The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), popularly known as Wobblies, have a long tradition of soapboxing which dates back to the beginning of the century. Wobblies used soapboxing in a variety of ways, but basically as an organizing tool. Towns and cities frequently passed ordinances to prohibit Wobblies from using the streets to organize workers. In these early free speech fights, Wobblies challenged these ordinances by affirming their constitutional right to free speech. As part of their tactic to repeal these ordinances, Wobblies continued to mount the soapbox and would soon fill the jails in small cities and towns beyond their capacities. In many states this tactic was successful in forcing the ordinances to be rescinded. Wobblies in various cities across the country are once again battling with authorities around the issue of free speech, but this time on the airwaves. I interviewed Internal eXile, a Wobbly deejay on Berkeley's pirate radio station Free Radio Berkeley. He talked about some of the ways he and other Wobblies use pirate radio as an organizing tool.
Salvatore Salerno (SS): Tell me about the Wobbly Radio project with which you were involved?
Internal eXile (IX): Well, it was loosely IWW programming. It was more of a labor and ecology show. Now I'm doing a graveyard shift music show. I am one of about sixteen Bay Area Wobblies doing a show on Free Radio Berkeley. A number of people joined the Wobblies who were Free Radio Berkeley deejays through contact with Wobbly organizers. So, though I'm no longer doing the original show, it's not as though Wobbly programming is not happening anymore. Stephen Dunifer himself is a Wobbly, so it's not as though we're unrepresented at the radio station.
SS: Your idea was to do a show on labor and ecology?
IX: Well I could give you a little background on how my show began. I had been volunteering at the station doing various odd tasks, but not being a deejay. Then finally I had a graveyard shift from 2:30 to 6 a.m. just playing music. Then a prime time slot opened on Free Radio. When the show opened up I asked for it and the rest of the members of the radio station said it was okay. Stephen Dunifer asked me to take the show on the condition that I would try to do a night time labor show since working folks couldn't always listen during the day. I said great, but I also wanted to include ecology as well. I had been doing work with Earth First! and much of what I had done for the radio up until that point had entailed going up north and involving myself in Headwaters and Sugar Loaf to cover those Earth First! actions for Free Radio Berkeley. So, everyone agreed that it would be a show that was about speaking truth to power.
For a year, I consistently did shows on local organizing campaigns but sometimes more regional ones like the Headwaters Campaign. There was always an attempt to focus on the perspective of what it's like being a worker in post-industrial society. It's not the same as it was at the turn of the century when there was mass industrialization going on. I gave the perspective of anybody like myself who is a former college student, now turned working class simply because there are no meaningful jobs available. Every week I'd try to cover something that was happening locally like the ongoing organizing campaign in the Bay Area by an AFL-CIO union, Local 2850, in a hotel in the well-to-do suburb of Lafayette.
SS: What is that about?
IX: Well, that is a situation where workers tried to organize with a union. The boss used union busting tactics to intimidate them and openly to fire them which is of course illegal. The added twist to this particular campaign is that the workers that were trying to organize a union were all Latino or Chicano and mostly women so there was an added element of racism and anti-immigrant hysteria thrown in because of Proposition 187. I had already been doing a lot of solidarity picketing, donating my time and going out to their picket line. So I figured what I would do in addition to that is to start covering it for the radio station. I had hoped to interview some of the organizers, but the timing was too late and other Wobbly deejays wound up interviewing them on their radio shows. So in a sense I laid the groundwork, but others followed. Other campaigns that I focused a great deal of energy on in that one year period were organizing efforts that the SEIU health workers were doing in San Francisco and in Oakland. I would record sounds of the demonstrations and talk with some of the workers involved with that struggle. Then there was Judy Bari's ongoing case against the FBI and her work in organizing people up north to fight to save Headwaters and other areas of redwood forest. I chose her in particular because of the working class perspective she brought to Earth First!
SS: Have you done any work around Muni fare increases?
IX: Yeah, there were various times where I got involved with that as well. I did some stuff about the racism that BART workers were facing , and I would have liked to do even more.
SS: Are there other examples of how pirate radio can be used as a good organizing tool?
IX: In one way free radio adds the element of listener participation. Listeners can call in and talk about things which are going on right now unlike your standard station where you call in, get an operator, and you might get on. Free radio is uncensored, so anybody can call up and talk about things which are going on right at that moment. Where IWWs have had organizing drives going on, like the campaign against Borders Books, they've called the radio station and, for example, said, 'Call the boss of Borders and complain about their union-busting activity.' ... This was in June when the organizing was just getting underway. As a result Borders got quite a few calls. In fact somebody called the radio station and said, 'Yeah, I called Borders and the boss there said they had gotten tons of calls already and they keep saying they heard about it on the radio.'
There's another thing that we've been able to do. We have a portable transmitter which we take to demonstrations and set up just for that particular occasion. We set up a little station with maybe a six mile radius and then we have people carrying signs that say tune in to our frequency. Then people driving by tune in, and they get a sense of what's going on instead of just seeing some people on the street with picket signs or doing guerilla theater.
SS: Any other examples?
IX: We've had live call-ins from activists in the forest. Once four Free Radio Berkeley deejays took a trip up to Sacramento where the state was doing an environmental hearing on Ward Valley [proposed site for toxic waste on Native land in the Mojave Desert]. The mainstream media had been ignoring what was going on. They were saying things like, 'There are a bunch of people standing on the road protesting.' People driving by heard only that sound bite on their car radios. It's like, ho hum, another protest, big deal.
So what happened is that one Free Radio Berkeley deejay got out a tape recorder and started interviewing Bradley Angel of Greenpeace. Then I walked up to him and just held my mike out. Both of our tape recorders had the word 'PRESS' written on them. All of a sudden mainstream reporters started coming out of nowhere and started interviewing him as well. One AM radio station reporter even stepped out of the bushes and started interviewing him. I guess it was just the effect of people standing around the guy with the tape recorders and then reporters started thinking, gosh this must be a story, so they headed over there. We felt what happened at that point was like a catalyst for agitation. It got the mainstream media to actually sit up and pay attention. Now whether or not they played what was recorded uncensored or not I don't know, but, if they didn't, at least we played it live and uncensored on free radio.
SS: How about other programming?
IX: Well the thing about free radio is that since it's not licensed by the FCC, we don't get hit up with these stupid rules on format. So music is pretty much free form. Often times lots of music that you will obviously not hear at other radio stations gets played, including songs by local working class bands and activists. We play music by activists from Earth First! as well. ... We play a lot of genres that you don't hear on mainstream radio. There's a lot more punk and hip hop played on free radio.
SS: Have there been problems with the FCC?
IX: The FCC has left Free Radio Berkeley alone, partly because of the court case. They realize if they do anything now, it's not going to help their case. They have on occasion harassed other stations, particularly ones which are Latino-based, and they've threatened people with deportation as well. Two Latino radio stations got visits from the FCC and those two stations had to shut down. One of them shut down permanently. We did what we could to help the other one get up and running again. What happened in the case of the San Francisco station was that they had to shut down because their landlord threw them out after the FCC came and visited them.
Let me actually back up just a bit and point out that it's not just having a strong collective organization that guarantees people being on the air. It's also the will of the individuals involved to say we're going to fight for our freedom of speech. This is our freedom and if we have to fight for it, we will. If the FCC's going to harass us, we're not going to let it get to us because they can't do anything without a warrant, number one, and, number two, the legality of their actions is tied up in the courts.
You have to admire a person like Napoleon Williams from Decatur or Mbanna Kantako from Springfield, Illinois, who have just simply said, 'We don't care if it's legal or illegal. We consider the system to be illegitimate because they have done nothing for us as black men, or as black people, or as people in general; and we're just not going to take it any more. The only way we have found that we're going to get our freedom is if we take it ourselves. Our attitude is if they won't give us any spots on the air waves, we'll just do it ourselves.'
SS: Is Wobbly radio a version of the free speech fight.
IX: Yeah, that's the analogy that Stephen Dunifer likes to use. He brought that up at the last free radio conference in Oakland by comparing our struggle to the free speech fights of the past by Wobblies in Centralia and Everett, Washington. This is a modern version of the free speech fight. Utah Phillips in fact has been a constant guest and supporter in our court cases saying, 'Hey it's a free speech fight.' What would a free speech fight be without old-time Wobblies hanging around?
SS: And so Wobbly deejays are in a sense soapboxers?
IX: Yeah, Stephen Dunifer likes to call it the leaflet of the Nineties.
SS: Soapboxing the air waves.
IX: Yeah, exactly.
SS: How is the IWW involved?
IX: Well, actually the IWW's very much involved. The people doing a lot of the work, particularly with Free Radio Berkeley and Free Radio Santa Cruz, are Wobblies. I don't know if it just happened to turn out that way or if there's something about the level of organizing ability that Wobblies have, but two of the people in the workshop building transmitters are Wobblies. As I said before, Stephen Dunifer who started this station is a Wobbly. Many of the people who are involved in the scheduling committee at Free Radio Berkeley are Wobblies. Free Radio Santa Cruz is run by Wobblies. There's been talk about forming an industrial union of micropowered radio stations. It would be part of a communications industrial union. In the Bay Area there is an industrial union around the administration of the Internet. The IWW Internet server was built and is maintained by Wobblies. Then there is a collective of telephone switching called Integrated Switching and Networks. This is all part of one small local which is starting to look toward organizing bigger industrial unions.
There's talk about inviting the radio stations into this as well. I think that's a good idea because the technological revolution is largely in the hands of capitalists right now. In order for this technological revolution to serve the masses it has to be far more democratic. Free radio is one of the few alternatives that there is in this change in telecommunications which is going on because of the globalization of capital. The Telecommunications Act centralizes communications into the hands of a few rich, powerful elites who are strongly involved with the government. If there's going to be any alternative it's going to have to be working class and community-based, and the IWW seems to be one of the few organizations playing even a minor role in this organizing right now.
SS: Why haven't other unions been involved in micropower radio?
IX: Well, first of all I have to say that some of them actually have. In the Bay Area Local 2850, which has been organizing the Lafayette Park Hotel, has expressed very strong support for free radio. They have been on our station and they have called us up and let us know when their pickets are happening. They send us material, and they are strong supporters of this station mainly because we have given them lots of air time and solidarity. They hosted the last micropower radio gathering in their union hall. Also the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers Union in Los Angeles have expressed interest in getting their own station which would be part of the Labor Party chapter down there.
Other than that, I think the main reason why other unions have been reluctant to support micropower radio is that a lot of unions, especially the AFL-CIO unions, are hamstrung by their internal bureaucracies which are very conservative. The American labor movement has mostly had a silent if not open partnership with capital since the end of World War II. A lot of workers are dissatisfied with the way things are. They're very unhappy with both the government and the bosses. Yet a lot of workers unfortunately take very reactionary political stances because they've been coerced or confused into scapegoating people who are not really their enemies. The rank and file militants in these unions would certainly love to do something like micropower radio, but getting information to them is hard because they don't necessarily have access to leaflets or the Internet which are places where you find these things out. As far as locals doing it, they are either bureaucratically vested in the system and therefore not willing to take the plunge, or just afraid. It's a big step to do this because it's not exactly legal. You run the risk of being slapped with a notice of apparent liability and a $10,000 fine, and that could be your whole strike fund right there, so it's not like there's going to be a lot of help coming from any International.
SS: Right, it also crosses the line into direct action.
IX: Indeed. Direct action is something that's being talked about now by the AFL-CIO, but real direct action is still something that they haven't done. Rarely do you ever see direct action advocated, much less carried out, by the local union bureaucrats. Free radio, on the other hand, is definitely about being proactive.
SS: Does Wobbly radio give voice to perspectives that are working class?
IX: Yeah, it does. I do have to insert a bit of a caveat though. Many of the people who organized the free radio movement are not necessarily what you'd call traditional working class, but rather post-industrialist working class. The Food Not Bombs kind of situationist/anarchist perspective is more prevalent in free radio, and that's fine. I count myself as being an anarchist, but I am somewhat disappointed about the lack of class consciousness that some deejays have. They tend to support labor unions in principle, but they're not necessarily out there agitating themselves. It'd be nice to see more of that, but I attribute it more to just the American mindset than anything else. It just shows how much microradio is needed to offer more exposure to working class perspectives. As Stephen Dunifer says, we need not just one of these stations, or even 100; we need 10,000. One in every community if possible. There's even talk of an IWW-specific radio station, starting in the Bay Area in the near future. It's just a matter of organizing!
-- January, 1997
