02/08/2026
Roots of the Labor Movement in San Diego run deep! ✊🏻✊🏽✊🏿
In the early 1900s, workers in San Diego were organizing for unions alongside workers across the country and around the world.
Industrial Workers of the World, often known as "Wobblies," believed that all workers belonged in one big union—a multiracial, multicultural working class movement.
In November 1910, San Diego police shut down a Wobbly meeting scheduled at Germania Hall. Wobblies shifted tactics, beginning a practice of "soapboxing," literally standing on a soap box at busy corners and delivering speeches to workers passing by.
Wobblies focused on a busy corner at 5th and E, near neighborhoods where many Black, Mexican, Chinese and other immigrant workers lived and worked.
Tension with bosses mounted. San Diego's business elite proposed a ban on "street speaking" to shut down the organizing.
On January 8, 1912, San Diego Common Council passed Ordinance 4623, banning public speaking in a 49-block square area of downtown.
On February 8, 5,000 Californians marched in protest. Dozens were arrested, but marches and protests continued. The local papers began fomenting violence, and soon vigilantes began attacking union organizers, even kidnapping them and taking them to the county line.
Vigilantes continued to attack anyone who spoke up, especially members of the Wobblies. By March, over 1,000 vigilantes organized by local businessmen were collaborating with San Diego police. Vigilantes committed assaults, kidnapping, torture and even murder.
The free speech fights went on for months, but by the fall, the violence won out.
Although rarely enforced afterward, restrictions on "seditious speech" were on the books in San Diego until 2020, when the Black Lives Matter movement built enough power to have them removed.
The legacy of the free speech fights lives on in San Diego. For decades, city government worked with bosses to stop workers from organizing. After decades of organizing our workplaces and our communities, we finally have elected leaders who take working people seriously—but we must continue to organize to protect what we've won and build more power to lift ourselves up at work and in our communities.
