After watching this documentary, I have many thoughts. It describes the extremely hard living conditions of the working class at the end of the 19th century and the early 20th century. Migrant workers, in order to change jobs, had to climb onto freight trains and sit for hours or even more than ten hours in extremely dangerous environments. Not only that, they also faced extortion and robbery by conductors and a series of people, bandits, and thieves; robbers would take money or drive people off the train, and those workers who could not pay would be forcibly pushed off the train, with the claim that this was “lubricating the rails”—extremely cruel. Also memorable is the plight of lumberjacks in the American Northwest, where more than a hundred lumberjacks lived in “workers’ dormitories” that were even worse than pig pens or cow stables, day after day selling their lives to capitalists, bodies covered in injuries, and not even a clean, healthy meal, sometimes only a sleeping board without a proper bed. In such conditions, the working class increasingly realizes that only by uniting and fighting can they overcome the enemy and achieve victory. The IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) helped the working class fight, and when migrant workers rode freight trains, they formed a flying squad that specialized in fighting and capturing robbers.
One tactic mentioned in the documentary about the IWW is active sabotage (shirking). American harvest workers worked extremely hard; capitalists treated workers purely as tools—cruelly exploiting them when needed and ruthlessly discarding them when not, with no regard for the workers’ survival. Harvest workers during off-season were treated as vagrants and could even be thrown into prison by the government just for walking on the streets, forced to do hard labor for the state, and paid nothing. When harvest season came, they were heavily exploited again, working ten-plus hours a day with no opportunity to rest. I didn’t know before what sabotage meant; the documentary explains that the term comes from French, where sabot means wooden shoes; when French workers wanted to rest, they would throw wooden shoes into the machines to break them—this is the origin of sabotage. “We are the enslaved of rebellion; we shall not rest until our goals are achieved.” This sentence left a deep impression on me.
What impressed me most was the IWW members across various regions and cities openly giving speeches to promote the benefits of unions. Even when reactionary governments introduced measures and banned any organizations other than religious groups and the Salvation Army from speaking or propagating ideas, the IWW members did not fear such reactionary decrees or the penalties they would face. They continued on the streets with speeches and debates against the enemy. IWW member Hill wrote the song “The Missionary and the Slave” and kept promoting, fighting, hoping to awaken more workers to avoid being deceived by the bourgeoisie’s so-called “God will feed you.” Happiness can only be achieved through working-class unity and struggle. As a Marxist, I felt too afraid to publicly declare my views, and during labor reforms I seldom actively expose political matters to fellow workers, which I found very shameful. The reactionary U.S. government, during the war, did everything to slander the IWW to undermine the workers’ movement and prevent workers from striking. American capitalism slandered the IWW as “inciters,” saying they were bought by Germany, traitors, or mice stealing American wealth. Yet countless speakers did not fear the government’s reactionary laws, and they continued to stand on soapboxes on the streets one by one, until prisons were filled with these speakers. Foster records in his autobiography that “I was not enthusiastic about founding a wage-workers’ party; even as it was being formed, I shifted my attention to the IWW. In the autumn of 1909, I went from Seattle to Spokane to report on the struggle for freedom of speech in Spokane for TILDUS’s Laborer’s Newspaper (formerly the Seattle Socialist). Spokane’s fight for freedom of speech was one of the most intense among many such struggles led by the IWW. The city authorities, to prevent the IWW from approaching the crowds of roaming workers on the sidewalk, passed a strict law banning street speeches, and they issued a nationwide call to recruit volunteers for the army, drawing hundreds into the city to prepare for prison. Police used brutal whippings and mass arrests to deal with anyone attempting to speak on the street. In the early days of the struggle, IWW fighters refused to execute the 34-day stone-moving labor sentence and were imprisoned in the cold Franklin School, fed only white bread and water. This was a horrific system; rations were only two ounces of white bread, leading to serious stomach problems and near-starvation. Three people became very ill, and soon after release died. About six hundred people were arrested during the struggle, which continued until March 1910.
Upon arriving in Spokane, I immediately actively participated in this struggle. I sincerely admired the IWW’s fighting spirit, which starkly contrasted with the empty rhetoric of the Socialist Party. I was arrested and spent two months in prison. In prison, I joined the IWW (the world labor union). After being released, I became the chairman of the workers’ committee negotiating a resolution with the authorities. The negotiation result was almost a complete victory for the IWW because the offending decree was repealed. The working class is the true fighter for democracy, equality, and freedom. They are not afraid of prison, not afraid of labor, and they continue their propaganda and struggle even when prisons are full, ultimately forcing the government to lift the ban. It was precisely because of the struggles of the working class that the imperialists in the United States could maintain a certain degree of freedom of speech. I should learn this selfless spirit of fighting for the interests of the working class, unafraid of slander or prison."
]https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1DY41117Yi/