Today in Labor History June 20, 1912: Voltairine de Cleyre, one of the earliest feminist anarchists, died at the age 45, following a long illness. Two thousand supporters attended her funeral at Waldheim cemetery, in Chicago, where she was buried next to the Haymarket Martyrs. De Cleyre opposed capitalism and marriage and the domination of religion over sexuality and women’s lives. Her father, a radical abolitionist, named her after the Enlightenment writer and satirist, Voltaire. Her biographer Paul Avrich said that she was "a greater literary talent than any other American anarchist." The Haymarket affair, and the wrongful execution of anarchists in Chicago, radicalized her against the state and capitalism. She was also a prolific writer, and poet, publishing dozens of essays and poems in her short life.
Today in Labor History June 19, 1937: The Women's Day Massacre. During the Great Ohio Steel Strike of 1937, there were numerous street battles between workers and police, including the Youngstown Riots and Poland Avenue Riot on June 21st. On June 19th, there were smaller battles that some believe were initiated by the cops to test the likely extent of union resistance in a real fight. When the cops in Youngstown couldn't find any union leaders to beat up, they went after women picketers who were sitting in chairs to support the strike. They fired tear gas and, when the women refused to leave, began firing live rounds at them, killing 2. Over the course of the entire strike, police killed 16 workers, many of whom were shot in the back as they ran away.
Today in Labor History June 18, 1872: The Rochester, New York police arrested Susan B. Anthony for attempting to vote, in violation of laws allowing only men to vote. She was convicted, but refused to pay the fine. In 1878, she and Elizabeth Cady Stanton arranged for Congress to introduce a constitutional amendment that would extend voting rights to women. In 1920, it was ratified as the 19th amendment to the constitution.
Today in Labor History June 15, 1914: Westinghouse strike, Pittsburgh. The Allegheny Congenial Industrial Union (ACIU) struck against Westinghouse. They were demanding union recognition and protesting against the "scientific management" theories of Frederick Taylor. They also wanted an eight-hour day, reinstatement of fired workers, and higher overtime and holiday rates. Women played a major role in the strike and many of the striking workers were women. Bridget Kenny organized marches and recruited workers to join the ACIU and rose to become one of the main spokespeople for the union. She had been employed by Westinghouse but fired in 1913 for selling union benefit tickets on company grounds. The Pittsburgh Leader, one of the city’s newspapers and one that hired numerous women writers, including Willa Cather, nicknamed Kenny “Joan de Arc.” And the women in this strike provided some of the inspiration for the workingwomen characters in Willa Cather’s short fiction. The Westinghouse plant on Edgewood Avenue was one of three they possessed in the Pittsburgh region, and one of the main sights of strike activity. In late June, the company used armed thugs to intimidate the workers, leading to a violent exchange in which several workers, and the East Pittsburgh police chief, were injured.
There are many in the left, particularly the anarchist and anti-authoritarian tendencies, who believe that because all hierarchy and power are bad, there should be little or no structure to our organizations.
However, no matter how well-organized we are, hidden power structures often remain, and these can result in dynamics where some members are doing most of the talking and decision-making, while others are effectively silenced.
A great read on this topic is: "The Tyranny of Structurelessness," by Jo Freeman, published in 1970, but still relevant today.
THE WORLD OF 1950s BOMBAY comes alive in this story of twin sisters trying to follow their own dreams and meet the expectations of their very proper Punjabi family, still unsettled by the violence of Partition. Lovely, rich saga. A MINUS
Today in Writing History June 4, 1917: Laura E. Richards, Maude H. Elliott, and Florence Hall won the first Pulitzer prize for biography. They wrote about their mother Julia Ward Howe, the feminist, abolitionist, pacifist author and poet. You can read the biography here.
Howe not only wrote the lyrics to The Battle Hymn of the Republic; she also wrote the pacifist 1870 Mother’s Day Proclamation. Also known as the Appeal to Womanhood Throughout the World, the proclamation called on women to unite worldwide for peace. In 1872, Howe called for a Mother’s Day for Peace to be celebrated each year on June 2. Yet today, women throughout the U.S. and Europe (along with the men) are calling for ever more heavy weaponry and NATO troops to be sent to the Ukrainian killing fields, where over 200,000 Ukrainians have already lost their lives, and where this now direct NATO involvement risks precipitating WWIII between nuclear-armed powers, neither of which show any indication that they are willing to back down or negotiate an end to the slaughter. Where is the peace movement today? Or, is some slaughter justified in the name of capitalism (er, I mean against despotism)? And, if that is true, where are all the people screaming for war against India? Philippines? Italy? Saudi Arabia? El Salvador? Egypt? Sudan? And Israel?
"If you think about Harry Potter books as emblematic of where we are, even though those books were written by a women they tend to be very traditionally sexist, very imperialist and racist in the sense that once again we have our little European white-boy hero. And I'm not here to say those books are not enjoyable or valuable, but they certainly don't offer a paradigm that breaks with conventional thinking. And the question to me isn't so much 'Why are the Harry Potter books so well received?' but: Why aren't other books that are alternative, that offer different kinds of visions, just as popular? Because we do know that a very patriarchal, white male-dominated mass media really pushed the Harry Potter books. ... People say to me,'Well, children really love them." I say, Well, guess what? Children wouldn't have known anything about what some white female in England is writing without a powerful patriarchally based mass media that really hyped these books.
"And one of the constant struggles for feminist thinking and writing and our visions is that we rarely have access to that kind of powerful mainstream media. There are wonderful visionary feminist #books that no one reads. They don't get hyped." - bell hooks on #HarryPotter, Bitch magazine, 2000
My print-on-demand shop decided this artwork should be featured on its homepage, and I'm thrilled! It's a sequel to this piece: https://gwennseemel.com/artwork/everythings-fine/daffodils/ And it's all about my relationship with myself and with all the other flowers.
Today in Labor History May 30, 1431: Teenage peasant soldier and crossdresser, Joan of Ark, was burned at the stake by an English tribunal, in part for the “blasphemy” of wearing men’s clothes. After her arrest, her male attire was taken from her and she was forced to sign a document (which she may not have understood) declaring she would no longer cross dress. But when her captors returned her men’s attire, to test her will, she promptly put the clothes back on. During her trial, she vowed, 'For nothing in the world will I swear not to arm myself and put on a man's dress.'" Twenty-fiver years later, Pope Callixtus III declared her a martyr. In 1909, they beatified her and they granted her sainthood in 1920. Transgender activist, writer and communist, Leslie Feinberg, argues in Transgender Liberation that "Joan of Arc was burned at the stake by the Inquisition because she refused to stop dressing as a man… an expression of her identity she was willing to die for rather than renounce."
She rose to prominence during the Hundred Years’ War, which was essentially a feud between competing monarchies (French and English) that left the peasants poor, hungry and at risk of being slaughtered. England had been winning the war and had almost gained control over France when Joan of Ark decided to intervene. She had been having religious visions and was convinced that only she could turn things around for France. She travelled to Chinon to meet King Charles, disguised as a male soldier, which later led to charges of cross-dressing. Convincing the King to turn the conflict into a religious war, she led his troops in the Battle of Orleans. By many contemporary accounts, it was her military advice that won the battle. However, by her own words, she never killed a man, preferring to carry the banner “forty times better” than a sword. In the centuries after her death, she became legendary.
Today in Labor History May 29, 1830: Anarchist school teacher Louise Michel was born. Also known as the Red Virgin, she was a leader of the Paris Commune. During the Bloody Week, the authorities executed 30,000 men, women and children. They forced Michel to turn herself in by threatening to kill her mother, then deported her to New Caledonia, where she taught both the children of colonists and the indigenous people of New Caledonia. Her struggle against French colonialism and her support for the indigenous people is remembered today in their local museum of anarchism.
In 1880, the French gave amnesty to commune prisoners and allowed her back into the country. Many of those prisoners could not find work and were starving. She helped set up soup kitchens to feed them and devoted herself to writing about strikes and worker protests. On Mach 9, 1883, she led a demonstration through Paris. During the march, starving workers looted bakeries and stole bread. They arrested Michel and sentenced her to six years solitary confinement. Two years after being released, a would-be assassin shot her behind her ear. During the trial, she defended the would-be assassin, arguing that he had been misled by an evil society. She died on January 9, 1905.
Margaret Skinnider was born in Coatbridge, Scotland on 28th May 1892. She was a revolutionary and feminist who fought during the 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin as a sniper, among other roles, and was the only female wounded in the action. 1/2
Today in Labor History May 21, 1935: Jane Addams died. Addams was a peace activist, sociologist and author. She was a co-founder of the ACLU and a leader in the history of social work and women’s suffrage. In 1931, she became the first American woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize. In 1889, along with her lover, Ellen Gates Starr, she co-founded Hull House, a settlement house in Chicago. Eventually, the house became home to 25 women and was visited weekly by around 2,000 others. It became a center for research, study and debate. Members were bound by their commitment to the labor and suffrage movements. The facilities included a doctor to provide medical treatment for poor families, gym, adult night school and a girls’ club. The adult night school became a model for the continuing education classes that occur today.
Today in Labor History May 21, 1871: The Bloody Week, a savage orgy of repression and violence, was launched against the Paris Commune. As a result of the French government’s massacres and summary executions, 20,000 to 35,000 civilians died. 38,000 people were arrested. Prior to the repression, workers had taken over the city for 2 months, governing it from a feminist and anarcho-communist perspective, abolishing rent and child labor, and giving workers the right to take over workplaces abandoned by the owners.
During the Commune, workers took over all aspects of economic and political life. They enacted a system that included self-policing, separation of the church and state, abolition of child labor, and employee takeovers of abandoned businesses. Churches and church-run schools were shut down. The Commune lasted from March 18 through May 28, 1871. Karl Marx called it the first example of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Louise Michel was one of the leaders of the revolution. During the Commune, she was elected head of the Montmartre Women’s Vigilance Committee. She also participated in the armed struggle against the French government. In her memoirs, Michel wrote the following about her state of mind during the commune: “In my mind I feel the soft darkness of a spring night. It is May 1871, and I see the red reflection of flames. It is Paris afire. That fire is a dawn.” She also wrote “oh, I’m a savage all right, I like the smell of gunpowder, grapeshot flying through the air, but above all, I’m devoted to the Revolution.”
#OnThisDay 21 years ago, I became a professional artist, or at least this is the day I celebrate and I don't even remember why exactly--it's been that long!