File spoon-archives/anarchy-list.archive/anarchy-list_2001/anarchy-list.0105, message 10


Date: Tue, 01 May 2001 10:33:49 -0700
From: David Brown <recall-AT-eskimo.com>
Subject: Daily Crouch: 5/1 MOTHER JONES


web version in full, 97 (!) entries,
http://www.eskimo.com/~recall/bleed/0501.htm

Excerpts:

MAY DAY

MOTHER JONES
"I'm no lady, I'm a hell-raiser!" Labor agitator, radical.

WORLD LABOR DAY.

TRADITIONAL FERTILITY FESTIVAL.
Welcoming back the Spring.

Ancient Roman FLORALIA, Festival of the Goddess Floralia. Grand
processions in England including "Jack in the green," milkmaids,
Morris dancers, Robin Hood & his Merry Men.

SATIRE DAY.

Keep in mind this is:

Correct Posture Month, National Asparagus Month,
Good Carkeeping Month,
Better Sleep Month,
Fungal Infection Awareness Month,
Revise Your Work Schedule Month

First week is: National Bathroom Reading Week,
Carpet Care Improvement Week

Second week is:  International Online Romance Week
http://www.online-romance.com
Conserve Water/Detect-A-Leak  Week

Third week is: Raisin Week, Girls Incorporated Week

Fourth week is: International Pickle Week,
American Beer Week  (begins Last Sunday),  Poppy Week,

Important moveable holidays are: first Friday: International Tuba
Day; 2nd Wednesday, National Third-Shift Worker's Day; 3rd
Friday, National Defense Transportation Day;
Monday before Ascension, Pacing the Bounds (Switzerland)

Important Indeterminate Holidays: Late May, Hot Penny Toss Day
(Rye, Sussex, UK)

MAY DAY! MAY DAY! MAY DAY!

Hundreds of thousands of American workers, increasingly
determined to resist subjugation to capitalist power,
poured into a fledgling labor organization, the
Knights of Labor.

Beginning on May 1, 1886, they took to the streets to demand
universal adoption of the 8-hour day. Chicago was the center of
the movement. Workers there had been agitating for an 8-hour
day for months, & on the eve of May 1, 50,000  were already
on strike. 30,000 more swelled their ranks the next day,
bringing most of Chicago manufacturing to a standstill.

Fears of violent class conflict gripped the city. No violence
occurred on May 1 -- a Saturday -- or May 2. But on Monday,
May 3, a fight involving hundreds broke out at McCormick
Reaper between locked-out unionists & non-unionist workers
McCormick hired to replace them. The Chicago police,
swollen in number & heavily armed, quickly moved in with
clubs & guns to restore order. They left four
unionists dead &many others wounded.

 Angered by the deadly force of the police, a group of
anarchists, led by August Spies & Albert Parsons, called on
workers to arm themselves & participate in a massive protest
demonstration in Haymarket Square on Tuesday evening, May 4.
The demonstration appeared to be a complete bust, with only
3,000 assembling. But near the end of the evening, an individual,
whose identity is still in dispute (possibly a police agent
provocateur), threw a bomb that killed seven police &
injured 67 others.

Hysterical city & state government officials rounded up eight
anarchists, tried them for murder, & sentenced them to death.

 On 11 November 1887, four, including Parsons & Spies, were
executed. All of the executed advocated armed struggle & violence
as revolutionary methods, but their prosecutors found no evidence
that any had actually thrown the Haymarket bomb. They died
for their words --  not their deeds.

250,000 people lined Chicago's street during Parson's funeral
procession to express their outrage at this gross miscarriage of
justice.

For radicals & trade unionists everywhere, Haymarket became a
symbol of the stark inequality & injustice of capitalist society.
The May 1886 Chicago events figured prominently in the decision
of the founding congress of the Second International (Paris, 1889)
to make May 1, 1890 a demonstration of the solidarity & power
of the international working class movement. May Day has been a
celebration ever since.
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/5202/GenStrike.htm
http://www.accessweb.com/mayday/links.html

1380 - Cecilia Chaumpaigne, a baker's daughter, releases Geoffrey
Chaucer from the charges ("de raptu, meo") she had brought
against him.  http://www.luminarium.org/medlit/chaucer.htm

1543 - Copernicus circulates "The Little Commentary," showing the
heliocentricity of the Solar System.  Churches & people react
rather badly to the notion that Mankind is not the center of the
Universe. 455 years latter, many (especially (F)redites) still do.

1654 - "Under penalty of death, no Irish man, woman, or child, is
to let himself, herself, itself be found east of the River Shannon."
An Order from the Parliament of England.

1672 - Joseph Addison--essayist, poet, statesman, & contributor
to The Tatler and The Spectator--lives, England.

1700 - John Dryden, poet (All for Love: or The World Well Lost),
dies in London.

1776 - Order of the Illuminati founded in Germany by Adam
Weishaupt.

1812 - England: James Brook arrested for trying to destroy
Cartwight's Mill.

1830 - Mother Jones (born Mary Harris) lives, Cork, Ireland.
Irish- American anti-war activist & labor radical.

Mary Harris "Mother" Jones was born in the year 1830.
The renowned Labor organizer, who lived to be
100-years old, said:

  "I live in the United States, but I do not know exactly
  where. My address is wherever there is a fight against
  oppression. My address is like my shoes; it travels
  with me. I abide where there is
  a fight against wrong."

1838 - Louis Champalle lives. French anarchist, weaver in Lyon
where he was arrested November 19, 1882 for agitating during
Montceau-les-Mines events & sent to prison for six months in the
repressive trial of January 1883 ("Procès des 66"). Joined the
"Le réveil de la Croix-Rousse" in Lyon in 1892.
http://perso.club-internet.fr/ytak/mai1.html#1

1857 - Too Many Conquerors in the Kitchen?: William Walker,
conqueror of Nicaragua, surrenders to U.S. Navy.

1866 - US: Beginning this day for three days, white Democrats &
police attack freedmen & white allies in Memphis; 48 are killed.

1875 - Government Grant?: The “St. Louis Democrat” exposes the
“"Whiskey Ring"“ -- a conspiracy of distillery owners & federal
officials, including Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader President
Ulysses S. Grant's private secretary, to withhold liquor taxes
from the government. Grant used his influence to save his secretary
from conviction.  In all, 238 persons were indicted -- charged with
defrauding the Treasury.

1881 - Mystical Christian evolutionist Teilhard De Chardin lives,
Auvergne, France.

1884 - Moses Walker became first black player in the major
league.

Hazardous duty?:  In 1887, on July 14, the “"Father of Apartheid
Baseball,"“ Adrian "Cap" Anson threatened Newark officials to
bench Walker or forfeit the game. It was here Anson shouted his
infamous remark, "Get that nigger off the field, there’s a law
against that!"

Anson, an excellent player & future Hall of Famer, had clout on &
off the field. The ban began.

Soon after league officials of the American Association & the
National League announced teams would not be allowed to hire
black players in the future, because of the "hazards" black players
imposed.

1884 - Eugène Dieudonne lives (1884-1944), Nancy. French
individualist, illegalist anarchist & member of the Bonnot Gang.
http://perso.club-internet.fr/ytak/mai1.html#1

1886 - First nationwide General Strike for 8-hour day,
commemorated in 1889 as the first International Labor Day.
340,000 U.S. workers in Chicago, Milwaukee & other cities
strike. Four demonstrators are killed & over 200 wounded
when police attack the Chicago rally.

International Workers' Day (May Day) begins in Chicago. 340,000
U.S. workers in Chicago, Milwaukee & other cities strike for the
8-hour workday. Four demonstrators are killed & over 200
wounded when police attack the Chicago rally. U.S. later sets
another day as Labor Day to undercut world solidarity.
http://www.dnai.com/~figgins/generalstrike/index.html

1890 - American utopianist Albert Brisbane dies, Richmond,
Virginia.

1890 - May Day labor demonstrations spread to 13 other
countries;

30,000 march in Chicago as the newly prominent American
Federation of Labor throws its weight behind the 8-hour day
campaign.

1891 - France: Army test their newly designed Lebels machine gun
against a peaceful May Day rally at Fourmies where women &
children were carrying flowers & palms. Casualties numbered 14
dead & 40 wounded. The anarchist Ravachol bombed the Lobau
Barracks in Paris in March 1892 as retribution.

Each footstep taken in this society bristles with privileges, &
is marked with a bloodstain; each turn of the government
machinery grinds the tumbling, gasping flesh of the poor; &
tears are running from everywhere in the impenetrable night
of suffering. Facing these endless murders & continuous
tortures, what's the meaning of society, this crumbling wall,
this collapsing staircase? ...

No cry is heeded: whenever a single, louder complaint penetrates
the din of sad murmurs, the Lebels is loaded & the troops are
mobilized.

     — Octave Mirbeau, “Ravachol”
        http://burn.ucsd.edu/~mai/TEXT/mirbeau_ravachol.html

1893 - World's Columbian exposition opens in Chicago, Jane
Addam's purse snatched at opening ceremonies.

1898 - George Dewey commands, "You may fire when you
are ready, Gridley."

1900 - Flunk the test?: Poet Wallace Stevens, drunk at a dinner for
the Harvard junior class, recites his class ode & passes out.
http://www.uwm.edu/People/kater/

1906 - Twelve hundred members of the Iron Molders Union in
Milwaukee strike for shorter hours & a pay increase. After two
years, the strike ends in defeat.

One employer, Allis-Chalmers, will spend 21,700 dollars for the
Burr-Herr Detective Agency. What did the company get for its
money? The union reports more than 200 assaults on its members,
including union leader Peter Cramer, whose injuries kill him.
Another unionist, planted outside Burr-Herr, testifies the agency
offered him 10 dollars for each striker he beat up.

The employers also obtain court orders against picketing. The
union appealed the injunctions & won. By that time, however,
the strike was already lost.

1907 - France: During a demonstration in Paris Jacob Law, a
Russian anarchist (born in Balta in 1887), puts five bullets
into a bus returning to an Imperial battleship. He was sent to
prison in Guyana, until released May 10, 1924. A lifelong
anarchist, his memoirs, “Dix-huit ans de bagne” appeared 1926.
http://perso.club-internet.fr/ytak/mai1.html#1

1911 - Beginning of the End?: US: Election of Socialist
governments in over 20 U.S. cities (plus Eugene Debs
gets 900,000 votes for President).

1911 - Chinese Revolution -- Sun Yat-sen becomes first president.

1916 - Chicago Herald becomes first newspaper to call the new
music "Jazz."

1923 - Joseph Heller lives. American writer, gained world fame
with his satirical war novel “Catch-22”:  to fly dangerous combat
missions is insane, but if airmen seek to be relieved for mental
reasons, the request proves their sanity.
http://www.levity.com/corduroy/heller.htm
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/heller.htm

1924 - Terry Southern lives. American novelist/screenwriter,
attacked Hollywood's film industry, drugs, tv-shows, religion,
clichés of pornography, "dreamgirls" etc. His works aroused
critical debates, been labeled pornography or just plain sick.
Most notable screenplay was “Dr. Strangelove”.

1926 - Baseball great, Satchel Paige, makes pitching debut in
Negro Southern League.

1929 - Liberal Book Friends (GfB) begins publishing the free
monthly illustrated review 'Meditation & Departure'. Nice
mix of anarchist & contemporary & critical art-related materials.
Included Max Baginski, Karl Roche, Erich Muhsam, Fritz Linow,
Arthur Lehning, Rudolf Rocker among many others. Each issue
included a booklet by some anarchist or sympathetic author
(Emma Goldman & Theodor Plievier, for example).
http://www.free.de/dada/ask51121.htm
http://www.free.de/dada/ask5rz06.htm

1933 - Christian anarchist "Catholic Worker" founded, New York
City.
Dorothy Day & Peter Maurin, anarchist-Catholics (!), publish
first issue of their long-running newspaper.
http://www.catholicworker.org/

1946 - Australia: Beginning of the Pilbara Strike, the first
industrial strike by Aboriginal people in Australian history.

1948 - Glenn Taylor, Idaho Senator, arrested in Birmingham,
Alabama for trying to enter a meeting through a door marked
"for Negroes".

1950 - General strike against South African repression.

1958 - Crew of protest ship "Golden Rule" is arrested by U.S.
Navy in nuclear test zone, South Pacific.

1965 - Wales: Second Factory for Peace opens, Onllwyn, Dulais
Valley.

1966 - 500,000 Vietnamese march for end of war.

1968 - France: During the traditional May Day demonstrations
fights break out around a black flag as Communists try to
exclude the anarchists from the procession.

1969 - US: 169 are convicted of trespass in the aftermath of a
student occupation at Harvard University. Cambridge,
Massachusetts.

1970 - US: ROTC (Reserve Officer Training Corp) building
ransacked, College Park, Washington D.C. During this first
week of May 30 ROTC buildings are burned or bombed, &
the National Guard are teaching students a thing or two on 21
campuses in 16 states.

1970 - US: In New Haven, new protests over the pending trial of
Seale & Ericka Huggins, today & tomorrow, when 20,000
demonstrators show up.

1971 - US: Beginning of five days of anti-war May Day protests in
Washington, D.C., resulting in over 14,000 arrests--the largest
mass civil disobedience in U.S. history.

1971 - US: Anti-Vietnam War protesters attempt to blockade
government for a day;  5,000 District police, 1,500 National
Guard & 8,000 Federal troops start rounding people up:
7,000 arrested [another source: "20,000 National Guard &
police, 10,000 paratroopers"]. BleedMeister, then Midwest
Field Secretary for the US Student Press Association &
reporter for College Press Service, is there. By May 5 a
total of 12,614 are arrested (record).

1972 - Quang Tri captured by North Vietnam. The number of U.S.
troops has been reduced to 69,000. Beloved & Respected Comrade
Leader President Dick M "I Have a Plan" Nixon orders the mining
of ports in North Vietnam.

1977 - The Clash start their first tour of the U.K. with a May
Day celebration at the Roxy in London. The 40 day White Riot
Tour brings a show to London's Rainbow Theater. The audience
gets wild, ripping out seats bolted to the floor to make room for
dancing. The news media sees it as a fulfillment of the tour's billing
& describe the incident as a "riot."

1977 - US: 24-hour occupation of Seabrook (NH) nuclear power site
results in 1,415 arrests. The action, sponsored by Clamshell
Alliance, becomes a model for anti-nuclear direct actions across
the country.

1977 - Turkey: State-sponsored paramilitary groups open fire on
tens of thousands of  May Day demonstrators in Istanbul, killing 37.

1978 - Sylvia Townsend Warner dies. Originally intended a career
as a musicologist-- accomplished as an editor to the 10-volume Tudor
Church Music & contributor to Grove's Dictionary of Music.  Her
first novel, “Lolly Willowes”, was the first selection of the
Book-of-the-Month Club.

1982 - England: Day of resistance & protest against Falklands
War.

1985 - US: Ronnie Reagan declares trade embargo against
Nicaragua. So much for rightwing touting of "free trade".

1986 - 1.5 million take part in South African general strike.
http://www.dnai.com/~figgins/generalstrike/index.html
http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/history/

1992 - US: Two days of rioting in the aftermath of the Rodney
King police brutality trial leaves 38 dead, 1500 injured & a half a
billion dollars in property damage, in Los Angeles.  Preparations
made for military occupation.

1993 - Ecuador: Marchers in Quito protest "disappeared people".

1995 - Recollection Used Books opens it doors. AuntieDave buys
100 books, sells one. The mood is set. Only used bookstore in the
world with a beat up cat for it's logo & no cats -- just four dogs
in-house.

1996 - Chicken or the Egg?: Board of Directors meeting of British
Aerospace, sellers of the Hawk jet fighter to Indonesia for its
illegal occupation of East Timor, is interrupted by protesters
pelting them with eggs.
http://www.disinfo.com/ci/humrts/ci_humrts_timor.html

1996 - Germany: Riots with Berlin police erupt after two separate

May Day marches, one of 20,000 workers protesting government
social spending cuts & one of 10,000 "radical leftists" protesting
anti-squatting raids. Ten police are injured.

1996 - Turkey: Three killed & 69 injured when Turkish police
attack banned leftist demonstrators in a 100,000 person May Day
rally. Istanbul.

1997 - Russia: Victor Serge Public Library in Moscow opens. The
first & only Russian library to take up the task of acquainting
the Russian public with scholarly and political literature of a left-
wing (anti-capitalist & anti-bureaucratic) orientation. In
addition to lending books, the Library is used for discussions.
http://users.skynet.be/johneden/foundatn/library.htm

1998 - Denmark: Strike wave continues. The May Day rally in
Copenhagen was a massive event which marked day 5 of the all-out
strike by 500,000 private sector workers demanding a week extra
holidays & the 35 hour week amongst other demands. Between 350 &
500,000 workers participated in the rally.

1999 - US: Rally to Save Ancient Forests in Eugene, Oregon as
logging season begins today.

Ancient forest campaigners in Western Oregon marked one year of
continuous occupation of a contested timber sale near Eugene on
April 19th.

1999 - US: Million March for Hemp, Seattle, Washington.

1999 - US: Nummer One Son concludes his first season of  bowling,
Seattle, Washington.

Wins numerous Youth League awards. His Travel team earns second
place & he wins Greater Seattle King of the Hill match November
1998, about a month after he first picked up a bowling ball.
Awarded for the highest scratch game of the season, with a high score of

174. Finishes the Travel League season with a 115 average &
regular League a little below that.

1999 -- >Happy anniversary to Recollection Books & congratulations
to Nummer 1 son  Brandon.

>28 yrs ago tonite I was in a may-day detention camp in
Washington, D.C.

   So you were on the outside of the Redskins football field
(named after Bobby Kennedy, I believe) those long 28 years
ago. Michael & I, east coast correspondents for the National
Catholic Reporter, were among the first arrested that morning
on the streets & on first busload of prisoners taken to
the field. It didn't matter that we had press credentials

--- Bleedster Ruth


Like desert flowers we learned to crouch near the earth,
fearful that we would die before the rains, cunning,
waiting the season of good growth.

    ---Meridel LeSueur
         http://www.trussel.com/hf/mayday51.htm


Anti-CopyRite 2001





   

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