The IWW employed a variety of creative tactics, including the tactic of flooding the area of a free speech fight with footloose rebels who would challenge the authorities by flouting the ordinance, intentionally getting arrested in great numbers.

In communities where the authorities saw their interests in avoiding the development of unions, the practice of soapboxing was frequently restricted by ordinance or by police harassment.

The Wobblies, as the IWW members were called, relied upon free speech, which in the United States is guaranteed by the First Amendment, to enable them to communicate the concept of One Big Union to other workers. The IWW engaged in free speech fights during the period from approximately 1907 to 1916. ( December 2014) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message) Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. For instance, the Free Speech Movement, which began with a conflict on the Berkeley Campus in California in the 1960s, was a 'free speech fight'. More generally, a free speech fight is any incident in which a group is involved in a conflict over its speech. which brought the IWW to the greater notice of the American public and was notable for the intensity of violence by anti-labor vigilantes directed at the IWW this violence included the kidnapping and tarring and feathering of Ben Reitman, who was a physician, and was Emma Goldman's lover. The most notorious of all of the free speech fights was the San Diego free speech fight, which won a significant amount of public awareness for the IWW as it involved tremendous violence against the labor groups organized by the IWW. The events often ended with the police arresting them for participating in street meetings. The IWW organized transient workers (especially in cities in the American West) who worked in highly seasonal jobs-they met on the streets, discussed contemporary issues, and listened to speakers at the time, it was a very popular method of organization. The Wobblies, along with other radical groups, were often met with opposition (violent and otherwise) from local governments and especially business leaders, in their free speech fights. During the World War I period in the United States, the IWW members (referred to as Wobblies), engaged in free speech fights over labor issues which were closely connected to the developing industrial world as well as the Socialist Party. Public protests for freedom of association and speechįree speech fights are struggles over free speech, and especially those struggles which involved the Industrial Workers of the World and their attempts to gain awareness for labor issues by organizing workers and urging them to use their collective voice.

Soapbox Rebellion by Matthew S. May