Site Logo

Labor activists gather to remember the Everett Massacre

Published 1:30 am Saturday, November 5, 2016

By Dan Catchpole

Labor activists gather to remember the Everett Massacre
1/8
Labor activists gather to remember the Everett Massacre
Miriam Ball, of Olympia, hangs a wreath to honor a victim of the Everett Massacre on Saturday, marking 100 years since the event in which Industrial Workers of the World members were gunned down as they attempted to come ashore near downtown Everett’s waterfront. (Ian Terry / The Herald)
Wreaths hang on a fence near the railroad tracks on the west end of Hewitt Avenue in Everett with the names of victims of the Everett Massacre. (Ian Terry / The Herald)
Industrial Workers of the World member Dave Tucker (right), of Bellingham, speaks to a small crowd gathered Saturday afternoon in Everett to remember the 100 year anniversary of the Everett Massacre. (Ian Terry / The Herald)
Industrial Workers of the World members walk along Hewitt Avenue in downtown Everett during a march Saturday afternoon to remember the victims of the 1916 Everett Massacre. (Ian Terry / The Herald)
Industrial Workers of the World members walk along Hewitt Avenue in downtown Everett during a march Saturday afternoon to remember the victims of the 1916 Everett Massacre. (Ian Terry / The Herald)
Industrial Workers of the World members walk along Hewitt Avenue in downtown Everett during a march Saturday afternoon to remember the victims of the 1916 Everett Massacre. (Ian Terry / The Herald)
Industrial Workers of the World members walk along Hewitt Avenue in downtown Everett during a march Saturday afternoon to remember the victims of the 1916 Everett Massacre. (Ian Terry / The Herald)

EVERETT — They came to Everett to finish what hundreds of fellow workers set out to do 100 years ago.

Dozens of labor activists gathered in a steady rain Saturday near the city’s waterfront, where a leftover spur of Hewitt Avenue — still paved with bricks — runs down toward Port Gardner and fades away into train tracks.

They gathered by the memorial for the men who died on Nov. 5, 1916, in the Everett Massacre. It was a lopsided gunfight between union members, the community’s elected sheriff and hastily deputized citizens. The union members belonged to the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW).

The IWW had set its sight on organizing the city’s workers, many of who worked in the mills that dominated Everett’s waterfront. Mill work was dangerous — and sometimes deadly — and paid little. The Wobblies, as IWW members are called, had been banned from speaking on Everett’s main streets and met stiff resistance from local business leaders.

After several violent clashes, hundreds of Wobblies set out by boat from Seattle for Everett, where they meant to demonstrate at the corner of Hewitt and Wetmore avenues.

Local lawmen and a mob of armed vigilantes met the first boatload of Wobblies at the dock. Gunfire soon broke out. When the ship limped away from Everett, at least seven men — five Wobblies, a local National Guard lieutenant and a sheriff’s deputy — were dead or dying. A half dozen more IWW workers somehow disappeared in the bay.

“They saw us as a threat,” IWW member Dave Tucker told the crowd Saturday. “Well, we are a threat to the power structure.”

The Wobblies and supporters hung wreaths for the slain workers on a chain-link fence near the Everett Massacre memorial stone. Then they set out to finish the march to the corner of Hewitt and Wetmore.

The IWW differs from most unions, which aim to organize workers based on what work they do. The IWW seeks to organize workers by company. It is much smaller than it was 100 years ago. But its ambitions are just as big.

“Where’s the IWW now?” MoonDog Garcia, chair of the IWW’s General Executive Board, asked the crowd. “We’re in Whole Foods. We’re with entertainers in Times Square…. We’re still fighting for better working conditions, better pay and respect.”

That is a message that resonates with Tomwren Shannon, a 28-year-old mason from Lynnwood. He works in a union shop, but he joined the IWW on Saturday because he was attracted to its broader vision of a economic system run by workers rather than corporate board members, he said.

“Most unions still pit workers against workers,” Shannon said.

Radical unionism is not something stuck in the past. It is relevant today, when millions of Americans feel economically left behind and see the middle class being squeezed, he said. “That’s apparent from this election and how many times people have ‘Googled’ ‘democratic socialism.’”

This story originally misstated MoonDog Garcia’s affiliation with the IWW. Garcia is from Salt Lake City and chairs the union’s General Executive Board.

Dan Catchpole: 425-339-3454; dcatchpole@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @dcatchpole.

You Might Like