Radicals in the Community: Wobblies in the Pacific Northwest

Folio: The Seattle Athenaeum is pleased to welcome professor Aaron Goings, author of Red Harbor: Radical Workers and Community Struggle in the Pacific Northwest for an NEA Big Read presentation and discussion on the working-class families who fueled and supported the IWW—including the Wobbly women who played such important roles in sustaining the movement amid state and employer repression.

Founded in 1905, the Industrial Workers of the World (often known as the Wobblies) organized workers across country (and internationally)--and faced violent repression from employers, professional strikebreakers, and the state for their activism.  The Wobblies dug some of their deepest roots in the Pacific Northwest—in logging camps, harvest fields, immigrant neighborhoods, and in the booming urban centers of our region’s largest cities and towns. 

Dr. Aaron Goings is a Professor of History at Peninsula College in Port Angeles. He spent most of the last 15 years a tenured history professor at Saint…