France, Alternative Libertaire AL dossier spécial sur
l'éducation populaire - United States: the hobo organizers (fr,
it, pt) [machine translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
One hundred years in the United States, itinerant revolutionary workers, vagabonds among
the vagabonds were good union plant starts speaking. Today's struggles to help the most
vulnerable fringes of the proletariat, trade unions pay professional agitators,
organizers. ----------- If popular education is a typically French term, the United States
and Canada experienced movements share similar concerns. Have you ever heard the word
empowerment? We could translate it as "empowerment" or "empowerment". Empowerment aims to
give groups and individuals the tools they need to conduct their own emancipation. ----
This idea goes way back. Since their founding in 1905, the Industrial Workers of the World
(IWW), a very dynamic revolutionary syndicalist movement, have raised critical questions:
while the state-unien proletariat was composed of a mosaic of migrants in all languages
and of all origins, how to develop a collective consciousness, a common culture and a
self-education?
The union IWW, nicknamed "Wobblies," numbered in their ranks many vagabonds workers
(hobos), who lived "on the trimard" site factory, and did not hesitate to hold rally in
the "jungles" these savage encampments poor.
To reach the destitute, the IWW were using simple and effective means of propaganda:
cartoons, songs, street theater ...
it moves to the left of the AFL
Until repression and strife Curb its development, the IWW will be a very important
power-cons, with up to 100,000 members at its peak before 1914 and permanently marking the
popular culture. Number of folk singers, including Bob Dylan, can be considered as the
heirs of their culture of protest song.[1]
The influence of the IWW fades in the 1920s, but from 1930, a new practice is born in the
left fringe of the AFL (the large central labor-unienne states), which will give rise to
typical North American militant specimen that is the organizer.
The organizer is one activist, often young and politicized-e, possibly extreme left.
Paid-e by the[union 2], he or she becomes a professional agitator, sent on a mission among
the workers crumbled to help them organize themselves and claim. Once the group is welded
around a few victories, the organizer share to new adventures. One can see at work in Ken
Loach's film Bread and Roses (2000).
This activist model also existed at various times in the French syndicalism, while
remaining rather the exception. But the United States, it has become the norm. In the
1930s, pragmatism and creativity made by the organizers have also inspired Saul Alinsky
for his theory of community organizing
Tudy (AL Savoie), William (AL Montreuil)
[1] On this subject, read Joyce Kornbluh, Hobos & Wobblies. Industrial Workers of the
World: itinerant agitators in the United States (1905-1919), The Insomniac, 2012.
[2] "Become a Union Organizer" recruitment page on the AFL-CIO website (www.aflcio.org)
http://www.alternativelibertaire.org/?Les-travailleurs-sociaux-entre
