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IWW

Walt Whitman and the Wobblies: Part II

The Wobbly core belief in One Big Union and the solidarity of the working class found support in Whitman’s reference to “the knit of identity” in “Song of Myself” which refers to his approach throughout the poem of blurring the distinctions between individuals and himself, pulling all people together into a common country, a common experience, a common humanity. His terror that the One Big Union that he loved so much (the United States) would be torn asunder by the Civil War led him to repeatedly champion the value of collective experience. Socialists reading Whitman’s references to the unity of Read more