Author: ottoutiww

1920: Organize the Lumber Workers!

LUMBER WORKERS

OF ONTARIO

Pamphlet produced in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada, dated 1920.

Do you realize that you are the most important factor in one of the three greatest industries in Canada? Lumber was at one time produced without the aid of the faithful horse or of gas and steam power machinery. But lumber has never been produced without labour power! That means YOU!

Although lumbering today is simplified and greatly aided by modern machinery, of which the band-saw and the tractor may be quoted as instances; the lumber industry still requires the services of wage workers. Even with modern machinery and the much boasted improved methods, there still must be axemen, sawyers, rollers, skidders, etc. (and snuff chewers of course), in order that lumber and pulp may be produced to supply those needs of humanity that only the products of the forests can fill. Without the raw material that you produce there would be no pulp and paper mills. No lumber for the building of houses, factories, docks, ships, railway coaches and cars, and the many other structures and products of wood do necessary to industry. In short, without the material made available by the labours of lumber workers, there could be no industry and civilization as we know it today. Consider this. Without lumber we would still be living in thatched huts. We could never have advanced to our present stage of civilization.; Lumber workers you have made civilization possible! Why then can you not enjoy the fruits of man’s material and intellectual advancement? Why must you, who have supplied the material for the building of palaces, be condemned to spend your nights (you have nothing else to spend) in filthy bunk houses at your work places, and equally filthy flop-houses in town when unemployed? You produce wealth and exist in poverty! Not because you have produced too little: but because you receive for yourselves so little of what you produce.

Have you never stopped to consider that the logs and pulp-wood sticks that you cut, and the ties you hack, are worth a great deal more than the wages you receive? It is as plain as the nose on your face; and the boss paid you (in wages) the full value of what you produce, that there would be no profits left for him. It is clear that he robs you of the greater part of your product – but how?

Let us put it this way. If you cut in one day one hundred logs (most of you put in even bigger counts) and the boss said to you at the end of the day: “Jack, out of the 100 logs you have cut I will let you keep 15 logs as your wages and I will take the remaining 85 logs, you would reply: “Hell, no! that ain’t a square deal!” We use these figures, the 100 and the 15, because the figures compiled by the government statisticians show that on average, “all persons gainfully employed” in the industries of Canada receive about 15 per cent of their production as wages. It should be remembered, however, that the government ‘figure-twister’ (that’s what statistician means) has included salaried executives who get several thousand a year instead of $30.00 or so a month. When this fact is taken into consideration, “Jock’s” 15 shrinks to about 8. When we put it this way it is easy to see that you are being robbed.

You will easily see and understand how the big bosses of the lumber woods can afford mansions and motor cars if you just take a pencil and do a little simple arithmetic. Having set aside the high salaried executives we found Jack’s share to be eight; but even allowing the government figures, the big boss get 85 logs. If he had only one set of sawyers cutting for him he would have only a modest income, but no boss is satisfied with “Chicken-feed.” Tho’ many employers hire thousands of workers we will take an easy round number, 100, to illustrate our point. One hundred workers each producing 100 logs equals a total product of 10,000 logs. The employer’s share is 85 out of every 100, or 8,500, while the remaining 1,500 logs are DIVIDED BETWEEN 100 workers! The difference between 8,500 and 15 is equal to the difference between a ragged pair of overalls and a dress suit.

It is not because your boss, as an individual is stronger than you that he takes the 85, but because the bosses are ORGANIZED. The power of economic organization enables the bosses to keep under their thumb the machinery of production and the sources of raw material, woods, mines, etc. They who own and control the means of life, the machinery of production and distribution, are the rulers of the world. They did not grow the trees, put minerals into the ground, and build the factories and mills, and the machinery in the, but they claim ownership of all these things.

Nature grew the trees and formed the mineral deposits. In fact, the whole material world and all living things and creatures, including man himself, are a part of nature. Labour, using material provided by nature, has built factories to work in and machines to work with-and jails to be confined in for disobedience to the boss’ orders. All men and women are entitled to what nature may have given and what they may have produced by their own efforts. The boss has no more right to keep your product for himself than the louse has to the blood of your body. Louse and boss are both parasites. Then why in the name of common sense do you boil the one and bow to the other?

What you think to be the power of the boss is simply the power that your lack of organization gives the boss. He is not going to part with any more than he must without a struggle. You suffer unsanitary camp conditions and work long hours for very small pay because you are not organized to TAKE more pay, shorten the hours of labour and get better conditions.

If Worker and Boss were two individuals you would think it very foolish of the Worker if he went up to the Boss and said: ” Naughty Boss, yuo have stolen 85 of my logs, I shall strike you with my little finger.” But if the Worker organized his five fingers into a fist and hit the boss a poke in the mush, you would all shout: “Atta boy Jack!” As the Boss fell backward over a windfall. The worker who meows in the bunk house and goes alone to the boss asking for more wages, or whatever he may want, is trying to knock the boss down with a little finger. For workers to organize themselves into a UNION and STRIKE for what they want is to HIT the boss with the all powerful FIST of economic power! What do we mean by “economic power?”

There was a time when all things that man required were produced: made ready for use: by hand labour, aided only by hand-made tools and weapons. This was a time when there were no factories; a time when even a man with the imagination of a Jules Verne had not yet dreamed of machinery. Man secured food and clothing in that early day by the use of bow and arrow, spear, and fishing net. But these things were useless unless set into action by the mental direction and muscular energy of man himself. It would have been silly of our skin-clad ancestor of the long ago to say to his crude weapons: “Go you into the forest my worthy bow and arrow and my trusty spear and fetch me a haunch of venison.” “Now you, my good fishing net, go and secure me an armful of herring from yonder shoals.” If this had been man’s mental attitude he would still be waiting for the venison and would never have tasted herring. This is just another way of saying that labour-power is the one factor that is absolutely necessary to production either with the crude tools and weapons of long ago or the highly perfected and ingenious machine of to-day. As it is the one essential factor in industry, if you withdraw your labour-power, go on strike, the tools and machinery would lie idle and utterly useless. By this simple act you would stop production and thus cut off the boss’ profits. Your ability to paralyze industry is your ECONOMIC POWER. We see then that Labour’s weapon in the fight for higher wages, shorter hours, better conditions, and finally the ownership of industry, is Economic Power. We see then that Labour’s weapon in the fight for higher wages, shorter hours, better conditions, and finally the ownership of industry, is Economic Power. Labour holds this power because Labour is the one essential factor in industry. In the face of these facts there can only be ONE reasonable answer to the question: “Where and how should we organize?” We must organize in INDUSTRY, as WORKERS! Why are so few of us organized?

It is to the master’s interest to keep us unorganized for we are helpless and therefore easy victims to his greed for profits as long as we are not organized to take those profits away from him. The master’s ownership of industry (the means of lifge) gives him control over the schools. He also owns the newspapers and will only allow them to print what iti is to his interest that the workers should read-and believe.; With school and press at his command he has created racial, religious, and other unfounded prejudices in the minds of the workers. While the workers are busy fighting one another as British, French, Dagoes and so on and as Catholic and Protestant, the boss is stealing the 85’s. The boss is a firm believer in Caesar’s motto: “Divide and rule.

The I.W.W. says: “Food, clothing and shelter are produced by Labour, using the tools and machinery of production to transfer raw materials, provided by nature into usable shape. The raw materials were not created by “nationality” or “religion.” The tools and machinery were produced by Labour, not by “State” or “Church.” Nationality, and religion then have no place in industry. It makes no difference to the boss what country you come from or what church you go to-or whether you go to any church. His only concern is, can you produce wealth for him.

In industry we are not divided into a number of races but into two classes. The class that produces and does not possess-The Working Class-And the class that possesses but does not produce-The Ruling (parasite) Class.

The man who works beside you is not a Britisher, Frenchman or Dagoe; neither is he a Catholic or a Protestant. He is a worker just as you are. As workers you are all robbed by the boss, regardless of race or creed. It is your common interest as workers to disregard race and creed and organize to win back what the boss has stolen from you.

In conclusion we will try to put the message of the I.W.W. into a few simple words. It is this.

“Workers! many years of struggling against the boss in the interests of Labour has taught us many valuable lessons. We have learned that to divide the workers of one industry into a number of unions; such as a teamsters’ union, swampers’ union and so on in the woods, weakens rather than strengthens the workers. It “allows one set of workers to be pitted against another set of workers in the same industry thereby helping to defeat one another in wage wars,” as our Preamble so truly states.”

“Our experiences and a study of industry has shown us that lumber workers could not produce lumber unless other workers provided food, clothing and tools they require. That other industries are dependent upon the products of the lumber worker. All industries are dependent upon one another and can only carry on as so many units organized into a One Big Union of Industry.” “In the heat of many fierce battles against the boss we have learned that the bosses are all organized into a One Big Union of Bosses to fight against the workers to maintain their own position as the rulers of the world.” “Recognizing these facts we call upon all workers, in every industry, in all countries, to set aside all racial and other hatreds and prejudices.” “To organize the many industrial units of workers into One Big Industrial Union of the Working Class.” Our immediate demands are: Higher Wages: Shorter Hours: Better Conditions: Our final aim: THE WORLD FOR THE WORKERS.

Add to the strength of the I.W.W. by joining it, the one little unit of economic power that is yours. In this way your power will increase to the extent of the many thousands of units of economic power that comprise: THE INDUSTRIAL WORKERS OF THE WORLD.

Literature Can Be Obtained from the following Branches:

512½ Second Ave., Seattle, Washington.

227½ Yamhill Street, Portland, Ore.60 Cordova Street, Vancouver, B.C., Canada.

260 Bay Street, Port Arthur, Ontario, Canada.

223 N. Benard Street, Spokane, Washington.

… 464, Duluth, Minn.

… Sacramento, Calif.

… rcadero Street, San Francisco, Calif.

…5 Kasota Building, Minneapolis…

318 N. Wyoming Street, Butte, Mont.

555 West Lake Street, Chicago, Ill.

Box 800 City Hall Station, New York, N.Y.

206 Hennepin Ave., Minneapolis, Minn.

434 Bryson Block, Los Angeles, Calif.

Don’t depend on the Capitalist class papers for the news and the truth about the working class. Read the I.W.W. papers. Industrial Solidarity, printed at Chicago, and the Industrial Worker, printed at Seattle, booth weeklies with a $2.00 subscription rate carry all the news of interest to workers. Subscribe now!

28 Alder St., Sudbury, Ont.

138 Schreiber St., Sudbury, Ont.

314 Bay St., Port Arthur, Ont.

Panhandlers Claim Victory

Andrew Nellis of the Ottawa Pandhandlers Union said the group has reached a settlement after filing a $1-million lawsuit against the city last year.

The lawsuit accused the city of violating panhandlers’ constitutional rights by putting up a fence at the underpass across from Chateau Laurier. Nellis ended up being charged after he snipped a lock off the fence.

On Tuesday, Nellis said the panhandlers and city reached a deal but an agreement on confidentiality prevented him from going into details. Sounded like the settlement might involve allowing the panhandlers to use some property for a street art gallery.

Nellis is claiming victory.

“It won’t be the first victory we have, either,” he said.

In the same breath, Nellis said the panhandlers group plans to sue the city again if an updated nuisance bylaw comes into force for roads and sidewalks. The bylaw passed the transportation committee meeting Wednesday.

Ottawa drops charges against panhandler organizer

From the Industrial Worker

Shortly before midnight on April 30, 2008, police arrested Ottawa IWW Panhandlers’ Union organizer Andrew Nellis and searched his bag. Inside the bag, they found several packaged locks and a lock cutter. They charged him with mischief under $5,000 and possession of break and enter tools, the latter a felony charge.


Police alleged that he planned to cut the lock off of a recently constructed fence built in the underpass on Rideau and Sussex streets in downtown Ottawa to prevent the homeless from taking shelter, socializing, and panhandling there. The underpass was the site of previous panhandler protests and meetings.

Nellis told the Industrial Worker that he wanted to replace the city’s lock with a panhandlers’ lock and then distribute key copies to Ottawa’s homeless at the May Day rally the next day.


Prosecutors have since dropped all of the charges.


Nellis’ attorney had pushed for a jury trial and said he would file a constitutional challenge to the City of Ottawa’s right to strip access to shelter on public property from its homeless population.

The city had previously fenced off spots under the Mackenzie bridge near a mall and the Rideau Street-Colonel By Drive underpass.


Nellis said he was “disappointed” that the city had dropped the charges against him. He is now planning to sue the City of Ottawa for “vexatious harassment” and false arrest. Nellis spent five days at the Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre on Innes Road, a prison well known for its poor conditions. Nellis organized the prisoners to protest their “inhumane” conditions, resulting in citywide and national media coverage. The combined inside-outside pressure resulted in immediate improvements for prisoners.

He has petitioned the IWW General Defence Committee Local 6, based in Ottawa, for support in raising funds for his legal fees.

Ottawa IWW Picket Wins $2,500

From the Industrial Worker

Ottawa-Outaouais IWW members and community supporters won $2,500 owed to member Miguel Yanes Lobaina.

Lobaina, who had worked as a dishwasher before being fired, had won a Superior Court of Canada ruling on March 5 ordering Hooley’s restaurant to pay him, but it refused to comply.

On August 6, 20 picketers marched in front of its doors, with IWWs holding signs saying, “Pay What’s Owed.” It took less than an hour for the owner to ask for a meeting with the picketers and sign a cheque to pay Lobaina. It didn’t bounce either.

1918: Raid and Internment

By S. Holyck Hunchuck and Peter Moore, as published in the Industrial Worker

On May Day 1918, 18 men identified by the local newspaper Ottawa Citizen as members of the “notorious IWW” were arrested during a meeting at 268 Rochester Street, meeting hall of Nove zhyttia, the Ukrainian Social Democratic Party of Canada.

The arrested men included travelling lumberjack and brewer Petro Haideychuk, brewer Nicholas Mucciy, shoemaker Paul Shawliak, labourer Yuri Skypnychuk, and Toronto-based IWW organizer Stefan Waskan. Their ages ranged from 18 to 53.

The IWW in Ottawa agitated against child labour, Canada’s war-time ally the Russian Czar and the war, demanded bread or work in street demonstrations, and advocated the creation of public works programs and the end of exploitative immigration policies in the predominantly francophone and anglophone Canadian capital.

The arrests came as part of systematic surveillance and harassment of radicals across Canada by federal and local authorities during the First World War (1914-1918). Canada passed Orders-in-Council that targeted Enemy Aliens, especially those from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. This Empire included a fifth of today’s Ukraine.

The Orders were in effect decrees that bypassed Canada’s elected officials, granting police extraordinary powers of seizure, destruction of property, arrest, detention, forced relocation, internment and deportation. The government interned about 8,000 people during World War One, two-thirds of whom were Ukrainian immigrants, a minority in Canada.

During the raid, police confiscated the branch’s library, files, musical instruments, theatrical costumes and even sheet music, which probably were destroyed. The men arrested, all immigrants, were sent to an internment camp in Kapuskasing in northern Ontario. It was a remote forced labour camp with the worst reputation among the 24 camps. Tasks included draining swamps, building roads, and logging in the Canadian winter. Private and government corporations enlisted this slave labour for their own profit.

“(Internment) was easy in Ottawa, pretty bloody hard in Kapuskasing,” said Canadian historian Desmond Morton.

Stefan Waskan was the only man arrested who escaped the internment camp, because he was a Canadian citizen and British subject. Orders-in-Council had stripped immigrants naturalized after 1902 of their citizenship, making them vulnerable to harassment, deportation, and internment.

On September 24, 1918, months after the Ottawa raid, the Canadian government banned the Industrial Workers of the World. Thirteen other primarily ethnic radical organizations were made illegal. Maximum sentence for IWW membership or affiliation with banned organizations was five years.

World War One ended on November 11, 1918, but the Kapuskasing prisoners were held into October 2, 1919. Petro Haideichuk, Nicholas Mucciy, Paul Shawliak, and Yuri Skypnychuk returned to Ottawa and began to organize in 1920 a branch of the Ukrainian Labour Temple Association, which affiliated with the Communist Party of Canada in 1924.

There is no record of what happened to the other thirteen Kapuskasing survivors or whether the IWW was revived in Ottawa. Today’s Ottawa-Outaouais General Membership Branch was chartered in November 15, 1993.

SOURCES: Articles typed in full or in part from Le Droit, Ottawa Journal, Ottawa Evening Journal, and the Ottawa Citizen. Please read these articles with a grain of salt – with World War I hysteria, it is possible these “IWWs” were never members.

Interview: The IWW and the Ottawa Panhandlers Union

Disclaimer – The opinions of the author do not necessarily match those of the IWW.  The image pictured to the right did not appear in the original article, we have added it here to provide a visual perspective. This article is reposted in accordance to Fair Use guidelines.

By Dave – originally posted to anarkismo.net, January 27, 2008

(Dave interviewed Ottawa anarchist Andrew Nellis for Linchpin. Andrew is an organizer with the Ottawa Panhandlers Union.)

Q. What is the Ottawa Panhandlers Union and how was it started?

A. The Ottawa Panhandlers Union is a shop of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). It’s a real union. What we do is run by the panhandlers themselves. The IWW has one paid member for the entire union. It’s entirely member run. The idea is to empower people on the street to fight for themselves.

Ideally despite coming in as an outside organizer I’ll be able to step out of the picture once the organization is up and running and there’s a structure in place to ensure that the organization continues. I was on the street myself. I’m not on the street now. So I do know something about the milieu in which I’m working.

Ideally it [the Panhandlers Union] should be run by people who are actually on the street but in practice we find that our most valuable members are those who have just come off the street or are in the process of getting off the streets. Their lives are somewhat less chaotic than people who are actually on the street although we do have some [key] people who are hardcore street. It always impresses me. I’m so proud of all of these people. For example, the guy who writes our press releases has to leave the room every 15 minutes or so to take a sip of hand sanitizer As you may be aware people who are heavily addicted to alcohol stand a one in three chance of death if they go through withdrawal so they have to drink alcohol continuously just to survive The fact that someone who is dealing with this many crises in his own life is capable of not only functioning but contributing something to the welfare of others around him. It’s just really humbling for me to work with someone like that considering the many sacrifices that he’s got to be making in his own life are so much larger than anything I’m expected to give.

Q Could you give some examples of some of the problems that are faced by panhandlers and homeless people in Ottawa that the Panhandlers Union was formed to help resist.

A I can tell you that although things were bad before the new police chief, they’ve become infinitely worse since. The new police chief has the “broken windows” philosophy. He believes that you can stop big crimes by stopping little crimes. He’s ordered his police officers to stop issuing tickets and begin arresting panhandlers. It costs $185 a day to keep someone in jail and they’re more than willing to pay that to keep panhandlers off the street than providing supported housing is infinitely cheaper they prefer using enforcement for something it was never designed to do.
We were forced to start a Copwatch program because the police are openly and blatantly breaking the law. We have had many cases where its been reported to us that the police have stolen the panhandlers’ money, roughed them up, and told them not to come back or they’d be beaten. One night I had to start guard under the bridge by the Rideau Centre because the street kids there had been informed by a police officer that if they were there when he came back he was going to – and I quote – “boot-fuck” them. So I went there with a recorder and I warned the police that I’d be there all night with my recorder. This is the kind of stuff that we do.

We do a lot of advocacy work. We have one member who is schizophrenic and he was picked up in an ambulance and he was [held] involuntarily at the Montfort Hospital in their psychiatric wing. And he requested our assistance in getting his doctors to agree to let him go to school since he has a law degree from Russia and he’s in the process of updating his credentials here in Canada. His doctors were concerned about letting him go by himself to his classes so we went there to tell them that we’d have a person willing to go with him to the classes if necessary to assure them that he wouldn’t be a danger to himself or others. What was particularly gratifying for me was that while the doctors did not want to talk to us, it took us several hours to buttonhole the doctor, once he heard the name Industrial Workers of the World, he was at great pains to assure us that that they very sensitive to his cultural and religious needs, and that they were not discriminating against him. When I tried to get a word in edgewise to assure him we were not there to complain about his treatment but to make sure that he was able to attend his classes.

This is the kind of work that we do. A lot of it is in the background. A lot of people think that because our most visible efforts revolve around things like marching in the street, or egging the BIA that this is [all of] what we do. In fact 99% of what we do is just quiet support work for the streets that particularly teaches people where to go, how to wend their way through the paperwork of police complaints, to make sure they turn in their tickets [under the Safe Streets Act] to the Ticket Defense Program and see benefits of what standing together can do.

We have one member right now who is an organizer with the IWW. He came to us because he had been beaten up by Rideau Centre security. Immediately after getting out of the hospital, he contacted us. We got our video cameras and documented his injuries, I got him in contact with a lawyer, Yavar Hamid. As a result, we sued the Rideau Centre in superior court for $70,000. The Rideau Centre settled.

Q. How is the Panhandlers Union structured internally?

A. The IWW is not an anarchist organization. Our constitution actually forbids us as members from promoting and political or anti- political party. The organization itself runs in an anarchist manner. We have no hierarchy. At meetings everybody takes turns, everybody is expected to be either the chair or recording secretary and at every meeting it changes so that everybody gets to see and develop the skills necessary for running a meeting. It’s very important for the continuation of the kinds of traditions that we are trying to build for the organization.

For many people this the first time they’ve ever had any responsibility in a social sense, and its very gratifying to see someone who started out at the beginning of a meeting very nervous and unsure of themselves actually telling someone like me to shut up and let other people talk.

Q. Earlier [before the interview] we were talking about the backlash that has been felt by the Panhandlers Union and yourself. Could tell me a little about that?

A. We’ve experienced some amount of backlash from the police towards the organization. It’s become particularly bad lately since we’ve started the Copwatch program. It started in earnest perhaps a year ago when someone logging in from the Regional Municipality of Ottawa Carleton [IP address] vandalized the Panhandlers Union Wikipedia article saying that “Mr. Nellis,” that is myself, “really, really, really needs to get a life” and saying that the members of this union are a “parasitical blight on the city of Ottawa.” These changes were edited back fairly quickly but it was only discovered as a result of the release of the Wiki Scanner tool. The official response from City Hall was “No Comment.” I’ve subsequently discovered that the police use the same system that City Hall do. Whoever made these changes might well have been within the police station as well as inside City Hall.

Since then there have been posters put up on Ottawa city streets saying things like “Don’t feed the human pigeons” This is in response to Mayor Larry O’Brien’s statement in which he compared panhandlers to pigeons stating that if you don’t feed them they’ll go away. During the election campaign he [O’Brien] compared panhandlers to seagulls at the Carp Dump saying that in order to keep the seagulls away, occasionally you have to shoot one.

The second set of posters that went up, we believe by the same people, featured myself with a gun in my mouth in a circle with a line through it saying “Panhandlers follow your leader” with [a picture of] the mayor standing in the background grinning. I can only take this as a death threat.

We’ve recently had the Panhandlers Union [Wikipedia] articles deleted by a false flag campaign launched by someone who also we believe hijacked my internet account. Someone contacted Sympatico, my ISP, identified themselves as me and asked for my password. We know that that the first time this did not work because Sympatico Security contacted me to tell me my password which I informed at the time them that it was not me [requesting the information]. We put a special password on my account which was supposed to prevent anything like this from happening and which would require the person to give a password to identify themselves as me if they called. Apparently this did not work because within a couple of weeks someone had hijacked my e-mail, deleted a week worth of personal e-mail, vandalized my blog, attacked an anarchist IRC channel I founded and helped facilitate, and generally made my life very miserable on the internet. Whoever did this used servers they had hijacked in Pakistan and Hong Kong.

The Wikipedia campaign to delete the Panhandlers Union article – someone identified themselves in the discussion as a member of the Panhandlers Union, gave details of his arrest records, the fact that he was Hepatitis C positive, details that only the police would know about this man. We know it was not the panhandler himself who posted this because he was at the time homeless. And we know that whoever posted this was [also] using servers in Pakistan and Hong Kong. We have reason to believe it was the same person [who hacked Andrew’s internet account] who posted these messages. And in these messages he ranted about fascists and police and said that he had voted numerous times to keep the article. This gave Wikipedia administrators the excuse to delete the article out of hand by ignoring all calls to keep it. The Wikipedia article is currently deleted and no record of it ever having existed remains including the evidence that the City of Ottawa or the police had vandalized it.

Q. Do you think that the Panhandlers Union in Ottawa is a model that could be applied to other cities? Has there been interest in trying to develop Panhandlers Unions in other cities?

A. Yes. In fact I’ve been in a number of presentations on street organizing. It’s a very different milieu from what most organizers are used to. The street has its own rules. It’s stylized and ritualized not all that different than lets say a medieval Chinese court. It’s a very different place.

When you’re dealing with people as oppressed as people on the street are, it’s extremely important not to come across as an authority figure. Often the temptation is there to present yourself as leader and this must be resisted at all costs because the street will try to turn a person into a personality and it will become a cult of personality in which the personality is more important than the movement. While there can be short term results, eventually the organization falls apart when this person leaves.

The street is extremely hierarchical. There is usually a dominant alpha male. It’s very patriarchal. Often it’s racist and homophobic. I should add that it’s probably no more so than any other sector of society but because people live much closer to the bone there’s not as much lying about it. People are very straightforward about their prejudices.

So because of all these things which exist on the street, it’s important that the organizer establish from the very beginning that its about the organizational structure and that its not about the individual. If it’s about the individual, the structure is never going to survive. The reason to have an organizer when one is organizing on the street is to make sure that there is a structure.

The entire reason [many] people are on the street is that they cannot live in a highly structured scenario. There is nothing wrong with this but it is very difficult to keep an organization going when there is no structure to it. In order to ensure that it survives it’s necessary to create a tradition. And this takes many, many years. There is no short way to do this. And the way you do this is by giving people successes, by showing them that what you’re doing works. On the street people don’t have enough resources to take risks so they tend to do what works for them. If it’s already working they are loathe to change it. In a very real sense they are very conservative. In order to break through this it is necessary to give them successes and show them that working together is better than working by themselves. The only way to do that is by slowly building people’s trust and to show them that if they work together there is an advantage to them personally.

Q. Could you tell me a about your own politics and how you became an anarchist.

A. I identify as an anarcho-syndicalist and I am a member of the IWW. I believe that the union structure provides a very viable means of building resistance to the current system. Anarcho-syndicalism I believe is important because it will not only allow us to build an army within capitalism itself while continuing to function but will allow us to create a structure which will continue to exist when capitalism will have been destroyed.

A lot of the problem we face is that there’s always a sense of immediacy. We’re always looking at the next battle and never at the longer strategic plan. And we see the results of that in what’s happened thus far in anarchist movements. For example in Spain and the Ukraine where people were not careful about who they chose as allies and were crushed as a result. Anarchists have a history of winning on the battlefield and losing in the halls of power. I think its very important that we develop long-term strategic plans for dealing with our success rather than planning for our failures.

Q. What do you see as some of the strengths and weaknesses of anarchist organizing in Ottawa?

A. It’s interesting. I often get the feeling from anarchists that they really don’t believe that anarchism works. It’s a strange thing to say but often people seem to feel that anarchism is something you need to weave life into, that it requires extra effort to put a slather of anarchism across whatever structure it is that they create but it gives me a feeling that people don’t have faith that anarchism itself works. It’s not a chore that you need to apply to whatever it is you’re actually doing. Anarchism works. I’ve seen it in action. I’ve seen people who are oppressed and beaten down and frightened empowered by what anarchism has done for them. I’ve seen people on the street who’ve literally been beaten down. We have a man who was beaten so badly be Rideau Centre security that he nearly lost the use of his eye and yet through solidarity through what he saw anarchism was able to do for him he is now today an anarchist organizer himself. And its gratifying to see that he’s taken control of his life. He has a good paying job. He has a permanent home. And he’s using these advantages now to teach other people the value of anarchist organizing. These techniques don’t need to be grudgingly applied. They need to be lovingly embraced. They work. If you actually use them they work. It is such a thrill the first time you see it actually working, not just in theory but in practice. It’s easy to see why those original anarchists were so passionate why they continued to work into their eighties and nineties why they sang on the gallows, because anarchism is a revolutionary idea in every sense of the word. It gives a person such joy to see that it is capable of empowering people to take control of their own lives.

Abbie Hoffman said that a revolution in consciousness is an empty high without a revolution in the distribution of power and that’s perfectly true and valid but the opposite is also true. A revolution in the distribution of power will be meaningless unless there’s also a revolution in consciousness, It starts inside and continues on into the world outside of us.

Why Panhandlers Need a Union

By Proshanto Smith

The first reaction when most people hear the idea of a “panhandlers union” is laughter. Then the jocular questions start: When a panhandler goes on strike, will anyone notice — or care? What could they possibly want, wider sidewalks?

Given the widespread misunderstanding of what it means to belong to a union, these questions are not altogether unexpected.

Every person must first and foremost have the freedom to exist; history shows us when this freedom is infringed for any, it becomes a threat to all.

For panhandlers, begging is the means for survival. Take this away, and one threatens their existence. The Panhandlers Union of Ottawa has been formed in response to the attempt by police, business interests and government to eradicate panhandling through the criminal justice system by characterizing panhandling as aggressive.

Panhandlers have inadequate or no income and shelter. Most have inadequate education, skills and family support. According to a study prepared for the City of Ottawa, 32 per cent of panhandlers have had some involvement with the foster-care system.

They are burdened with anxiety, depression and low self-esteem and they often develop drug and alcohol addictions, all of which present barriers to integration into the community. Many suffer years of homelessness before they get the help they need to stabilize. And some never make it off the street.

In this city, where street vending is prohibited, panhandlers do not have other legal options to make a living if they are not job-ready.

Yes, individuals can recover by overcoming the psychological trauma and addictions associated with their plight. However, judgment and condemnation are not the cornerstones of recovery. In fact, they present sometimes-insurmountable barriers.

Society must make room for the homeless by graciously extending a hand.

In April 2004 the Ottawa-Outaouais General Members Branch of the Industrial Workers of the World unanimously agreed to extend such a hand when member Jane Scharf requested that panhandlers become part of that union. She said panhandlers were enduring harassment by shopkeepers, the police and social-service agencies.

Panhandlers were unable to pay the $3 monthly dues and therefore did not become full members. IWW members nevertheless provided support such as assistance with police complaints, assistance in getting panhandling tickets registered with the Ticket Defence Program and advocacy with social services and housing authorities. For a time, the union produced an edition of the Dominion newspaper for distribution by the panhandlers for donations. The city shut this successful venture down with a bylaw that prohibits street vending with or without a licence.

In the summer of 2004, hundreds of community and labour activists helped the Panhandlers Union organize a homeless action strike in the form of a tent city at City Hall. This action, which lasted 55 days, drew public attention to many of the problems facing the street person in Ottawa.

The panhandlers demanded that the city stop prosecuting panhandlers who were not aggressive, and find more humane solutions to homelessness. They were able to get the mayor to set up a task force to investigate the way the city and police are treating the homeless.

As found in the many public delegations made to the Task Force on Homelessness and the Safe Streets Act 2005, many of these panhandlers come from backgrounds of tremendous trauma with very little — if any — assistance in learning to cope with the effects of the beatings, rapes and deprivation they have experienced.

The police have made an effort to improve the treatment of homeless persons and are working with community agencies to try and find more humane responses. However, the city continues to abuse and discriminate against the homeless when it tries to move them off the street into housing. For example the homeless cannot access Ontario Works or emergency housing programs because they do not have addresses where they can be contacted.

This year IWW member Andrew Nellis secured funding from local labour groups, businesses and individuals to ensure that union dues were no longer a barrier for panhandlers. To date, the union has signed up 25 members and meets formally once a month at a drop-in centre to plan, network, and organize.

Members of the Panhandlers Union are negotiating with Ottawa City Hall and the various business improvement areas regarding the current ban on street vending so that the homeless can sell their arts, crafts, jewelry, and street newspapers, as well as perform music and street theatre. With the union behind them they can look to the future with an entrepreneurial spirit.

Proshanto Smith is an Ottawa panhandler who negotiated with the mayor on the homeless task force. He wrote this article in collaboration with the Panhandlers’ Union of Ottawa.

First published in the Ottawa Citizen as part of a settlement with the Ontario Press Council for the Citizen’s publication of false information about the Ottawa Panhandlers Union.

Union-Busting Chartwells Fires IWW Organizer

The Industrial Workers of the World continues to organize a union with Fellow Workers working at Chartwell’s in Carleton University. In its public statements, Chartwell’s managers presume to talk for workers even after they have fired an IWW organizer and intimidated its workforce. It was no coincidence Braden Cannon was fired; he had filed union certification papers with Chartwell’s the week before.

The IWW calls on Chartwell’s employees to continue to fight back and never let them silence you. You can make a difference, when you stand up for yourselves.

In the News

FRATERNIZING WITH THE UNION

By Melissa Wheeler, Ottawa XPress September 5, 2002

The Carleton University food service provider Chartwell’s won’t talk about the sacking of an employee August 23 for a 20-minute work stoppage protest.

District manager Barbara Phillips said “it’s a personnel issue and I’m not prepared to talk about it with anyone but the student at this time.”

The student is Braden Cannon, 22-year-old international studies major at Carleton University. He said he was part of a group of seven student workers who orchestrated a 20-minute work stoppage when they learned a co-worker had not been paid the preceding Monday due to a glitch in the system.

Prior to the incident, he had instigated an Industrial Workers of the World union drive among Baker’s Grill and Tim Horton’s employees on the campus. Following the attempt to organize, Cannon was suspended along with three other employees, two of whom had not signed union cards. The next day he organized an “informational picket” to hand out flyers protesting the pay delay. He also met with Philips and Chartwell’s regional vice-president Marty Doyle, was fired and learned that the other employees’ suspensions had been lifted.

“Obviously I was fired because there was a political action, because it was an action specifically against the company. They can’t excuse politics in the workplace.”

Chartwell’s said the company allows employees the freedom to belong in a union, a freedom guaranteed by the courts.

Cannon said he plans to stay involved in the union effort anyway because “they’ve already done the worst they can to me by firing me.”

Chartwells workers suspended for 20-minute walkout

by Dave Pizer, The Charlatan

  Four Tim Hortons and Baker’s Grille employees were suspended by Chartwells management after participating in a twenty-minute work stoppage as an act of solidarity for a colleague whose paycheque was allegedly several days late.

Braden Cannon was a Baker’s Grille employee who participated in the work stoppage. He says an assistant cook who had been filling in at Baker’s Grille for a week had not been paid at the end of the week. According to Cannon, the cook needed the money to place a deposit on an apartment.

At 2 p.m. on Aug. 21, seven employees at Tim Hortons and Baker’s Grille unanimously decided to take their breaks at the same time to protest Chartwells’ treatment of the cook.

Cannon and three of the other participants were suspended from work.

The following day, members of Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), joined by members of other unions on campus and CUSA, gathered outside of Tim Hortons and Baker’s Grille for what they called an ”information picket.”

Leaflets produced by the IWW with the headline, “An injury to one is an injury to all!” were handed out to passers-by. The document claimed the suspended workers decided to stop work after realizing “their fellow worker might become homeless as a result of Chartwells’ shameless behaviour.” The IWW also encouraged people to avoid Chartwells businesses until the suspended workers were reinstated.

IWW delegate John Hollingsworth was handing out leaflets at the picket. He says, “Workers at Tim Hortons and Baker’s Grille want to have a union, they want to have the right to bargain their conditions of work and wages. They want to be able to know that when they act in solidarity, management will not be so able to take reprisals against them.”

According to Hollingsworth, the majority of workers at Baker’s Grille and Tim Hortons have signed union membership cards and their application for recognition as part of Industrial Union 640 is currently before the Ontario Labour Relations Board.

Hollingsworth also says he believes the work stoppage was part of the reason the cook was paid Aug. 21.

“We think the fact that the workers were drawing attention to this was probably a pretty important factor in making sure it was expedited,” says Hollingsworth.

But Chartwells district manager Barbara Philips says there was no anti union motive in the action to suspend the workers.

“We just can’t shut the doors, because we have an agreement with the university that we will provide service from this time to that time,” says Philips. “So right now, they are on a paid suspension until we find out all the details that went on.”

According to Philips, the leaflet being distributed by the IWW was filled with factually incorrect and misleading information, and makes “a number of totally unsupportable allegations.”

She says due to a minor error in the payroll system at Chartwells head office, there was a delay with some employee payments. However, Philips says the problem was resolved within 48 hours and “no employee suffered any loss at that time.”

Philips says the assistant cook in question was not on the verge of homelessness and is “extremely embarrassed and upset” that such information is being circulated, and wishes to remain nameless.

“I don’t think that was fair to do that. I think they should have got all their facts straight,” says Philips.

The assistant cook declined to comment.

Three of the suspended workers were reinstated on Aug. 23, while Cannon, who is also an IWW delegate, was fired.