Free speech fights

The IWW organized transient workers (especially in cities in the American West) who worked in highly seasonal jobs—they met on the streets, discussed contemporary issues, and listened to speakers; at the time, it was a very popular method of organization. The events often ended with the police arresting them for participating in street meetings. The most notorious of all of the free speech fights was the San Diego free speech fight, which won a significant amount of public awareness for the IWW as it involved tremendous violence against the labor groups organized by the IWW. which brought the IWW to the greater notice of the American public and was notable for the intensity of violence by anti-labor vigilantes directed at the IWW; this violence included the kidnapping and tarring and feathering of Ben Reitman, who was a physician, and was Emma Goldman's lover.

More generally, a free speech fight is any incident in which a group is involved in a conflict over its speech. For instance, the Free Speech Movement, which began with a conflict on the Berkeley Campus in California in the 1960s, was a "free speech fight".

"Free speech fights" and the IWW

The IWW engaged in free speech fights during the period from approximately 1907 to 1916. The Wobblies, as the IWW members were called, relied upon free speech, which in the United States is guaranteed by the First Amendment, to enable them to communicate the concept of One Big Union to other workers. In communities where the authorities saw their interests in avoiding the development of unions, the practice of soapboxing was frequently restricted by ordinance or by police harassment. The IWW employed a variety of creative tactics, including the tactic of flooding the area of a free speech fight with footloose rebels who would challenge the authorities by flouting the ordinance, intentionally getting arrested in great numbers. With the jails full and a seemingly endless stream of union activists arriving by boxcar and highway, the local communities frequently rescinded their prohibitions on free speech, or came to some other accommodation.

The Free Speech League, a progressive group which functioned at the same time as (and occasionally together with) the IWW, worked in conjunction with the IWW prior to World War I in many of their free speech fights, which generated a good deal of controversy. The free speech fights of the IWW were highly publicized, as they were designed to garner attention: they frequently started when local communities interjected to attempt to prevent the IWW from occupying street corners from which they would use provocative language to detail their radical beliefs. The free speech fights began occurring in 1906 and drew to a close by 1917—over that period of time, at least 26 communities played host to the IWW's free speech fights, and the years of 1909 to 1913 were particularly active, with at least 21 free speech fights happening.

The IWW members who engaged in the free speech fights typically cited the First Amendment and the rights guaranteed therein as proof positive of the validity of their cause, thereby highlighting the legal importance of the issues they fought for. That being the case, their struggles did not go unanswered or ignored: local, state, and even the federal government were prompted to respond, while, perhaps more importantly, the American public, due to the national publicity garnered by the free speech fights, were invariably tasked with confronting free speech issues. Practically all realms of American life were impacted by the free speech fights, as members of the press, church officials, school teachers, politicians, anyone involved in the business and labor world, and members of any organization (especially those of the Socialist Party) had a stake in the fights and thus attempted to comment on the issues in contention.

An overview of the free speech fights

From its inception, the IWW was deeply committed to free speech issues, and especially those affiliated with labor groups. The IWW formed in 1905 in response to dissatisfaction with the trade unions promoted by the American Federation of Labor (the AFL). Whereas the AFL promoted the ideals of capitalism by fighting for the rights of workers within the ideological framework of the free market system, the IWW functioned on anarchistic principles. Rather than urging workers to join unions based on craft and skill that were determined to form binding trade agreements with employers, the IWW advocated for the development of broad unions for low-skill workers that would be driven by the workers themselves (and their collective actions) rather than by top-down politics and binding capitalist decisions.

The primary vehicles of change for the free speech fights of the IWW were spontaneous workplace strikes as well as on-site labor slowdowns in addition to picketing, parades, and demonstrations. Importantly, the IWW engaged in street corner public displays and speaking to raise the public awareness regarding free speech fights. The desire for direct action by laborers was attributed to having grown disaffected with the beliefs of the AFL. They stressed their truly American origins and likened their actions to those of earlier American revolutionaries and activists.

The free speech fights of the IWW were often quite similar in nature: Wobblies (many of whom travelled across the country to spread their message) would visit a city's downtown and attempt to speak on soapboxes on street corners. Their message and their tactics were particularly provocative, and they were frequently arrested—though, if they were not arrested on one street corner, they would simply pack up and head to another one. Among the offences which they were arrested for were blocking traffic, vagrancy, unlawful assembly, or violating local ordinances such as ones against speaking on the streets.

Though the IWW was successful in many of their free speech fights, they did not always achieve their desired goals. In San Diego, for instance, they were unable to cause the repeal of a restrictive street ordinance while, in Paterson, they failed to gain protection for street picketing and meetings.

The IWW ideology of free speech

The ideology of the Wobblies who fought for free speech rights across America was deeply indebted to their core beliefs regarding the provenance of the First Amendment rights of the Constitution. In their estimation, they were fighting with the Constitution on their side while those who opposed them, such as city officials, were disregarding the fundamental laws of the country. The Wobblies frequently used phrases such as "Have you ever read the Constitution?" and "What is this, Czarist Russia, or Free America?"

The Wobblies held that the free speech rights granted by the First Amendment had been abridged over time, and they felt that it nowhere more evident than it was in the case of the laborers for whom they worked tirelessly—capitalism had conspired with the judicial system in the United States to deny agency and the Constitutionally-granted freedom of speech to American laborers. Not all Wobblies subscribed to such idealistic ideology, though, since some argued the more pessimistic belief that the Constitution had been written by the elites and that free speech was merely an illusion that worked to uphold the power of those same elites. By adopting aggressive tactics which flaunted local ordinances against free speech, the Wobblies courted arrest, which they used as a demonstration of how far the abridgement of free speech had come. The official attempts to silence the IWW in the free speech fights, they argued, were totally opposed to the spirit of the First Amendment.

According to the Wobblies, the fact that they even had to fight for free speech rights was evidence of the corrupting effect of capitalism in America and of its legal system. They argued that the Constitution was not being applied to American laborers, just as it had not been applied to slaves in the century prior. Rather than take their fights to the courts, which they felt were substantially corrupted by capitalist influence, they took their fight to the streets and urged other Americans to do the same.

The publications of the IWW urged people to "Educate, Agitate, Organize!!!" which led their opponents to see the fights for free speech as precursors to more insidious desires such as those for unionization and, especially, for the abolition of capitalism.

Popular reactions

The free speech fights of the IWW were inherently populist in nature. They were met with a variety of different public response and reactions: some supported their efforts and sought to collaborate with them while others engaged in vigilante violence against them (as was especially the case in San Diego). The free speech fights gained mass support from political groups such as labor unions, Socialists, and also the Free Speech League. Notably, few of the groups stood fast with the IWW when it came to their calls for revolution or for the overthrowing of capitalism more generally, and instead focused on the importance of the free speech rights for their own inherent worth to Americans. The AFL, though, opposed the IWW's efforts in the free speech realm from the get go. Other groups and members of the public, too, began to oppose the free speech fights over time because of the aggressive tactics and language among other things.

The Socialists were the most closely connected allies of the IWW in the free speech fights, as they had suffered through many years of free speech repression already and thus helped to fundraise for the cause and occasional even took part in the fights.

Labor unions also offered significant support to the free speech fight cause since they had a stake in the fights. Important support, still, came from the American public at large.

Official reactions and regulation of street speaking

The most notable proponent of the free speech fights in the official arena was New York City Police Commissioner Arthur Woods, who argued that all American groups should be granted the right of free speech and assembly. Rather than repress their constitutional rights, Woods felt that it was the duty of the police to protect the demonstrators. His personal philosophy dictated that free speech could be regulated only in ways that protected it through the creation of channels of expression which would not impede the rights of others.

The reasonable regulation of street speaking was an important issue that arose because of the free speech fights of the IWW. Their soapboxing on downtown street corners proved especially divisive. Whereas IWW supporters held that freedom of expression was especially important in the areas where that expression could actually reach the people (such as laborers) who would benefit the most from their message, opponents argued that their right to free speech did not belong in such public places where their incendiary tactics could be harmful to the public. Public streets were the best means of reaching the workers to whom their free speech fights were addressed, and the Wobblies did not always possess the necessary funds to rent out public assembly halls, for instance, from which they could exercise their right to free speech. The IWW conceded, nonetheless, that reasonable restrictions should be placed on public speaking.

The struggle over free speech on downtown street corners was regarded as absurd by many people, since there were myriad other areas in the public sphere that allowed outdoor speaking to take place—downtown street corners, though, were outlawed. The fight over the street corners, therefore, became a symbol of the divisive ideology of the IWW—their opponents scornfully argued that the street corners were important to the Wobblies only because they could not reach an audience elsewhere since nobody would willingly attend any of their speeches.

Many of the opponents of free speech fights, thus, were in favor of the establishment of centrally located areas that permitted oration but did not interfere with the city. Others, though, were totally opposed to the right to speak in public.

The IWW occasionally saw its fight over the regulation of street speaking extend to the judicial realm. More often than not, judges upheld the street ordinances that prevented public speaking. Notably, a judge in San Diego upheld the city's ordinance, and used the language of a similar decision in Los Angeles to explain that "This ordinance does not attempt to suppress freedom of speech, or seek to interfere with the citizen in the right to express his views upon any subject, political, religious, or otherwise, as is suggested by the petitioner. It simply specifies a certain district within the city wherein no one may do the things prohibited."

Analysis of free speech themes

One of the key themes of the free speech fights came from the regulation of speaking on the streets and involved discussions over the importance of access to public property and how reasonable limitations could be applied to it. People who debated the free speech fights frequently focused on the distinction between legal speech and illegal action while also detailing the various types of unprotected speech. They also debated what types of criticisms of the government should be protected by free speech.

One of the primary issues with the debates surrounding the free speech fights was that commentators understood that certain types of speech should be regarded as illegal and were not covered as free speech—sedition, libel, inciting speech, and obscenity fell into this category of speech, yet what some regarded as obscenity or libel, others regarded simply as government criticism that should be protected by the Constitution.