Giovanni Passannante, Paris Commune, Maria Lacerda de Moura , Jura Federation, Ricardo Flores Magon, Antonio I. Villarreal, Librado Rivera, Henri-Edmond Cross, John Henry Mackay, John Cage, Raoul Vaneigem, Jef Jaisun & more, On this day, May 16

Our Daily Bleed...

How heavy the heart is now, & every heart
Save only the word drunk, power drunk
Hard capsule of the doomed. How distraught
Those things of pride, the wills nourished in the fat
Years, fed in the kindly twilight of the books
In gold & brown, the voices that had little
To live for, crying for something to die for.
The philosophers of history,
Of dim wit & foolish memory,
The giggling concubines of catastrophe —
Who forget so much — Boethius’ calm death,
More’s sweet speech, Rosa’s broken body —
Or you, tough, stubby recalcitrant
Of Fate.
— Kenneth Rexroth, excerpt, "Again at Waldheim"

MAY 16
DJANGO REINHARDT
Belgian-born Gypsy jazz musician, bon-vivant.

ROGATION DAY.
ST. BRENDAN'S DAY: Commemorating his 6th-century voyage from Ireland to ... The Garden of Eden? America?

1527 -- The Medici government in Florence is overthrown; the Republic is re-established.

1571 -- Johannes Kepler, by his own calculations, is conceived at 4:37 a.m.

1691 -- Jacob Leisler becomes first American colonist hanged for treason.

1717 -- Voltaire (François Marie Arouet) suspected of writing subversive satire, is imprisoned for the first time in the Bastille.
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/voltaire.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voltaire

1763 -- James Boswell & Samuel Johnson meet in the back of Tom Davies' London bookshop. Aware of Johnson's well-known prejudices, Boswell at this long-waited meeting admits: "I do indeed come from Scotland, but I cannot help it." To commemorate this momentous event, on this very day in 1791 Boswell published his Life of Johnson. Noteworthy trivia, indeed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Boswell

1770 -- France: Marie "Let them eat cake" Antoinette marries future King Louis XVI of France, after a "swept off her feet romance." She later confesses: "I just lost my head." (More than 800 people are killed by fireworks at the wedding)

1792 -- Denmark becomes first Western country to outlaw slave trade.

1836 -- Edgar Allan Poe marries Virginia Clemm, his 13-year-old tubercular cousin. (Possibly secretly married previously, on September 22, 1835.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Allan_Poe

1848 -- France: An unsuccessful communist coup is attempted, Paris.
[Source: Robert Braunwart]
[Hereafter attributed with symbol: ]

1864 -- France: Auguste Delale (1864-1910) lives, in Tours. Anarcho-syndicalist. Collaborated on Jean Grave's journal "La révolte," with Emile Pouget on "Père Peinard," "Libertaire," etc. Delale was a founding member of l'Association Internationale Antimilitariste at the 1904 Congress in Amsterdam.
For Emile Pouget, see "Emile Pouget's Life As An Activist" by Paul Delesalle (archived from anarchosyndicalism.net which is no longer on line):

http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/Pouget/pouget101.htm
http://ytak.club.fr/mai16.html

1870 -- Italy: Giovanni Passannante [sometimes spelled Passanante] busted by cops while surreptitiously plastering subversive manifestoes on the walls in Salerno.
[Details / context]

1871 -- France: The Paris Commune, following the decree of April 12, destroys the Vendôme Column ("monument de barbarie"). Gustave Courbet sera rendu responsable de ce crime de lèse-majesté.
http://struggle.ws/talks/paris.html
http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/pariscommune/Pariscommunearchive.html

1871 -- Korea: A peace-loving US naval force tries to open the country to foreign trade (US marines land at mouth of the Han, are withdrawn after fighting).

1887 -- Brazil: Maria Lacerda de Moura lives (1887-1945), Barbacena, Minas Gerais.
Teacher, one of Brazil's first feminists, a journalist & anarchist writer.

[Details / context]

1888 -- US: The Union Labor Party holds its first national convention, Cincinnati, Ohio.

1891 -- Henry Lawson's poem "Freedom on the Wallaby" appears in "Worker," Queensland.

1893 -- The first typewriter with results visible while typing is patented.

1901 -- Gustave Lefrancais (1826-1901) dies.
French revolutionary, member of the First International, of the Paris Commune, & a founder of the anarchist Jura Federation. Lefrancais helped Elisée Reclus in producing Géographie Universelle. Wrote Souvenirs d'un Révolutionnaire (Préface de Lucien Descaves) & Le mouvement Communaliste a Paris en 1871. Eugene Pottier, who wrote the text of "The Internationale" while hiding out in Paris in June 1871, dedicated the song to Gustave Lefrancais.

Lefrancais adamantly declared that he was "a Communalist, not an anarchist," & probably (according to Murray Bookchin) coined the term.

See "The Communalist Project" by Murray Bookchin, in the Harbinger (Vol. 3, No. 1)
http://www.social-ecology.org/harbinger/vol3no1/communalist_4.html
http://ytak.club.fr/mai16.html
http://www.ronsens.de/machtdose/00234.html
http://www.sterneck.net/musik/arbeiterlieder/index.php

1904 -- US: Supreme Court upholds the deportation of British anarchist John Turner. The court rules, based on arguments presented on April 6th & 7th, that Congress has unlimited power to exclude aliens & deport those who have entered in violation of the laws, including philosophical anarchists.
Turner was arrested in New York on October 23, 1903, under a warrant issued by the Secretary of the Department of Commerce & Labor.
[Details / context]

1909 --

Ricardo Flores Magón, Antonio I. Villarreal & Librado Rivera imprisoned for 18 months for alleged "violation" of the neutrality laws.

Postcard in Latvian (or possibly Lithuanian) of
MEXICAN REVOLUTIONARIES JUAN SARABIA RICARDO FLORES MAGON LIBRADO RIVERA ANTONIO I. VILLEREAL
Text translation: Mexican Revolutionaries Sentenced on 16 May (the last three) to 18 months in prison, Tombstone, Arizona; the first was kept in prison for a year without trial, released by agreement(2). They were all prosecuted for "neutrality border violations (3)."
http://struggle.ws/anarchists/guerrero/biography.html
http://www.netdotcom.com/revmexpc/

1910 -- Henri-Edmond Cross (aka Delacroix) (1856-1910) dies.
French neo-impressionist/pointillist painter, illustrator, anarchist.

1912 -- MDMA patent issued.

1912 -- Author Studs Terkel lives, New York City.

1915 -- US: The Modern School retreats from New York City to rural Stelton, New Jersey, while the Ferrer Center perilously remains in the city until 1918 when the anti-radical hysteria following America's entry into the war drove it out of business.
[Details / context]

1918 -- US: Congress passes Sedition Act against radicals, penalizing anyone judged to be hindering the war effort by making false statements, obstructing enlistment, or speaking against production of war materials, the American government, its constitution, or flag. Signed into law by Beloved & Respected Comrade Liberal President Wilson on May 21.

1919 -- American popular pianist, gay-in-denial Liberace lives. Unlike bartenders, used bookstore dealers & self-styled radicals, this dude knows how to dress.
http://www.liberace.com/

1924 -- Niilo Lauttamus (1924-1977) lives. Prolific Finnish writer, who published over 20 war novels focusing on the events of World War II in Finland & Germany.
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/lauttamu.htm

1927 -- US: Booked To Die? US Supreme Court rules booksellers must file income tax returns. Take that, Richard.

1929 -- US: The first Academy Awards are given. The term, Oscars, isn't used to describe the statuettes presented actors & actresses until 1931. The first awards ceremony attracted an audience of 200 people.

1932 -- Author William Faulkner begins work in Hollywood.

1933 -- Bleed Saint, Swiss-German anarchist, gay writer John Henry Mackay dies.

1933 -- Germany: The first blacklist of "unacceptable" books is declared by German National Socialists of the Berlin Librarian Commission. Among the titles banned by the Nazis are the anarchist novelist B. Traven's The Carreta & Government:
"I wish to do my share so that authority figures & authority worship vanish."
[Source: Calendar Riots]

1933 -- Dominican Republic: Filareto Kavernido (1880-1933) arrested & murdered by authorities. Gynaecologist, philosophical Nietzschean, communist-anarchist, pacifist, idiste, passionate advocate of Esperanto (Ido).
Kavernido founded the community “Kaverno di Zaratustra” in Berlin after WWI. Scandalized by its practice of free love & nudity & Kavernido apparently practicing abortions (then illegal), the colony soon moves to France, Corsico, Haiti, &, finally, to the Dominican Republic. Unfortunately, with Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Trujillo as dictator, Filareto & his partner Mally & her children are arrested (May 16, 1933) by pistoleros, & he is shot shorty afterwards under uncertain circumstance.

1934 -- US: General Strike backs Teamsters union strike for recognition in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota.
[Details / context]

1938 -- US: Supreme Court issues the Mackay Decision, permitting employers to permanently replace striking workers. Employers used this weapon against striking workers sparingly until the 1980's, when its use increased under the influence of the Reagan Administration's anti-union/anti-labor policies.

1940 -- Glenn Hughes opens Seattle's new Penthouse Theatre, on the University of Washington campus.

1942 -- US: Hikoji Takeuchi, a Nisei, is shot by a guard at Manzanar.
The guard claims he shouted at Takeuchi & that Takeuchi began to run away from him. Takeuchi claims he was collecting scrap lumber & didn't hear the guard shout.
His wounds indicated that he was shot in the front. Though seriously injured, he eventually recovered. [Sources]

1942 -- US: Gordon Hirabayashi challenges Japanese-American exclusion orders, Seattle, Washington; he is arrested & his case goes to the US Supreme Court, where he loses.

1943 -- Poland: The Warsaw ghetto resistance is crushed by the Nazis. 56,000 die in the process.
BEHIND the ghetto walls, forty thousand Jews dried their tears
All that were left of the millions.
Freedom is won with grenades & rifles, not with tears!
We are weak & starving, & there is one rifle for twenty men.
& are stones not weapons?
What of our women & little children?
A child can hurl a grenade & a woman can load a rifle!
We are a peaceful people.
We are a people of war! Take your comrade's hand!
Who can resist the Nazis?
Hoist the blue flag, sky blue, & the red flag, red as blood!

Never to Forget: The Battle of the Warsaw Ghetto
by Howard Fast & William Gropper
http://www.trussel.com/hf/warsaw.htm

1951 -- Bolvia: Outgoing Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Pres. Urriolagoitia resigns & turns over the administration to an army junta, in order to prevent the election of Victor Paz Estenssoro.

1953 -- US: Bill Haley & his Comets hit the "Billboard" music charts for the first time with "Crazy Man Crazy." The first rock n' roll record to make the pop music chart.

1953 -- Gypsy jazz musician Django Reinhardt dies (1910-1053), Fountainebleau, France. One of the most important jazz guitarists of all time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Django_Reinhardt

1955 -- James Agee, American poet, novelist, & one of the most influential film critics of the '30s & '40s, dies in New York.
http://research.hrc.utexas.edu:8080/hrcxtf/view?docId=ead/00139.xml

1958 -- US: Eli Beeding experiences 83g deceleration on a rocket sled, New Mexico.

1958 -- A concert of John Cage's most important compositions is held, NY.

1959 -- US: African-American Mack Parker murdered by white mob.

1960 -- US: Primary Colors: A research study reports that TV commercials "in living color" are over three times more effective than black & white commercials.

1961 -- South Korea: Military coup deposes Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Prime Minister John Chang.

1961 -- US: SNCC students replace CORE Freedom bus riders.

1962 -- US: Marines sent to Thailand in response to gains by rebel Pathet Lao in neighboring Laos.

1963 -- US: Sit-ins & marches throughout the south for the next 10 weeks: 758 demonstrations in 186 cities, 14,733 arrests in 11 southern states of enlightenment (throughout June & July).

1967 -- Vietnam: Nhat Chi Mai immolates herself in Saigon, South Vietnam, to protest the war.

1967 -- México: A student strike at University of Sonora leads to clashes with police.

1968 -- France: May '68: The upheaval continues, universities, factories, places of work shut down or occupied. Permanent forums, going 24-hours a day, have developed, open to all, where float anarchist black flags & red flags. Slogans flower the walls, & poetry takes again its place in the sun. Certain notions abound, people — strangers — talk to each other, engage in debate, in the streets, everywhere:

"All is possible "...

The worker's movement continues to spread, with wildcat strikes & new occupations. Today the workers take over the works at Renault de Billancourt.

16 mai 68 Grève à l'usine Renault de Flins.

16. May - Strikes hit other factories throughout France, plus air transport, the RATP & the SNCF. Newspapers fail to be distributed.

[Source]

“As soon as the relations of exploitation & the violence that underlies them are no longer concealed by the mystical veil, there is a breakthrough, a moment of clarity, the struggle against alienation is suddenly revealed as a ruthless hand-to-hand fight against naked power, power exposed in its brute force & its weakness, a vulnerable giant . . . . sublime moment when the complexity of the world becomes tangible, transparent, within everyone’s grasp.”

—Raoul Vaneigem, “Basic Banalities” (Situationist International Anthology, p. 93)

http://www.citylights.com/CLsitu.html
http://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/si/enrages.html

1968 -- England: Students at Enfield College of Technology protest imposition of a 10% quota on overseas students. Also, defying a ban by the proctors, 50 Oxford students distribute leaflets outside the Cowley car factories, supporting the engineers' wage claim. Michael Inwood, a philosophy don, supports them. Suggestions for a temporary halt in immigration were rejected by the Home Secretary.

1968 -- Italy: Student upheavals during the May Days sees scuffles at a college in Florence.
[Details / context]

1969 -- US: Going Down?: The USS Guitarro, a $50 million nuclear submarine undergoing final fitting in Frisco Bay, sinks to the bottom as water pours into a forward compartment. A House Armed Services subcommittee later finds the Navy guilty of "inexcusable carelessness" in connection with the event.

1969 -- A Stand-Up Guy?: Pope John Lennon, declared "an inadmissible immigrant to the US," seeks a visa to visit America. 10 days ago his "standing visa" was revoked by the US Embassy in London because of his drug conviction last November.

1969 -- US: Jefferson Airplane bass player Jack Cassady arrested for possession of marijuana in New Orleans, gets a 2 1/2 year suspended sentence.
http://hempfest.org/

1972 -- US: Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Presidential Aide Charles W. Colson orders thriller-author E. Howard Hunt to break into Arthur Bremer's apartment to "survey its contents," but Hunt rejected the assignment as too risky. Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Dick M Nixon wanted to tie Bremer to the left-wing, if possible, to smear liberals during his pre-election campaign.
[Source]

1972 -- US: Baseball's Greg Luzinski's 500' HR hits the Liberty Bell monument in Philadelphia.

1972 -- Turkey: Government announces the arrest of 20 for publishing a Marxist newspaper.

1973 -- US: 6 SLA members die during a shoot-out & fire, Los Angeles (-May 17).

1974 -- US: Mohawk people reclaim part of homeland in upstate New York.

1975 -- Japanese Junko Tabei is first woman to reach Mt Everest's summit.

1977 -- US: A commuter helicopter idling on the helipad atop New York City's Pan Am building topples over as a landing strut collapses. The chopper's blade snaps off & spins across the roof, slashing six people to death & injuring another seven. A seventh victim, a woman walking on Madison Avenue 59 floors below, is killed by a piece of the falling blade.

1977 -- Friendly Neighborhood Narco Agent - Jef Jaisun played on Friggin' Here May 16th, 1997 Show #22 * played - request
"Flash forward to Autumn, 1993. ... I was still suffering from the sting of the Chicago AFE breaking up & I was looking for a new musical home.
For some bizarre cosmic reason, still unknown to me by this day, someone whips out a guitar & begins playing that Jef Jaison classic from 1969 "Friendly Neighborhood Narco Agent."
Knowing at this point four chords on the guitar, I bravely played along on another guitar available & surprised myself that I could feel at home with an instrument that I comparatively wasn't used too yet. That wasn't the case. Again, I was playing what I had felt like playing & there wasn't any "professional" attitudes to contend with. I felt at home & welcomed. I stayed the night & later, I played with a bunch of other guys who were, shall we say, banging, on various instruments & discovering the magic of creating music for the sake of creating, without any pretensions except that what we did better've sounded good! It did. I was intrigued by the whole thing. I was hooked.
— Delonde Bell, The Sheep Fiend Musicians

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22jef+jaison%22&hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1
http://www.sheepfiends.com/FAQ.html
http://www.jaisunphoto.com/

1979 -- US: A. Philip Randolph dies. African American labor leader & peace activist, president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters.
http://www.pbs.org/weta/apr/

1979 -- Gary Gygax publishes Dungeon Masters Guide (Dungeons & Dragons).

1984 -- Andy Kaufman, comedian, dies at 35 of cancer.

1985 -- Michael "Air" Jordan named NBA Rookie of the Year. Jordan, of the Chicago Bulls, was the number three draft choice.

1987 -- US: Grand Day in NY Harbor? "Bobro 400," a huge barge, sets sail within eyesight of the Statue of Liberty with 3,200 tons of garbage nobody wants. The floating trash heap soon became America's most well-traveled garbage can as it began an eight-week, 6,000 mile Odyssey in search of a willing dumping site.

1988 -- US: Surgeon General declares, in a report, cigarettes & tobacco products are addictive. The report, the work of 50 scientists who studied 2,000 research articles, found the "processes that determine tobacco addiction are similar to those that determine addiction to... heroin & cocaine." The Tobacco Institute criticized the conclusion, noting many smokers are able to quit smoking.
Secondhand smoke is not a problem.
If children don't like to be in a smoky room, they'll leave.
(As for infants) ... at some point, they crawl.
— Charles Harper, chairman, RJR Tobacco Company

I was with some Vietnamese recently, & some of them were smoking two cigarettes at a time. That's the kind of customers we need!
— US Senator Jesse Helms, on his meeting with the Vietnamese ambassador designate at a dinner given by the R J Reynolds Company

1988 -- US: Undercover Trashman? US Supreme Court rules trash may be searched without a warrant.

1989 -- Italy: Dopo 20anni, il 16 maggio 89 a Modena gli anarchici si ritrovano in piazza con una rappresentazione teatrale per non dimenticare.
Per aver distribuito durante la manifestazione un volantino che ricorda l'assassinio di Giuseppe Pinelli 2 anarchici vengono denunciati per oltraggio all'onore del corpo della polizia di stato. Wrongly arrested for a bombing carried out by neo-fascists & a CIA-informant to discredit the left, Pinelli was murdered by the police.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giuseppe_Pinelli
http://www.youtube.com/v/N5c7yMfSDZs&hl=en&rel=0
http://www.youtube.com/v/EzffrH1EqXA&hl=en&rel=0
http://www.youtube.com/v/i7MvkpZUE_U&hl=en http://ita.anarchopedia.org/Giuseppe_Pinelli
Giuseppe Pinelli
http://utenti.lycos.it/freemedia/controinchiesta_sulla_morte_di_pinelli.htm

1989 -- China: 250,000 continue protests in Tiananmen Square. Protests in Shanghai & five provincial capitals.

1991 -- US: EPA says US industry reported it added 3 million tons of toxic waste to the environment in 1989.

1996 -- Amnesty International calls on Peru to release 600 political prisoners.

1998 -- Global Street Party, around the globe.
http://www.irational.org/cta/

2000 -- The Moonies buy United Press International (UPI) news service.

2004 -- Italy: XI Congresso USI-AIT, May 16th(?), in Rome.
http://www.usiait.it/img/2004/rm160504.htm
http://www.usiait.it/img/2004/rm160504a.jpg

2007 -- US: Baristas at the Wealthy St.(!) Starbucks in East Grand Rapids announce their membership in the IWW Starbucks Workers Union, becoming the first store in Michigan to declare union membership at the world's largest coffee chain. Starbucks, notorious for poor treatment of workers, follows with numerous anti-labor violations & is forced by the NLRB to settle Grand Rapids union worker complaints in October.
http://www.starbucksunion.org/node/1888
http://www.mediamouse.org/features/051707grand.php

3000 --

When evil is allowed to compete with good, evil has an emotional populist appeal that wins out unless good men & women stand as a vanguard against abuse.

— Hannah Arendt, Origins of Totalitarianism

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