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I first met Howard Williams in early 1998 when he and a group of San Francisco bike messengers showed up at our International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) headquarters on 1188 Franklin Street. He and his comrades were members of the SF Bike Messengers Association and they wanted to join the ILWU. We told them that we would gladly affiliate the SFBMA and give them office space in our warehouse Local 6 on 9th street. But we all committed to working together to win bargaining rights for messengers – bikes, cars and walkers – in the Bay Area. Howard worked tirelessly with us to organize, and we were successfull in bringing two companies under contract: Pro Messenger and Ultra Ex. The collaboration between ILWU and the messengers also resulted in a “peace” agreement between Muni drivers of the TWU and the bikes which deescalated potential deadly clashes between the two groups. Many messengers think that the ILWU presence added a modicum of self respect and self worth that reduced rampant substance abuse in the bike community.

Howard remains an avid supporter of the ILWU and a striking figure on a bike with his distinctive head gear, beard and lanky physique. He is still a working messenger. He is also a thinker about many topics: politics, religion and philosophy. We are proud to run his essay on Eric Hoffer another ILWU member who had a lot to say about a lot of things. This article originally appeared in the June, 2019 issue of The Dispatcher, the newspaper of the ILWU.

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This year marks the 60th anniversary of the writing of Working and Thinking on the Waterfront by Eric Hoffer (1898-1983), an author and active member of International Longshore & Warehouse Union Local 10 from 1943 until his retirement in 1964. Working and Thinking was the result of a journal Hoffer kept from June 1, 1958 to May 21, 1959. In his observations, Hoffer commented on a variety of personal matters and public issues, including the manner of social change. His statements that “Drastic change juvenilizes” and can even cause “dehumanization” may help explain Internet trolls, social media mobs and the polarization that now afflicts American politics and journalism. His 1958 claim that “If an American businessman had displayed a fraction of such megalomania [of foreign tyrants] he would have been made the laughingstock of the world” leaps off the page when we consider that such a businessman now occupies the White House.

Unfortunately, Hoffer’s insights into social change are limited to analysis of change in general. Nowhere in Working and Thinking does he mention the approaching containerization that would soon haunt the futures of longshore workers.    

Hoffer was a working-class philosopher. Among ourselves, working people have always discussed issues of the day or of eternity with perspectives and insights unfamiliar to many professional scholars. Our wisdom rarely breaks out of our ranks. In addition to having limited time to write or otherwise express our experiential wisdom, we face prejudices from publishers and other cultural gatekeepers who often stereotype us. Hoffer was one exception who managed to break into the wider culture with The True Believer, his 1951 study of fanaticism. This book launched Hoffer on a successful career as an author. He wrote nine more books along with magazine articles and a syndicated newspaper column. Yet unlike most successful working-class writers and artists he never quit his “day job.” Indeed, in Working and Thinking, he credited his longshore work as an assistance to his creativity. And he used the flexible schedule made possible by the hiring hall to gain chances to write that workers in other trades did not have.

His statements about working people stand as vigorous assertions about our deeds and dignity. To Hoffer, “Honor Labor” was more than a slogan. It was an integral part of his artistic expression and daily life. In these times, media portrayals of working people are relatively few and rarely done with awareness or solidarity. Most newspapers and magazines no longer even print once obligatory Labor Day articles about working people and our unions. In contrast to today’s neglect of workers (especially those who do physical labor), Hoffer’s words from the past are a timeless affirmation of the inherent dignity of labor and a repudiation of postmodern corporate so-called values. Hoffer believes that in general, “common people have a better opinion of mankind than do the educated” and expresses “confidence in the competence of the run-of-the-mill American” while crediting “the masses” with the building of America. Much of this confidence comes from his experience in union meetings. And on the waterfront, he experiences “a strong feeling of belonging.”  Hoffer does not over romanticize workers, either as individual persons or as a class; he finds shortcomings including some among himself and his colleagues.

The waterfront and America have changed much since the late 1950s. Rather than looking back nostalgically or endorsing all change uncritically, we might read Hoffer for what we can regain in order to face opposition to our basic rights as workers and as people.

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