The IWW busts itself

[Matthew Andrews]

Fellow Workers,

Here is a quick update from Boston. In case you haven't be following
what's going on here, the Boston branch of the IWW has been completely
smashed by the international. A culture of purges has developed under
the guise of the "safe spaces" policy. Although the policy itself seems
to be a reasonable guideline for resolving conflict, in practice it was
used to allow unsubstantiated accusations and to exclude people without
due process. It became clear to me that a majority of local wobblies
were frustrated with the clique that was controlling the branch. We
developed revisions to propose for the by-laws and attended the February
branch meeting to make our case. When the purge artists saw they were
in the minority, they made a concerted effort to disrupt the meeting. I
was nominated to chair the meeting, but we were unable to come to
order. They made wild accusations about faking our dues stamps. They
claimed the right to exclude people because they reserved the meeting
space. They threatened to call the cops! I even thought a fight was
going to break out when one of them flipped the table I was sitting at,
sending my coffee into the air. It was surreal. Finally, we decided to
re-convene in the neighboring space so we could conduct the branch
meeting. Presumably they did the same.

A split like this is bad enough, except instead of resolving matters -
or allowing us to resolve matters locally and democratically - the GEB
temporarily (indefinitely) suspended our branch so we could no longer
hold official meetings. They refused to recognize our meeting minutes
or define control over union property. Consequently we lost our office
space, bank account, signs and materials. After six months they finally
came out with a report that completely absolved the destructive behavior
of the "safe spaces" minority faction. To the best of my knowledge
nobody from the IWW is helping anyone in Boston re-organize, despite my
pleas for support.

Those of us who remain united are forming the Boston Labor Support
Committee. We are basically still the IWW but without the burden of an
overbearing, bureaucratic and factional international. We marched in
May Day together and have continued to meet. We recently hosted a book
lecture with a local author Marty Comack (Wild Socialism) at the
Somerville Public Library with about a dozen attendees. We plan to host
another lecture on 9/24 with Eric Chester (author of Wobblies in their
Heyday). Eric has retired to Scotland but is back in North America to
tour for his new book! I'm very excite to be hosting him.

We're also planning to table at the Bread and Roses Festival in Lawrence
Massachusetts on Labor Day.

We are trying to connect with other wobblies who have been purged or
smashed out of the union over the past decade or so. My fellow workers
in Boston identify more with the anarchist tradition but are
non-sectarian. I volunteered to contact "people who were interested in
reviving the WIIU" and was given a favorable response.

Our goals are modest at this point. But if there are similar post-IWW
groups out there, perhaps some kind of network could coalesce. I'm
hoping we can keep lines of communication open and explore the
possibilities.



In Solidarity,

~Matthew Andrews

[Andrew Gunderman]

Thanks for the interesting update and book info Matt, always good to hear from you.

---

From: workers-internation...@googlegroups.com <workers-internation...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Matthew Andrews <matthewa...@gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, August 29, 2016 10:38 PM
To: workers-internation...@googlegroups.com
Subject: The IWW busts itself

 

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