MARCH 1

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WOMEN'S HISTORY MONTH.

Switzerland: CHALAND RA MARZ, children's revels.

HOLLOW EARTH DAY. (Just keep diggin'.)

Scotland & Greece: WHIPPITY SCOORIE.

Old Rome: NEW YEAR'S DAY.

Eastern Orthodox Church: Great Lent Begins.

NUCLEAR FREE PACIFIC DAY.

PULASKI DAY.

LEEKDAY (appropriated by the Christians as St. David's Day): a number of practices surround the Welsh tradition of Cymhortha on this day: farmers reciprocate their labour in ploughing the land, & everyone contributes a leek to the communal dinner; those too ill to plough have their fields done for them & are given a sack of leeks.

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It being mayhaps & quite likely that today (or yesterday if you insist) is not the 29th of February — a day you don't want to be robbed of — we provide a link to some precious forgotten moments... with further gems from Félix Fénéon's "news items":

At skittles apoplexy felled Mr. Andre, 75, of Levallois. While his bowl was still rolling, he ceased to be.

1360 -- England: King Edward III of England pays 16 pounds ($3,840) to ransom skilled soldier Geoffrey Chaucer from French captivity during the siege of Rheims.
http://www.luminarium.org/medlit/chaucer.htm


1790 -- US: First census count includes slave & free Negroes. Indians are not included.


1798 -- US: First strike of 1798, by those nasty ink-for-blood printers.


1837 -- Author William Dean Howells lives, Martin's Ferry, Ohio.
http://public.wsu.edu/~campbelld/howells/index.html



1842 -- Spain: Fermín Salvochea y Álvarez lives (1842-1907); author, teacher, insurrectionist, briefly mayor of Cadiz with the proclamation of the 1st Republic; among other measures, he implemented an 8-hour work day before he was forced to flee the country. / Figura fundamental en el anarquismo andaluz, maestro de varias generaciones, nace en Cádiz el 1 de marzo de 1842.

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In southern Spain, Fermín Salvochea was one of the most influential figures in Andalusian anarchism. Down there, the people were pitted against a bourgeoisie that owned huge & unproductive landed estates.

Following his death in September 1907, 50,000 people attend his burial — & his tomb since then never lacks a daily renewal of flowers.

The character Fernando Salvatierra, in the Blasco Ibáñez novel La Bodega, is based on Salvochea.

http://recollectionbooks.com/siml/library/utopia.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferm%C3%ADn_Salvochea
http://www.andalucia.cc/almenara/105-11.htm
http://cadizcentro.net/index.php/archives/2005/01/13/fermin-salvochea/
http://www.cgtandalucia.org/spip.php?article540
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDQ9jZGXMC0

1847 -- US: Michigan becomes first state to abolish the death penalty.



1848 -- Germany: During this month Michael Bakunin, the Russian anarchist, leaves Paris, travels to Frankfurt, Mainz, Mannheim, Heidelberg. He tries unsuccessfully to reach Poland. He goes to Berlin, Leipzig & Breslau. He meets Marx & Engels in Cologne & a split begins over Marx's denunciation of Bakunin's friend Herwegh, who had led an ill-fated expedition of German exiles to Baden in the hope of instigating an uprising.
http://socialhistory.org/en/news/bakunin-collected
http://www.knaw.nl/smartsite.dws?lang=ENG&id=26101&pub=971108



1872 -- US: Yellowstone becomes the world's first national park.
http://www.gorp.com/parks-guide/yellowstone-national-park-outdoor-pp2-guide-cid9447.html


1875 -- US: Congress, gives African Americans the right to serve on juries & occupy public places. In the wake of the Civil War, black men are briefly able to vote & hold elected office.
[Details / context]

1877 -- Milly Witkop Rocker (1877-1955) lives, Ukraine. Exiled to London, she was an activist in the Jewish anarchist movement among the Lower Eastside sweatshop workers.

In London, in 1896, she met Rudolf Rocker who became her lifelong companion. Their son is the artist, Fermin Rocker.

[Details / context]

1880 -- Lytton Strachey lives, London. Bisexual. Biographer/literary critic with the wonderful, gently mocking, ironic, enormously articulate style, causes Bertrand Russell, reading Eminent Victorians (1918) while in jail as a conscientious objector, to keep breaking into laughter, only to be told to pipe down by his jailers.
http://web.archive.org/...bloomsbury.denise-randle.co.uk/strachey.htm
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/taro/uthrc/00128/hrc-00128.html



1884 -- Scotland:

Strange Stuff:

Black Rain falls in the Clyde Valley. ... A correspondent to Knowledge, 5-190, writes of a black rain that fell in the Clyde Valley, March 1, 1884: of another black rain that fell two days later. According to the correspondent, a black rain had fallen in the Clyde Valley, March 20, 1828: then again March 22, 1828. http://home.comcast.net/~jholmes20/substory3.htm http://www.resologist.net/damn03.htm

1885 -- Italy: During this month, Repressione statale delle agitazioni dei contadini nel mantovano e dei dirigenti del movimento 'La boje.' Vengono arrestate 168 persone e 22 vengono deferite all'autorità giudiziaria con l'accusa di attentato alla sicurezza dello stato.
Source: [Crimini e Misfatti]


1890 -- Australia: The Worker, the first Australian labor newspaper, is published in Brisbane.


1892 -- France: In Marseille premier number of L'Agitateur, "Organe Anarchiste."

... show details

(à partir du n° 4). Les responsables du journal se succèderont mais le plus important est sans aucun doute Sebastien Faure qui financera le journal grâce aux bénéfices tirés de ses conférences antireligieuses. A noter que certains articles de ce périodique sont en langue italienne. Mais après les attentats de Ravachol, le journal est victime de la répression policière et contraint de cesser sa parution. Il réapparaît pourtant le 14 janvier 1893, six numéros suivront mais avec des lieux de publication différents (Avignon, Toulon, Dijon, et même La Chaux-de-Fonds, en Suisse). Le harcèlement judiciaire incessant aura finalement raison du journal; deux autres numéros paraîtront pourtant en 1897 à l'initiative du Groupe "La Jeunesse Internationale". http://www.ephemanar.net/mars01.html

1896 -- Italy: On the island of Tremiti where residents are confined, confrontations take place with the police, who kill the anarchist Argante Salucci & wound 10 of his companions.


1898 -- France: In Paris du premier numéro du journal Le Naturien...

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revendiquant l'indépendance absolue par le retour à la nature (et non à l'état primitif). Les principaux collaborateurs en sont illustrator Émile Gravelle & Henri Zisly. Seulement quatre numéros parurent. [Details / context]

1899 -- US: During this month Emma Goldman's lectures in Detroit include "The Power of the Idea" & "A Criticism of Ethics." Invited by the Ohio Liberal Society to lecture on trade unionism, Emma addresses three meetings in Cincinnati. From Cincinnati, Goldman travels to St. Louis where she delivers 10 lectures, including one before the conservative Bricklayers' Union.

Near by, Emma speaks before two large gatherings in the mining town of Mount Olive. Her lecture on "The Eight-Hour Struggle & the Condition of the Miners of the Whole World" is especially well received.

Emma is also offered financial support for her future medical studies by Herman Miller, a friend of Robert Reitzel & president of the Cleveland Brewing Company.

1900 -- Bulgaria: Nikolas Tchorbadieff lives (1900-1994). Militant & anarchist propagandist. Forced into exile, helped found the "International Bookshop" in Paris & was a founder of the French-Bulgarian review Iztok in 1979.


1900 -- March-October: Emma Goldman prepares for & visits Europe.

In the summer Emma & Hippolyte Havel visit Paris in preparation for the September International Anti-Parliamentary Congress.

Emma becomes acquainted with the leading figures of the French anarchist movement & other progressive circles & also also decides against pursuing further medical studies so that she can concentrate on political activities.

[Details / context]

1906 -- Leader of the modern regional novelists, Jose María de Pereda, dies in Santander, Spain.
http://www.galeon.com/cantabria/Biografias/CarpP/PeredaJM/PeredaJM.htm


1906 -- US: Emma Goldman publishes the first issue of her paper, Mother Earth.
www.spunk.org/library/people/goldman/sp001520/emmabio.html
http://www.lib.umich.edu/joseph-ishill-authors-artists-oriole-press/goldman.html
http://struggle.ws/ws/gold49.html
http://home4.swipnet.se/~w-40997/emma.htm



1907 -- US: Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) strike Portland, Oregon sawmills.
http://www.inspiracy.com/black/beautifullosers.html



1910 -- US: Three passenger trains buried at Steven's Pass in the Cascade Mountain Range & 118 die. Worst snowslide in US history.



1911 -- Francisco Ponzán Vidal (the "Anarchist Pimpernel") lives (1911-1944). Spanish anarcho-syndicalist, anti-fascist guérillero, anti-Francoist & resistance fighter. Captured in France in 1943, shot by the Nazis in Buzet-sur-Tarn, near Toulouse.
http://geocities.ws/paisajes_guerrilla/catalonia.html



1912 -- England: Increasing industrial unrest reaches a peak today when miners go on strike to further their demand for a national minimum wage. This is the biggest strike Britain has ever seen to date; according to the Board of Trade over a million workers were involved. The Syndicalist movement was extremely active at this time urging the workers to cease relying upon Parliament, & advocating militant trade unionism & 'Direct Action.'

... show details

The miners' strike was providing unwelcome instruction in working-class solidarity. Tom Mann, a seasoned militant & leader of the Syndicalist Movement, drew the attention of public meetings in Manchester to the fact that the authorities were having premises prepared as temporary barracks & were concentrating military forces a few miles out of the city.

He & others in the Syndicalist Trials of 1912, were subjected to the first use of the Incitement to Mutiny Act since 1804.

http://recollectionbooks.com/siml/library/syndtrials.html

1914 -- Ralph Ellison lives, Oklahoma City, Okla. American teacher & writer, best known & only published novel Invisible Man (1952) tells a story of a black man who retires in a basement to solve his relationship with American society. Won the National Book Award in 1953. In a 1965 inquiry of 200 authors & critics it was cited among the most important post-World War II novels.


1917 -- Robert Lowell, American poet, WWII conscientious objector (CO), lives, Boston, Massachusetts.

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Robert Lowell, poet noted for complex texts, was imprisoned as a conscientious objector during World War II & later spent periods in mental hospitals. Married three times. Father of the confessional poets, a term used to describe among others Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, & John Berryman.

1917 -- US: During this month Tom Mooney's defense attorney W. Bourke Cockran speaks at mass meeting at Carnegie Hall organized by Emma Goldman &
Alexander Berkman.




1918 -- Italy: Marie Louise Berneri (1918-1949) lives, Arezzo. The elder daughter of Camillo & Giovanna Berneri. Best known as editor of "Freedom," author of Neither East Nor West & Journey Through Utopia. Married to Vernon Richards, she died in 1949 during childbirth, age 31.
See the tribute published following her death, http://recollectionbooks.com/siml/library/berneri/MLBerneriTribute.html


1918 -- US: Emma Goldman receives a visit from Prince Hopkins, who reports on the activities of the League for the Amnesty of Political Prisoners.




1919 -- US: Man Ray, artist & photographer, publishes the only issue of TNT, an anarchist magazine, this month. He illustrated for a number of anarchist publications, including Emma Goldman's Mother Earth.

... show details

A recent PBS documentary on Man Ray, as one person put it,
"elected to completely ignore this important intellectual context of his work since they would have to use the "A" word."

http://www.infoshop.org/page/GraphicsLinks
http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/man_ray.html
http://www.manray-photo.com/

1920 -- American poet Howard Nemerov lives.


1920 -- US: This month Radio station WGI in Boston initiates first known regularly scheduled radio broadcasts, eight months before the traditionally accepted "first" of regularly scheduled broadcasts claimed by KDKA in Pittsburgh. Before it became defunct in 1925, WGI billed itself as the station "where broadcasting began."
Source: [Vanessa Collection]

1921 --

Russia: 15,000 mutiny at Kronstadt against Marxist tyranny. From March 1-17, the old Bolshevik stronghold of Kronstadt rises demanding free election to the Soviets — but is slandered & brutally suppressed upon the orders of Lenin & Trotsky. Today the Kronstadt naval base on Kotlin Island, some 25 miles off-shore from Petrograd, adopts a 15-point program of political & economic demands — a program in open defiance of the Bolshevik Party's control of the Soviet state.

... show details

"Almost immediately the Bolsheviks denounced the uprising as a "White Guard plot," ostensibly another in the series of counterrevolutionary conspiracies that had beleaguered the Soviet regime during the three preceding years of civil war. Less than three weeks later, on March 17, Kronstadt was subdued in a bloody assault by select Red Army units. The Kronstadt uprising, to all appearances, had been little more than a passing episode in the bitter history of the civil war.
We can now say, however, that the Kronstadt uprising marked the end of the Russian Revolution itself."

      — Murray Bookchin (from his introduction to Ida Mett's The Kronstadt Uprising)

http://home1.swipnet.se/~w-40997/IJKron1921.htm
http://libcom.org/tags/kronstadt

alt: Cronstadt

1932 -- US: Charles A. Lindbergh, Jr., kidnapped; he is found dead on 12 May.



1932 -- US: Librado Rivera (1864.-1932) dies from complications following a car accident.

Mexican anarchist, a school principal, then a professor, & companion in the fight waged by the Magón brothers, Enrique & Ricardo Flores.

... show details Librado Rivera's libertarian ideals landed him in jail numerous times &, in May 1905, Rivera went into exile in the US with Ricardo Flores Magón & was active in the newspaper Regeneración. Several times he was jailed & threatened with expulsion. Just a year before his death Rivera was arrested, struck & thrown in front of a train in an attempt to kill him, but foiled the attempt, & went on to found yet another newspaper, El paso. [Details / context]

Librado Rivera, Magon Brothers, et al, in a mural by Diego Rivera, http://www.arts-history.mx/login_pago.php?URL=/sitios/index.php?id_sitio=1222105#47

1933 -- US: An Anarchist Looks At Life: Speech Before The Foyle's 29th Literary Luncheon.

When I was 15 I suffered from unrequited love, & I wanted to commit suicide in a romantic way by drinking a lot of vinegar. I thought that would make me look ethereal & interesting, very pale & poetic when in my grave, but at sixteen I decided on a more exalted death.

I wanted to dance myself to death.

— Emma Goldman, March 1, 1933

1938 -- Fascist aesthete Gabrielle d'Annunzio dies.


1938 -- England: During this month Emma Goldman determines to go to Canada in the fall regardless of the chances of getting a US visa, convinced that she could do more good for Spain there than in England.

Emma writes the preface for a collection of writings by Camillo Berneri, the exiled Italian anarchist intellectual kidnapped & murdered by the Communists in Barcelona during the 1937 "May events," which Italian comrades are publishing in his memory.

Emma Goldman Papers

1943 -- American addict, discoverer of ibogaine & it's pioneer advocate, psychonaut Howard Lotsof lives, Bronx, New York.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Lotsof


1949 -- Denmark: "Cobra #1," issued in Copenhagen.
Editors: Christian Dotremont & Asger Jorn.


1950 -- General semanticist Alfred Korzbski dies...so to speak.


1951 -- Spain: Public transport boycott, prelude to the first strike wave under Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader fascist Franco.


1952 -- Mariano Azuela dies, Mexico City. Writer best known for his fictional stories of the Mexican Revolution of 1910. Novels include Los de abajo (The Underdogs, 1915).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariano_Azuela
http://www.farmworkers.org/azuela1.html


1954 -- US: Turkey Shoot? Five US Congressmen shot on the floor of the House by four Puerto Rican Nationalists who fire at random from the spectator's gallery.


1954 -- US: Collared? Ted Williams fractures his collarbone in first game of spring training after flying 39 combat missions without injury in Korean War.

http://www.rt66.com/~korteng/SmallArms/arms.htm

1954 -- First H-bomb tested on Bikini Atoll. Over 7,000 square miles are contaminated as well as many local residents & Japanese fishermen.

Inspires the Lucky Dragon series by the artist Ben Shahn:

http://www.culturevulture.net/ArtandArch/Shahn.htm
http://www.bikiniatoll.com/


1962 -- US: 28-day strike by Local 100 called when Fifth Ave. Coach fired 29 employees & threatened layoff of 1,500 others.


1963 -- Italy: Viene censurato l'episodio "La ricotta" di Pier Paolo Pasolini, facente parte del film "Rogopag." Nel successivo processo per vilipendio alla religione il regista sarà condannato a 4 mesi con la condizionale.
Source: [Crimini e Misfatti]


1966 -- England: In Liverpool, over 100 youths barricade themselves inside the recently closed Cavern Club, where the Beatles began. They are upset about the club closing due to bankruptcy & at the same time keep the police out of the club.


1967 -- US: Black Congressman Adam Clayton Powell is stripped of his House seat for "gross misconduct." Ralph Bunch later commented: "...if Adam Clayton Powell were white, he would have his seat today." (Re-elected without campaigning, April 11.)


1968 -- US: Chicana Welfare Rights Organization is formed, with Alicia Escalante as director.


1968 -- March 1 movement. The Year of the Barricades.

The revolution which is beginning will call in question not only capitalist society but industrial society. The consumer society is bound for a violent death. Social alienation must vanish from history. We are inventing a new & original world. Imagination is seizing power.

(Poster attached to the main entrance at the Sorbonne, May 13, 1968)

http://www.historyguide.org/europe/lecture15.html

1968 -- Italy: In Rome — a city controlled by the revisionist Italian Communist Party — police unleashed a severe attack on students gathered on the long, steep Spanish Steps in the center of the capital for a march to demand university reform.

... show details

200 students were injured., & students respond to the police violence with their own. Burning police vehicles paralyzed the city as students fought their way through. Two weeks later, intense fighting once again threw the city into chaos as students who had seized Rome University clashed with police blocking their way to the American Embassy. Over half a million students at 26 universities were on strike. The occupation of the university at Trento was followed at Turin.

1968 -- Italy: La giustizia di stato condanna Eugenio Scalfari, direttore dell'Espresso, e Lino Jannuzzi, giornalista, autore degli articoli sul piano di colpo di stato del generale De Lorenzo.
Source: [Crimini e Misfatti]



1971 -- US: Right Where It Hurts? Weather Underground bombs US Capital building men's room, Washington, DC, "in retaliation for the Laos decision."

"Progress? We've gone from blowing up the government to blowing the government."

— Bokonon

1971 -- At Miami's Dinner Key Auditorium, Jim Morrison of the Doors is arrested for allegedly exposing his penis during the show. Morrison is officially charged with lewd & lascivious behavior, indecent behavior, open profanity & public drunkenness.

http://www.doors.com/miami/

1973 -- The New York Joffrey Ballet gives its first performance of its "Deuce Coupe Ballet," set entirely to Beach Boys music.
Austin Lounge Lizards: http://www.austinlizards.com/audio/AUSTIN_LOUNGE-Hey_Little_clip_28-66_hifi.m3u
http://www.austinlizards.com/lyrics/hey_little_minivan



1977 -- Sara Lowndes Dylan files for divorce from her husband of eleven years, Bob Dylan. She gets custody of their five kids & their million-dollar home. Sara was the subject of such songs as "Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands," "Lay Lady Lay" & "Sara."




1984 -- Jackie Coogan actor (Uncle Fester-Addams Family), dies at 69.


1985 -- US: Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Acting President President Ronnie Reagan says Nicaraguan Contra murderers, torturers, rapists & bandits are "the moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers."


1986 -- US: Start of Great Peace March for global nuclear disarmament, Los Angeles.


1990 -- Game's Up?: US Secret Service raids Steve Jackson Games.


1991 -- Yugoslavia: Women for Peace protest against militarism, Belgrade & Ljubljana.


1997 -- Germany: 15,000 demonstrate in Lunesburg against shipment of French nuclear waste to site in Gorleben. Over the next several days hundreds of thousands participate in demonstrations & direct actions along the shipping route.


2003 -- Turkey: Parliament rejects a US bribe of 30 billion dollars in grants & loans in exchange for allowing American troops to use the country as a base for the invasion of Iraq directed by the rightwing cabal in the White House.
http://www.markfiore.com/user/1/animation/232


2004 -- US: Sidney Solomon, a long-time anarchist & painter who lived in New York, dies, age of 92.

... show details

Sidney participated in the international anarchist movement going back to the 1930s when he was a member of the Vanguard Group. Member of the New Trends Group in the 1940s, & the Libertarian Book Club from the 1940s through the 1980s.

His wife, Clara Solomon, was active in the movement in her teens, & in the 1930s agitating in support of anarchist revolutionaries in Spain. She met Sidney when he was drumming in an all-anarchist jazz band. [Her father, Samuel Freedman, was a garment-union activist who also served as business manager of the anarchist newspaper Freie Arbeiter Stimme (Free Voice of Labor.)]

sometimes spelled Freie Arbeiter Shtimme; no idea why



2006 -- France: Joëlle Aubron (1959-2006) dies of cancer in Paris. Member of the anarchiste group Action Directe. Action Directe went after symbols of capitalist exploitation (corporations, police, Ministries of Labor, Defense, etc). These included the killing of Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader General Audran (responsible for the sales of French weapons).

"Si, en plus de nos condamnations à perpétuité, j'avais regretté mon engagement, je serais morte de désespoir."

http://news.infoshop.org/article.php?story=20060303151824189
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_directe_(armed_group)
http://www.ephemanar.net/mars01.html#aubron


3000 --

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“It seems somewhat ridiculous to talk of revolution . . . . But everything else is even more ridiculous, since it implies accepting the existing order in one way or another."

      — Situationist International #1