San Diego free speech fight
In 1905, the WFM and other unions, together with socialist, and anarchist groups met in Chicago to form the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) in what came to be called the "First Continental Congress of the working class."
The Wobblies, as IWW members were called, frequently engaged in creative tactics, including soapboxing and free speech fights .
In many American cities, IWW members found their right to public speech interfered with by local ordinances, police harassment and vigilante violence.
The ordinance came as a result of a recommendation given by the San Diego grand jury and a petition signed by eighty-five prominent citizens and property owners who had hoped to prohibit free speech in a seven-square block zone centered around 5th & E. The meetings blocked traffic, it was officially argued, and that necessitated an ordinance for "the immediate preservation of the public peace, health, and safety and one of emergency.
Prior to passage of the ordinance, the Wobblies, Single Taxers, and Socialists had signed a 250-person petition in which they called for an allowance of unrestricted free speech.
The police intervened and two days later the San Diego Common Council passed Ordinance 4623 with an emergency clause that called for the immediate cessation of public free speech rights, sidestepping the customary twenty-day implementation wait period.
"[5] In response to the Germania Hall incident, the IWW shifted their efforts to a form of soapbox oratory in order to win over a diverse spectrum of the working class, focusing on gaining converts through their speeches.
The Stingaree was home to everything different and unknown that went against the "mission" ideal in San Diego, including: saloons, shops, cheap hotels, gambling houses, opium dens and prostitutes.
The square block at the corner of Fifth and E Streets was home to more than just debauchery, as it also was the central location for a variety of "soapbox orators" including the Salvation Army, Socialists, Holy Rollers, and the Single Taxers.
The reports about jail conditions were conflicting, but the general trend seems to show that the Wobblies and other pro-free speech detainees were treated badly.
[7][8] These events coincided with the plan of the Free Speech League to "glut the jails and then to demand individual jury trials which would clog the courts and bring the legal machinery to a standstill.
District Attorney Utley tried to offer a compromise to the Wobblies, promising to free the men originally arrested for conspiracy if the IWW ceased its public speaking in the restricted zone.
The increase in arrests left Police Chief Keno Wilson with a dilemma; he wanted to punish the protesters, but simultaneously faced overcrowded jails and stockades.
The vigilantes then proceeded to "reeducate" the speakers on patriotism as this brutal first hand account notes: They were drunk and hollering and cursing the rest of the night.
In the morning they took us out four or five at a time and marched us up the track to the county line ... where were forced to kiss the flag and then run a gauntlet of 106 men, every one of which was striking at us as hard as they could with their pick ax handles.
The state of California finally intervened, as Governor Hiram Johnson was flooded with demands for an inquiry into the arrests and vigilantism in San Diego.
"[11] Ultimately, however, Weinstock changed course and concluded that there was no mistreatment of prisoners and that the police were “above average in intelligence, character, and personality.“[12] Weinstock likened the situation to Czarist Russia and suggested the attorney general of California file criminal charges against “the citizens’ committee, the press who condoned the lawlessness, the Merchants Association, the Chamber of Commerce, and other commercial bodies,” but he did not.
The report was not released until May 20, 1912, and it did not include the police killing of Joseph Mikolash, a Wobbly, inside the San Diego headquarters of IWWon May 7 or the Reitman affair.
When the two arrived at the train station the same women that allegedly needed protection from the soapbox orators yelled "Give us that anarchist; we will strip her naked; we will tear out her guts.
The bonus track "Tar and Sagebrush" on the Anti-Flag album The Bright Lights of America is a folk punk interpretation of Ben Reitman's description of his torture.
