Colin Ward, Paul Feyerabend, Gil J. Wolman, Kazimir Malevich, Mercedes Comaposada Guillen, Clément Duval, Virgilia d'Andrea, Gino Cerrito, What Happened on this day, in recovered history, February 11

A harmful truth is better than a useful lie.

— Thomas Mann

FEBRUARY 11

COLIN WARD
British anarchist writer & planner, social critic.

"SAINT" CAEDMAN'S DAY.

France: FEAST OF OUR LADY OF LOURDES.

US: WHITE SHIRT DAY

1650 -- Rennie Descartes, philosopher, "I think therefore I am." Thought about it, then quit thinking.

1657 -- Philosopher / writer Bernard Fontenelle — nephew of Corneille & last of the "Precieux" writers — lives, Rouen.

1778 -- France: Over 300 people come-a-calling on Voltaire upon his return to Paris after 28 years in exile for satiric writing & impudence.
http://www.voltaire.ox.ac.uk/www_vf/about_voltaire/biography.ssi

1780 -- Poet Karoline von Günderode lives, Karlsruhe. Became friends with many romantic German poets & writes of herself: "The past was behind me! I belonged only to the present. But a yearning was within me, which knew not its object. I searched constantly, but every thing found was not what was sought, & longingly I propelled myself into the infinite."

1787 -- William Blake's brother Robert gets buried in Bunhill Fields. At his deathbed at the moment of death, Blake saw his brother's spirit ascend heavenward "clapping its hands for joy." Blake reflected this moment in many images & attributed his innovations in printing to the inspiration of his dead brother. See Daily Bleed Saints Gallery page, http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/saints/
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/wblake.htm

1790 -- US: Society of Friends petition Congress to emancipate slaves.

1790 -- US: Long after colonists had invaded upstate New York & natives had fought back successfully (including in alliance with the British during the American Revolution), US signs first treaty with Iroquois.

1805 -- US: Sacajawea gives birth to Jean-Baptist Charbonneau while leading Lewis & Clark Expedition.

1812 -- US: At Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Republican Governor Elbridge Gerry's behest, Massachusetts is redistricted to give Republicans advantage in the election of State legislators. One grotesquely shaped new district, described as looking like a salamander, results in the coining of the word gerrymander.

1812 -- England: Stockport workers ask for meeting with masters on subject of wages; manufacturers agreed then withdrew offer at later Manchester meeting. Also during this month shearing frames in small establishments in Huddersfield destroyed by Luddites.
Source: [Luddite Chronology]

1847 -- Patent thief, inventor of the modern timeclock, among other widgets, Thomas Edison lives.
Collage by SaintMeister James Koehnline

1852 -- Nikolai Gogol burns his novel Dead Souls (2nd part).

1859 -- Wales: Whale of a Story? John Lewis of Aberdare, experiences a fall of fish from the sky.

1861 -- US: House unanimously passes resolution guaranteeing noninterference with slavery in any state.

1861 -- England: Troops have to be called in to suppress the riot that follows a prisoners' breakout from Chatham prison in Kent.
'Calendar Riots'
http://www.geocities.co.jp/MusicStar/6282/pistols/discography/boot.html

1862 -- Elizabeth Siddell dies; husband Gabriel Rossetti buries his unpublished manuscript poems with her — but he changes his mind in October 1869 & has her disinterred to get them back. Has them published in 1870.
'Calendar Riots'

1878 -- WhiteWash?: Soviet Suprematist painter Kazimir (or Kasimir) Malevich, lives, Kiev. Persecuted by the Stalinist regime. His painting "White on White" drives 'em nuts; Black Square is even worser!

KAZIMIR MALEVICH
Daily Bleed Patron Saint May 15, 2006-08. Soviet anarchist artist, founder of the Suprematist movement.

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Alexander Bruner, a young painter, stunned the art world in 1992 by entering an Amsterdam museum & defacing Kazimir Malevich's renowned "White Cross" [or "Suprematism 1922-1927"?] with a spray-painted green dollar sign in protest of the increasing commercialization of modern art.

Feb 11, 1997 — statement issued in support of Alexander Bruner for defacing Malevich's painting, is apparently no longer online.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazimir_Malevich
http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/malevich/

1887 -- France: Clément Duval, anarchist expropriator & member of the "Panthers of Batignolles" is condemned to death. See also March 29, 1935.
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Following the protests organized by the anarchists, his sentence is commuted to life. On April 14, 1901, he escaped from servitude in French Guyana to New York, where he lived until the ripe young age of 85, surrounded by beloved Italian anarchist comrades who aided him.

1887 -- The literary magazine The Epoch is founded in NY.

1887 -- Rubén Darío book Abrojos is published, Santiago, Chile.

1890 -- US: Eleven million acres of Sioux land stolen by the American government, opened to white settlers.

1890 -- Italy: Virgilia d'Andrea (1890-1932) lives, Sulmona- Abruzzi. Poet (« poétesse de l’anarchie »), teacher, writer. Met Armando Borghi & became a dedicated anarchist. Her anti-fascist activities forced her to leave Italy.
"Like Luigi Galleani she writes in emotive & powerful language..."

[Details / context]

1896 -- Oscar Wilde play "Salom‚" premiers, Paris.

1902 -- Belgium: Police beats up universal suffrage demonstrators in Brussels.

1905 -- US: James Blackstone, Seattle, bowls 299½ — last pin breaks but stands.

1911 -- Mexico: From an article appearing today in Regeneración(Mexican anarquista paper), titled "The Social War,"
"A revolution which does not guarantee people the right to live is a revolution of politicians &, disinheriting us, we must turn our backs on them. We, the poor, need a social revolution (...) that is, we need a revolution which gives to all, men & women, the land which up to now was the exclusive inheritance of some privileged people of fortune."

http://www.portaloaca.com/historia/historia-libertaria/1735-regeneracion-y-la-federacion-anarquista-mexicana-1952-1960-tesis.html
http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regeneraci%C3%B3n_%28peri%C3%B3dico%29

1913 -- US: IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) leads rubber strike in Akron, Ohio. The Akron Rubber Workers will do it again in 1936-37, at the General Tire Company of Akron, scene of the first sitdown strike in rubber. (See 1937 below.)
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The first major strike, in 1913, represented an end of innocence. The action, which included workers from all of Akron's rubber shops, began after the introduction of machinery that made tires easier to build & resulted in lower piece rates for the workers.

The strike was loosely directed by the Industrial Workers of the World, a radical group nicknamed the "Wobblies." It lasted more than five weeks. The workers made no gains — they didn't even manage to shut down the rubber shops. The strike served chiefly to disillusion company executives.

http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/entry.php?rec=907
http://www.iww.org/

1916 -- Black feminist & civil-rights activist Flo Kennedy is born in Kansas City, Missouri. As a lawyer, Kennedy represented Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker & H. Rap Brown.
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In 1966, she founded the Media Workshop to confront racism in media & advertising. In 1972 she forms the Feminist Party & files an Internal Revenue Service complaint alleging that the Catholic Church violates tax-exempt requirements by spending money to influence political decisions. Kennedy describes herself (quote)

"I'm just a loud-mouthed middle-aged colored lady . . . & a lot of people think I'm crazy. Maybe you do too, but I never stop to wonder why I'm not like other people. The mystery to me is why more people aren't like me."

1916 -- US: Emma Goldman is arrested for lecturing on birth control, NYC.

1919 -- US: Seattle General Strike ends.
Harvey O'Connor's sympathetic Revolution in Seattle remains the best book on this event.
Online, see Howard Zinn's People's History of the US
Also see the excellent Seattle General Strike Project page:
http://depts.washington.edu/labhist/strike/
http://www.washington.edu/uwired/outreach...Cold%20War%20and%20Red%20Scare.html
http://struggle.ws/hist_texts/seattle1919.html
http://recollectionbooks.com/SeattleRadicalTimeLine.htm

1922 -- Italy: Gino Cerrito lives (d.1982) in Messina (Sicily). Militant anarcho-syndicalist & anarchist historian. Involved in the antifascist struggle during WWII. One of the creators of the Anarchist Group of Messina, with colleagues like Alfonso Failla, Ugo Mazzuchelli, Mantovani & Umberto Marzocchi, fought for the revival of the Italian Anarchist Federation (FAI). As a professor of Contemporary History at the University of Florence, Cerrito did significant research work on libertarian issues (insurreccionalisme, militarism, organization, etc). Author of L'antimilitarismo anarchico in Italia nel primo ventennio del secolo (1968),Le origini del movimento operaio in Italia (1969) & many other books.
http://anarcoefemerides.balearweb.net/post/111336

1926 -- Rioting breaks out at the Abbey Theatre, because Sean O'Casey's "The Plough & the Stars" is perceived as anti-Irish.

1929 -- Gone To Heaven? Vatican declares itself a separate enclave from Italy.

1929 -- Italy: Stipula dei Patti Lateranensi tra lo stato italiano e il Vaticano. La Chiesa viene adescata e comprata per avvallare e benedire il regime. Essa accetta che i Vescovi giurino fedeltà allo stato in cambio del monopolio assegnato alla religione cattolica come religione di stato e di un risarcimento pari a 1miliardo e 750 milioni.
Source: [Crimini e Misfatti]

1929 -- Eugene O'Neill Play "Dynamo" opens in NY.

1932 -- US: Duke Ellington & his orchestra records "Creole Love Call."

1934 -- Austria: Dollfuss government destroys the Socialist Party by raids & bombardment of its headquarters (-February 15); uprising & bombardment of Karl Marx Co-op housing complex in Vienna follows.

1935 -- US: First airplane flight with auto slung beneath the fuselage, New York. Inspires pot-bellies around the nation.

1937 -- US: 48,000 GM workers, who began a 44-day sit-down strike on December 30, 1936, win today.
Called "The Great Flint Sit-Down Strike," Flint was possibly the most completely controlled of any company town in the country.

The idea for the sit-down strike arose from an incident on a baseball field when auto workers playing a baseball game discovered the ump was a non-union man & sat down on the field in protest.

General Motors recognizes the United Auto Workers (UAW) ... Two months later, company guards beat up UAW leaders at the River Rouge, Michigan plant.

... show details

Then I led the audience in some of our union songs — Solidarity Forever, Hold the Fort, & others, one of the younger men playing an accompaniment on the banjo. They made the walls ring with words familiar to many as a paraphrase of an old hymn:

Hold the fort, for we are coming Union men, be strong; Side by side we battle onward — Victory will come!

"Rosie," said Germer afterward, "we'll make you chairman of the entertainment committee."

...Frequently the entertainment would be interrupted, as a man in a checkered red-&-black windbreaker called through the "mike" for volunteers to relieve pickets: "Three men to Mae West Post...two men to Camp Argonne...four men to Post No. 14."

See Rose Pesotta's Bread upon the Waters .
http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/bright/pesotta/chap19.htm
"They set the machine guns right in the middle of the street on Chevrolet Avenue..."

Instantly, the noise stopped. The whole room lay in perfect silence. The tirebuilders stood in long lines, touching each other, perfectly motionless, deafened by the silence. A moment ago there had been the weaving hands, the revolving wheels, the clanking belt, the moving hooks, the flashing tire tools. Now there was absolute stillness, no motion anywhere, no sound.

Out of the terrifying quiet came the wondering voice of a big tirebuilder near the windows: "Jesus Christ, it's like the end of the world."

He broke the spell, the magic moment of stillness. For now his awed words said the same thing to every man, "We done it! We stopped the belt! By God, we done it!" & men began to cheer hysterically, to shout & howl in the fresh silence. Men wrapped long sinewy arms around their neighbors shoulders, screaming, "We done it! We done it!"

For the first time in history, American mass-production workers had stopped a conveyor belt & halted the inexorable movement of factory machinery.

— From Industrial Valley, by Ruth McKenney (NY: 1939, pp. 261-2)

1939 -- Jane Yolen, children's book author, lives.

1948 -- US: Local 598 workers begin to honor the 1937 Sit-Downers on today's annual "White Shirt Day."
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As a result of a suggestion from Bert Christensen, a member of the Education Committee, Local 598 members begin what has become a UAW tradition, honoring those who sat down in 1936-37 (the Great Sit-Down strike) by wearing white shirts into work on the day that the first UAW-GM agreement was reached.

Brother Chistensen felt that by wearing white shirts (traditionally worn by management) we would show that we were as good as white collar workers & also when management walked up & down the factory floor & saw everyone wearing white shirts, it would demonstrate the strength & unity of UAW workers, as well as the dignity of all UAW working men & women.

http://www.uaw.org/solidarity/09/0209/feature06.php

1948 -- Russia: The Central Committee of the CPSU rebukes Khatchaturian, Prokoviev & Shostakovich for "bourgeois decadence."

1950 -- Albert Einstein calls for international control of atomic weapons.

1951 -- Canadian poet Tom MacInnes dies in Vancouver. (Complete Poems (1923); In the Old of My Age (1947)).

1952 -- US: Third major air crash in two months, in Elizabeth, New Jersey, results in the withholding of a report praising Newark Airport as "one of the nation's safest."

1952 --

Anticoncept
France: First projection of Gil J. Wolman's The Anticoncept, in Paris.

http://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/chronology/chronology.html | [Situationist Resources]

1963 -- Sylvia Plath, a suicide, in London, age 30, on her third attempt.
Dying
is an art like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.
I do it so it feels like hell.
— "Lady Lazarus" (1962)

1963 -- US: CIA Domestic Operations Division created.
"The highest ambition of the integrated spectacle is still to turn secret agents into revolutionaries, & revolutionaries into secret agents."

      — GUY DEBORD, 1988

"A few years back, a man high up in the CIA name Ray cline was asked if the CIA, by its surveillance of protest organizations in the United States, was violating the free speech provision of the First Amendment. He smiled & said: 'It's only an amendment.'"

— Howard Zinn, The Zinn Reader pp412-13.

1964 -- Beatles do Washington D.C. "I Want to Hold Your Hand" topped the charts in January. It is about this time Bob Dylan, having released "The Times They Are A-Changin'" in January, visits the southern US & writes "Chimes of Freedom"; he & Joan Baez appear together at the Berkeley Community Theater later in the month.

http://www.bobdylan.com/
http://www.folkarchive.de/history.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Dylan

1964 -- US: 19,000 students boycott Cincinnati schools to protest segregation.

1965 -- Italy: il ministro degli Interni Paolo Emilio Taviani proibisce la rappresentazione a Roma del dramma ëIl Vicario" di Rolf Hochhuth, che criticava l'operato di Pio XII nei confronti degli ebrei nella Germania nazista.
Source: [Crimini e Misfatti]

1967 -- US: Less than two months after his return from Hanoi, A.J. Muste, renowned US pacifist, dies at age 82.
A. J. MUSTE, Patron Saint 2005-2011
American pacifist, revolutionist, anarcho-socialist.
http://www.ajmuste.org/

1967 -- The Monkees announce they'll play their own instruments on all future recordings. This is, of course, the beginning of the end.

1968 -- Oviedo: se celebra el Congreso Provincial de Gitanos.
http://www.elmundo.es/larevista/num132/textos/crono.html

1969 -- Canada: At St. George Williams College, Montreal, 200 students smash computers with axes & set computer center on fire during sit-in protesting prof's racism.

1969 -- Grateful Dead play Fillmore East.

http://www.geckographics.com/
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/11/26/121126fa_fact_paumgarten?currentPage=all

1970 -- John Lennon pays 1,344 pounds in fines for protesting the South African rugby team playing in Scotland.

1971 -- Deep-Six?: Treaty on non-militarization of sea bed signed, London, Moscow & Washington. Means the subs have to stay 4-feet off the bottom or else.

1977 -- LobSang?: 20.2-kg lobster caught off Nova Scotia (heaviest known crustacean).

1978 -- US: "Longest Walk" begins, 300 Native Americans start march from Alcatraz, in Frisco, California, to Washington D.C. Organized by American Indian Movement (Aim).
http://www.pbs.org/itvs/alcatrazisnotanisland/activism.html

1978 -- Lois Gibbs brings US to awareness of "Love Canal" (near Niagara Falls, NY).
Residents will be evacuated this year.
Inspires TV programs called "The Love Boat," "Survivors" & "I Want To Be A Millionaire."

1978 -- Working-class Swedish writer Harry Martinson, dies in Stockholm. His best works are Passad ("Trade Wind"), a collection of poetry; a novel Vägen till Klockrike (The Road); & his epic poem, Aniara: A Review of Man in Time & Space.
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/harrymar.htm

1979 -- Iran's premier Bakhtiar flees town, Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Ayatollah Khomeini seizes power. We lovingly know him as him "Chuckles."
Travel Tip of the Day — Stuck on a bus in the middle of a revolution, where the natives have the impression you're a bunch CIA/Mafia spies? I highly recommend a big sack of "Hash Brownies."
       — HemoMeister, who speaks from personal experience.

1981 -- US: Eight workers contaminated when 100,000 gallons of radioactive coolant leaks into containment building of the Tennessee Valley Authority's (TVA) Sequoyah I plant in Tennessee.

1985 -- US: Wyandot Indians of Kansas & Oklahoma receive $5.5 million for aboriginal lands sold in 1842 for less than fair market value.

1987 -- US: Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Ronnie Reagan lies to the Tower Commission, claiming he did not approve arms sales to Iran.

1990 -- South Africa: Political prisoner Nelson Mandela released, after 27 years in prison, by the US-supported apartheid government of South Africa for the crime of "high treason."

Mandela & scores of other "Rivonia treason trialists" were arrested after a raid on a farmhouse in Rivonia, Johannesburg, in which plans for a guerrilla confrontation with the apartheid state was planned, & sent to prison following a seven-month trial in 1964 at the Palace of Justice in Pretoria.

http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/ssrg/africa/history.html
http://archives.obs-us.com/obs/english/books/Mandela/Mandela.html
http://www.anc.org.za/show.php?include=docs/misc/2010/umzabalazo.html

1994 -- Paul Feyerabend dies, Zurich, Switzerland. Swiss anti-scientist "Against Method", anarchist philosopher.

"Anything goes."

http://blackeyepress.wordpress.com/2009/02/11/paul-karl-feyerabend/
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feyerabend/
http://www.suppose.de/texte/feyerabendpaolino.html

1994 -- Mercedes Comaposada Guillen (1901-1994) dies, Paris, France. Spanish-French militant & anarchist teacher. Companion of the sculptor Baltasar Lobo. She became secretary for Pablo Picasso, who protected her from French authorities.
[Details / context]

1999 -- Outer Space: Pluto is once again the farthest planet from the sun in our solar system.

2000 -- Roger Vadim, French filmmaker, dies, aged 72, Paris. Made Barbarella, a high point for actress Jane Fonda.

2005 -- American playwright Arthur Miller dies. Combined social awareness with searching concern for a character's inner life. Wrote The Misfits for one-time wife Marilyn Monroe. He was repeatedly attacked by HUAC during the 50s witchhunts but refused to name names.
The apple cannot be stuck back on The Tree of Knowledge; once we begin to see, we are doomed & challenged to seek the strength to see more, not less.
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/amiller.htm

2006 -- US: Duck! Duck! Beloved & Respected Comrade Vice President Dick Cheney, armed & always dangerous — peppers a millionaire contributor with a shotgun while bird hunting. His hunting party failing to bag the vaunted & elusive Large-winged Osama bin Laden, Cheney determines to take out anyone who ain't leaning far enough to the right.

2010 -- British anarchist, social theorist Colin Ward dies, Ipswich, England. Author of almost 30 books on subjects that ranged from allotments, architecture, self-build housing, children's play, education, postcards & town planning to water distribution & anarchist theory, many of which gained him an international following.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/feb/22/colin-ward-obituary

3000 --

"I don't want you to follow me or anyone else.

I would not lead you into the promised land if I could, because if I could lead you in, somebody else would lead you out.

      — Eugene Debs
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/sinners/DebsEugene.htm