Rather did each in his own fertile field enspirit others than remain recluse cowering under some convenient shield; lovingly lilt their tones; the martial muse, unbuckled of her armoured hate, must yield sooner, because they lived her world to cleansing dews! ROSE FLORENCE FREEMAN, To Elie & Elisée Reclus Élisée & Élie Reclus: In Memoriam Compiled, edited & printed by Joseph Ishill (Berkeley Heights: Oriole Press, 1927)

---

THE IDES OF MARCH

  

LISEE RECLUS

  

Anarchist geographer,
French Communard.
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/ReclusElisee.htm

---

RUDE AWAKENINGS DAY.

EVERYTHING YOU THINK IS WRONG DAY.

Hinckley, Ohio: BUZZARD'S DAY.

Ancient Mesopotamia: MARDUCK'S FESTIVAL. A mock-king is selected from among condemned prisoners, feasted & executed. Masters & servants change places for five days.

INTERNATIONAL DAY AGAINST POLICE BRUTALITY.

---

44 -- [BC] Roman strongman Julius Caesar assassinated. Author of Commentaries on the Gallic War.

Beware the ides of March.

Men at some time are masters of their fates:
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.
But, for my own part, it was Greek to me.
Think you I am no stronger than my sex,
Being so father'd & so husbanded?
These things are beyond all use,
And I do fear them.
Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.
Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,
It seems to me most strange that men should fear;
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come.

— Cæs. The ides of March are come.
Sooth. Ay, Cæsar; but not gone. Act iii. Sc. 1.

Et tu, Brute!

1649 -- England: John Milton appointed Secretary of Foreign Tongues by the new Commonwealth government.
http://facultystaff.richmond.edu/~creamer/milton.html


1723 -- One of the important German lyric poets of the period, Johann Christian Günther dies in Jena, Germany.


1810 -- Aernout Drost, Dutch writer whose historical novels are the first important works of the 19th-century Romantic movement in The Netherlands, lives, Amsterdam. His first novel, Hermingard van de Eikenterpen ("Hermingard of the Oak Burial Mounds," 1832), portray the conversion of a Germanic woman to Christianity in 4th-century Holland.



1812 -- England: Luddites attack Mr Vickerman's establishment, Taylor Hill, Huddersfield destroyed.



1820 -- Plunk Your Magic Twanger, Froggie?: In his journal Lord Byron calls John Keats, "A tadpole of the Lakes."




1830 -- France: Radical geographer, anarchist, Élisée Reclus lives (1830-1905), Sainte-Fay-la-Grande.alt; Élisée Reclus, Elisee Recluse; Reclus, Elisée



1830 -- Paul von Heyse (1830-1914) lives. German writer, who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1910. Head of the Munich circle of writers, who refused to portray the realistic side of life.
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/vonheyse.htm


1834 -- Happy Birthday (see 1810)?: At age 24, Aernout Drost, Dutch writer of historical novels, dies in Amsterdam. His posthumously published works include Schetsen en verhalen ("Sketches & Stories," 1835).


1844 -- England: Lord Ashley introduces Ten Hours' Bill into House of Commons.


1869 -- First federal women's suffrage amendment ever introduced in US Congress.


1873 -- Italy: The Italian Congress of the International meets, Bologna.
[Details / context]


1874 -- France assumes 'protectorate' over Annam (Vietnam).


1877 -- Ben Fletcher lives. Black IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) organizer of longshore locals in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.


1887 -- Painter's International Union formed.



1891 -- Italy: Aldino Felicani (1891-1967) lives, Tuscany. Italian-American anarchist, typographer, editor, & publisher ("Rompez les rangs," "Libertarian Youth," "The Social Question," "l'Agitazione," "The Lantern" &, until his death, "Controcorrente / Countercurrent").


1894 -- France: Belgian anarchist Jean Pauwels dies while attempting to blow up the Madeleine church in Paris. His bomb exploded prematurely. Pauwels is also suspected of being responsible for the explosions of February 19 on rue Saint Jacques & rue du Faubourg Saint Martin, using bombs made by Emile Henry.



1897 -- US: Fly-Trap? First indoor fly casting tournament opens, at Madison Square Garden.

http://128.121.183.135/nwfishing/
http://www.piscatorialpursuits.com/olympicpage.htm


1898 -- US: Mid-March, Emma Goldman (still on her speaking tour of Feb-June, addressing 66 meetings) delivers three lectures in Cleveland, including a well-attended meeting of the Franklin Club. (Also, just weeks before his death on March 31, Emma visits the ailing Robert Reitzel in Detroit.)



1900 -- Writer, sociologist, & leader of the Northeastern School, Brazilian Gilberto de Mello Freyre lives, Recife. His best known work is Casa-grande e senzala (The Masters & the Slaves, 1933), depicting the relationship between Brazil's Portuguese colonizers & their African slaves.
http://www.fgf.org.br/

1908 -- Spain: José Peirats lives (1908-1989), Vall d'Uxó, Castellón. Wrote Anarchists in the Spanish Revolution & other books on Spain.

http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/gallery/galleryindex.htm#Peirats
http://struggle.ws/spain/iron_peirats.html
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/8195/blasts/pointblank/spanishrevolution.htm


1911 -- Russia: Skriabin's The Poem of Fire performed at the Bolshoi.


1914 -- Matti Kuusi (1914-1998) lives. Finnish folklorist, writer, professor. Works include collection of poems, memoirs, studies of Kalevala, African popular tradition & other folk poetry.


1914 -- US: Emma Goldman, in Yiddish, among speakers at an afternoon celebration of the ninth anniversary of the publication of Mother Earth & a commemoration of the Paris Commune; other speakers include Alexander Berkman, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Harry Kelly.

Goldman also (?) delivers farewell lecture in New York City. American playwright George Middleton & actresses Fola La Follette & Mary Shaw speak on "What Drama Means to Me."

1916 -- US: Calvary mounts it's moral high-horse once again, gallops into México in pursuit of the ever-elusive Pancho Villa.

"Black Jack" Pershing's Punitive "Expedition" is bogged down within five weeks due to Mexican hatred for the beloved gringo invaders, unfriendly terrain, etc. Pershing publicly proclaims success, though privately whined that Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader President Wilson dealt him a bad hand. [Shades of Korea! Vietnam! Iraq! Manifest Destiny!]

First US tactical air unit in the field, the 1st Aero Squadron commanded by Capt. B. D. Foulois, began operations with General Pershing's invasion of Mexico.

Aeronautics & Astronautics Chronology, 1915-1919,
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/Timeline/1915-19.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pancho_Villa_Expedition http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pancho_Villa_Expedition
http://jeff.scott.tripod.com/revolution.html

1917 -- US: Supreme court approves Eight-hour Act under threat of a railway strike.
[Sources]



1917 -- Russia: Czar Nicholas II abdicates as revolution sweeps his country. Marxist-Lennonists will predominate over the long haul despite all opposition.

http://www.firesigntheatre.com/



1918 -- Richard Ellmann, critic/biographer (James Joyce), lives, Highland Park, Michigan.


1920 -- Italy: The council movement in Turin begins a strike, combined with occupation of the factories & resuming production under their own workers' control.

By April the strike spread through much of northern Italy. The government had to use warships to land troops at Genoa to march on Turin.

While the councilist program was supported by the anarchists, the Socialist Party & the unions succeeded in sabotaging the strike: when Turin was besieged by 20,000 soldiers & police, the party newspaper "Avanti" refused to print the appeal of the Turin socialist section.

[Details / context]

1920 -- Russia: Mid-March, Emma Goldman & Alexander Berkman return to Petrograd to secure work in support of the revolution.

Ninth Congress of the All-Russian Communist party is held in Moscow; militarization of labor stirs much debate.

Source: Emma Goldman Papers

1929 -- D. H. Lawrence, in Paris looking for a publisher for Lady Chatterley's Lover, meets Harry Crosby of The Black Sun Press, with whom he has corresponded for more than a year; they disagree violently about everything they discuss.

Source: See Geoffrey Wolff, Black Sun (Random House, 1976).
http://www.bibliomania.com/0/0/32/frameset.html
http://www.banger.com/banger/crosby/bio.html

1936 -- England: Emma Goldman speaks on "The Russian Theatre" to a 1,000 members of the Coventry Repertory Circle, one of the most successful meetings she has ever had in England.

1937 -- Crackpot fantasist H.P. Lovecraft dies, Providence, Rhode Island.

"The world is indeed comic, but the joke is on mankind."

— H.P. Lovecraft

American poet & author of macabre short novels, whose cult following can be traced to the 60 or so 'Cthulhu Mythos' stories.

[Details / context]

1938 -- Poet Dick Higgins lives (1938-1998), Cambridge, England.

Higgins studied at Columbia University, New York (where he received a bachelors degree in English, 1960), the Manhattan School of Printing, New York, & the New School of Social Research, 1958-59, with the anarchist John Cage & Henry Cowell. He attended Cage's composition class, where he met George Brecht, Allan Kaprow, Al Hansen & other future Fluxus artists....

[Details / context]

1938 -- Spain: Lincoln Brigadists retreat into Caspe, about 70 kilometers east of Belchite; of the 500 Lincolns who left Belchite, only 100 remain.
http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/scw/chronology.htm
[Resources & sources on the Spanish Revolution of 1936]


1939 -- Hitler occupies Bohemia.



1944 -- Sly Stone, guitarist/founder of Sly & the Family Stone, lives.



1945 -- Spain: Cenetista David Antona Domínguez (1904-1945) dies. Secretariado del Comité Nacional CNT. Militant anarcho-syndicalist, freed from prison in July 1936.

«No es hora de palabras. La mejor propaganda, la única, es la de los fusiles y ametralladoras, es la del plomo justiciero que hace inexpugnable la capital de nuestra revolución. En esta lucha titánica, en estas jornadas de sangre, se está ventilando el porvenir no sólo de España, sino del mundo entero. Compañeros: en nuestras balas está la decisión! ¡O el fascismo que es la muerte o nosotros que somos la vida!».

See España 1936: La revolución perdida V. El Frente Popular by Pierre Broué.
http://www.alasbarricadas.org/ateneovirtual/index.php/22_de_noviembre
http://www.veuobrera.org/00fine-x/secr-cnt.htm

1953 -- Russia: Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Uncle Joseph Stalin dies in his sleep, Moscow.
http://www.historyguide.org/europe/lecture10.html


1955 -- Colonel Tom Parker becomes Elvis Presley's manager. Parker manages Presley all his life & after his death. Some people die more than others.




1964 -- US: Hot Hand? Atomic Energy Commission admits that an unplanned release of radiation from an underground nuclear test spewed fallout over Las Vegas.

During the 1950s & 1960s, more than 200 US nuclear explosions send huge radioactive clouds into the atmosphere.

Since 1962, the atmospheric tests have been replaced by underground tests like the one near Las Vegas. The National Association of Radiation Survivors estimates that victims number 886,000. A 1980 report by a U.S. House of Representatives committee finds:

"The Government's programs for monitoring the health effects of the tests was inadequate &, more disturbingly, all evidence suggesting that radiation was having harmful effects, be it on sheep or people, was not only disregarded but actually suppressed."

http://www.conelrad.com/atomic_cafe.html
http://web.archive.org/...publicshelter.com/main/tac.html
http://www.geocities.com/yucca51/atomic-photos.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_and_cover

1966 -- US: Teens riot. Arrest of a black high school student for throwing bricks & stones at passing cars touches off a wave of looting & burning in Watts, California. Two killed & 25 injured in the riot, the second major disturbance to break out in the Los Angeles ghetto in less than a year (see 11 August).

After a morning inspection tour (of the 1965 Watts LA riots) one investigator said that he had found the "holiday atmosphere" among the looters most repelling.

“These rioters don’t have any leaders.”

http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/10.Watts.htm

1966 -- Jean Biso (1881-1966) dies. Anarcho-syndicalist, Secretary of the Syndicat des Correcteurs in Paris, participant in support groups for Sacco & Vanzetti, Spanish Revolution of 1936.


1966 -- US: Thomas C. Lynch, Attorney General of the State of California, condemns the use of LSD & other drugs in a statement to the State Senate Judiciary Committee in Sacramento. Except for alcohol, of course.
Source: [Frisco History Archive]
http://www.sfmuseum.org/hist1/rock.html
http://www.seattlehempfest.com/

1968 -- Diocese of Rome announces it deplores but won't prohibit "rock & roll masses" at the Church of San Lessio Falconieri.


1968 -- England: Six protesters ejected from shipyard at launch of Britain's 4th Polaris nuclear submarine, Birkenhead.


1968 -- US: Blood, Sweat & Tears opens at the Avalon Ballroom in Frisco.
Source: [Frisco History Archive]


1968 -- Choque entre un tren y un tractor en Santa María de la Alameda. 26 muertos y 80 heridos.
http://www.el-mundo.es/larevista/num132/textos/crono.html


1969 -- England: Alan Barlow (1928-2004) & Phil Carver arrested immediately following a powerful explosion at the Francoist Banco de Bilbao, Covent Garden, London. In their possession is a letter claiming the action on behalf of the "1st of May Group."
http://recollectionbooks.com/siml/library/AngryBrigade/1969.html
Video: http://www.brightcove.tv/title.jsp?title=340392670&channel=219646953&lineup=392158298


1970 -- US: 78 protesters arrested during a second attempt by Native American activists to occupy Fort Lawton, demanding that Seattle give the unused facility back to Native Americans.


1970 -- Tarjei Vesaas (1897-1970) dies, in Vinje. Norwegian novelist/short story writer.


1971 -- Chatrooms make their debut on the Internet.



1971 -- Louis Louvet (1899-1971) dies. Anarcho-syndicalist, in the Syndicat des Correcteurs d'imprimerie since 1937.


1972 -- Los Angeles Radio station KHJ raided by police after calls from listeners who feared there'd been a revolution at the station from 6:00 to 7:30 in the morning. DJ Robert W. Morgan had played Donny Osmond's "Puppy Love" over & over. The police left without making any arrests.


1980 -- Penobscot Indians in Maine win major land claim.



1980 -- Hélio Oiticica (1937-1980) dies. Brazilian painter, performance artist, & anarchist. Grandson of the anarchist Jose Oiticica, whose ideas & activities were an important influence.

Created environmental, participatory events—among them Parangolé (1964), Tropicália (1967) & Apocalipopótesis (1968)—either in art centres or in the street.

One of the leading exhibitors in the exhibition Nova objetividade brasileira (Rio de Janeiro, 1967), which reactivated Brazil's avant-garde.

[Details / context]

1982 -- Nicaragua: CIA-trained & equipped forces dynamite bridges.


1982 -- Italy: Agenti dei NOCS (Nuclei operativi centrali di sicurezza) sono accusati di torture e violenze nei confronti di persone arrestate con l'accusa di terrorismo.
[Source: Crimini e Misfatti]



1983 -- Irish-born British novelist Rebecca West, 91, dies, London, England.

"I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat, or a prostitute."

1985 -- US: Two-to-one vote against construction of new nuclear power plant, Bakersfield, California.


1986 -- England: The most successful picket at Wapping in the News International dispute: forty yards of fence are torn down, lorries are held up for five hours & parts of the country have to do without their Murdoch Sunday papers.


1991 -- US: Local 234 begins successful 19-strike preventing introduction of part timers.


1993 -- United Nations "Truth Commission" concludes most of the human rights abuses in El Salvador during its civil war had been committed by the U.S.-backed Salvadoran government.



1995 -- Jean Meckert, aka Jean or John Amila, (1910-1995) dies. Libertarian novelist & antimilitarist.

In 1971, his novel La vierge et le taureau denounced military misdeeds in the South Pacific (atomic & bacteriological experiments). Jean Amila was violently attacked, possibly by government agents, & left for dead. He suffered amnesia afterwards, regaining his memory, little by little, thanks to his continued writing.

His books are all stamped with his antimilitarist/anarchist spirit, tackling the army, the church, the family & the State, & often include characters who are spontaneously libertarian, their anarchism deep & visceral.

" I do not know if I am an anarchist, but I know the ideas. My father was an anarchist & a deserter..."

— "le monde libertaire," December 3, 1987

[Details / context]

1995 -- US: "New York Times" publishes 50,000th edition today.
Source: ’Robert Braunwart’


1997 -- England: Activists across Britain stage supermarket protests against genetically engineered foods.


1997 -- Switzerland: First International Day Against Police Brutality [DAPB].

This day of protest initiated in response to Swiss police beating two children, aged 11 & 12, by the Black Flag in Switzerland, with the help of COBP from Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Over 50 groups within 14 countries participate.

"The strong arm of the State, the police, is a repressive instrument, which at every opportunity violates the very laws that it is supposed to respect. It abuses its power on a daily basis without suffering any consequences. The police spy, harass, imprison, torture, & kill.

Their primary victims are the "undesirables" of society; the poor, the homeless, the marginalized, immigrants, people of color, sex workers, activists, student activists, & unionized workers. In response to the general deterioration of living conditions & the ever-increasing rise of poverty, governments invest in police forces in an attempt to maintain order & social peace by any means necessary."

http://slingshot.tao.ca/displaybi.php?0068008
http://nefac.net/node/215

2001 -- Germany: Fermin Rocker Show closes, Berlin.

Paintings by Fermin Rocker (1907-2004), at Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, Franz Mehring Platz.

Fermin Rocker's paintings convey the memory of his father, the famed anarcho-syndicalist parents, Rudolf Rocker & Milly Witkop Rocker.

Too modest to be called a working-class hero, Rudolf fought against the Nazis in Germany & militated with the workers in England & later in the United States.

Fermin's powerful characters convey a sense of the conflicts & sufferings of the age, carrying their grief with dignity.

http://raforum.info/article.php3?id_article=919&lang=en
http://www.eastlondonhistory.com/fermin%20rocker.htm

2002 -- Finland: 5th Black & Green days, 15th-17th.



2003 -- US: Hundreds of demonstrations across the nation in opposition to Beloved & Respected Comrade President Bush's relentless pursuit for a war against Iraq. In Seattle, protesters surround the Federal Building. TV news broadcasts later in the day include focus bits on the Singing Grannys (singing!) & long-time anti-authoritarian Robbie Barnes (wrapping the building with "crime scene" tape, anarcho-Christo-fashion).
http://www.markfiore.com/user/1/animation/232
http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2005/05/19/lies/


2003 -- Spain: In Madrid, CNT & antiwar groups protest the American war in Iraq.
http://www.nodo50.org/paremoslaguerra/images/15m.jpg


3000 --

"We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are."

— Anais Nin
(also attributed to the Talmud, as Bleedster Leonard F. advises us.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ana%C3%AFs_Nin
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Anais_Nin

4500 --

Anarchist Encyclopedia / Dictionary Quick Index

---

anti-CopyRite 1997-3000, more or less
Subscribe to daily email excerpts/updates (include 'subscribe bleed' in subject field),
or send questions, suggestions, additions, corrections to:
BleedMeister David Brown

Visit the complete Daily Bleed Archives

The Daily Bleed is freely produced by Recollection Used Books

Visitors since since May 2005

anarchist, labor, &radical books

See also: Anarchist Encyclopedia
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/gallery/galleryindex.htm
Stan Iverson Memorial Library
http://recollectionbooks.com/siml/
Anarchist Time Line / Chronology
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/indexTimeline.htm