Today in Labor History March 3, 1873: U.S. Congress enacted the Comstock Law, making it illegal to send any "obscene literature and articles of immoral use" through the mail. This included any literature discussing birth control. The authorities imprisoned many birth control and free love advocates for violating the law, including Emma Goldman and Margaret Sanger.
Today in Labor History February 7, 1917: A court wrongly convicted labor organizer Tom Mooney for the San Francisco Preparedness Day bombing in July 1916. The governor finally granted him an unconditional pardon after 22.5 years of incarceration. 10 people died in the bombing and 40 were injured. A jury convicted two labor leaders, Thomas Mooney and Warren Billings, based on false testimony. Both were pardoned in 1939. Not surprisingly, only anarchists were suspected in the bombing. A few days after the bombing, they searched and seized materials from the offices of “The Blast,” Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman’s local paper. They also threatened to arrest Berkman.
In 1931, while they were still in prison, I. J. Golden persuaded the Provincetown Theater to produce his play, “Precedent,” about the Mooney and Billings case. Brooks Atkinson of the New York Times wrote, “By sparing the heroics and confining himself chiefly to a temperate exposition of his case [Golden] has made “Precedent” the most engrossing political drama since the Sacco-Vanzetti play entitled Gods of the Lightening… Friends of Tom Mooney will rejoice to have his case told so crisply and vividly.”
Today in Labor History January 11, 1911: Leonard Abbott, Alexander Berkman, Emma Goldman opened the first American Modern School in New York City. They modeled it after the Modern Schools that anarchist Francisco Ferrer had created in Spain. 1909, Ferrer was wrongfully convicted of fomenting an insurrection. He was executed in 1909, leading to worldwide protest. The creators of the American Modern Schools designed them to counter the discipline, formality and regimentation of traditional American schools. Regular working people ran the schools for the children of workers. They sought to abolish all forms of authority, including educational, with the goal of creating a society based on free association and free thought. By the time of the World War I in 1914, Modern Schools were operating in Philadelphia, Detroit, New York, Seattle, Portland, Chicago and Salt Lake City, with more soon to follow in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston and Paterson. They taught classes in English, Yiddish, Czech, Italian and Spanish. Some of the students at the original New York Modern School were visual artist Man Ray and early birth control advocate Margaret Sanger’s son. Organizers of the Modern Schools believed that learning was a life-long process that never ended. Therefore, parents were encouraged to participate in the operation of the schools and to attend evening and weekend lectures. Some of the speakers at these lectures included Clarence Darrow, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Jack London, Upton Sinclair, and Man Ray. The schools also served as cultural centers for the promotion of unionism, free speech, sexual liberation, and anti-militarism. The last Modern School in America was in Lakewood, New Jersey. It operated from 1933 to 1958. Two of its last students were the sons of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg who were accused of giving secrets of the atomic bomb to the Soviets.
Today in Labor History January 7, 1939: The authorities finally freed Tom Mooney, a labor activist who they wrongly convicted of murder in the San Francisco Preparedness Day bombing in July 1916. The governor granted him an unconditional pardon after 22.5 years of incarceration. As a result of the bombing, 10 people died and 40 were injured. Not surprisingly, only anarchists were suspected in the bombing. A few days after the bombing, they searched and seized materials from the offices of “The Blast,” Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman’s local paper.
emma goldman told us all 100 years ago that suffrage was a distraction because the real problem with the oppressive systems we live under is not just that more of us don't get to participate in them and profit from them and that's why they teach us about susan b anthony instead
Today in Labor History November 17, 1942: Ben Reitman, hobo organizer, anarchist and one-time lover of Emma Goldman, died. Reitman served as a doctor for hobos, prostitutes and the downtrodden. He participated in numerous free speech fights and anarchist causes, getting beaten, tarred and feathered, jailed, and run out of town for his troubles, most notably during the San Diego free speech fight. He also wrote the book, “Boxcar Bertha.”
Today in Labor History October 17, 1939: Warren Billings, labor activist, and falsely imprisoned for the San Francisco Preparedness Day bombing, was finally released from Folsom Prison. trumped up charges stemming from the San Francisco Preparedness Day parade bombing in 1916. As a result of the bombing, 10 people died and 40 were injured. Not surprisingly, only anarchists were suspected in the bombing. A few days after the bombing, they searched and seized materials from the offices of “The Blast,” Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman’s local paper. Billings and his codefendant Tom Mooney were wrongly convicted. They served 23 years in prison and were released in 1939. Governor Edmund G. Brown pardoned them in 1961.
Today In Labor History September 29, 1921: Lithuanian anarchist revolutionary Fanya Baron was executed by the Cheka on the personal order of Lenin. Baron spent her early life participating in the Chicago workers' movement and IWW. After the Russian Revolution in 1917, she moved to Ukraine and joined the Makhnovist movement. She was arrested and imprisoned by the Cheka. On July 1, 1921, she broke out of prison with the help of the Underground Anarchists and went to Moscow, where she was discovered and aided by Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman. However, on August 17, 1921, she was discovered and arrested again by the Cheka, and ultimately executed.
“What will you do with the lazy ones, who would not work?'
No one is lazy. They grow hopeless from the misery of their present existence, and give up. Under our order of things, every men would do the work he liked, and would have as much as his neighbor, so could not be unhappy and discouraged.”
― Emma Goldman #Anarchism#Freedom#EmmaGoldman#FuckCapitalism#CapitalismKills
Today in Labor History July 22, 1916: Someone set off a bomb during the pro-war “Preparedness Day” parade in San Francisco. As a result, 10 people died and 40 were injured. A jury convicted two labor leaders, Thomas Mooney and Warren Billings, based on false testimony. Both were pardoned in 1939. Not surprisingly, only anarchists were suspected in the bombing. A few days after the bombing, they searched and seized materials from the offices of “The Blast,” Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman’s local paper. They also threatened to arrest Berkman.
In 1931, while they were still in prison, I. J. Golden persuaded the Provincetown Theater to produce his play, “Precedent,” about the Mooney and Billings case. Brooks Atkinson of the New York Times wrote, "By sparing the heroics and confining himself chiefly to a temperate exposition of his case [Golden] has made “Precedent” the most engrossing political drama since the Sacco-Vanzetti play entitled Gods of the Lightening... Friends of Tom Mooney will rejoice to have his case told so crisply and vividly."
Today in Labor History July 22, 1892: Anarchist Alexander Berkman tried to assassinate industrialist Henry Clay Frick in retaliation for the 9 miners killed by Pinkerton thugs on July 6, during the Homestead Steel Strike. Frick was the manager of Homestead Steel and had hired the Pinkertons to protect the factory and the scab workers he hired to replace those who were on strike. Berkman, and his lover, Emma Goldman, planned the assassination hoping it would arouse the working class to rise up and overthrow capitalism. Berkman failed in the assassination attempt and went to prison for 14 years. He wrote a book about his experience called, “Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist” (1912). He also wrote “The Bolshevik Myth” (1925) and “The ABC of Communist Anarchism” (1929).
Today in Labor History July 18, 1934: “The American Mercury” accepted Emma Goldman's article, "Communism: Bolshevist & Anarchist, A Comparison.” However, it was not until a year later that it was published, in a truncated form, as "There is No Communism in Russia."
Goldman had been deported by the U.S. in 1919, during the Palmer raids, and sent to Russia, where she lived with her comrade, Alexander Berkman, for several years. She was initially supportive of the Bolsheviks, until Trotsky brutally crushed the Kronstadt rebellion, in 1921, slaughtering over 1,000 sailors and then executing over a thousand more. After this, she left the USSR and, in 1923, published a book about her experiences, “My Disillusionment in Russia.”
H.L. Menken founded “The American Mercury,” in 1924, and published radical writers throughout the 1920s and ‘30s. A change of ownership in the 1940s led to a shift to the far right, including virulently antisemitic articles.
Once called “The Most Dangerous Woman in America” due to her activism and writing , influential #Anarchist and #Feminist Emma Goldman was born on this day June 27, 154 years ago.
Today in Labor History June 15, 1917: President Woodrow Wilson signed the Espionage Act into law. The law targeted leftist, anti-war and labor organizations, especially the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), which was virtually destroyed because of the arrests and deportations of its members. When Eugene Debs spoke against the draft in Canton, Ohio, he was arrested and sentenced to 10 years in prison. He ran for president from prison in 1920, winning nearly 1 million votes (3.4% of the total). The government used the law to arrest anarchists Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman and deport them to the Soviet Union. They used the law against the Rosenbergs, whom they executed. They also used it against Daniel Ellsberg, whose “Pentagon Papers” were published by the NY Times 50 years ago this week. The Espionage Act is still on the books and was used recently to prosecute Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden.
Today in labor history April 30 1886: 50,000 workers in Chicago were on strike. 30,000 more joined in the next day. The strike halted most of Chicago’s manufacturing. On May 3rd, the Chicago cops killed four unionists. Activists organized a mass public meeting and demonstration in Haymarket Square on May 4. During the meeting, somebody threw a bomb at the cops. The explosion and subsequent gunfire killed seven cops and four civilians. Nobody ever identified the bomber. None of the killer cops was charged. However, the authorities started arresting anarchists throughout Chicago.
Ultimately, they tried and convicted eight anarchist leaders in a kangaroo court. The men were: August Spies, Albert Parsons, Adolph Fisher, George Engel, Louis Lingg, Michael Schwab, Samuel Felden and Oscar Neebe. Only two of the men were even present when the bomb was thrown. The court convicted seven of murder and sentenced them to death. Neebe was give fifteen years. Parson’s brother testified at the trial that the real bomb thrower was a Pinkerton agent provocateur. This was entirely consistent with the Pinkertons modus operandi. They used the agent provocateur, James McParland, to entrap and convict the Molly Maguires. As a result, twenty of them were hanged and the Pennsylvania mining union was crushed. McParland also tried to entrap WFM leader, Big Bill Haywood, for the murder of Idaho Governor Frank Steunenberg. Steunenberg had crushed the WFM strike in 1899, the same one in which the WFM had blown up a colliery. However, Haywood had Clarence Darrow representing him. And Darrow proved his innocence.
On November 11, 1887, they executed Spies, Parson, Fisher and Engel. They sang the Marseillaise, the revolutionary anthem, as they marched to the gallows. The authorities arrested family members who attempted to see them one last time. This included Parson’s wife, Lucy, who was also a significant anarchist organizer and orator. In 1905, she helped cofound the IWW. Moments before he died, Spies shouted, "The time will come when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today." And Engel and Fischer called out, "Hurrah for anarchism!" Parsons tried to speak, but was cut off by the trap door opening beneath him.
Workers throughout the world protested the trial, conviction and executions. Prominent people spoke out against it, includin Clarence Darrow, Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, and William Morris. The Haymarket Affair inspired thousands to join the anarchist movement, including Emma Goldman. And it is the inspiration for International Workers’ Day, which is celebrated on May 1st in nearly every country in the world except the U.S.
"Order derived through submission and maintained by terror is not much of a safe guaranty; yet that is the only "order" that governments have ever maintained. True social harmony grows naturally out of solidarity of interests. In a society where those who always work never have anything, while those who never work enjoy everything, solidarity of interests is non-existent; hence social harmony is but a myth... Thus the entire arsenal of governments - laws, police, soldiers, the courts, legislatures, prisons - is strenuously engaged in "harmonizing" the most antagonistic elements in society." - Emma Goldman
Born, raised, lived in California over 50 years. I am leftist politically, Vegan because I feel it is wrong for me to exist by the harming of other sentient beings (positive side effect, a smaller carbon & water footprint). I am demisexual & dislike sexual references I filter NSFW, Kink & Lewd + (if I understand them). I read a lot & play board & table top roleplaying games. I am ASD, physical & mental health issues. Apatheist/Taoist, cPTSD
Added: I do not identify as transgender because in my life my gender has never changed, only my sex has changed. I was a girl when I was little and became a woman upon turning 18. I was forced to pretend to be male by society but I never have been.
“I want freedom, the right to self-expression, everybody's right to beautiful, radiant things.' Anarchism meant that to me, and I would live it in spite of the whole world — prisons, persecution, everything. Yes, even in spite of the condemnation of my own closest comrades I would live my beautiful ideal.” ― Emma Goldman, Living My Life
"I was sure that no one, be it individual or government, engaged in enslaving and exploiting at home, could have the integrity or the desire to free people in other lands" - Emma Goldman, Living My Life
"For the government to attempt to control thought, to prescribe certain opinions or proscribe others, is the height of despotism." - Alexander Berkman
“I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better.” - Maya Angelou
"When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time." - Maya Angelou