THE WOBBLIES: Documentary for May Day!

Newly restored by the Museum of Modern Art and recently inducted into the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress, this provocative film pays tribute to American workers who took the ideals of equality and free speech seriously enough to die for them. Directed by Stewart Bird and Deborah Shaffer in 1978, this radical documentary is a rare and challenging invitation to rethink both past and present through the eyes of an organization largely omitted from public memory...   WATCH TRAILER

The Industrial Workers of the World, or IWW, welcomed all workers, regardless of their trade, gender, or race. Wobblies, as they were known, came from textile mills, copper mines, logging camps, and everywhere in between, and together generated more controversy, perhaps, than any other organized-labor group in U.S. history. 

"Solidarity! All for One and One for All!" 

With that slogan, they took to organizing unskilled workers into one big union and changing the course of history. Along the way to winning an eight-hour workday and fair wages in the early 20th century, the IWW, one of the few unions to be racially and sexually integrated often met with imprisonment, violence, and the privations of prolonged strikes. 

This award-winning film airs a provocative look at the forgotten American history of this most radical of unions. Made in 1978 yet echoing current times, THE WOBBLIES boldly investigates a nation torn by naked corporate greed and the red-hot rift between the industrial masters and the rabble-rousing workers in the field and factory. Deeply enriched by the reminiscences of IWW members, who, in their eighties and nineties, are lucid and lively on the subject of the union’s peak during the 1910s. Intercut with remarkable archival footage, their first-hand accounts of textile strikes, pitched battles over free-speech rights, lumberjack work stoppages, and the methods and theories of industrial sabotage are set to the sounds of rousing music straight from the “little red songbook.”

This free screening for May Day was organized in solidarity with other independant theaters around the US!