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Goldman 18

the spare figure of Joe Hill holding his accordion and song sheet. The text describes him as an "itinerant worker, union organizer, labor agitator, cartoonist, poet, musician, composer" who was "murdered by the judiciary in collusion with the mine owners who wished to silence his songs. They killed a man but gave birth to a legend." 
Joe Hill became a member of IWW as a maritime worker in San Pedro, California in 1910. This was the year the IWW organized workers of the San Diego Consolidated Gas & Electric Co. in a successful strike for higher wages and shorter hours. It was also the year that IWW-influenced workers of the Los Angeles Gas Works, 90% of whom were Mexican, won their demands. San Pedro is part of Los Angeles and San Diego is only 130 miles away. Joe Hill could easily have participated in both actions. It is known that the [[underline]]magonistas (followers of the Flores Magóns) were active in Los Angeles, and that in 1911, Joe Hill and a number of Wobblies participated in an abortive revolutionary action in Baja California led by the PLM.[[superscript]]35[[/superscript]] This effort was supported by a rally hosted by writer Jack London who came to Los Angeles for the purpose. Two years later, John Reed was reporting the Mexican Revolution from the encampments of Pancho Villa in northern Mexico.
The Wobblies felt that revolutionary consciousness should be fostered by working class intellectuals and they employed literature and the arts to disseminate their ideas. In addition to soapbox orators and the use of songs (like the Wobblies' famous [[underline]]Little Red Song Book[[/underline]] which nourishes working class and radical movements to this day), there were leaflets illustrated with cartoons, comic strips, pamphlets, and "stickers" with gummed backs that could be pasted up on any convenient space by the thousands. The IWW also published newspapers in five languages including Spanish.[[superscript]]36[[/superscript]] To draw parallels between the IWW use of public graphics and illustrated newspapers, the Taller de Gráfica Popular's inexpensive linocut posters and handbills starting in 1937, the production of the United Farm Workers illustrated newspaper