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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).

You can read my complete article on the Pinkertons here: https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2024/04/04/union-busting-by-the-pinkertons/

#workingclass #LaborHistory #anarchism #communism #alexanderberkman #prison #assassination #strike #steel #carnegie #massacre #emmagoldman #pinkertons #books #writing #author @bookstadon

To this day, Mexico honors Ricardo Flores Magon, and his brothers, who led the anarchist revolution in, and occupation of, Tijuana and other northern Baja California towns in 1911, during the early days of the Mexican Revolution.

Berlin has a Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz in the Mitte neighborhood. I spoke at a radio station there, about Food Not Bombs, back in the early 1990s. Germany has at least one street named after Emma Goldman.

There is a Kropotkinskaya metro station in Moscow & Mount Kropotkin in Antarctica. There are still numerous schools around the world named for Spanish anarchist educator Francisco Ferrer. And numerous places have streets or squares named after Karl Marx.

But where are the revolutionary street and place names in the U.S.? Emma Goldman and Ricardo Flores Magon both spent considerable portions of their lives in the U.S., including time in U.S. prisons (Magon died in Leavenworth). Joe Hill's music lives on, was performed by Pete Seeger, Utah Philips, and Paul Robeson, was executed by the state on trumped up charges. Where are the Joe Hill streets? How about Albert Parsons, falsely convicted and executed for the Haymarket bombing, or his wife Lucy, radical organizer and cofounder of the IWW? How about street names or parks named for Cherokee radical and IWW organizer Frank Little, lynched by vigilantes? Or African-American IWW organizer Ben Fletcher?

The closest thing that comes readily to my mind is a short stretch of 9th St., in Oakland, renamed Huey P Newton Street, in 2021. Or Malcolm X school in Berkeley.

If you know of other examples of street or place names in the U.S. named for radicals or revolutionaries, please share photos.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #anarchism #communism #IWW #joehill #emmagoldman #marx #haymarket #kropotkin #rosaluxemburg #RicardoFloresMagon #tijuana

Today in Labor History June 17, 1911: Federal troops, led by Madero, recaptured Tijuana from the Magonista anarchist rebels. Among those surviving and escaping was the famous Wobbly (IWW) songwriter, Joe Hill. Another Wobbly bard, Haywire Mac (compose of The Big Rock Candy Mountain and Hallelujah, I’m a Bum), also participated in the occupation of Tijuana. The Magonistas had captured the Baja California border town of Mexicali on January 29, and Tijuana on May 8, as well as Ensenada, San Tomas, and many other northern Baja California towns. The rebels encouraged the people to take collective possession of the lands. They also supported the creation of cooperatives and opposed the establishment of any new government. Many U.S. members of the IWW participated in the revolution. Lowell Blaisdell writes about it in his now hard to find book, “The Desert Revolution,” (1962). The IWW had been active in nearby San Diego since 1906, sight of an infamous Free Speech fight in 1912. During that struggle, in which many veterans of the Desert Revolution fought, police killed 2 workers. Vigilantes kidnapped Emma Goldman and her companion Ben Reitman, who had come to show their support. However, before deporting them, they tarred and feathered Reitman and raped him with a cane.

Read my history of the IWW in San Diego here: https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2022/02/01/today-in-labor-history-february-1/

Read my biography of Haywire Mac here: https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2021/03/16/the-haywire-mac-story/

#workingclass #LaborHistory #anarchism #IWW #RicardoFloresMagon #magonista #mexico #Revolution #folkmusic #joehill #haywiremac #emmagoldman #vigilantes #tijuana #sandiego #freespeech #books #nonfiction #author #writer @bookstadon

Today in Labor History May 18, 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 Czech rebellion of 1848. They deported him back to Russia, where the authorities imprisoned him and then exiled him to Siberia in 1857. However, he escaped through Japan and fled to the U.S. and then 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. In 1872, they expelled Bakunin from the International. Bakunin had an influence on the IWW, Noam Chomsky, Peter Kropotkin, Herbert Marcuse, Emma Goldman, and the Spanish CNT and FAI.

#workingclass #LaborHistory #anarchism #bakunin #IWW #cnt #chomsky #kropotkin #emmagoldman #marx #rebellion #revolution

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.

You can read my article on the U.S. Modern School movement here: The Modern School Movement (Fifth Estate, #411, Spring, 2022): https://www.fifthestate.org/archive/411-spring-2022/the-modern-school-movement/

#WorkingClass #LaborHistory #anarchism #ModernSchool #education #children #FranciscoFerrer #EmmaGoldman #spain #newyork #union #FreeSpeech #antiwar