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 devastated 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%). The government used the law to arrest anarchists Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman and depart 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 52 years ago. The Espionage Act is still on the books and was used recently to prosecute Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #espionageact #redscare #freespeech #anarchism #prison #policestate #repression #soviet #emmagoldman #rosenbergs #edwardsnowden #chelseamanning #eugenedebs #IWW #warcrimes #imperialism

Míting de Emma Goldman: El 4 de junio de 1937 se celebra en el Conway Hall de Londres (Inglaterra) un mitin de apoyo a la Revolución española organizado por la Unión Anarcosindicalista que tuvo que posponerse el 28 de mayo anterior. Intervinieron la militante anarcofeminista Emma Goldman y Fenner Brockway, del Independent Labour Party (ILP, Partido Laborista Independiente), que hablaron sobre las condiciones por las que pasaba la Revolución española, y Sonia Clements, periodista de Spain and the World , que habló a beneficio de la Unión Anarcos.

#EmmaGoldman #RevolucionEspañola #Anarcosindicalismo #MemoriaHistorica #ConwayHall

Today in Labor History June 2, 1919: Anarchist Galleanists carried out a series of 9 coordinated bombings across the Eastern United States. They damaged the homes of U.S. Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, as well as then Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Franklin D. Roosevelt. They also targeted a number of judges. None of the targeted men died, although a night watchman, a former editor of the Galleanist publication “Cronaca Sovversiva,” did accidentally get killed. The bombs were delivered in packages that included the following note: “War, Class war, and you were the first to wage it under the cover of the powerful institutions you call order, in the darkness of your laws. There will have to be bloodshed; we will not dodge; there will have to be murder: we will kill, because it is necessary; there will have to be destruction; we will destroy to rid the world of your tyrannical institutions.”

The response by Palmer included mass illegal search and seizures, unwarranted arrests and the deportation of several hundred suspected radicals and anarchists. He also carried the nationwide witch hunts known as the Palmer raids in November 1919 and January 1920, arresting 10,000 anarchists, communists, and labor leaders, imprisoning 3,500, and deporting 556, including Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), was founded in response to the raid, by IWW organizer Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Helen Keller, and others.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #anarchism #bombings #palmerraids #redscare #policebrutality #prison #deportations #fdr #union #communism #EmmaGoldman #alexanderberkman #elizabethgurleyflynn #HelenKeller #IWW #aclu #classwar

Homenaje a Emma Goldman: El 31 de mayo de 1940 se celebra en el Town Hall de Nueva York (Nueva York, EE.UU.) un homenaje póstumo en memoria de la destacada propagandista anarquista Emma Goldman, «la excepcional mujer de nuestro tiempo», fallecida el 14 de mayo anterior en Toronto (Ontario), Canadá. En el acto, presidido por Leonard D. Abbott, hablaron, entre otros, John Haynes Holmes, Roger Baldwin, Norman Thomas, Harry Weinberger, Rose Pesotta, Harry Kelly, Martín Gudell Petrowsky (guía y traductor de Goldman en su visita a la España revolucionaria), Rudolf Rocher y Eliot White. El acto fue amenizado por Clifford Demarest en el órgano.

#EmmaGoldman #Anarquismo #HistoriaAnarquista #MemoriaHistórica #MujeresLibres

Today in Labor History May 30, 1814: Russian anarchist militant and philosopher Mikhail Bakunin was born. In Paris, in the 1840’s, he met Marx and Proudhon, who were early influences on him. He was later expelled from France for opposing Russia’s occupation of Poland. In 1849, the authorities arrested him in Dresden for participating in the rebellions of 1848 & 1849. They deported him back to Russia, where the authorities imprisoned him and then exiled him to Siberia in 1857. During his imprisonment, he lost all his teeth due to scurvy. However, he eventually escaped and made it to England.

In 1868, he joined the International Working Men’s Association, leading the rapidly growing anarchist faction. He argued for federations of self-governing workplaces and communes to replace the state. This was in contrast to Marx, who argued for the state to help bring about socialism. However, he agreed with Marx’s class analysis. Nevertheless, in 1872, they expelled Bakunin from the International.

Bakunin died in 1876 in Bern, Switzerland. He influenced anarchist movements throughout the world, but especially in Italy and Spain. He also influenced the IWW, Noam Chomsky, Peter Kropotkin, Herbert Marcuse, and Emma Goldman. Chomsky wrote that Bakunin’s prediction that Marxist states would ultimately become dictatorships was "one of the few predictions in the social sciences that actually came true." Anarchist historian Paul Avrich wrote that Bakunin's life was full of paradoxes: "[He was] a nobleman who yearned for a peasant revolt, a libertarian with an urge to dominate others, an intellectual with a powerful anti-intellectual streak." And there were numerous examples of antisemitism in his writing, too.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #anarchism #Revolution #rebellion #bakunin #marx #chomsky #EmmaGoldman #prison #kropotkin #communism