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Free speech fights are struggles over free speech, and especially those struggles which involved the Industrial Workers of the World and their attempts to gain awareness for labor issues by organizing workers and urging them to use their collective voice. During the World War I period in the United States, the IWW members (referred to as Wobblies), engaged in free speech fights over labor issues which were closely connected to the developing industrial world as well as the Socialist Party. The Wobblies, along with other radical groups, were often met with opposition (violent and otherwise) from local governments and especially business leaders, in their free speech fights. The IWW organized transient workers (especially in cities in the American West) who worked in highly seasonal jobs—they met on the streets, discussed contemporary issues, and listened to speakers; at the time, it was a very popular method of organization. The events often ended with the police arresting them for participating in street meetings. The most notorious of all of the free speech fights was the San Diego free speech fight, which won a significant amount of public awareness for the IWW as it involved tremendous violence against the labor groups organized by the IWW.〔Brisseden, p.283, and Whitten, p.6.〕 which brought the IWW to the greater notice of the American public and was notable for the intensity of violence by anti-labor vigilantes directed at the IWW; this violence included the kidnapping and tarring and feathering of Ben Reitman, who was a physician, and was Emma Goldman's lover. More generally, a free speech fight is any incident in which a group is involved in a conflict over its speech. For instance, the Free Speech Movement, which began with a conflict on the Berkeley Campus in California in the 1960s, was a "free speech fight". =="Free speech fights" and the IWW== The IWW engaged in free speech fights during the period from approximately 1907 to 1916. The ''Wobblies'', as the IWW members were called, relied upon free speech, which in the United States is guaranteed by the First Amendment, to enable them to communicate the concept of One Big Union to other workers. In communities where the authorities saw their interests in avoiding the development of unions, the practice of soapboxing was frequently restricted by ordinance or by police harassment. The IWW employed a variety of creative tactics, including the tactic of flooding the area of a free speech fight with ''footloose rebels'' who would challenge the authorities by flouting the ordinance, intentionally getting arrested in great numbers. With the jails full and a seemingly endless stream of union activists arriving by boxcar and highway, the local communities frequently rescinded their prohibitions on free speech, or came to some other accommodation. The Free Speech League, a progressive group which functioned at the same time as (and occasionally together with) the IWW, worked in conjunction with the IWW prior to World War I in many of their free speech fights, which generated a good deal of controversy. The free speech fights of the IWW were highly publicized, as they were designed to garner attention: they frequently started when local communities interjected to attempt to prevent the IWW from occupying street corners from which they would use provocative language to detail their radical beliefs. The free speech fights began occurring in 1906 and drew to a close by 1917—over that period of time, at least 26 communities played host to the IWW’s free speech fights, and the years of 1909 to 1913 were particularly active, with at least 21 free speech fights happening. The IWW that members engaged in the free speech fights typically cited the First Amendment and the rights guaranteed therein as proof positive of the validity of their cause, thereby highlighting the legal importance of the issues they fought for. That being the case, their struggles did not go unanswered or ignored: local, state, and even the federal government were prompted to respond, while, perhaps more importantly, the American public, due to the national publicity garnered by the free speech fights, were invariably tasked with confronting free speech issues. Practically all realms of American life were impacted by the free speech fights, as members of the press, church officials, school teachers, politicians, anyone involved in the business and labor world, and members of any organization (especially those of the Socialist Party) had a stake in the fights and thus attempted to comment on the issues in contention. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Free speech fights」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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