Interesting article, with a couple corrections.

As azisman has noted, "International" Workers of the World for the IWW is wrong, if all-too-commonly encountered. The whole raison d'etre of the IWW was to organize workers by industry (such as all construction workers at the same job site) instead of by craft (such as creating separate unions for plumbers, carpenters, electricians, etc.). That's why they named themselves the Industrial Workers of the World.

And since the IWW is still in existence, still organizing workplaces, very much alive in the state of Washington even, it'd be nice if bloggers & journalists got it right (so that folks who feel the need for a do-it-yourself union that won't back down when the going gets rough could look the union up in the phone book, fer crissake). I was myself one of the local Wobbly delegates in the '90s, edited the newsletter of the Seattle General Membership Branch, etc., till personal circumstances forced me to withdraw.

I can also add a bit to your account of the Fremont Lenin statue. The statue hails originally from Slovakia. A pal of mine, a journalist for a Bratislava newspaper, started writing me about the project long before the statue ever came to the states. It seems that a Seattle-area guy fell in love with a Slovak woman, and Slovak food and culture, and decided to create a Slovak restaurant in one of the suburbs. The statue was originally supposed to stand in front of the restaurant.

But when the would-be restauranteur died in a car crash before the restaurant could open, the statue went into limbo. At some point not long thereafter, it got "temporarily" erected in the Fremont neighborhood. For quite a while, the actual ownership of the statue was similarly in limbo, but I've never heard any authoritative account of how the issue was finally resolved. I assume, though, that some Fremont civic group bought the statue from the restauranteur's family, so that the Lenin can permanently remain in the neighborhood, just as the article asserts.