News - All Departments and Unions

The International Solidarity Commission of the Industrial Workers of the World condemns the actions taken by the Mossos d'Esquadra, Catalonia police. Laura Gómez, the General Secretary of CGT-Barcelona was arrested by the Mossos d'Esquadra for trumped up charges that have no basis in fact. It is obvious that this is nothing more than an act of repression and intimidation in response to the growing workers' mobilizations in Spain. We demand the immediate release of Laura Gómez and the withdrawal of all charges.

We are in solidarity with, and commend, the CGT-Barcelona, Laura Gómez, and the rest of Spain's working class for their ongoing struggle against police repression and labour injustice.

Solidarity Forever,
International Solidarity Commission
Industrial Workers of the World.

Whereas increasing numbers of working class and dispossessed people in the United States have begun to meet face to face to proclaim their opposition to economic injustice and define their interests in democratic popular assemblies, autonomous from political parties, as part of the Occupy Movement, which resonates deeply with the IWW's traditions and principles, and

Whereas millions of working class and dispossessed people around the world, but especially in Northern Africa and Western Asia, have been organizing themselves to overthrow the governments that enforce the capitalist and neocolonial domination and exploitation they have resisted for generations, and

Whereas the IWW has stood since its founding in 1905 for the proposition that:

"The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of the working people and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life.

Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the means of production, abolish the wage system, and live in harmony with the Earth." and

Whereas since 2006 the tradition of the movement for the rights of migrant workers in the U.S. has been to mobilize themselves and their allies for mass actions on May 1 to disrupt the functioning of the economic system and political discourse of the 1%, and

Whereas every year May Day is celebrated globally as International Workers Day to commemorate the struggle of the international working class to emancipate itself through the class war over the centuries, and

Whereas May Day 1890 was proclaimed to be an international day of working class protest by the Second International against the repression of the 8 Hour Day movement in the U.S. where 8 mostly immigrant anarchist labor organizers were arrested, with 4 being hanged and one committing suicide the night before the hangings, after an unknown person threw a bomb at police who were repressing a protest against police brutality in Haymarket Square in Chicago, and

Whereas the Los Angeles branch of the IWW welcomes this opportunity to organize alongside OccupyLA and other participants in the Los Angeles General Strike Coalition to help the working class build the skills, the community, and the combativeness necessary to defend ourselves, our elders, and the generations to come from the global threats of austerity, exploitation, imperialism and ecocide.

Be it resolved that the LA Branch of the IWW endorses the May 1, 2012 General Strike and commits to work as part of the Los Angeles General Strike Coalition by conducting trainings and participating in actions in the lead up to May 1.

By Andy Piascik

This story will appear in the March 2012 issue of the Industrial Worker.

One hundred years ago, in the dead of a Massachusetts winter, the great 1912 Lawrence Textile Strike—commonly referred to as the “Bread and Roses” strike—began. Accounts differ as to whether a woman striker actually held a sign that read “We Want Bread and We Want Roses, Too.” No matter. It’s a wonderful phrase, as appropriate for the Lawrence strikers as for any group at any time: the notion that, in addition to the necessities for survival, people should have “a sharing of life’s glories,” as James Oppenheim put it in his poem “Bread and Roses.”

Though 100 years have passed, the Lawrence strike resonates as one of the most important in the history of the United States. Like many labor conflicts of the 19th and early 20th centuries, the strike was marked by obscene disparities in wealth and power, open collusion between the state and business owners, large scale violence against unarmed strikers, and great ingenuity and solidarity on the part of workers. In important ways, though, the strike was also unique. It was the first large-scale industrial strike, the overwhelming majority of the strikers were immigrants, most were women and children, and the strike was guided in large part by the revolutionary strategy and vision of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW).

Beyond its historical significance, elements of this massive textile strike may be instructive to building a radical working class movement today. It is noteworthy that the Occupy movement shares many philosophical and strategic characteristics with the Lawrence strike—direct action, the prominent role of women, the centrality of class, participatory decision-making, egalitarianism, an authentic belief in the Wobbly principle that We Are All Leaders—to name just a few. During the two months of the strike, the best parts of the revolutionary movement the IWW aspired to build were expressed. The Occupy movement carries that tradition forward, and as the attempt at a general strike in Oakland and solidarity events such as in New York for striking Teamsters indicate, many in Occupy understand that the working class is uniquely positioned to challenge corporate power. While we deepen our understanding of what that means and work to make it happen, there is much of value we can learn from what happened in Lawrence a century ago.