In the Stingaree they stand on their soapboxes and preach revolution: socialism, single tax, salvation, Christ and Marx running together in an uneasy blend to the winos, the workers, and the whores, in English, Mandarin, Spanish, Chinook, Creole. A better world to come, or a better world in this one, if you’ll convert, repent, organize, strike!
A fight’s been brewing for weeks, ever since the cops raided Wobbly Hall on Haymarket Day. The wobs won’t take that lying down, and the call’s gone out for bodies to swarm the city. Arrest one, arrest all, until the jails swell and burst, until the merchants throw up their hands and turn vigilante, until newspaper publishers drive their cars into protests, until the city forbids speaking on the street, until the governor sends a special investigator to try to corral the horsewhip boys back into line, until the cops burn down the Stingaree and drive speakers and listeners both out into the waste places. Or try to, anyway: block the roads, search the trains, drag the rivers, the Wobblies will slip in to organize.
But that’s all in the future. Now it’s just a tense, searing atmosphere that hangs over the neighborhood, hot and dry and dangerous as a Santa Ana wind. There’s nowhere to go and nothing to do but hunker down, cling tight to each other, and brace against the fires yet to come.