Word: iww
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Mother Jones, by the way, was Mary Harris Jones, who was an organizer, "starting unions, running strikes, fighting for prison reform, helping found the IWW, supporting the Mexican Revolution, and even sending weeks at a time in prison, a victim of the now-forgotten American class war." She called herself a "Hellraiser," according to Mother Jones. But she didn't seem to hold any beliefs...
...Crimson is probably correct in saying that history textbooks will remember Johnson as a great leader except for the war. I have no doubt that the historians who, for instance, gloss over the Palmer Raids and the repression of the IWW in telling of Woodrow Wilson's greatness, will similarly beautify their accounts of the Johnson administration. But that is why people who are trying to understand the world, and to change it, have never had much use for the mainstream American rewriting of history. Frank Ackerman
...MOST significant failure of America's labor movement was the inability of the AFL to incorporate unorganized industrial workers. The phenomenon of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), or Wobblies, in the early 1900's had already indicated that the AFL was incapable of expanding beyond it own craft orientation. Today, history has repeated itself in the AFL-CIO's fat complacency...
Someone familiar enough with IWW history to follow the film's meanderings also knows how mutilated this version of that era is. The free-speech battle in San Diego becomes a minor skirmish. A group called the Over-alls Brigade pops in two years early for no discernable reason. By weaving Joe's first love back into the film, Widerberg states as fact the unconfirmable alibi Hill gave at the murder trial. And because the scenes of labor upheaval lack conviction, the trial fails to gain credibility as a politically repressive...
Widerberg's greatest offense stems from his attitude towards the IWW. He tries to ignore them, and when that's impossible he downplays and perverts their role. The first time the Wobblies cross Joe's path, they look like a travelling glee club. Later, as their identity becomes established, they are portrayed as weekend radicals, trouble-makers without purpose. And while Joe sits in prison, they scheme about how to exploit his situation. Bullshit. These unionists were men willing to die for their cause; many actually did. They had a plan of action and an ideology based on their...