MRZine review of An Injury to One by Reter Rachleff.
2005 will mark the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Industrial Workers World, the I.W.W., popularly known as the “Wobblies.” The most radical, mass-based labor organization to emerge within U.S. history, they embodied the slogan “An Injury to One Is an Injury to All,” as they organized unskilled as well as skilled workers, immigrants as well as the native born, women as well as men, workers of color as well as whites. They practiced internationalism, organizing not only in Canada and Mexico but also across the world. At a grassroots level, the Wobblies employed creative tactics like “striking on the job,” “working to rule,” and “sabotage,” while calling for a general strike to achieve “industrial freedom.” They articulated a vision of a new form of industrial, social, and political order, one in which workers might answer to no authority above their own collective organizations. And they employed culture as a weapon, from poetry and music to cartoons, murals, pageants, and plays.
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