they identified as appropriate to the working class, such as musical interests. Long-time member John Strucker maintains that “most of the time I was in STO, we were way into whatever music the working-class people we were with, liked. And, basically, Chicago being Chicago, that meant soul and blues on the one hand, and country and western on the other.”150 Similarly, Kingsley Clarke remembers “a certain shit-kicking Johnny Cash-like culture,” that he encountered early on: “my first exposure to STO was in Gary, and on the second day they invited me to eat breakfast, and they were drinking whiskey for breakfast. And I think that was a bit of a posture.”151
For some members, the posture transformed into a more developed political stance. One tendency within STO was labeled “workerist” because of the emphasis placed on integrating as fully as possible with the working class. In many cases, this manifested itself in the adoption of common working-class attitudes, including eventually a willingness to work with the trade unions. Noel Ignatiev recalls “the people who really dug in, got a house and wife and kids in Gary … some are probably retired by now, if they didn’t destroy their lungs.”152 From the perspective of those who remained in STO for the long-haul, these people were inevitably lost to the struggle, as they made their peace with the unions, and with the day-to-day realities of working-class life. On the other hand, the workerist attitude was an important corrective to the woodenness or posturing that characterized much of STO’s early work. In the end, a split in the organization over these issues would mark the conclusion of STO’s initial workplace period.
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Internal disagreements over workerism were just one example of the dynamic evolution of STO’s perspective on workplace organizing: it was never static, and was in fact subject to regular evaluation, challenge, and reformulation within the group. STO’s first formal publication was “A Call to Organize,” which was drafted by Ignatin and Hamerquist in early 1970. This leaflet summarizes the initial approach taken by STO, as well as the optimism that characterized its earliest work. The text was subsequently revised and expanded as a pamphlet called Mass Organization in the Workplace, which was reprinted multiple times. As early as the beginning of 1972, however, it included a prefatory note to the effect that it was “not a full and accurate picture of the production organizing perspective of the Sojourner Truth Organization.”153 This cautionary note exemplified the group’s constant attempts to improve on its prior theory in the light of accumulated experience.
By the same token, STO’s internal discussions of the appropriate trajectory for workplace interventions were quite sophisticated, and often quite heated. In the fall of 1970, STO held its first evaluation-of-work meeting. Don Hamerquist presented a paper entitled “Reflections on Organizing,” which articulated some necessary corrections to the group’s initial conception.154 In Hamerquist’s view, STO’s first efforts had been characterized by a simplistic understanding of the class forces involved in workplace organizing, as well as a naïve understanding of the risks and benefits of direct action at the job site. For instance, he challenges the notion that younger workers, black and latino workers, and established rank-and-file militants shared a common openness to revolutionary ideas. Instead,
The initial cadre of workers [within an independent organization] must have a number of different characteristics which show up among different social groups in the factory. It must be open to a general revolutionary critique of capitalism; it must be aware of the importance of organization; it must be able to provide leadership for the struggles that develop on the job. Workers radicalized outside of the job [e.g. black and latino workers and younger, counter-cultural whites] are more likely to accept a radical critique than they are to see the possibility and necessity of building mass struggle and organization. The trade union opposition might want to get organized and even accept a few revolutionary propositions, but they won’t see why this should go beyond a struggle for control of the union. The leader of job actions is likely to be great whenever a spontaneous struggle arises, but to have no idea of what to do in other situations or how to relate job issues to general political issues. Each of these limitations in areas of possible support for our perspective help spell out the sort of political problems that are involved in implementing it.155
Similarly, just as different sorts of workers exhibited different potentials, so too did different sorts of job actions. In this case, however, a single type of action, such as a strike, could take on completely different meanings depending upon its character. Thus, “some strikes involve mass participation in struggle, but most clearly do not. No alternative conception of the world is manifested in those strikes where the union and management cooperate in the orderly closure of operations; where picketing is only a dull and tiring public-relations chore; and where the bulk of workers just disappear till a new contract is signed. And this is the character of most present-day strikes.”156 The alternative to this dismal outlook was direct action at the job site. But one universal difficulty of implementing STO’s perspective was the tension between the need for direct action, and the risk of job loss or even criminal prosecution. This tension was paralleled by a similar conflict between the requirement that independent organizations be mass in character and the necessity that they be politically cohesive. The terrain on which these contradictions played themselves out was the question of openness and secrecy. In Hamerquist’s view, “though the difficulties in functioning openly are certainly real, there is no alternative to using whatever possibilities exist and working to expand these possibilities as rapidly as possible. This follows from the absolutely essential role of direct action.… There is no way that direct action can be developed if a conspiratorial cadre grouping becomes a substitute for, rather than a means to, a mass organization.”157 Building on these reflections, and on the concrete experiences of members, the group progressively shifted its emphasis toward greater openness on the shop floor. In 1973, in particular, the organization prioritized mass work to the exclusion of most other concerns, including the internal functioning of the group as a whole, which suffered as a result.
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Once this transition was underway, conflicts arose within STO around the implications of mass organizing. While the majority of members, including both the formal and informal leadership, stood firm in opposition to participating in intra-union reform efforts, a growing minority began to question the logic of this position. The disagreement manifested itself in the form of a debate over the right of members to run for shop steward. As indicated above, stewards were the lowest rung of the union bureaucracy, and in many cases replacing a bad steward with a good one led directly to improvements in working conditions as well as organizing prospects. In fact, more than a few STO members in multiple factories were asked by their rank-and-file workmates to run for steward, most often against particularly hated union hacks. In most cases, these members refused, citing an organizational policy that was often difficult for their coworkers to fathom. This process could be frustrating for all involved, although in many situations compromises could be arrived at, where non-STO militants ran for steward instead.
The frustration was perhaps most intense in the Westside STO branch, which was concentrated around the International Harvester plant in Melrose Park. In contrast to the undeniably corrupt IBEW local that controlled Stewart-Warner, a somewhat more progressive faction of the United Auto Workers was in charge at Melrose. Further, the radical origins of the UAW and its liberal reputation throughout the sixties and early seventies encouraged the STO members employed by International Harvester to pursue some tentative engagement with the union.158 The branch established a Workers’ Voice Committee, which straddled the line between being an independent organization and functioning as a dissident
