The Wobblies and the Deportations

Bisbee, Arizona is a historic mining town that produced copper and other minerals between 1877 and the 1970’s. Throughout its history, Bisbee was shaped by a unique set of social, political and economic circumstances due to both its proximity to the Mexican American border as well as the influx of immigrants seeking jobs in the mines. Bisbee’s diversity and the desire of white miners to remain the dominant group was the impetus for the creation, perpetuation and reinforcement of a rigid racial hierarchy that determined an individuals social prestige, what neighborhood they lived in, what jobs were available to them in the mines and, perhaps most markedly, the wages that they would receive. This study of Bisbee’s racial hierarchy culminates in an examination of the deportation of 1917- a controversial demonstration of mining company power that has been traditionally treated as a labor conflict, although there is evidence that the ideas about race which structured Bisbee’s racial hierarchy may have influenced these events. This examination of Bisbee’s racial history from its founding in 1877 to the deportation in 1917 as well as modern implications for the borderlands of southern Arizona is done through the lens of Eduardo Bonilla-Silva’s theories of racialized social systems and Michael Omi and Howard Winant’s work on racial formation.

The author is a member of the department of history at the University of California, Riverside.

Safundi: The Journal of South African and American Studies, 2011

In two of the planet's most highly racialized countries, South Africa and the United States, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, or "Wobblies"), were remarkable. A key revolutionary syndicalist current operating globally, aspiring to unite the world's working class into a revolutionary One Big Union against capitalism, the state and economic and social inequality, the Wobblies operated in contexts characterized by white supremacy and deeply divided working classes. Yet they not only condemned racism and segregation in theory, but actively engaged in the challenging work of organizing workers of color including black Africans, African Americans, Asians, Coloureds and Latinos, against both economic exploitation and national/ racial oppression. Although the literature on race, ethnicity, and labour in both countries is voluminous, remarkably little has been written regarding the IWW on race matters. Yet the Wobbly tradition's impressive commitment and achievements largely unappreciated; the myth that left anti-racism started with Marxist communism in the 1920s remains pervasive. This article develops a comparative analysis of these two IWW experiences, bridging the North/South and industrialized/developing country divides in the (labor) historiography, and deepening our understanding of IWW politics and of labor, race and the left in countries with heterogeneous working classes. Given the centrality of sailors and dockers in the Wobbly movement, particular attention is paid to Philadelphia (US) and Cape Town (SA). In short, this article seeks to correct omissions in the literature of both countries' labor and left movements by exploring how and why the IWW did what so few other unions were willing or able to do-organize across the color line, reject working class and official racism, with both remarkable achievements (if some limitations) in its emancipatory project. In doing so, this paper recovers a history of revolutionary unionism and politics amongst workers of colour, and of their organisations, like the General Workers Union, IWW, Industrial Workers of Africa, Industrial Social League, and the Industrial and Commercial Workers Union of Africa. The broad anarchist tradition, including syndicalism, thus played an important role in struggles for national liberation and racial equality.

Safundi: The Journal of South African and American Studies, 2011

In two of the planet's most highly racialized countries, South Africa and the United States, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, or "Wobblies"), were remarkable. A key revolutionary syndicalist current operating globally, aspiring to unite the world's working class into a revolutionary One Big Union against capitalism, the state and economic and social inequality, the Wobblies operated in contexts characterized by white supremacy and deeply divided working classes. Yet they not only condemned racism and segregation in theory, but actively engaged in the challenging work of organizing workers of color including black Africans, African Americans, Asians, Coloureds and Latinos, against both economic exploitation and national/ racial oppression. Although the literature on race, ethnicity, and labour in both countries is voluminous, remarkably little has been written regarding the IWW on race matters. Yet the Wobbly tradition's impressive commitment and achievements largely unappreciated; the myth that left anti-racism started with Marxist communism in the 1920s remains pervasive. This article develops a comparative analysis of these two IWW experiences, bridging the North/South and industrialized/developing country divides in the (labor) historiography, and deepening our understanding of IWW politics and of labor, race and the left in countries with heterogeneous working classes. Given the centrality of sailors and dockers in the Wobbly movement, particular attention is paid to Philadelphia (US) and Cape Town (SA). In short, this article seeks to correct omissions in the literature of both countries' labor and left movements by exploring how and why the IWW did what so few other unions were willing or able to do-organize across the color line, reject working class and official racism, with both remarkable achievements (if some limitations) in its emancipatory project. In doing so, this paper recovers a history of revolutionary unionism and politics amongst workers of colour, and of their organisations, like the General Workers Union, IWW, Industrial Workers of Africa, Industrial Social League, and the Industrial and Commercial Workers Union of Africa. The broad anarchist tradition, including syndicalism, thus played an important role in struggles for national liberation and racial equality.

americanreformmovements.com

Law, Culture, and the Humanities, 2017

This article explores the relationship between mob violence, immigration control, and the early twentieth-century US deportation regime. Scholars examining the decline of lynch violence in the South typically see modern criminal justice as a new incarnation of white, heteropatriarchal violence. But they have left the deportation apparatus, a conjoined element of a US carceral assemblage, unexamined. This article argues that modern border policing’s ostensibly bloodless removal absorbed anti-immigrant mob violence within its carceral-eliminatory system. As with the diminution of the Southern, anti-black lynch mob, invocations of legality in deportation proved better suited to the biopolitics of liberal capitalist modernity. Nevertheless, the deportation regime, bolstered by an extensive federal infrastructure, still targeted migrants of color, took aim against political radicals, and policed heteropatriarchy in its production of settler-colonial citizenship via the spatial elimination of so-called undesirable aliens.

At a moment when U.S. labor seems its most weak and vulnerable, a wave of teacher strikes and demonstrations led and carried out primarily by women shows promise of revitalizing the movement. Critics allege the strikes and demonstrations are " unseemly, " but popular support for them appears to be growing. Historically, militant strikes and demonstrations have met with significant and sometimes violent resistance from corporate and political entities hostile to labor, and contemporary women in the movement should prepare for pushback. In the past, anti-labor forces have used the law and physical aggression to squeeze labor activists out of public space. Labor has a history of fighting back, beginning with the free speech fights of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) in the early twentieth century. These campaigns were the first in U.S. history to claim a First Amendment right to use public space. IWW organizer Elizabeth Gurley Flynn led several of these free speech fights. She and other women free speech fighters played an essential if often overlooked role in popularizing the idea that ordinary people have right to public space. Their tactics and experiences can inform and inspire women at the forefront of a contemporary labor militancy.

Workers' movements are a common and recurring feature in contemporary capitalism. The same militancy that inspired the mass labour movements of the twentieth century continues tO define worker struggles that proliferate throughout the world t0day.

Fighting War: Anarchists, Wobblies & the New Zealand State 1905-1925, 2016

Using government archives and contemporary publications, this pamphlet unearths the story of some of the men and women in Aotearoa New Zealand who opposed the state, militarism, and a world at war. Anarchists, ‘Wobblies’ (members of the Industrial Workers of the World) and their supporters did not stand against militarism because they were pacifists, but as members of the working class who refused to fight working class people from other countries. For them the world was their country; their enemy was capitalism. Their fight for a free society led to an intense cultural struggle—a struggle that questioned the war, the nature of work and authority itself. This battle for minds had material results. Intense state surveillance and a raft of legislation not only determined who could read what, but led to jail time or deportation from the country. In a time of smothering oppression and social pressures, they held on to their beliefs with courage, ingenuity and resolve.