REMEMBERING JOE HILL
Click to viewJames Ishmael Ford at his fine blog Monkey Mind reminds us that this is Joe Hill’s birthday. Ford uses the occasion to remind us that Joe Hill’s class war never really ended. Today’s economic crisis of capitalism may be a wake up call for many who never considered themselves working class.
Ford posted the video above, which I am delighted to share here.
The end of the video relates how Joe’s ashes were scattered in every state in the Union except Utah. That’s what everyone thought happened, but it didn’t and there in lies a story.
In 1971 I was serving as General Secretary Treasurer of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW.). A large oil painting of Joe Hill looked down on me from across my desk-the same desk Big Bill Haywood had used. Joe’s blue eyed stare kind of kept me on task.
One day the mail brought a letter with a small manila envelope enclosed marked “Joe Hill’s Ashes.” It seems that someone cleaning out a closet in Detroit found an overcoat with the envelope in the pocket. The overcoat had belonged to his father, a local IWW officer in 1915. For some unknown reason he had never got around to scattering the ashes.
A few days later several fellow workers took the ashes down to what was then still called Waldheim Cemetery where we scattered the ashes around the Haymarket Memorial, which was surrounded by the graves of dozens of unionists, anarchists, Socialists and Communists including Emma Goldman.
And then, of course, we sang.