Too bad no DUers can remember the Seattle General Strike of 1919

[LucyParsons]

(or do they? anyone? ...anyone?)

This is what Americans can do. Americans who organize. Americans who are unionized.



http://depts.washington.edu/labhist/strike/

The Seattle General Strike of February 1919 was the first city-wide labor action in America to be proclaimed a “general strike.” It led off a tumultuous era of post-World War I labor conflict that saw massive strikes shut down the nation's steel, coal, and meatpacking industries and threaten civil unrest in a dozen cities.

The strike began in shipyards that had expanded rapidly with war production contracts. 35,000 workers expected a post-war pay hike to make up for two years of strict wage controls imposed by the federal government.

When regulators refused, the Metal Trades Council union alliance declared a strike and closed the yards. After an appeal to Seattle’s powerful Central Labor Council for help, most of the city’s 110 local unions voted to join a sympathy walkout. The Seattle General Strike lasted less than a week but the memory of that event has continued to be of interest and importance for more than 80 years.

n the morning of February 6, 1919, Seattle, a city of 315,000 people, stopped working. 25,000 union members had joined the 35,000 already on strike. Much of the remaining work force was idled as stores closed and streetcars stopped running. The General Strike Committee, composed of delegates from the key striking unions, tried to coordinate vital services and negotiate with city officials, but events moved quickly beyond their control.

Most of the local and national press denounced the strike, while conservatives called for stern measures to suppress what looked to them to be a revolutionary plot. Mayor Ole Hanson, elected the year before with labor support, armed the police and threatened martial law and federal troops. Some of the unions wavered on the strike's third day. Most others had gone back to work by the time the Central Labor Council officially declared an end on February 11. By then police and vigilantes were hard at work rounding up Reds. The IWW hall and Socialist Party headquarters were raided and leaders arrested. Federal agents also closed the Union Record, the labor-owned daily newspaper, and arrested several of its staff. Meanwhile across the country headlines screamed the news that Seattle had been saved, that the revolution had been broken, that, as Mayor Hanson phrased it, “Americanism” had triumphed over “Bolshevism.”




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_General_Strike_of_1919

A cooperative body made up of rank and file workers from all the striking locals was formed during the strike, called the General Strike Committee. It acted as a "virtual counter-government for the city" (Brecher), somewhat akin to the Paris Commune in 1871. The workers in the committee organized to provide essential services for the people of Seattle during the work stoppage. For instance, garbage that would create a health hazard was collected, and firemen remained on duty. Exemptions to the stoppage of labor had to be passed by the Strike Committee. In general, work was not halted if doing so would endanger lives.

In other cases, workers acted on their own initiative to create new institutions rather than simply continuing the old. Milk wagon drivers, after being denied the right by their employers to keep certain dairies open, established a distribution system containing thirty-five neighborhood milk stations. A system of food distribution was also established, which throughout the strike committee distributed as many as thirty thousand meals each day. Strikers paid twenty five cents per meal, and the general public paid thirty five cents. Beef stew, spaghetti, bread, and coffee were offered free of charge.

Army veterans created an alternative to the police in order to keep the peace. The "Labor War Veteran's Guard," as it was called, forbade the use of force and did not carry weapons; it was policy "to use persuasion only." As it happened, peacekeeping was unnecessary: no arrest was made by traditional police forces in actions related to the strike, and general arrests dropped to less than half of normal. Major General John F. Morrison, stationed in Seattle, claimed that he had never seen "a city so quiet and orderly." A poem in the Union Record reads, in part:

What scares them most is
That NOTHING HAPPENS!
They are ready
For DISTURBANCES.
They have machine guns
And soldiers,
But this SMILING SILENCE
Is uncanny.

Nina DeMarcia

The methods of organization adopted by the striking workers bore resemblance to anarcho-syndicalism, perhaps reflecting the influence of the Industrial Workers of the World in the Pacific Northwest (though only a few striking locals were officially affiliated with the IWW). The radicalism of events was certainly conscientious; both workers and their opponents saw the situation as a prelude to revolution. The Seattle Union Record, in an editorial by Anna Louise Strong, attempted to analyze the historical significance of the general strike:

The closing down of Seattle's industries, as a MERE SHUTDOWN, will not affect these eastern gentlemen much. They could let the whole northwest go to pieces, as far as money alone is concerned.

But, the closing down of the capitalistically controlled industries of Seattle, while the workers organize to feed the people, to care for the babies and the sick, to preserve order--this will move them, for this looks too much like the taking over of power by the workers.

Labor will not only Shut Down the industries, but Labor will reopen, under the management of the appropriate trades, such activities as are needed to preserve public health and public peace. If the strike continues, Labor may feel led to avoid public suffering by reopening more and more activities.

UNDER ITS OWN MANAGEMENT.

And that is why we say that we are starting on a road that leads--no one knows where!

Seattle's mayor concurred with the conclusion that the general strike was a revolutionary event but admitted this with regret: "The so-called sympathetic Seattle strike was an attempted revolution. That there was no violence does not alter the fact . . . The intent, openly and covertly announced, was for the overthrow of the industrial system; here first, then everywhere . . . True, there were no flashing guns, no bombs, no killings. Revolution, I repeat, doesn't need violence. The general strike, as practised in Seattle, is of itself the weapon of revolution, all the more dangerous because quiet. To succeed, it must suspend everything; stop the entire life stream of a community . . . That is to say, it puts the government out of operation. And that is all there is to revolt -- no matter how achieved."

Revolutionary pamphlets littered the streets of the city. One, titled "Russia Did It," proclaimed: "The Russians have shown you the way out. What are you going to do about it? You are doomed to wage slavery till you die unless you wake up, realize that you and the boss have nothing in common, that the employing class must be overthrown, and that you, the workers, must take over the control of your jobs, and through them, the control over your lives instead of offering yourself up to the masters as a sacrifice six days a week, so that they may coin profits out of your sweat and toil."

End of the strike

Federal troops were sent in by request of the state of Washington's Attorney General. Nine hundred fifty sailors and marines were stationed across the city by February 7. At the same time, the Seattle mayor added 600 men to the police force and hired 2,400 special deputies. The executive committee of the General Strike Committee, fearing the violent repression so common in early twentieth century America strikes, voted to end the strike but recanted this decision when it became evident that enthusiasm for the strike remained high among the rank and file.

The international offices of the AFL began to exert pressure on the workers to end the strike. For various reasons, some locals gave in to this pressure and returned to work. With division among the ranks of the strikers thus increasing and the power of the opposition becoming stronger and more agitated by the strike's continuance, the General Strike Committee voted to end the strike on February 11, at noon. It stated the reasons for ending the strike: "Pressure from international officers of unions, from executive committees of unions, from the 'leaders' in the labor movement, even from those very leaders who are still called 'Bolsheviki' by the undiscriminating press. And, added to all these, the pressure upon the workers themselves, not of the loss of their own jobs, but of living in a city so tightly closed."

The initial shipyard strike persisted. Immediately following the general strike's end, thirty-nine IWW members were arrested as "ringleaders of anarchy", despite their playing a marginal role in the development of events.

[JackRiddler]

1. May I be the first to keep this afloat?

This is the kind of real history, real issues thread needed on this board. Thank you, thank you.

[nichomachus]

2. Small correction

You said "this is what Americans can do." It would be more correct to say "this is what unions can do."

Without unions, Americans can't really do this. Strikers would simply be fired and replaced.

This is why it was necessary for the fascists to destroy unions, something they began in the late '40s. The process was accelerated in the Reagan years, and today is almost complete.

[LucyParsons]

4. Yes, yes, yes!!!

Edited.

I am a proud member of my union, which most of my late-twenties/early-thirysomething friends see as very... "retro" of me, not to mention naive. They're missing the "critical mass" part. Why NOT be in the union? That's my question.

[Alexander]

3. K&R

:thumbsup:

[Hydra]

5. Sad to say that such greatness will never happen again

As an activist, I can tell you that the biggest problem with change in America is the "It's not hurting me" phenomenon.

No matter what the issue, whether it's kidnapping, workers rights, education or food prices, if the person hasn't been hurt by it, they refuse to do anything to help fix the problem.

We are now a society of 1. Separately we claim to stand, and separately we will fall.

[LucyParsons]

6. I sadly agree.

But, still. Gotta keep at it, while we're breathing. No?

I mean, I haven't gone to work for ExxonMobil yet.

[Pooka Fey]

7. K&R

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

8. I remember it.

My old man used to tell me stories about it.