by FW Gale
The sentiment “If each Wobbly would make a new Wobbly once a week, we’d have the Cooperative Commonwealth of Labor in a few short years,” is attributed to IWW Bill Haywood. Bill was a revolutionary, and each Wobbly must understand his statement.
A Wobbly is a Citizen of Industry, a worker who knows their interests are opposed to the interests of the employing class; they know the value of their labor; and they are dedicated to carrying on the mission of the IWW come dungeons dark or gallows grim. A Wobbly has faith that cooperation and solidarity are the antidote to the competition and selfishness that has ruined the world. A Wobbly believes the most powerful thing a rebel can do is stop working and put their hands in their pocket, and that if we teach all workers to do this, we’ll soon topple Capital. Wobblies act on their beliefs.
We make new Wobblies by agitating, educating, and organizing everywhere we can for the fall of the wage system. We make more rebels by getting workers thinking about their situation and educating them about the IWW, and collective action, as a solution to capitalist oppression. Places IWWs have agitated and educated include the workplace, street corners, houseless encampments, court rooms, prison cells, public meetings, and city council meetings. Agitations can be speeches, songs, plays, books, poems, one on ones, classes — just find a way to share your beliefs.
Because we aim to organize all workers into the Union, we should not stop agitating and educating until we’ve organized all workers. Organizing is merely getting people into the Union with some care and planning. We plan to agitate and educate in communities most oppressed by the drive for profits.
Wobblies do this because there is safety in numbers and with more dues we can expand the Cooperative Commonwealth. With more dues we can organize more strikes to fight the bosses and cooperatives to house and feed each other in harmony with nature. If we organize cooperatives for security and empower workers with direct action, more will join. The most effective recruiting tool is to show people that the Union can house, feed, and empower them.
Direct action is the worker on the job nonviolently telling the boss when and where we shall work, for how long, for what wages and under what conditions. Like Bill Haywood we must constantly educate as many workers as we can about this power so that we can use this power wherever we work.
The Cooperative Commonwealth of Labor is how we’ll organize the means of production to live in harmony with nature. The means of production will be cooperatively managed and owned by workers, for the benefit of the community. To develop the Commonwealth, we’ll need to organize workplaces and cooperatives for food, water, shelter, transportation, healthcare, and education. This is a necessity given the rapidly changing climate.
You don’t have to be a revolutionary to see the Earth changing. You must be revolutionary to do something to protect Mother Earth and free millions of workers toiling for the bosses. We must ask ourselves if we are living up to Bill’s revolutionary sentence. Are we organizing to stop stolen Thacker Pass from being exploited for green cars? Are we organizing to stop Alberta’s oil sands or Louisiana’s Cancer Alley? Are we organizing to stop the slave farm perfected, Congolese cobalt mining? Are we organizing cooperatives? Are we building solidarity?
Some of the answers to these questions can be found at the annual Canoe Journey. I had the privilege to volunteer at the Suquamish stop this year, because in my Tribe that’s what we do — we help others. Over the two days that I volunteered we gave away thousands of meals without a mass shooting — something America has been unable to do since 1776.
Canoes are made with love and care and treated with respect over generations. Cars on the other hand, the American mode of transport, require mining, and oil and gas extraction, and they’re trashed every few years for a new model. The cost is all too apparent if you believe in climate change. People can be fed without profit by living in harmony with salmon and crab, instead of by the market-produced environmental blight that is McDonalds.
Today Congolese children die like dogs so Americans can have the way of life they have — phones, Wal-Marts, movies, cars, and much more. The true cost of the American way of life is a dead child in the global south everytime a phone is plugged in. This must stop, and we in the global North must cash in our privilege and engage in class struggle to save Mother Earth and our lives. We must go to Thacker Pass, Kolwezi, Cancer Alley, Border Towns, and Alberta — anywhere we can to educate, organize, and emancipate. To stop it all, we must live up to Bill’s simple exhortation to recruit and empower the most abused of our sick society.
The medicine will be good and a Workers’ Commonwealth which will be made faster if Americans, including IWWs, of all stripes, come take their Indian lessons. My family, and my Qawalangin Tribe, managed the resources of Biorka village for 10,000 years, feeding hundreds of thousands of people without strip mining the Congo and whipping kids. The Chimacum tribe managed Ironhead beach for 10,000 years, feeding hundreds of thousands of people, without nuking Hiroshima and Nagaski to prove a point. Take heed, America, you haven’t been able to survive since 1776 without murdering an African child. Look at Lahaina, Mother Earth is changing and who are you going to rely on? The government? The free market? Free for all? Or the cooperative ways of the Tribes, the people with the proven record of land stewardship. At this point, we all have nothing left to lose. Join One Big Union and save Mother Earth.
Seattle Industrial Workers of the World 