrick mentioned it, I did find there is a Smithsonian Folkways classic labor songs right here on the Smithsonian. I never have an original idea. There's nothing.

That's not surprising. I never even heard of, Smithsonian Folkways, so I'm very excited. I see there's a lead-belly one over here. Woo, that's good stuff. It's good stuff. Yeah, just for people interested in learning more about that sort of history, there's this book called The Folk Singers and the Bureau, the FBI, the folk artist, and the suppression of the Communist Party USA.

It focuses on the 30s, 40s, and 50s, but that comes directly out of this earlier stuff, and it talks about all of this sort of genre of music and the rebels and how the state would crack down on artists for perpetuating some radical ideas in their music. So that was all part of the Red Scare and McCarthyism as well. I did want to mention too because we were talking about how they really started going after the IWW when the war was happening, World War I. And of course, Eugene V. Debs was one of the founders of IWW and he went to prison for protesting

the war and ran for president from prison for the Socialist Party of the United States. And got a lot of votes. He got a lot of votes, like, over a million. I know that. Yeah, it's just really interesting to see because I've heard these stories from their perspective, though. I've heard the Emma Goldman story. I've heard the Eugene V. Debs story over and over again.

But hearing it from the rank and file, again, going back to just this film and their approach to this story was just such a beautiful thing. Yeah, and mentioning Eugene Debs, another huge figure in the IWW was Big Bill Haywood mentioned a lot in this documentary. And one of the things that was so great about him was that he made these really, like, quotable, you know, little pithy remarks that, like, condensed pretty complex theory and just made it, like, common sense for working people. So a couple of his quotes is, like, you know, if one man has a dollar he didn't work for, then another man worked for a dollar he didn't get. That's very easy to understand, you know. The other one was, I've never read Marx's capital, but I have the marks of capital all over my body.

Like, ooh, brilliant, poetic, right to the point. And that made him, among other traits, you know, one of the top leaders of the IWW. No, I was just, like, thinking of, like, two things, actually, with regards to, like, these, like, testimonies. So, on the one hand, like, they talk very freely about, like, and it's kind of, like, amazing that, like, how clear their memory of these, like, days are. But there seems to be, like, two things where there are, like, internal discrepancies between different people. one of them is like regarding the place of sabotage when it comes to strikes. And the other one is about like, so what really happened when things started like going bad? And it seemed like there was some kind of like unease with regards to like talking about that decline

because there was, it seemed like there was a huge disappointment for everyone when they were seeing these people like being jailed, like for 10 years in prison and like $10,000 like dollars for like bail. And even though everyone was like commented to the movement, it was a huge blow. And it seemed like at least if I'm reading their reactions, right, it was kind of like a touchy subject that they weren't really like comfortable talking about. And that's a tactic that the state uses and still does and used up through the 60s and 70s with Cointel Pro and the black liberation movements was, you know, if you just come down with extreme force on an organization, you start killing people or locking people up or beating people with the full. force of the state behind you, they have no way to really match that power. And you could then force those fissures and contradictions that might exist within a movement to widen and become more intense under the pressure of state reaction. And so they learned that, I think,

by crushing these early labor movements. And they then employed it later against like black liberation movements specifically in the 60s and 70s. And, you know, today as well with Black Lives Matter, Ferguson, all these things for the last several years over the last decade or so. You know, there's been brutal, brutal with no accountability, state repression of largely peaceful protests, largely peaceful protesters. And it just wreaks havoc on any organization because you just cannot stand up to the pure power and will and money of the state. Yeah, because they didn't touch a lot on, and I think maybe that this just wasn't the film for that,

but it didn't touch a lot on like, you know, the massacres in Colorado or the Haymarket Massacre massacre or the killing of Joe Hill, like all of these things were happening where people were dying at the hands of police all over the country that were involved in IWW. And I think that after it seemed to be, and I'm curious, like I don't know the history on this, but it seemed the film kind of suggested that maybe there was some connection to a split between like communists who supported the Bolshevik revolution and like anarchists maybe who didn't. Right. That was, yeah, that was definitely something that was one of the, one of the splits and the fissures that could be wrinkled over in previous times,

but once the Russian Revolution proved, you know, we can take these ideas and we can actually go on the offense and we can actually win. Well, then it becomes a question of like, okay, we all have these ideas of like socialism and communism. Here's a real world movement to put it into practice, and half the people are going to say, well, I don't like that. I don't like the idea of that or being structured that way. And somebody else is like, well, it's not ideal, but they're operating under

on ideal conditions and so you know this whatever those arguments then just create more tensions plus the state pressure yeah those splits are going to intensify and weaken the movement yeah and i think that we have to you know mention that essentially this was a popular movement and it was a movement that made things like the new deal possible and made things because they were the only reason why franklin roosevelt you know signed in the new deal was because they were scared of movements like iw w They were scared of socialism, they were scared of communism, they were scared of anarchism. So they found a way to placate people, and a lot of real world great things happened because of that, but it fell short of a lot of things, especially when we think about health care and jobs, guarantees, and any kind of ownership over your labor. But there were a lot of wins in that, but this was made possible because of movements like IWW.

but essentially IWW was a failed movement. Yeah. I mean, in the way that the black liberation movement and the Black Panther parties and all these movements throughout history have been acute failures, right? But they go on to inform the next movements

and create a cultural legacy. Like Malcolm X, for example, was assassinated, right? In the prime of his life, as he was making this radical intellectual transition towards like a broader humanism and this really interesting intellectual move, he was assassinated. So you can say Malcolm X,

lost, but one of the things that Malcolm X created, in my opinion, is the, or helped go on to influence is the entire genre of hip hop, because one thing Malcolm X always said is, like, black is beautiful, love yourself, as a black person, don't buy into the white idea that you're somehow lesser than, right? And then what is hip hop, if not this confident, swaggering, you know, pro-black movement that is grassroots and comes out of that culture, comes out of that rebellious, you know, movement, and is informed by Malcolm X. So in that way, these things continue to live on through us and create a legacy that's really beautiful.

And part of reclaiming this history is so that we could put these lessons to work in the modern situation that we find ourselves in. Yeah, and I was very excited that this film is being released because of that because, I mean, I said it was a failed movement, but I mean it in the sense of how you, you know, said it, that I've been aware of IWW for a very long time

and it's something that a lot of my anarchistrians were a part of when they're running their collectives in Denver and it, like, inspired me to learn more about it and to learn more about Joe Hill and to hear these labor songs and to understand my place as a worker and make that connection, you know, to put context into how our society is structured, especially when we're at work. So in that sense, of course, it'll live on. And that's why I'm so excited about this film being re-released and having this beautiful transfers because we are in this moment where maybe technically,

we you know like union ship is down but it's rising in the largest sector of our economy of workers right now the largest you know working segment right now is service work and so when people at Starbucks are unionizing when fast food workers are unionizing when Amazon is unionizing that is an opportunity to actually grow and learn about solidarity and learn about our place in context Anybody that's in any union effort, this would be a wonderful, like, movie night, you know, when you and your, you and your co-workers are organizing? Afternoon. Afternoon. But to come see this movie in the context of an organizing effort would be deeply inspirational.

I love that. Thank you for that. Afternoon, guys. One p.m. Afternoon. And one thing that I just, like, wanted to add to, like, what you were, like, saying a minute ago is that, yes, it's uneniable that left movements have been defeated over and over. because as Brett was saying, what we are against is, like, militarized force. Like, literally, like, unless you are going into that domain,

we are bound to see, like, defeats. But I think we should be, like, aware of, like, this, like, melancholic attachment of loss all the time. And that's why I think it's important to, like, contextualize this film and this event as part of a celebration for May Day. So I, that's, like, that's how I would like to, at least, like, frame it and that's how I would like to, like, invite people to, like, come over and, like, really, like, enjoy this history and, like, be part of the conversation that's going to happen after the screening. Yeah. Instead of tragic nostalgia, use it for, you know, real inspiration. Yeah, I think just connecting it to what's going on now is, like, really beautiful because it's such an opportunity right now to, like, show people, like, maybe people are unionizing, but maybe they don't even know why, you know? And, like, putting that history back out there and, like, reconnecting with it and recontextualizing it and understanding why even our left-wing party

in the United States is so hostile towards, you know, more left-wing movements, more hostile than they are towards the right-wing element, you know? Like, it's interesting to know why. And it's because essentially we're trying to like, you know, the workers are trying to have some kind of power again. Yeah. And I would argue, from my personal opinion, both major political parties in the United States are ultimately answerable to capital, and they are run by and dominated by the rich. And so they're never going to have interest in radical redistribution of wealth or power. But what they will do is they will pay lip service and do symbolic gestures,

gestures that don't actually transform the material hierarchies of our society, but which lend credence, at least in rhetoric, to a movement. This happens with the workers' movement. It also happens with Black Lives Matter, etc. but when it comes time to, you know, maybe shift resources away from police and towards mental health care, or when it comes time to actually redistribute some of this stuff, or the, you know, Scranton Joe needs to stand up and actually put his full, you know, bully pulpit weight behind these union struggles, and you don't hear a peep from him, that really says what those parties ultimately serve.

And I think any left movement should at least be aware of it. We can disagree on what that means with our approach to the Democratic Party. I'm very skeptical and pessimistic about them being a vehicle through which. which we can pursue these movements, I see them more as the main challenge, but we should at least keep in mind that these parties are ultimately answerable to capital, and they're never going to be on our side when push really comes to show. Now, I think I want to, like, jump into the technical aspects of the film, because up until now this film came on in 1979, there's been a DVD release. You know, it looks, you know, the version I saw,

looks fairly rough. So I'm very excited to see. I saw a clip of the new 4K transfer and it looks gorgeous and I'm very excited to see it on the screen. Yeah, even if you have seen that DVD version of it, you've never seen it like this. This is a new restoration that was funded by MoMA. It's being put out by Kino Lorber, which is one of the most respected repertory film distributors in cinema. Also, this is a movie that's on the National Registry of Historic Films. It's very significant. It's well, it's been, waiting for this kind of treatment. So it's, yeah, I think it's coinciding with the cultural moment, but the, yeah, the people

who have been taking care of this film have finally gotten the resources to make it look better than it ever has. I don't have much to, like, add to that. It's beautiful. And it's not only, like, photographs and, like, you know, like video captures, but there's also a bunch of, like, drawings that were, like, really interesting to, like, look at coming from, like, workers. Yeah, and the political cartoons that they wove in and, you know, that, that, that, that,

It's very interesting to see how the political cartoon was one of the mediums through which they attacked this movement of the IWW and the way they drew them and what they used to symbolize them and stuff is very fascinating. Yeah, I also, I mean, it's really interesting to go back to, you know, this style of documentary for a while was really easy to parody, you know, because of like the ubiquity of like Ken Burns and stuff like that. but I've been finding like a new appreciation for those films. I've been revisiting Ken Byrne's films and I've been revisiting like more historical documentaries like this. So it was really cool to see one with such reverence and see kind of like where this kind of style, you know, the era that it kind of originated from and also seeing it about a subject matter that's just so close to my heart was just really impactful. And I will say for myself that the movie teared me up multiple times. I mean, if you have a heart, like, you know, you feel for these people, like the one story about the father who was holding his kid on a porch during a protest and got shot and killed by the police and he was a father of five, you know, of course your eyes well up with tears and your heartbreaks for that. These were real people with real lives.

And, you know, they wanted just basic comforts and dignity for them and their families and to see them brutalized, just trying to fight for that. Yeah, it'll never not be heartbreaking. Yeah, because I think we look back a lot of times with historical films like this, and, you know, when they're told in the aspect that you were talking about, like, from the top down, you know, it's like hard. I mean, it's easy to see it as a mass of people, but seeing it like this, you just realized it was a collection of people. They were individuals, but they were, you know, fighting together and they cared for one another. And like it's something that you don't see because it's impossible to see is that these were the people that they could find. right? There's like thousands that they wouldn't be able to find

because they don't have their like names in any kind of like record or they're dead especially like minors because of like the nature of the job that's why we have the wife of a minor but not the minor himself so like we got to like remember it's not only like

you know not only applaud the documentary makers for like their efforts but also like see a lot of this has been erased because people's lives were like just like erased from history because rank and file we're not talking about these like really influential charismatic leaders which is like great like Haywood obviously

we're going to be like moved by his words because he's an orator he's but it's the people that are like fighting on the street that are like actually on like the picket line and kind of I guess just like sending my respects to those people who were not even able to be like you know represented in a piece of like media like this.

Every movement, as you said, we'll have its leaders that we point to, but we should never forget that every successful and every failed movement worth anything at all is underpinned by regular everyday people. Nameless, faceless people will never know or hear about, but who, you know, in many cases, sacrifice their life so that people in the future,

us, might have a better go at it. And that's beautiful. So I've done this in a while, and I didn't prompt anyone, but does anybody have any, like, further reading or films or whatever to suggest to people to, like, dive more into this? Well, I don't want to be shamelessly plugging my own show, but we've done episodes on the IWW on Ben Fletcher and on the folk singers in the bureau, that book with the author. So if you're interested in any of those, you can go to Rev. Left Radio on any podcast and look at an hour, two hour long, episodes on each of those topics and it's yeah just filling out the picture even more it's a good show it is a good show thank you it is good i one of the first things whenever i was moving to omaha one of my friends was like bread from rev left lives there and i was like oh yeah i never even

thought about that so it was super funny immediately met up and became friends yeah exactly but uh i i'll say for me i'm going to suggest harland county usa is a huge one if you haven't seen that documentary It's a must watch Barbara Cople, just incredible film. Also, there's a great throughline episode about Eugene V. Debs. Their capitalism series has been awful. It's like one of the worst things they've ever made. But this episode about Eugene V. Debs is incredible. And then I'll also say, I just watched a film called Her Socialist Smile about Helen Keller.

And it's a challenging film. It's a hard film to watch just as far as, like, the format. It's very experimental. But it took me, like, three times starting it to finally, like, sit down and watch the whole thing. And once I, like, connected with it, I really connected with it. We're also probably going to be showing Norma Ray later in the year. Yeah.

I just bought that on VHS. I'm very excited. Oh, nice. I just got a VHS copy of that. Score. Yeah, it's good. Like Reds is. good movie in general like but these are just like general not touching really on the IWW

I mean that's okay it doesn't have to be about IWW I mean Ken Lodge movies are always great propaganda pieces I Daniel Blake Daniel Blake oh my god that movie I want to show that one um two days two days one night by the Dardan brothers um um oof that one's tough sorry to bother you by sorry to bother you yeah that's so good I'll also say the young Karl Marx by Raul Peck. Good movie. In Dubious Battle by John Steinbeck from 1936. It's all about labor organizers of the previous few decades and the repression they faced.

And it's not exactly on the IWW, but very much in that world and of that time. And it's a pretty short novel as well. Patrick, got anything? I think you all covered it. Nice. Cool. Thank all of my guests for joining me today. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Thanks so much. The Wobbleys is playing on May Day. That's May 1st at the Ruth Sokolov Theater at 1 p.m. For KIOS and Joshua LeBior. For film streams, I'm Patrick Kinney. Bigis from film streams. And Brett from Rev. Left.

You have been listening to On Documentary, produced by me, Joshua LeBior. This show is presented by KIOS at The Movies for more information. visit k ios.org Happy Mayday everyone but it all amounts to nothing if together we don't stand there is power in a union now the lessons of the past

we all learn with workers' blood and the spikes of the pussies we must fight for the cities and the farmlands to train She's full of mud Wars, why's been the bosses, why sir The Union forever Defending our rights

Bound with the black leather workers Unite With our brothers and our sisters In many far of lands There is power in a union Now I long for the morning morning that they realize brutality and unjust laws cannot defeat us but who defend the workers who cannot organize and the buses sent their luckies out to cheat us money speaks for money the devil for his own

who comes to speak for the skin and the bone what a comfort of the world a light to control there is power in a union The Union Never keep bending our rights bound with the black men

and all workers in line With our brothers and our sisters Together we will stand Yeah It's the power in our union