from Facebook
Book discussion and signing. Eric Chester is author of “The Wobblies in Their Heyday”(paperback edition just released by Levellers Press). This book was the subject of a symposium in ASR 64 argues that the federal government waged all-out war against the IWW because of the effectiveness of its organizing in strategic industries.
[October 11 from 7 to 9PM at Wooden Shoe Books 704 South St]
“Eric Chester’s book gives us a much-needed reminder of the government-backed destruction of the most radical working-class organization in U.S. history―an organization whose class-wide organizing across lines of occupation, race, and gender is a potent perspective for the renewed class struggle today.” -Loren Goldner, Coeditor, Insurgent Notes
“This deeply researched study offers an incisive analysis of the success of the IWW in organizing during World War I and of the relentless campaign of corporate and federal authorities to destroy it. Chester has established a new watermark for historical understanding of the IWW.” – Staughton Lynd, Independent Scholar and Author of Intellectual Origins of American Radicalism
“Eric Chester’s important book establishes that the IWW’s revolutionary vision was embraced by large numbers of American workers, and that the union was building a strong presence in vital industries. The government’s brutal campaign of repression was driven by its deep fear of working-class rebellion and by the employers’ determination to crush the union while they still could.” -Jon Bekken, Associate Professor at Albright College and Coauthor of The Industrial Workers of the World: Its First 100 Years
