“The Wobblies” Film Screening for One Book One Community

Enjoy a free screening of “The Wobblies” in the auditorium. The Wobblies, a nick name for the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), have historical significance with the labor movement. This film is being screened as part of One Book One Community. While you are reading Cold Millions by Jess Walter, you will learn that the older brother “fights alongside other union men for fair pay and decent treatment.” Unions are part of Park City history as well. Unionized miners were on strike for six weeks in 1919 for better pay and working conditions and were responsible for building Miner’s Hospital to have health care available to them.

Watch the trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obfIweejag8

Reading Guide

Film synopsis: “Solidarity! All for One and One for All!”

Founded in Chicago in 1905, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) took to organizing unskilled workers into one big union and changed the course of American history. This compelling documentary of the IWW (or “The Wobblies” as they were known) tells the story of workers in factories, sawmills, wheat fields, forests, mines and on the docks as they organize and demand better wages, healthcare, overtime pay and safer working conditions. In some respects, men and women, Black and white, skilled and unskilled workers joining a union and speaking their minds seems so long ago, but in other ways, the film mirrors today’s headlines, depicting a nation torn by corporate greed.

Filmmakers Deborah Shaffer and Stewart Bird weave history, archival film footage, interviews with former workers (now in their 80s and 90s), cartoons, original art, and classic Wobbly songs (many written by Joe Hill) to pay tribute to the legacy of these rebels who paved the way and risked their lives for the many of the rights that we still have today.

This film was restored by the Museum of Modern Art and recently inducted into the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress.