Hellraisers Journal: From the Seattle Union Record: IWW Not to Blame for Everett’s Bloody Sunday

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Song on his lips, he came;
Song on his lips, he went;—
This be the token we bear of him,—
Soldier of Discontent!
-Charles Ashleigh

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Hellraisers Journal, Tuesday November 14, 1916
Everett’s Bloody Sunday: Making Facts Known in Interest of Justice

From the Seattle Union Record of November 11, 1916:

I. W. W. NOT TO BLAME FOR FIGHT
—–

Prominent Attorney Investigating Case Believes
“Citizens Committee” Is Entirely at Fault
in Everett Affair
—–

By THOMAS R. HORNER

IWW Label, 2nd Conv, Sept 17-Oct 3, 1906

So many untruthful statements have been published concerning the I. W. W. trouble last Sunday [November 5th], at Everett, that in the interest of justice the facts should be made known, and when the facts are known the public will see that the blame of the trouble rests wholly on the “Citizen’s Committee,” organized by the mill owners to put down by force and bloodshed the Shingle Weavers and Longshoremen’s strike at that place.

The I. W. W. did not go armed to Everett. They were admonished by their leaders to go unarmed. There may have been a very few who had weapons, but the vast number were without them. This statement is proved by a circumstance that cannot successfully be denied:

When the shooting occurred the boat had just been tied to the dock alongside, and about twenty feet from the broad side of the warehouse. There is unanswerable proof there were at least three parties of deputies entrenched so as to be comparatively safe themselves, yet so they could rake the boat from three angles.

Only Few Bullets From Boat

It is plain that practically all the shots that were fired from the direction of the boat must have struck the warehouse; yet the warehouse shows that only a very few bullets came from that direction. But the riddled condition of the boat shows that the vigilantes fired hundreds of times. Moreover, the splintered sides of the warehouse show that a number of shots were fired blindly from the inside of the north warehouse, where some of the vigilantes were ambushed, thus giving good grounds for the belief that when the trouble started they became panic-stricken and began madly to fire through the board sides, and possibly wounding their own men. At the same time they were firing blindly into a regular passenger steamboat without even distinguishing between “the dreaded” I. W. W.’s and the other passengers and members of the crew who were on board the Verona.

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Hellraisers Journal: Fellow Workers Murdered at Everett by Sheriff McRae and Posse of Gunthugs

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You ought to be out raising hell.
This is the fighting age.
Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
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Hellraisers Journal, Monday November 6, 1916
Everett, Washington – Free Speech Fighters Massacred

BLOODY SUNDAY IN EVERETT, WASHINGTON

WE NEVER FORGET

Everett Massacre, IWW Martyrs at Morgue, WCS

Members of the Industrial Workers of the World, who, after the brutal events at Beverly Park on October 30th, being determined to establish the right to free speech and union organization in the lumber town of Everett, Washington, were shot down in cold blood by Sheriff McRae and his posse of drunken deputies yesterday, the day now known as Bloody Sunday.

The men had arrived on the steamer Verona from Seattle in order to attend a free speech rally scheduled for that afternoon when they were denied the right to disembark at the Everett dock. Sheriff McRae, by most reports, fired the first shot as if to signal his deputized gunthugs to open fire on the union men.

The account below is from The New York Times which characterizes the union men as “invaders.” We expect to get the working class version of the story in the coming days from the labor and socialist press of Everett and Seattle.

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