Freedom Socialist • Vol. 29, No. 3 • June-July 2008

FROM THE MOVIE ARCHIVES

The message of yesterday’s Jewish anarchists for today: never give up

by Adrienne Weller

Two among the “uprising of the 20,000,” a 1910 garment workers’ strike in New York. Credit: The Free Voice of Labor: The Jewish Anarchists

The Free Voice of Labor: The Jewish Anarchists sweeps you along on the radical spirit of vibrant warriors with their “placards out in front/masses marching, marching, marching/forward in the struggle for victory,” as one of their battle songs has it.

The warriors in question are the elderly and completely engaging staff of the Yiddish-language newspaper Freie Arbeiter Stimme, from which this hour-long documentary from 1980 takes its name. Conversations with these tireless secular Jewish activists are at the center of a poignant, funny and uplifting look at their 87-year-old newspaper as it is producing its very last issue.

The film, directed by Steven Fischler and Joel Sucher with interviews by historian Paul Avrich, can be viewed or downloaded at freedocumentaries.org, a treasure site for gems of hidden history and social commentary.

Making a tradition of challenging wrongs. The impetus for the newspaper, begun in 1890 and closed down in 1977, was rooted in the doleful immigrant experience of Jews from Eastern Europe and Russia.

Persecuted by anti-Semitic pogroms and the czar, they looked to America as a haven. Old footage in Free Voice of Labor captures the yearning of immigrants first sighting the Statue of Liberty and their disappointment when met by rough handling and punitive contempt at Ellis Island.

Once across the harbor, they faced sweatshops and tyrannical bosses worse than those they had fled and an alien culture and language that shut them out. Having brought with them the revolutionary ideas of the times, these new conditions only strengthened their disgust with the whole ethic of capitalism.

The founders and pioneers of the Freie Arbeiter Stimme were fighters for the eight-hour day and the establishing of unions. Many were members of the needle trades, helping to found and build the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, the furriers’ union, and more. Women figured prominently among them, both in numbers and as role models.

Interviewee Sonia Farber shares her strategy to avoid being arrested in a fight with a strikebreaker on the picket line: use your knees instead of your arms so the cops don’t see what you’re doing. Still, they were all arrested time and again, only to return to the lines. When Paul Avrich describes Farber as an agitator, she says very modestly, “Well, we all tried to do our best.”
Clara Larsen recounts being hunted during the Palmer Raids, a precursor of McCarthyism during World War I in which the government swept up leftists and smashed their offices.

Free Voice of Labor also gives a strong flavor of an encompassing bygone Jewish culture, including the Yiddish-speaking essayists and poets who developed their craft by writing for the newspaper. Part of this flavor comes from its use of clips from old films that show, for example, a Jewish union firebrand standing up to an exploitative Jewish boss, and another unionist rhythmically intoning like a davening cantor to persuade the workers to strike.

Persistence until victory. And now for a political disclaimer: this is a movie about anarchists, after all. And for anarchists it is a point of dogma to snub the accomplishments of the Bolshevik leaders of the Russian Revolution and attribute to them all the crimes of the Stalinist regime that usurped them. Hence, in Free Voice, Lenin is slandered and Trotsky is ignored.

Still, the film records history that provides plenty of food for thought for contemporary activists, especially Jewish ones. Surely these revolutionaries of the past would excoriate the meek reformism of many of their ethnic sisters and brothers now. And undoubtedly they would cast a baleful eye upon Zionists who offer unwavering support for Israel’s ruthless, cold-blooded crimes against the Palestinians.

Anarchists of today will also find much to ponder, and be inspired by, in the lives of these staunch advocates of union struggles. Planted on the picket line against the bosses, these hardy rabble-rousers were an important part of the New York City union movement. Their allegiance was to their class.

The confidence and chutzpah of these champions of the downtrodden is impressive and elating. They had a job to do, and they would not be slowed by the fearful who hung back and refused to join them in the cause. To these their terse advice was “stay home.” In today’s zeitgeist of “post-” everything, their enthusiasm is highly refreshing.

Interviewee Irving Abrams, arrested 39 times, was a cohort of Big Bill Haywood, a founder of the Industrial Workers of the World. He ends the film by saying, “Tie yourself to a star and sail with it.” As long as this society has slaves, poverty, and injustice, he tells us, everyone must have a goal that inspires them to act and not to give up. Revolutionaries will continue on, he says, until ultimate human liberation is achieved for every person.

Amen to that.  

Adrienne Weller, a Jewish activist and retired AFSCME unionist, says she is “spurred by the battles of the past and the present.” Contact her at adrienne.w@earthlink.net.