🚀 go-pugleaf

Here is some information about folksinger/labor activist Joe Hill.  

EFF-Austin has adopted as one of it's slogans, "Don't Flame -- Organize" 
which is a small mark of recognition to those who fought censorship 
before us. 

The IWW, (International Workers of the World or "wobblies") were
instrumental in expanding free speech Constitutional protections during
the early part of the century because they were (1) willing to be
obnoxious and (2) willing to be thrown in jail.  Their agenda -- the 
abolition of capitalism and the implementation of a socialist system -- 
was driven by the First Amendment, often speaking in open-air public 
spaces, often near labor fields of migrant workers.  Council members 
would pass anti-speech and assembly laws which the wobblies routinely and 
intentionally violated.  People were arrested for reading from the 
Declaration of Independence, for example. The strategy : clog the jails and 
courts until they were such a nuisance that the courts let them go.  
Sometimes they won, sometimes they lost, everywhere they were thrown into 
jail, beaten, and tortured for speaking their beliefs.  And in the case 
of Joe Hill, (apparently) framed for a crime he didn't commit.


	"Whether they agree or disagree with its methods and aims, all 
	lovers of liberty everywhere owe a debt to this organization for 
	its defense of free speech. Absolutely irreconcilable, absolutely 
	fearless, and unsuppressibly persistent, it has kept alight the fires
	of freedom, like some outcast vestal of human liberty. That the 
	defense of traditional rights to which this government is supposed
	to be dedicated should devolve upon an organization so often
	denounced as "unpatriotic" and "un-American," is but the usual,
	the unfailing irony of history."

			-- an un-named quote from Pearson's Magazine,
			reprinted in The First Freedom : The Tumultous 
			History of Free Speech in America by Nat Hentoff


This is just historical context, and hopefully not foreshadowing.



thanks,               | "The most exciting breakthroughs of the 21st century
                      | will not occur because of technology  but because 
David Smith           | of an expanding concept of what it means to be human."
bladex@bga.com        |               -- John Naisbitt / Patricia Aburdene

---------- Forwarded message ----------


         \\\\\\INDUSTRIAL WORKERS OF THE WORLD////////
                          education
                           W * W
             organization * _I_ * emancipation
-------------------------------------------------------------
                   ``We Never Forget''

                          * * *
>>>      NOVEMBER 19 : JOE HILL MURDERED

     November 19 marks the 99th anniversary of the execution of our fellow
worker Joe Hill, songwriter and organizer, by the state of Utah, for a
crime he did not commit. 

     Born Joel Emmanuel Haggland on October 7, 1879, Joe left Sweden for
New York about 1902.  He played piano in NYC, then moved west and worked
as a longshore-worker in San Pedro, California.  Joe travelled around the
west working on farms and construction. 

     Joe Hill's songs first appeared in the IWW Songbook in 1911. Joe was
at the Fraser River, B.C. rail construction when workers struck in 1912. 
He wrote *Where the Fraser River Flows* and helped win the strike. 

     Arrested in Salt Lake City in 1914, Joe was charged with murder of a
storekeeper and ex-policeman.  Evidence shows the storekeeper was killed
for revenge by ex-convicts he had helped send to prison.  But police were
eager to get rid of the songwriter, and so Joe was convicted with many
irregularities in the trial. 

     Worldwide protests came from the Swedish government, and hundreds of
letters and telegrams came daily to the Utah governor asking for a pardon. 
In prison Joe kept writing songs, including *The Rebel Girl*, written for
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, which Joe considered his best song. 

[Note : Elizabeth Gurley Flynn was the national ACLU Board member ejected 
just after World War II for being a member of the Communist Party.  Even 
the ACLU had a "purge". -- David]

     November 18, 1915, Joe sent this telegram to IWW secretary Big Bill
Haywood: *Don't waste any time in mourning -- organize!* Later, Joe handed
a guard a paper with these words: 

                MY LAST WILL
     My will is easy to decide,  For I have nothing to divide
     My kin don't need to fuss and moan, 
     Moss does not cling to a rolling stone
     My body -- Ah, if I could choose,  I would to ashes it reduce
     And let the merry breezes blow 
     My dust to where some flowers grow
     Perhaps some fading flower then, Would come to life and bloom again
     This is my last and final will 
     Good luck to all of you -- Joe Hill.

Joe Hill was executed by a firing squad November 19, 1915.

In the 1980's, an urn containing Joe Hill's ashes was found in the US Post
Office.  After some negotiation, the ashes were turned over to the IWW,
and scattered at about 20 different sites around the United States. 
Wherever people are fighting for their rights, the spirit of Joe Hill
lives on!  Don't mourn -- organize! 


          THE REBEL GIRL
     by Joe Hill  /words updated/

     There are women of many descriptions
     In this cruel world as everyone knows
     Some are living in beautiful mansions
     And wearing the finest of clothes

     There's the blue blooded queen and the princess
     Who have charms made of diamonds and pearls
     But the only and true kind of lady
     Is the Rebel Girl

chorus:
     She's a rebel girl, a rebel girl
     To the working class she's the strength of this world
     From Newfoundland to B.C.
     She's fighting for you and for me

     Yes she's there by our side
     With her courage and pride
     She's unequalled anywhere

     And I'm proud to fight for freedom 
     With the rebel girl!

\\\\\\\\THE BOSSES NEED YOU - YOU DON'T NEED THEM/////////

--
thanks,               | "The most exciting breakthroughs of the 21st century
                      | will not occur because of technology  but because 
David Smith           | of an expanding concept of what it means to be human."
bladex@bga.com        |               -- John Naisbitt / Patricia Aburdene