SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL

POINT OF VIEW: The Lost Art of Agitation
By Travis Wilkerson

The world is what we make of it. And at Sundance what most of us make is art. In our own way we are trying to change the world – hopefully for the better, but not always for the more comfortable. This year my contribution is Soapbox Agitation #1: Proving Ground at the New Frontier on Main Microcinema. This unabashedly didactic piece combines a lot of things: theater, a history lecture, a punk rock show featuring Los Duggans, a political rally, an experimental film screening. But most of all it pays tribute to a lost American art form – agitation.

Agitation is about ideas. An agitator presents one or a few ideas to a mass of people. Slogans, placards, and chants are agitation in the most concise form.

“Agitation is about ideas. An agitator presents one or a few ideas to a mass of people. Slogans, placards, and chants are agitation in the most concise form.”

— Travis Wilkerson

It was born out of our rebellion against British colonialism and it came of age during the fight for abolition. But a hundred years ago, it came into its own with the best and the bravest of the agitators, the Wobblies. These revolutionary union organizers were the people who elevated agitation to an art form.

The Wobblies (a.k.a. Industrial Workers of the World or I.W.W.) were founded as a revolutionary union in Chicago in 1905. “Big” Bill Haywood opened the founding convention by pound a two-by-four instead of a gavel before proclaiming the mission the new organization to be nothing less than “the emancipation of the working class from the slave bondage of capitalism.” In oration, newspapers, pamphlets, literature, music, and graphic art, the Wobblies promoted their vision of revolution. Their folk cartoons, which combine savage humor and brave imagery, are still the boldest delivery of slogans ever seen in this country. And the ghosts of those slogans still whisper around the world:

Solidarity forever
Labor is entitled to all that it produces
The worst thief is he who steals the playtime of children
What time is it?
Time to organize.
Capitalism can’t escape the final move
We never forget

The Wobblies were the definition of the term “outside agitator” and soapbox agitation was their true medium. At a time of bloody civil unrest, organizers traveled to strikes, workplace disasters, deportations, lockouts, and free speech fights. In a strange town choked by open hostility, police bullying, and the constant threat of violence, these organizers would take to the stage (often literally a soapbox) and deliver their revolutionary views of the situation. Without any amplification, they would harness their bellowing voices to address audiences often numbering in the thousands. These agitators, which big business hated and feared, made their revolutionary ideas a central part of the labor and working class struggles the early 20th century.

Their actions in factories, mines, and timber and farm fields made their names are inseparable from the struggles that marked the era: Patterson, Bisbee, the Iron Range, and the Great Central Valley. The greatest Wobbly agitators form a kind of pantheon of masters of the lost art. Haywood is joined by the likes of Mother Jones, Eugene Debs, Lucy Parsons, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Carlo Tresca, and Joe Hill.

But the most legendary Wobbly agitator was Frank Little, who is best remembered for his speeches in Butte Montana, in the wake of a mining disaster and subsequent wildcat strike. At the time, Butte was dominated by the most powerful corporation in the world, Anaconda.

Little is reported to have addressed a number of dangerous topics in his last Butte speech including the history of the present struggle, strike tactics and strategy, but where he really got into trouble was the war. He proclaimed that World War 1 was a war between the bosses and that it was time to turn that war against the bosses. Legend has it that at the summit of his speech the clouds darkened and rain began to fall. He ended the speech by imploring the miners to win the strike “by any means necessary.” At 3:00 the next morning, Little was lynched by “persons still unknown.”

In the aftermath of World War 1, the Wobblies were targeted by the Federal Government and a mass trial of the I.W.W. leadership effectively crushed the movement. As suddenly as they arrived, the Wobblies disappeared from the political landscape – and to a great extent, they took the art of radical agitation with them.

Nowadays the Wobblies are regarded, if acknowledged at all, as brave fools. The 400 Billionaires love that position – so do both parties of war. We need the Wobblies more than ever, but instead we have their lessons. The Wobblies fought for change everywhere, at all times. They always made immediate demands: for better wages or free speech or for the rights of immigrants. But they never lost sight of their vision of a different kind of world altogether. Our immediate goal must be the recovery of radical agitation as an art form. We must bring art closer to politics, so that someday politics will look more like art. We must do this by any means necessary.

Soapbox Agitation #1: Proving Ground can be seen in the New Frontier on Main Microcinema on Monday, Jan. 22 at 7:30 p.m. and Wednesday, Jan. 24 at 7:30 p.m.