Why “The Wobble”?
We proudly base our name on the epithet of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), the Wobblies. A true labor organization that formed some time at the turn of the 20th century, the IWW members were referred to as Wobblies (Buhle and Schulman 1-5). Although sometimes used in a derogatory way by others, the Wobblies loved their nickname. It has many possible origin stories, but it’s rooted in the idea of wobbling in leisure, which they expected to take pleasure in when capitalism and class society could finally be toppled (an idea they got from The Right to Be Lazy by Paul Lafargue).
In the same vein, The Wobble comprises members who work to better our society by learning how to be better socialists; by learning how and helping to organize direct action; and by taking direct action. We work to dismantle society’s structures of colonialism, patriarchy, and industrialism upheld by xenophobia, racism, homophobia, transphobia, and classism. We pledge solidarity with any movement doing the same work, and we fight for change that will bring liberation to all of our marginalized communities in sensitive and meaningful ways.
Therefore, we “wobble” as we learn and as we practice what we preach. Oftentimes, we hit the mark, and sometimes we wobble off balance. We do not have a fixed mindset; we believe everyone can grow in their understanding of how to help change this world. We also “wobble” to the beat of the drum that guides us to make change through dance and song.
We represent the fields of education, public health, mental health, engineering, and policy. We bring our knowledge and activism to those spaces, as well as the communities where we live. More than anything, we aim to get rid of the status quo.
This blog shares our learning and growth, which we hope helps you learn and grow. We are all in this together.
In solidarity,
Your comrades 🌹
Citation
Buhle, Paul and Nicole Schulman, editors. Wobblies! A Graphic History of the International Workers of the World. New York Versa, 2005.
Our Mission
The Wobble is committed to engaging in direct action against capitalism, white supremacy, patriarchy, and settler colonialism. We believe these issues and their intersections are the basis of other struggles which we support, such as environmental justice, queer liberation, and abolition of the carceral state. We pledge our help in deconstructing these concepts and in building new, equitable systems.
We vow to work and to learn as a community, to continually be better accomplices and to take responsibility for any mistakes that we make in our journey. We will work with any movement doing the same work to co-liberate us from hegemonic structures. We will be transparent in our work so that our co-liberators and audience may hold us accountable to our stated ideals. We look to the examples of indigenous communities past and present in how to treat the land and each other. We wobble.
Our Purpose
We have three main purposes for this blog. Most importantly, we will use this space to work through our own understandings of socialism and what it means to do the much-needed work of dismantling so many oppressive societal structures. We also hope to bring people and groups together who share the same interests. At the very least, we hope this can be a space to show our solidarity with related movements. Finally, this space will cull resources we use in our learning or to use for helping others in their journeys to become antiracist and socialist.
Who We Are
In addition to certain dominant culture layers of identity, our Wobble members also have the following intersections:
- Indigenous cis-man
- South Asian brown cis-woman
- cis-Chicana
- cis-Latina
- bi
- disabled
- non-religious
The Wobble 