Emma Goldman, July 9th, 1917: It is organized violence on top which creates individual violence at the bottom. It is the accumulated indignation against organized wrong, organized crime, organized injustice which drives the political offender to his act. To condemn him means to be blind to the causes which make him. I can no more do it, nor have I the right to, than the physician who were to condemn the patient for his disease. You and I and all of us who remain indifferent to the crimes of poverty, of war, of human degradation, are equally responsible for the act committed by the political offender. May I therefore be permitted to say, in the words of a great teacher: “He who is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone.” Does that mean advocating violence? You might as well accuse Jesus of advocating prostitution, because He took the part of the prostitute, Mary Magdalene.
Livestream:
11:01am: Exit domicile.
*notices red and white flag fluttering from building*
That's odd. It must be understood that patriotism has taken different forms here. In the United States, the barrage of stars and stripes, the symphony of tasteful primary colors which have become cliche in Americana are common, not to be missed. Americans, by and large, are willing to express their patriotism visually because it is simpler. An act as basic, as common as waving the American flag is, in itself, innately political. Similarly, defacing the flag becomes a rallying cry of the right wing, willing to say (without detecting the irony) that men and women died for that flag. The flag assumes its own identity as something to be paraded and protected like a prize-winning poodle. To help me illustrate this point, please welcome Ms. Edith Bouvier Beale
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_0IhqWd6fE
It's nothing uncommon. However, I have seen more flags today than I have in 7 months of living in Poland. It's unsurprising. The third of the month is Constitution Day. Today, however, marks something different: Worker's Day.
On July 9, 1917, Goldman spoke to a jury which sought to imprison her under charges of "inducing persons not to register," citing the quotation above in her argument. A tireless advocate for women, workers, and birth control, Goldman was, in simple terms, a threat. Privately, I believe the US government had good reason to be afraid. Workers had just shot the capitalists in Russia, toppling a dynasty, and were working towards the formation of the USSR. Workers in Manhattan, contrary to popular media, had not always been so content to take money for work. When women seamstresses went on strike, they were beaten by police, attacked by hired prostitutes, and tossed around with little concern. Goldman appeared in a purple dress and, through use of cool rhetoric and common sense, advocated that the principles of Americanism and common decency protected her right to distribute anarchist pamphlets and newspapers to the workers.
The jury disagreed. She would then serve two years in prison alongside Kate O'Hare, a fellow socialist.
11:10
Nothing seems to be open (Workers' Day) and yet I needed soap to do laundry and some olive oil to use to cook dinner. The air has turned cold again. A liquor store stands open, four men smoke cigarettes in the doorway.
December 21, 1919
Goldman sits in the New York Port of Embarkation. She has not been told when or where she is going and reflects privately on the cowardly and secretive nature of the whole affair. She would, she realize, be taken from this land, the melting pot, the land of opportunity for those who did not need it. Her work would end. New speakers would rise from the cesspool of American capitalism to challenge the norms of treatment, to advocate for better pay, better hours, and more humane conditions. Perhaps there was a chill as she walked, step by step, towards Soviet Russia on boat called the Soviet Ark.
She would return later, prior to the war. She would speak favorably of Franklin Roosevelt. Before her death, she would suffer a stroke rendering her incapable of speech. She died silent, capable of hearing, capable of sight, but unable to utter a sound.
The cartoons would say "good riddance."
11:33
I find an open store. A woman stands behind the counter, surrounded by boxes, loaves of bread wrapped in plastic, oranges still packed in crates. She speaks no English and I see no machine that would take credit cards.
I return home empty-handed.
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