sound familiar?

"Towns passed laws against their [International Workers of the World] speaking on street corners, and the word went out so that every loose Wobbly in five hundred miles grabbed the next freight, intent on climbing up on a soapbox long enough to get himself arrested. They jammed the hails, wore out the police, used up the city funds, and they kept on coming till the authorities buckled or they themselves were overwhelmed." -- Wallace Stegner, *The Preacher and the Slave*, page ix, 1950.