This is Full Communism.
Blooged~?
Queering Anarchism Table of Contents
Preface …………………………………………………………………………………1
Martha Ackelsberg
Introduction: Queer Meet Anarchism,
Anarchism Meet Queer………………………………………………….5C. B. Daring, J. Rogue, Abbey Volcano, and Deric Shannon
Gay Marriage and Queer Love………………………………….19
Ryan Conrad
De-essentializing Anarchist Feminism:
Lessons from the Transfeminist Movement ………..25J. Rogue
Police at the Borders……………………………………………………33
Abbey Volcano
Gender Sabotage…………………………………………………………..43
Stacy aka sallydarity
Anarchy without Opposition ………………………………………63
Jamie Heckert
Lessons from Queertopia…………………………………………..77
Farhang Rouhani
Tyranny of the State and Trans Liberation…………….87
Jerimarie Liesegang
Morris reminds us that it was not only a myth of robbing from the rich to give to the poor that persists. The praxis of the working class maintains the notion of the commons in the following practices, symbols, and experiences: “The poor remains of the old tribal liberties, the folk-motes, the meetings round the shire-oak, the trial by compurgation, all these customs which imply the equality of freemen, would have faded into mere symbols and traditions of the past if it had not been for the irrepressible life and labour of the people, of those who really did the work of society in the teeth of the arbitrary authority of the feudal hierarchy.
Peter Linebaugh, Magna Carta Manifesto: Liberty and Commons for All (via howtotalktogirlsdialectically)
Framed and murdered by the state 125 years ago today, the sacrifice of the Haymarket martyrs should never be forgotten.
In 1884, the Federation of Organized Trade and Labor Unions of the United States and Canada passed the following motion:
“RESOLVED… that eight hours shall constitute a legal day’s labor, from and after May 1, 1886.”
As that day approached, in the face of intimidation and opposition from the capitalist press and hired thugs, 300,000 american workers went on strike in support of the 8 hour day. In Chicago, 80,000 workers marched in solidarity led by the anarchist International Working People’s Association (it says on Wikipedia that they were led by the IWPA leader Albert Parsons but it’s wrong, he was in Cincinnati addressing a demonstration there). On May 3rd German immigrant and editor of the anarchist daily newspaper Arbeiter-Zeitung, August Spies spoke to striking workers outside the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company, urging them to maintain solidarity in the face of the brutal campaign of intimidation they were being subjected to by police, scabs and violent strikebreakers. These men had seen their wages cut by 15% while their boss made a 71% profit. They were charged by police, beaten and shot. Six of them were killed.
The next day, 3000 workers assembled in Haymarket Square. Again, August Spies spoke to urge calm and solidarity. Next, Albert Parsons condemned the murderous police brutality of the previous day, decrying the fact that “the moderate and just claims of the wage- workers should be met with police clubs, pistols, and bayonets, or that the murmurs of discontented laborers, should be drowned in their own blood.”
After Parsons, English immigrant Samuel Fielden addressed the crowd. Fielden had gone to work in the cotton mills of England when he was 8 years old. He had come to America to find work in 1886, and had become the treasurer of the IWPCA. He spoke for around 15 minutes, when the chief of police approached him and ordered that this peaceful meeting should disperse, an order with which Feilden agreed to comply. At this point the crowd had thinned to a few hundred, and it looked like rain. Someone threw a stick of dynamite into the police.
In the ensuing chaos, policemen began discharging their revolvers indiscriminately. When the dust settled, 8 policemen and up to fifty civilians were dead.
With the press immediately demanding blood, August Spies, Albert Parsons, Adolph Fischer, George Engel, Louis Lingg, Michael Schwab, Samuel Fielden and Oscar Neebe were hunted down and arrested. All were anarchist organisers, none had a single shred of evidence linking them with the bomb. Some, like Oscar Neebe, weren’t even there. In a hideous miscarriage of justice, they were all convicted. Seven were sentenced to death, Neebe to 15 years in jail. Fieldin and Schwab had their sentences commuted to life imprisonment on appeal. Lingg committed suicide in his cell.
As Spies, Parsons, Fischer and Engel were led out, hooded and in chains, they proudly sung the Marseillaise:
With luxury and pride surrounded
The vile insatiate despots dare,
Their thirst of power and gold unbounded,
To mete and vend the light and air! (repeat)
Like beasts of burden would they load us,
Like gods would bid their slaves adore,
But man is man, and who is more?
Then shall they longer lash and goad us?
Just before they opened the trapdoor, Spies cried out:
“The time will come when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today!”
And so, in defiance, the Haymarket Martyrs died. 125 years ago today.
NEVER FORGET THEM
