radiofreederry:

Happy birthday, Big Bill Haywood! (February 4, 1869)

A leader and organizer of the Industrial Workers of the World in its earliest years, Bill Haywood was born in Salt Lake City in the then-territory of Utah, and began working as a miner at age 15. He became involved in the emerging labor movement in his 20s, and joined the Western Federation of Miners in 1896. The WFM’s defeat in the Colorado Labor Wars cemented Haywood’s commitment to industrial unionism and the concept of One Big Union which would unite all workers in all industries, organizing the working class into a single unit which would be able to topple the capitalist system in one general strike. To this end, Haywood became a founder of the IWW and one of its most outspoken and articulate ideologues. Tremendously charismatic, Haywood won the respect and admiration of many American workers and helped to organize and lead a number of protests and strikes, including the Lawrence Textile Strike of 1912. At the height of the First Red Scare, Haywood fled the United States and took asylum in the Soviet Union, becoming a labor advisor to the new Bolshevik government. He died in 1928 of complications from diabetes.

“The capitalist has no heart, but harpoon him in the pocketbook and you will draw blood.”