I was a pre-teen Wobbly

“Your assignment about the American labor movement will be a group project,” Mrs. Gruber said. “I have assigned each of you a partner.” She distributed names secretly to each of us.

I could see kids faces lighting up, kids who had been assigned partners they liked, kids who thought that they could work well with the other person. It looked like Mrs. Gruber had put some thought into this.

I looked at the name she gave me. “David Cooper.” I almost screamed, and I would have except that I didn’t want to be embarrassed in front of the class.

I looked over, and there was David Cooper looking at me with his usual grin, not a grin really, sort of a sneer. He looked like I’d been handed to him for lunch.

I went right up to Mrs. Gruber after class. “Mrs. Gruber, I can’t work with David Cooper.”

“It’s not about can. You have to.”

“He bullies me every day. He hits and kicks me when teachers aren’t looking. He smacks my books to the floor when we pass each other in the hall. Working with him put him in striking distance.”

“He won’t do that because it will affect the quality of the project. Do you think he wants a bad grade?”

“I think that grades don’t mean anything to him. He enjoys hitting me more than anything you can do for him.”

I think that was where I went wrong. I had belittled the power of grading. “You can’t change. If I change you, then I’d have to change someone else, and no one else has asked to change. Stop complaining and do your work.”

David Cooper was waiting for me outside the classroom. “You asked to change,” he said. “You don’t like me, do you?” He slammed me in the stomach. “Start liking me better, douche bag.” No one saw him do it—we were late for class and the hallways were empty. I struggled to my next class and got an after-school detention for being late. David Cooper either didn’t get one or didn’t bother to show up for it.

The next day in Mrs. Gruber’s class, David Cooper and I pushed our desks together, just like all the other kids. He made sure to catch my fingers between the desks and I couldn’t help screaming. Mrs. Gruber told me to stop making a disturbance.

“Look,” I said. “This can work. You can do the part about famous labor leaders while I do the part about—”

“Don’t be an asshole,” David Cooper said. “I’m not doing shit. I know you’re a grade grubber and a kiss-ass. Do everything or get a bad grade. And if we get a bad grade, I’m going to beat the snot out of you, so don’t get one.”

“Where’s your self-esteem?” I tried desperately. “I’m sure you could make this project better than I can make it alone.”

He handed me an invisible dime. “Call someone who cares. Now get working.”

I got working—not working bored me and was too risky. David Cooper watched me like a vulture. If I wasn’t reading or writing, he hit me. Of course, he hit me when I was reading and writing, too, but not as frequently. He wanted the best grade I could produce, at no cost to himself. Even I had to wonder who was the smart one on our team.

To make the work a little less miserable, I gave myself the task I had suggested to David Cooper. I read about the personalities of the American labor movement, with their fantastic nineteenth-century names like Uriah Smith Stephens and Samuel Gompers. I read about John L. Lewis and Eugene Debs. I pictured myself as a Knight of Labor or an industrial organizer.

I wandered out in the weeds and I found out about the “Wobblies” and Joe Hill. Most of what I learned about Joe Hill came from the song about him, and maybe that’s why he captured my imagination so completely. Here was a man who needlessly got himself executed to promote the workingman’s cause, but “takes more than guns to kill a man,” the song said.

What did that mean? I struggled with it a long time. Joe Hill died by firing squad, so he had to be dead. Little by little, I figured out that the song meant that he had ideas that couldn’t be killed. So, far, my own ideas were no match for David Cooper’s fists. It might be more interesting if David Cooper beat me for some idea instead of just playing the school game better than he did.

I wasn’t even sure that I was playing the school game better than he did. He got to do whatever he wanted, teachers seemed to like him, he was certainly more popular than me. All I got was high grades four times a year. It wasn’t like I had any fun doing it. It was just a job.

Just a job…I began to understand what the labor movement was all about. I did a bunch of work, but the pay was terrible. Homework, exams, projects, I did all the work and got nothing I wanted for it. This time I had fallen even farther. I was David Cooper’s slave, doing a bunch of work just to avoid a beating. Joe Hill didn’t care about a beating or even dying. I knew I had to do better.

David Cooper’s hand slapping the back of my head so that it hit the desk brought me back to reality. “Stop daydreaming and get to work,” he said.

“I wasn’t daydreaming. I was thinking. You should try it,” I said.

He grabbed my knee so hard I saw stars, but Mrs. Gruber didn’t notice. She was busy grading some other class’s work. I knew Joe Hill would shrug it off, or at least bear it in silence, so that’s what I did.

“You’re just scabbing for the man,” I said. David Cooper didn’t know what I meant, but he slugged me for it. I knew I was getting somewhere. Getting a beating is nothing. Getting beaten for an idea, that’s something.

Like an idiot, I said that to my mother when I got home that afternoon. She took an interest in my torn jacket and reminded me that I wouldn’t be getting a new one until the next school year. I explained that I was standing up for my rights and had to expect to get roughed up.

“Benjamin Upham Pinkman,” she said. (Yes, I have kind of a nineteenth-century name myself.) “You go to school to learn and achieve. Your rights are secondary. If someone is bullying you, we can fix it.”

I thought about all the times I had mentioned being bullied at school and what had come of it, which was nothing. David Cooper was just the latest in a long line of assholes who saw a way to get back at the school system by beating a small smart kid. But now I knew about Joe Hill, skinny, sickly, singing Joe Hill. You don’t have to be big to be tough.

“You can’t fix it. I have to do a group project with my bully, Mrs. Gruber says no exceptions, so forget it.”

“What? That’s going to affect your grade, isn’t it?”

“Probably. I’m not going to do the project just so David Cooper can get an A.”

My mother’s face froze. “Of course you will. If you get an A, it doesn’t matter what he gets. Virtue is its own reward.”

“Is exploitation a virtue? Is giving in a virtue?”

“There’s only one virtue in school, Benjamin, and that’s getting A’s through honest work. David Cooper may get an A, but not through virtue. Your A will be a virtue.”

“I’ve decided to take a job action. I’m not going to let my grade determine my path to freedom.”

“You’ll be free when you graduate and go to a fine university. You do your assigned work and stop focusing so much on yourself. Pinkmans are A students. End of story.”

Pinkmans have bought into a corrupt system for too long, I thought, but I just said, “Sure, Mom. Thanks for your support.”

The week dragged on. I no longer cared about my grade, Mrs. Gruber, or David Cooper. Let him hit me. I had a new hero. I read everything I could find about Joe Hill, including books I had to borrow from the county library system and newspaper articles on microfilm—that’s how things were before the internet. I worked really hard, covering my desk with books and papers so David Cooper figured I was getting him an A.

On Thursday, Mrs. Gruber said, “I know you’re almost finished with your projects, because you have to hand them in tomorrow, and you’ll fail if you don’t. But I’ll give you a choice. You can hand in a written report or do a presentation. If you do a presentation, both team members must speak.”

“We’re handing it in,” David Cooper said, leering meaningfully.

“Sure,” I said, then handed in a paper saying we were doing a presentation.

Most of the class handed in projects. They wanted to be finished, and they didn’t want to answer questions about their work. The few who did presentations started. Most of them acted out plays where workers argued with factory bosses. The workers always won. It didn’t seem too stressful until it came to our turn.

“We’re up,” I said.

David Cooper looked at me with death in his eyes. “You little shit, I told you we were handing our project in.”

“Change of plans. Say something.”

For a moment, I thought I had him, sending him up to the front fo the room knowing nothing about the labor movement. He was smarter than I thought.

“I’m not going to give a presentation,” he said. “I’ve been busting my tail all week while Benjamin rides his reputation doing nothing. Let him get up here and show you what he’s got. I’m not working so he can get an A.”

People always believe what they hear first. I decided to let them believe whatever they wanted, just like Joe Hill did. David Cooper smirked at me as he sat down and whispered, “After class, cocksucker.” I got up.

“You’ve just heard the usual bullshit from David Cooper.” The class gasped and Mrs. Gruber got ready to scream at me, but I wouldn’t stop. “All he’s done all week is threaten to beat the crap out of me if I didn’t get him an A while he did nothing. He’s just a company goon, a Pinkerton, threatening the working man who stands up for himself. I don’t blame him. He’s just trying to make a living in a corrupt system, like so many before him. If The boss rewards him for beating people up, and that’s what he’s good at, why shouldn’t he?”

Everyone looked confused except Mrs. Gruber, who screamed threats from her seat behind the desk. The kids heard me though—they heard me defending a kid who beat me down every day, saying he was right to do it. It didn’t make any sense.

“When I say that David Cooper is a company goon, what company am I talking about? I’m talking about the educational system. All we do is work, work, work, learning precious little. Our labor is alienated, handed in to the overseers like Mrs. Gruber. They don’t pay us a fair wage for these hours of our lives we’ll never get back. No—they pay us in scrip that we can’t even use to buy a sandwich. I mean grades. An A and a quarter will get you a pack of gum. We are not operating in a free market where we sell our labor to the highest bidder. It’s a monopoly where only Mrs. Gruber decides how much scrip to pass out.”

“It’s time for us to organize, to demand a fair compensation for our labor or go on strike. I’m going on strike, David Cooper and Mrs. Gruber be damned.”

I’d like to say that the class erupted in riotous embrace of my ideas. No way. They all just sat and stared at me like I was crazy. No one understood what I said. As usual, I outsmarted myself.

Mrs. Gruber gave me an F, David Cooper beat me until I shit myself, and my parents took everything out of my room except my clothes and school textbooks. It didn’t matter—I stopped doing any schoolwork that didn’t interest me and started studying Karl Marx on my own. I never again did anything because a teacher told me to. Joe Hill knew the truth: if you can take the punishment, you’re free.