"One Big Union" was one of the slogans of one of the best known labor unions in America, The Industrial Workers of the World. Organized in 1905 in Chicago, the IWW, popularly known as the "Wobblies" was created because of a belief among its' founders that the American Federation of Labor, the AFL, was failing in the struggle of workers against what the initial IWW Industrial Congress called the "employing class."
The IWW's goal, repeated over and over again in it's pamphlets and newsletters and its' music, was to promote solidarity among members of the working class. The song "Solidarity Forever" might even be considered the IWW's anthem. They saw that the AFL's approach, to organize workers by "narrow craft principles", divided workers instead of bringing them together. They believed that the rights of workers would never be achieved or protected until all workers were united in "One Big Union", an international union bringing together workers from around the world. Their motto - "an injury to one is an injury to all" - captures the spirit of the IWW. (For a more detailed and extensive introduction to the IWW see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Workers_of_the_World.)Plutocracy and the Constitution:
The history of the IWW with it's episodes of violent and often murderous suppression by government and semi-government forces like the American Legion is a snapshot of American history. From the very beginning of America there has always been a tension, even an antagonism, between the plutocracy, the wealthy property owners, that governed and the workers who were to be governed.
At the time just before America's independence was declared a serious issue almost scuttled the whole independence movement. A very serious debate broke out over whether those citizens who didn't own property - the workers - should be allowed to have a vote in the new nation. (Women and slaves were not even considered, of course). Eventually the question was settled on very pragmatic grounds. The wealthy landowners, the plutocracy, realized that a Declaration of Independence would lead inevitably to war with England. They also realized that as a class they, the oligarchy, didn't have sufficient numbers to mount an army. The workers, the propertyless, were needed to staff the army that would inevitably be needed. (Not much has changed there in the intervening centuries either).
The point is that there was, and always has been, a tension between the "haves" and the "have nots" in this country. The conflict becomes less obvious in time of war when all citizens are needed in order to create and support a military, and sometimes the "peace" in the class conflict even extends a little beyond the end of hostilities, but eventually the conflict re-emerges, as it has now.
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| An IWW Demonstration: New York 1914 |
The IWW opposed WWI, and any war, as the "bosses" business and many Wobblies were tried and convicted under the Espionage Act for speaking out against the war. Some were jailed for up to twenty years; others fled the country, and some were unceremoniously rounded up and shipped abroad by the authorities. The history of the IWW, as part of the history of Unionism in America, is often violent and blood-spattered. IWW leaders were beaten, shot, lynched and jailed for their advocacy of free speech, collective bargaining, and anti-war sentiments. The powers-that-be, the ever present plutocracy in America, tolerates free speech and working class organization only to a point and then it steps in and crushes the protesters. We see a classic example today here in America.
When the Occupy Wall Street movement began it was tolerated for a period, then the authorities stepped in. It's been reported that there was a clandestine meeting of mayors along with officials from Homeland Security to discuss how to move against the OWSy movement. Within a very short time heavily militarized police succeeded in evicting protesters from public venues. Nothing new there. Similar events dot the history of the IWW and it's attempts to organize citizens.
An emboldened plutocracy even attempted, most notably in Wisconsin, to outlaw collective bargaining by various unions. They met with strong resistance as members of the middle and working class, awakened and often impoverished by an economic recession that resulted from greed and malfeasance on the part of the Wall Street plutocrats, aided and abetted by a millionaire Congress that voted against the interests of average Americans and in the interests of the financial oligarchy, stood up against a naked power grab by the Wisconsin governor.
In Michigan the governor has, independently and arbitrarily, declared his right to take control of any town or city that is in financial difficulty, put in place an "overseer", override the actions of elected officials, sell off any assets that the town or city might have, abrogate contracts, and, in essence, become the "dictator" of all of that entities existence. That too is meeting with resistance.
The Congress of the United States, the majority of whom are millionaires, is now clearly in thrall to the financiers, to the very very wealthy. The income inequality in America now approaches that found in third world countries and the economic recession created by Wall Street limits the ability of the average America to resist, or even to elect officials who might truly represent the interests of the middle and working classes in this country. Our Supreme Court, too, is obligated to the financial powers that, in essence, rule this country.
What To Do: (More to come)
It may be too late to do anything. The recent act, signed by President Obama, allowing officials to preemptively confine any individual indefinitely without giving that person, citizen or not, access to our legal system, is just an addition to the infamous Espionage Act of 1917 and its amendments, the so-called Sedition Act of 1918. The Act was originally intended to prohibit any interference with military operations, the support of enemies during wartime, to stop insubordination in the military or interference with military recruitment. It was used, for example, to prosecute someone who, in a bar, said that he thought the War was bunk (he was put in prison for eight years). The Supreme Court ruled that the Act was not unconstitutional and it is still in effect. It's been used to prosecute everyone from Eugene Debs, Socialist Presidential Candidate, the poet e.e. cummings, to Daniel Ellsberg of Pentagon Papers fame. President Obama's order merely extends it and moves its' actions beyond the scope of our legal system.
The Act is a powerful tool in the hands of the powerful (I'll write more about it in my next post). Combine it's power with a demonstrably conservative Supreme Court, the same one that just ruled that corporations are people, and there are formidable obstacles to overcome by anyone or any group attempting to fight for the rights of the middle and working classes.
Somehow we need to remove the overwhelming power of great wealth in deciding who represents us in Congress. We need to somehow recreate our lost representative democracy. We need to change the way in which the Constitution is amended in order to make it more responsive to historical and social changes that have occurred since it's inception. (More about that later). But perhaps, most simply, we need to hark back to the IWW's slogan: One Big Union.
We, as members of the working class - and the middle class is included in that group - must remember that our interests, and the freedoms we require, are not the same as those of the plutocracy that now runs this country. We need to become One Big Union.
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A short footnote: it gives me a chill to realize that, by writing something as simple and innocuous as this little screed, I could be subject to arrest, prosecution, and incarceration under the Espionage/Sedition Act. We Americans think we're free and that we have certain inalienable rights. That is not true.
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