Item no. 28194
| May 1912 |
| Collection: Other |
'Move On' by A. Prince, Industrial Worker, May 9, 1912.
The battle in Fresno had been rough, but nothing had prepared the IWW for the challenges it would face in San Diego the following year. In January 1912, the city council banned public speaking in the town center where orators of every stripe, from Salvation Army preachers to Socialists, had gathered for years to voice their cause. The reason given by the council was that the street corner meetings were blocking traffic. The IWW claimed that the Merchants and Manufacturers Association had pressured the council to pass the ordinance in order to truncate their organizing efforts. Accordingly, the IWW called their members to San Diego to fight for the right to organize and speak. Since the gag law was only limited to the town center, it became necessary for the council to supplement it with an additional law - a "move-on" ordinance which gave police the arbitrary authority to break up any public gathering anywhere in the city. Not only did this give the police the power to silence all labor agitation, but it also, as this artist points out, gave them the power to dissolve picket lines.
See this image in the Solidarity Forever: A Look at Wobbly Culture exhibit.
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