Benefit for IWW Food and Allied Workers Union 460/640 Raises Over $1700

By X357733

Introduction

The reasons for doing this event are simple enough. Having attended various fundraisers over the years, I had some idea which approaches were the best at bringing in a fairly large sum of money. A few hundred dollars from a punk rock show, for example, is always nice for non-emergency situations. But the situation with the IWW Food and Allied Workers Union 460/640 was, and continues to be, very serious. I have been watching that campaign for some time, but was not spurred into action until I became aware of the fact that the IWW grassroots had not adequately stepped up to raise the tens of thousands of dollars necessary to win perhaps our most important campaign in the latter part of our history to date.

In Connecticut, we have seen many raids by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) which we hoped would bring more people to this event. Whether or not that was successful isn’t clear; however, the events that have followed the benefit might lead one to believe that perhaps we were on to something. The union hall that hosted us was raided two weeks later by ICE, and arrested one of their staff people. The union in question has always had a large immigrant membership, but people like Judi Bari and Martin Luther King Jr. might tell you that the forces of repression always hone in on the people who are building the connections between different movements and organizations.

Getting Started

The Connecticut program of the American Friends Service Committee, locally an organization that has always been enormously helpful, principled and friendly—especially to this secular, non-pacifist anarchist—has also had some of the best benefit events I have seen. It is certainly high-end on the spectrum, but its basic premises are easily replicated. The idea is simple: serve a nice dinner, maybe good music with a wide appeal, and an interesting, relevant speaker.

From there, you can get people to register in advance. If they can’t make it, they will often give a contribution anyway. With a cause like this, we had many of those. But the most efficient way we brought in money was selling sponsorships and ads in the program booklet. For $50, an organization can set up a literature table, get a ticket for one of their members, and get listed as a sponsor on the flyers and booklet. For various prices, up to $50 for a full page ad, groups and individuals could buy ad space.

So our small committee of myself, John Woodruff and Omar el-Malah (two Wobblies who work mainly for UE), and SEIU District 1199 vice president Steve Thornton went to work. We only huddled a few times, and only our first meeting had all of us at the table. I was the defacto point person, though I delegated anything I could.

Getting Our Ducks in a Row and Raking in the Dough

We sold some extra tickets in advance by giving people discounts for multiple tickets. The tickets, in addition to the program booklet, flyers, and pamphlets we sold, were printed for free at my college by the “IWW Lumpen Union I.U. 000,” as credited on the back of the program. If the humor is a little too fringe for you, don’t be embarrassed to ask; I’m sure there are only a few people in the Union who get it anyway. The tickets helped add to the novelty, and passing them out for Fellow Workers to sell to their friends, family and co-workers probably helped motivate them to sell a few extra as well.

Connecticut, by most standards in the US, is a pretty densely union state. So by luck, we had some big contributions from a couple UE locals, and Steve Thornton got us their big room for the event for free, in addition to buying 10 tickets at full price through 1199’s Solidarity Fund. Being able to advertise that we were bringing in that kind of audience also helped persuade various left-wing parties and coalitions to buy ads and sponsorships. Some groups required more shaming than others; after all, in theory, this is the kind of thing they’re supposed to support.

Besides that base of support, I also used my invaluable network of people who can do various important tasks; some friends from Food Not Bombs, who are also fellow members of Students for a Democratic Society and the IWW, made some great food for the event after I bought them groceries with some of the initial funds we collected in the run-up to the event. Evan Greer from the Riot Folk Collective, forever an ally to any radical cause under the sun, and certainly a crowd-pleaser, came down from Boston without a second thought. Todd Vachon, a local hip hop artist, Wobbly, and chair of the Socialist Party of Connecticut not only got us a sponsorship from the SP, but also performed alongside other musicians, including his father who came in from New York City, for an amalgamation called Mista Mayday with the Hired Gun of Frequency Activism.

As an aside, I have to note that while it wasn’t exactly a hip hop crowd, I prioritized having them perform because progressive folk of all persuasions need to start embracing that genre. It has been overlooked for far too long, and since its inception with its roots in Afrika Bambaataa’s Universal Zulu Nation, it has had a very liberatory, radical orientation that is often lost in the midst of the mainstream, shallow, materialistic, chauvinistic rap and hip hop dominating the airwaves. So if it’s not your thing, start getting used to it, because we can’t ignore it and still think we’re relevant.

Then there was Queers Without Borders (QWB), which is a loose grouping with a blog that does various events and actions in support of a radical Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Trans/Queer (LGBTQ) agenda. The people of this group were fiscally, organizationally and logistically crucial to this event. They were the first to put some cash down on the table, they pushed tickets and promoted it in their circles and local LGBTQ media, and they did much of the hands-on work, preparing, setting up and cleaning up after the event. Their motivation in all of this was two-fold: they have a strong, internationalist orientation, with the belief that LGBTQ folk are here, there and everywhere, transcending class, gender, and ethnicity. In turn, therefore, solidarity with all oppressed and exploited people, particularly radical initiatives like the 460/640 campaign, are crucial to support. In the end, there is no such thing as a single-issue, which is something they are trying to impress upon the rest of the LGBTQ movement.

Things We Did Well and Not So Well

Some of the small, helpful things we did, include buying alcohol with a supporter’s employee discount (in addition to some wine on clearance) which was an easy way to bring in some extra money by charging $2 for beer and $3 for wine, which at the very least covered the costs of something we should have provided anyway. I did, however, buy too much wine, which cannot be returned because I sent the receipt to the NYC GMB without thinking. We also got General Headquarters to send us a box of merchandise they could spare, most of which we sold, which was all profit for the campaign. We raffled off several of these items, and did a 50/50 grand prize, which was then donated back to the benefit by Richard Nelson of QWB.

While we seem to have covered everyone’s basic food needs, though it was on the light side, there was a great deal of room for improvement. First, it did not occur to me to ask the caterer if they wanted an ad in the program booklet in exchange for a discount, which we bought meat balls and teriyaki chicken wings from (because FNB wouldn’t cook meat, and if we’re charging people good money to get it, they should have food they’re used to). Food preparation was also left to the last minute, as the person in charge was not easily reachable, was sick for several days in the lead-up to the event, and frankly, for awhile I found myself being my usual highly-unproductive self up until a week before the event. Had I been on top of things, I could have taken full advantage of the fact that my uncle is a food salesman, who has access to an enormous amount of food for free. In the best case scenario, we could quite possibly have avoided paying anything for food, including the meat items which were our biggest expense. But we did manage to cut our costs in that regard.

One last thing I wish we had been able to do was to have the event geared toward starting a branch here in Connecticut. This was intended, but unfortunately the schedule was so chaotic, we were simply not in a position to make that happen. I had a whole speech ready about why we should do it, but the timing and my stress levels would simply not allow it.

These are all easily-remedied issues. Any local branch that meets regularly and functions even marginally better than our little committee could easily pull off an event far surpassing ours. The bottom line of this report, which is what makes me most gratified, is the fact that every branch in the union will now have a very easy model to follow so the 460/640 campaign can now depend on its international union for major financial support during this crucial time. In the context of the immigrant rights movement, and the upheaval and suffering that we have seen in these communities, a revolutionary democratic union that is winning real gains and building a strong grassroots membership there, is clearly the priority for the rest of the Union to support. So get to it!