44 lines
2.4 KiB
Plaintext
44 lines
2.4 KiB
Plaintext
Post WWII IWW History
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Mike Ballard suggested I should contact you re IWW history after the second
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world war, and under present circumstances I may well be the best person (at
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least in the organization) to talk to on this. But before I put you in touch
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with resources (the few that exist) it would help to get a better sense of your
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interests. It seems FW Ballard sent me this some weeks back, but I have
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misplaced it if so.
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There is a study of IWW in Cleveland that focusses on the WWII era (when
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Cleveland was the union's last area of significant industrial presence) but
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also carries it through the U.S. government's use of the Taft-Hartley law to
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bust it. After that there is no industrial presence, though there is some
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activity, until a 1964 blueberry pickers strike in Michigan. I have in my
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files a draft article on IWW from 1945 through 1980 (or perhaps notes for a
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draft, I would have to locate it) that I was working up with Franklin
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Rosemont (of Charles Kerr publishers in Chicago) and Penny Pixler which was
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commissioned for the new edition of Kornbluf's anthology but then vetoed
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because we insisted on treating the IWW as a living organization. There is of
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course the quite inadequate treatment in Patrick Murfin's addendum to Fred
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Thompson's The IWW: Its First Fifty (70 in the version with the Murfin chapter)
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Years. Sam Dolgoff addresses the era in his memoir, Fragments. Several IWW
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militants speak to the period in oral histories--I have not seen what is
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probably the most important of these, recorded by Penelope & Franklin Rosemont
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off Fred Thompson (who edited the Industrial Worker, was an IWW organizer,
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etc.) a few months before he died. There is also some material on Work
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People's College (run by Finnish IWWs in Duluth MN) into the 1950s,
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contemporary accounts in the IWW press and elsewhere of strikes and organizing
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campaigns in the 1970s 80s and 90s, an article by Mark Kaufmann on IWW
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organizing in Michigan state (the union's industrial stronghold, such as it
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was, from late 70s until 1990) in the 1980s in the current issue of Libertarian
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Labor Review (#14, Winter 1993).
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The material is somewhat scanty and scattered, but let me know what you're
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interested in and I'll do my best to point you in the right direction.
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jon bekken (IWW member since 1978, former IWW Secretary-Treas)
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communication studies
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suny 234 dowd fine arts
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cortland ny 13045
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bekkenj@snycorva.bitnet
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