The word for today is narcoterrorism.
The alleged perpetrators of this presumably heinous crime is Hugo Chavez’s Venezuelan Goverment.
*sigh*
Anyway, to finish light, everyone saw inktea’s post about the world naked bike ride, right? None planned for the cities yet though – closest is Chicago. By the way, the photo on Ink Tea’s blog is really cool.
Oh, here’s a nice writeup on Beltane.
Saturday is Beltane, May Eve, May Day, Walpurgis Night.
The day of the bale fire. A celebration of spring and fertility. The compliment to Samhain, honoring life rather than death. Among the traditional practices of celebration:
I’m off bicycle camping this year, so the garden will have to make do on its own, but I’ll be removing my “winter beard” and burning it so that when I return I can sprinkle the ashes in the dirt to encourage fertility in the veggie garden this year. I think I may bring a drum as well and perhaps there will be a bit of dancing and merrymaking in the campgrounds.
Over the years, May Day has also become a Worker’s day, a day consecrated by the blood and sweat of the anarchists and socialists who brought us such concepts of working less than sunup to sundown, safe working conditions, and having weekends.
With that in mind, I submit to you an essay on the Haymarket Martyrs compiled by a guy named Tom and encourage anyone so inspired to check out this dinner at Mayday books on Saturday:
The Anarchist Origins of Mayday
and the
Haymarket Martyrs“Law is on trial. Anarchy is on trial. These men have been selected, picked out by the Grand Jury, and indicted because they were leaders. They are no more guilty than the thousands who follow them. Gentlemen of the jury; convict these men, make examples of them, hang them and
you save our institutions, our society.”
State Prosecuting Attorney Julius Grinnell’s 1886 summation speech to the jury.“The trial judge was either so prejudiced against the defendants, or else so determined to win the applause of a certain class in the community, that he could not and did not grant a fair trial.”
Illinois Governor John P. Altgeld, in his 1893 pardon message.Who are the Haymarket Martyrs, and what do they have to do with May Day? Due to intentional obfuscation and omissions by both the Right and the Left in America, as well as a general historical amnesia, the central role of these Anarchists in this momentous event of American labor history is almost unknown today. The Haymarket Martyrs were arrested for a crime they did not commit, found guilty of having radical ideas, and executed for their beliefs. The following brief history has been compiled in memory of August Spies, Albert Parsons, Louis Lingg, George Engel, and Adolph Fischer, that everyone who reads it might appreciate their sacrifice, and ask what we can do in our time to continue the struggle for which they gave their lives.
MAYDAY – THE FIRST LABOR DAY
All of the privileges workers enjoy today – a minimum wage, safety laws, and even a workday limited to eight-hours – came about only with the sacrifice of the workers who came before us. From the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, people in factories have worked very long shifts, lasting up to fourteen or more hours a day. During the 1880s a new movement calling for an eight-hour day inspired both labor unions and unorganized workers. At its 1884 convention, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions (now the “American Federation of Labor” of the AFL-CIO) adopted a resolution stating that beginning May 1, 1886, “eight hours shall constitute a legal day’s work” and workers would strike at companies that did not recognize the eight-hour day.
By April 1886, a quarter of a million workers had committed themselves to go on strike as part of the May Day movement. This enabled thousands of workers to win shorter shifts. Most employers, however, refused to reduce working hours. By May 1 some 200,000 workers were on strike. An additional 340,000 workers in the industrial cities of Boston, New York, Milwaukee, Chicago and Pittsburgh turned out for local parades and rallies.
One of the most militant campaigns occurred in Chicago. The syndicalist International Working People’s Association – promoting equal rights and an end to racism and the class system – had successfully organized huge numbers of workers, building a movement that included African-Americans, immigrants, and women standing together with white men. Largely because of the organization’s efforts, 50,000 workers went on strike, with tens of thousands attending the city’s May Day parade. The IWPA’s successful broad-based appeal worried businesses and the government alike.
This fear resulted in a preparation for violence on the part of the bosses. During the Railroad strikes of 1877, the workers had been violently attacked by the police and the United States Army. A similar tactic of state terrorism was prepared by the bureaucracy to fight the eight-hour movement. The police and National Guard were increased in size and received new and powerful weapons financed by local business leaders. Chicago’s Commercial Club purchased a $2000 machine gun for the Illinois National Guard to be used against strikers. Indeed, machine guns were accepted as a means of breaking strikes long before they were generally accepted as a standard infantry weapon.
On May Day, Albert Parsons, along with August Spies, spoke to a huge crowd assembled as part of the May Day activities. Parsons was a member of both the Knights of Labor and the Chicago Central Labor Union, and Spies was the editor of the German workers’ paper Die Arbeiter-Zeitung. Despite the city leaders’ expectations of violence and a heavy police presence, the rally ended without incident.
Two days later, Spies spoke to a meeting of 6,000 workers. Among the workers were striking lumber workers and employees from the McCormick Harvester Works. Cyrus McCormick, a determined union-buster, had locked out his workers as a result of their strike of 2 ½ months, and was hiring strike-breakers to take the jobs of those in the union. While Spies was speaking, urging the workers to stand together and not give in to the bosses, the strikebreakers were beginning to leave the nearby McCormick plant.
The strikers, aided by the ‘lumber shovers’, marched down the street and forced the scabs back into the factory. Suddenly a force of 200 police arrived and, without any warning, attacked the crowd with clubs and revolvers. They killed at least one striker, seriously wounded five or six others and injured an indeterminate number.
Appalled by the police violence, Spies called for a massive rally the next day in Haymarket Square. Between 2,000 and 3,000 people attended the May 4 rally. Parsons gave an hour-long speech stating, “I am not here for the purpose of inciting anybody.” Chicago Mayor Harrison, who had attended most of the meeting, stopped by the police station on his way home. He reported to Police Captain Bonfield that “nothing looked likely to require police interference.” Despite this advice the captain, who regularly employed Pinkerton detectives and supported “shoot to kill” policies when dealing with strikers, sent additional officers to the square.
After hours of speeches people had begun to leave, when Samuel Fielden, a Methodist preacher and the final speaker, took the podium. It was close to ten in the evening when Fielden was closing the meeting. It was raining heavily and only about 200 people remained in the square. Suddenly a police column of 180 men, headed by Bonfield, moved in and ordered the people to disperse immediately. Fielden protested “we are peaceable”. As Fielden argued with the police, someone threw a dynamite bomb at the police. One sergeant was killed immediately. The police then opened fire at the crowd. Estimates indicated that seven or eight civilians were killed. Several policemen and additional civilians died later. Ballistics reports later demonstrated that the officers who died from bullet wounds had been shot by other police during the melee.
Following the Haymarket events, hysteria swept the city. Mayor Harrison declared martial law. Some believed the bomb had been thrown by an agent provocateur. Indeed, it served nicely as an excuse for the police to harass and attack scores of people. Police ransacked the homes and offices of suspected radicals, and hundreds were arrested without charge. A reign of police terror swept over Chicago. Staging “raids” in meeting halls, union offices, printing works and private homes, the police rounded up all known anarchists and other labor activists. State Attorney for Cook County J. Grinnell announced in a public statement, “Make the raids first and look up the law afterwards.” Labor unions were broken up. Picketing strikers were arrested and the police continued to beat labor supporters.
Anarchists in particular were harassed, and the police arrested and indicted Spies, Michael Schwab, Fielden, Parsons, Adolph Fischer, George Engel, Louis Lingg and Oscar Neebe. All were charged with conspiracy to murder, despite the fact that only three had been present at the Haymarket meeting of May 4th.
The trial opened on June 21st 1886 in the criminal court of Cooke County. The candidates for the jury were not chosen in the usual manner of drawing names from a box. Instead a special bailiff, nominated by state’s attorney Grinnell, was appointed by the court to select the jury candidates. The defense was not allowed to present evidence that the special bailiff had publicly claimed “I am managing this case and I know what I am about. These fellows are going to be hanged as certain as death”.
The eventual composition of the jury was farcical; being made up of businessmen, their clerks and a relative of one of the dead policemen. No proof was offered by the state that any of the eight men before the court had thrown the bomb, had been connected with its throwing, or had even approved of such acts.
But it wasn’t the men so much as their ideas that were considered dangerous. As Grinnell stated in his summation: “Law is on trial. Anarchy is on trial. These men have been selected, picked out by the grand jury and indicted because they were leaders. They are no more guilty than the thousands who follow them. Gentlemen of the jury: convict these men, make examples of them, hang them and you save our institutions, our society.”
As a result of the trial, all but one of the men received death sentences (Neebe received 15 years). Despite international outcry, Spies, Parsons, Fischer, and Engel were hanged on November 11, 1887 Lingg cheated the hangman by committing suicide in his cell the day before the executions.
The trial provoked international outrage. Between 150,000 and 500,000 people are estimated to have lined the funeral procession for the executed men. May 1st was designated “International Workers’ Day” by the International Working Men’s Association (the “First International”) in Paris in 1889, in commemoration of the Haymarket Martyrs, thus beginning the Mayday tradition that continues today.
On June 26, 1893, the newly elected governor of Illinois, John Peter Altgeld, issued a pardon to Schwab and Fielden, still imprisoned. In his pardon message he made it clear that he was not granting the pardon because he believed that the men had suffered enough, but because they were innocent of the crime for which they had been tried, and that they and the hanged men had been the victims of hysteria, packed juries and a biased judge. In doing so, Altgeld sacrificed his political career.
“There will come a time when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you are throttling today!”
-August SpiesThe authorities believed at the time of the trial that such persecution would break the back of the eight-hour movement. Rather than suppressing the labor and anarchist movements, the events of 1886 and the execution of the Chicago anarchists mobilized many generations of radicals. Emma Goldman, a young immigrant at the time, later pointed to the Haymarket affair as her political birth. Instead of disappearing, the anarchist movement only grew in the wake of Haymarket.
Thus, it is not surprising that the state, business leaders, mainstream union officials, and even the authoritarian Left would want to hide the true history of May Day. In an attempt to erase the history and significance of May Day, President Cleveland signed a bill in 1894, naming not May 1 but the first Monday in September as “Labor Day” – a holiday devoid of any historical significance. Adding further insult, President Eisenhower proclaimed May 1 as “Law Day” in 1958. A survey of Leftist websites and May Day flyers will reveal the same story as told here, often with the deliberate omission of the word, “anarchist.”
“Workmen, let your watchword be: No compromise! Cowards to the rear! Men to the front! The die is cast. The first of May, whose historic significance will be understood and appreciated only in later years, has come.”
- August Spies, May 1886Compiled from these sources:
THE ORIGINS AND TRADITIONS OF MAYDAY By Eugene W. Plawiuk
The Anarchist Origins of Mayday, Alan MacSimóin, Workers Solidarity 44, 1995
http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/ws95/may45.htmlMay Day – the REAL Labor Day, Jackie Dana The Working Stiff Journal Vol. 2 #4, May-June 1999
http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~rjensen/vol2no4/labor10124.htmChicago Historical Society,
http://www.chicagohs.org/
More information on Anarchism and my currently perfered flavor – Libertarian Socialism – can be found at Wikipedia.
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This was sent to me a while back. I think it is probably the sort of thing that either speaks to you or it doesn’t. Especially the last paragraph.
Season of The Bike, by Dave KarlotskiThere is cold, and there is cold on a motorcycle. Cold on a motorcycle is like being beaten with cold hammers while being kicked with cold boots, a bone bruising cold. The wind’s big hands squeeze the heat out of my body and whisk it away; caught in a cold October rain, the drops don’t even feel likewater. They feel like shards of bone fallen from the skies of Hell to pock my face. I expect to arrive with my cheeks and forehead streaked with blood, but that’s just an illusion, just the misery of nerves not designed for highway speeds.
Despite this, it’s hard to give up my motorcycle in the fall and I rush to get it on the road again in the spring; lapses of sanity like this are common among motorcyclists. When you let a motorcycle into your life you’re changed forever. The letters “MC” are stamped on your driver’s license right next to your sex and height as if “motorcycle” was just another of your physical characteristics, or maybe a mental condition.
But when warm weather finally does come around all those cold snaps and rainstorms are paid in full because a motorcycle summer is worth any price. A motorcycle is not just a two-wheeled car; the difference between driving a car and climbing onto a motorcycle is the difference between watching TV and actually living your life. We spend all our time sealed in boxes and cars are just the rolling boxes that shuffle us languidly from home-box to work-box to store-box and back, the whole time entombed in stale air,temperature regulated, sound insulated, and smelling of carpets.
On a motorcycle I know I’m alive. When I ride, even the familiar seems strange and glorious. The air has weight and substance as I push through it and its touch is as intimate as water to a swimmer. I feel the cool wells of air that pool under trees and the warm spokes of sunlight that fall through them. I can see everything in a sweeping 360 degrees, up, down and around, wider than PanaVision and higher than IMAX and unrestricted by ceiling or dashboard.
Sometimes I even hear music. It’s like hearing phantom telephones in the shower or false doorbells when vacuuming; the pattern-loving brain, seeking signals in the noise, raises acoustic ghosts out of the wind’s roar. But on a motorcycle I hear whole songs: rock ‘n roll, dark orchestras, women’s voices, all hidden in the air and released by speed.
At 30 miles an hour and up, smells become uncannily vivid. All the individual tree-smells and flower-smells and grass-smells flit by like chemical notes in a great plant symphony. Sometimes the smells evoke memories so strongly that it’s as though the past hangs invisible in the air around me, wanting only the most casual of rumbling time machines to unlock it.
A ride on a summer afternoon can border on the rapturous. The sheer volume and variety of stimuli is like a bath for my nervous system, an electrical massage for my brain, a systems check for my soul. It tears smiles out of me: a minute ago I was dour, depressed, apathetic, numb, but now, on two wheels, big, ragged, windy smiles flap against the side of my face, billowing out of me like air from a decompressing plane. Transportation is only a secondary function. A motorcycle is a joy machine. It’s a machine of wonders, a metal bird, a motorized prosthetic. It’s light and dark and shiny and dirty and warm and cold lapping over each other; it’s a conduit of grace, it’s a catalyst for bonding the gritty and the holy.
I still think of myself as a motorcycle amateur, but by now I’ve had a handful of bikes over a half dozen years and slept under my share of bridges. I wouldn’t trade one second of either the good times or the misery. Learning to ride was one of the best things I’ve done.
Cars lie to us and tell us we’re safe, powerful, and in control. The air-conditioning fans murmur empty assurances and whisper, “Sleep, sleep.” Motorcycles tell us a more useful truth: we are small and exposed, and probably moving too fast for our own good, but that’s no reason not to enjoy every minute of the ride.
CODE NAME …
So, I’m looking at doing a BIG motorcycle ride this fall. An old friend of mine is getting married in Vegas in mid-September and my sister is getting married in Knoxville TN in the beginning of October.
I’ve decided to make even more of a memory out of it and do it on the bike (btw, anyone interested in doing any of the legs is welcome to join me!)
Right now, I have three possible itineraries, each spanning approximately 3 weeks.
The first, named JOYFUL RIDING will be used if the girl is equipped to join me on the Knoxville leg. The specifics are:
Trip : “Joyful Riding”
Minneapolis MN – Las Vegas NV (1700 miles, 3 days, 500 – 600 mpd)
Las Vegas NV – Minneapolis MN (1700 miles, 3 days, 500 – 600 mpd)
[roughly 1 week layover in Minneapolis]
Minneapolis MN – Knoxville TN (1000 miles)
Knoxville TN – Minneapolis MN (1000 miles)
Total Distance: 5400 miles
The second, named THE BIG TRIANGLE involves a liesurly ride from Vegas to Knoxville. Since I have so much time, I may add site trips to this one…
Trip : “The Big Triangle”
Minneapolis MN – Las Vegas NV (1700 miles, 3 days, 500 – 600 mpd)
Las Vegas NV – Knoxville TN (2000 miles, 11 days, 150 – 250 mpd)
Knoxville TN – Minneapolis MN (1000 miles, 2 days, 450 – 550 mpd)
Total Distance: 4700 miles
The third, named THE TCCT would be one of those “tell the grandkids” journeys involving dipping a foot in both oceans. I’m not sure about the waypoints yet – the ones I picked looked like some of the closest oceanfront cities to the final destinations.
Trip : “The TCCT (Tundra to Coast to Coast to Tundra)”
Minneapolis MN – Las Vegas NV (1700 miles, 3 days, 500 – 600 mpd)
Las Vegas NV – Malibu CA – Myrtle Beach SC – Knoxville TN
(3400 miles, 11 days, 300 – 400 mpd)
Knoxville TN – Minneapolis MN (1000 miles, 2 days, 450 – 550 mpd)
Total Distance: 6100 miles
In any case, unless I add some side trips or windy backroads to it, the cross country trek is actually quite leisurely, so my biggest concern is whether my ass can weather the miles and the possibility of equipment failure. I’m not a huge distance rider (yet), so the first leg to Vegas involves what may be rather long days for me.
Hopefully, by the second week in October, I’ll be able to laugh at a mere 600 miles on the bike.
Hmm, If I was a real biker, I’d include a stop in Canada and the Gulf of Mexico.
If you get a moment, pop over to WolfspiritJHP’s weblog and read the post of an article about Peter Maurin written by Dorothy Day.
I’m not exactly sure what about it strikes me, but it adds a bit of dimension and perspective to the troubles and struggles of today. Maybe its ’cause I’m listening to a bunch of David Rovics’ covers of old labor songs.
Anyway…
So I was walking back from the corner store this morning and got a song stuck in my head. It is a kids’ clapping/jumprope/whatever song that some may remember (full lyrics pulled from the net):
Say, Say oh playmate
Come out and play with me
and bring your dollies 3
climb up my apple tree
slide down my rain barrel
into my cellar door
and we’ll be jolly friends
forever more – more – more !
Anyway, for whatever reason, my mind put a rather, erm, adult spin on the lyrics that fits so well that I can’t help but wondering if I’m seeing something that is actually there. Anyone else ever notice anything with the song?
###
Xanga’s Currently Playing doesn’t have a listing for what I’m listening to right now, so I’m doing my own version:
Currently Playing
Living in these times
By David Rovics
davidrovics.com
Track 1: The Dying Firefighter
Track 3: Saint Patrick Battalion
Track 4: Who Will Tell the People
Track 6: Shut Them Down
Track 16: Polyamory Song
Bohemianrapsody had a quote from some interesting articles on Shamanism:
“Shamanic ecstasy is the real “Old Time Religion,” of which modern churches are but pallid evocations. Shamanic, visionary ecstasy, the mysterium tremendum, the unio mystica, the eternally delightful experience of the universe as energy, is a sine qua non of religion, it is what religion is for! There is no need for faith, it is the ecstatic experience itself that gives one faith in the intrinsic unity and integrity of the universe, in ourselves as integral parts of the whole; that reveals to us the sublime majesty of our universe, and the fluctuant, scintillant, alchemical miracle that is quotidian consciousness. Any religion that requires faith and gives none, that defends against religious experiences, that promulgates the bizarre superstition that humankind is in some way separate, divorced from the rest of creation, that heals not the gaping wound between Body and Soul, but would tear them asunder… is no religion at all!” Jonathan Ott
Someone took issue with the wording and asked for an english translation which I found a bit odd because other than the latin, most of it looked english to me, so I figured I’d convert it to more common parlance:
Shamanic ecstasy is the real “Old Time Religion,” of which modern churches are but dull re-creations. Call it what you will — the mysterium tremendum, the unio mystica, or simply the eternally delightful experience of the universe as energy — shamanic, visionary ecstacy is an essential condition or element of religion. It is what religion is for.There is no need for faith as it is the experience of withdrawing the soul from the body itself that gives one faith in the intrinsic unity and integrity of the universe and in ourselves as integral parts of the whole. Experiencing shamanic ecstasy reveals to us the sublime majesty of our universe and the constantly changing, brilliant miracle that is everyday consciousness.
Any religion that requires faith and gives none, that defends against religious experiences, that expounds the bizarre superstition that humankind is in some way separate, divorced from the rest of creation, that heals not the gaping wound between Body and Soul, but would tear them asunder… is no religion at all!
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In other news, apparently Northern Ireland has electoral rules which ban “idiots and lunatics” from voting. While I kind of like the idea we couldn’t really apply it here – I mean, can you imagine banning over half the population from voting?
Have the hijackers ever been identified?
Remember, after the events of September 11, 2001, they released a list of the (19?) hijackers who were involved? Remember that over the next couple years a couple of the people on that list turned up alive in various places, making it very unlikely that they were the hijackers?
What I don’t seem to remember are any updated releases with the identities of the actual people who got on the planes, took them over, and crashed them into things.
Have the actual hijackers ever been identified? Anybody? Bueller?
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