Howard Zinn, William S. Burroughs, Kenneth Patchen, Abbie Hoffman, Léo Ferré, Simone Weil, Sacco & Vanzetti, Victor García, Pierre Le Meillour, Ludovic Masse, International Anarchist Congress of 1907, Louise Michel, Luís Fernández, Francisco Quintal, Anarchist sharks, on this day in recovered history, August 24, anarchiste, anarchist, anarquista, syndicalist
AUGUST 24
HHOWARD ZINN Premier American anarchist historian,
rights activist.
England: BARTHOLOMEW FAIR.
Tailor-made?: Originally a 12th-century cloth fair, opening with the snapping of shears, but by the 15th-century it is a raucous, rowdy pandemonium of midways, freaks, sideshows, performing animals. After 1640 London theaters shut down to come perform at this fair.
London's biggest saturnalia, begun as a trade-fair, develops (over 7-1/2 centuries) into a 14-day annual licence to riot & pleasure-seek. An attempt to suppress it in 1776 results in the greatest street battle in its long history as more than 5,000 of 'Lady Holland's Mob' riot all night to ensure the commencement of festivities. Last celebrated in 1855.
410 -- Rome overrun by Visigoths, symbolizes fall of Western Roman Empire. Domino Pizza Theory proven correct.
1456 -- Printing of the Gutenberg Bible is completed in Mainz.
1591 -- Robert Herrick, poet, is baptized in London.
1648 -- Fajardo Saavedra dies in Madrid, Spain. Known mainly for his Idea de un príncipe político cristiano, a commentary to counsel the Spanish ruler, he also wrote La repúblic ca literaria ("The Republic of Letters," 1655), a witty survey of Spanish literature, & Corona gótica ("The Gothic Kingdom," 1646), a history of Spain under the Goths.
1770 -- Rather than starve to death, poet Thomas Chatterton takes arsenic in his London garret & dies at age 17. Although Horace Walpole characterizes the author of pseudo-15th-century poems attributed to "Thomas Rowley, a prieste," as "a complete genius & a complete rogue," he becomes a symbol of native genius to the Romantics: Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, Coleridge — even Poe. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Chatterton http://www.poemhunter.com/thomas-chatterton/
1814 -- British troops burn the Capitol & the White house after US troops, fleeing so fast that only eight of them were killed, left Washington D.C. virtually undefended.
1827 -- US: Mechanics Gazette is published in Philadelphia.
The first US labor paper is a direct result of a strike by 600 carpenters who, tired of working from sunrise to sunset, put down their tools to demand a 10-hour day.
The strike lost, but it spurred Philadelphia unionists to form the Mechanics' Union of Trade Associations, composed of delegates from all of the city's labor organizations. The movement spread rapidly across the Northeast. By 1832, 61 Workingmen's Parties form & 68 labor newspapers, many of them dailies, are publishing.
1847 -- Charlotte Brontë dispatches Jane Eyre to the publishing house of Smith, Elder & Co. under the pseudonym of Currer Bell.
1853 -- First potato chips prepared by Chef George Crum, Saratoga Springs, NY.
1869 -- Waffle iron invented. Source: 'Calendar Riots'
1892 -- Two weeks before his death John Greenleaf Whittier writes his last poem — a tribute to Oliver Wendell Holmes, five days before Holmes's 83rd birthday.
1898 -- Portugal: Francisco Quintal lives, (1898-1987), à Funchal (Ile de Madère). Important militant & propagandist. General secretary of the Portuguese Anarchist Union (UAP), & director of its paper, "O Anarquista". Quintal was involved in many movement organizations & newspapers, including the important Valencia meeting in 1927, founding of the FAI (Federación Anarquista Ibérica), the "Centre de Culture Libertaire," & editing the journal Voz Anarquista.
To reach it, a ladder has to be set up. There is no stair.
What can we be looking for in the attic
but the accumulation of disorder?
There is a smell of damp.
The late afternoon enters by way of the laundry.
The ceiling beams loom close, & the floor has rotted.
Nobody dares to put a foot on it.
A folding cot, broken.
A few useless tools,
the dead one's wheelchair.
The base for a lamp.
A Paraguayan hammock with tassels, all frayed away.
Equipment & papers.
An engraving of Aparicio Saravia's general staff.
An old charcoal iron.
A clock stopped in time, with a broken pendulum.
A peeling gilt frame, with no canvas.
A cardboard chessboard, & some broken chessmen.
A stove with only two legs.
A chest made of leather.
A mildewed copy of Foxe's "Book of Martyrs," in intricate
Gothic lettering.
A photograph which might be of anybody.
A worn skin, once a tiger's.
A key which has lost its lock.
What can we be looking for in the attic
except the flotsam of disorder?
To forgetting, to all forgotten objects, I have just erected
this monument
(unquestionably less durable than bronze) which will be
lost among them.
"Not a single star will be left in the night. The night will not be left.
I will die &, with me, the weight of the intolerable universe.
I shall erase the pyramids, the medallions, the continents & faces.
I shall erase the accumulated past.
I shall make dust of history, dust of dust.
Now I am looking on the final sunset.
I am hearing the last bird.
I bequeath nothingness to no one."
1907 -- Netherlands: International Anarchist Congress openly held at Amsterdam (Aug. 24-31, 1907), leading to the formation of the Internationale Anarchiste. Reception & preliminary events occur today & tomorrow & the first working sessions begin on the 26th. Among the better-known participants are Christian Cornélissen & Pierre Monatte, Emma Goldman, Luigi Fabbri, Pierre Ramus, Rudolf Rocker, & Benoit Broutchoux.
1912 -- US: Cathlamet tribe awarded $7,000, Clatsop $16,000 & Chinook $20,000 for claims from loss of aboriginal lands at mouth of Columbia River.
L
LEO FERRE
French anarchist songster,
composer, popular performer.
Daily Bleed Saint 2005-2010
1919 -- Spain: The Gunman of Portillo, Luís Fernández por los Mozos de Escuadra, is arrested. Implicated in the assassination (his car apparently used in the killing) of Alvarez Caparrós, a police honcho. This is during a period of repression against the CNT (the anarchist labor union was shut down & 15,000 "cenetistas" are in prison or in hiding).
[Further details, in Spanish]
1919 -- Spain: Victor García (Tomás Germinal García Ibars) lives.
Indefatigable militant anarcho-syndicalist, writer, translator & historian of the international movement. Sometimes known as 'the Marco Polo of anarchism' for the length & breadth of his travelssource: for Marco Polo http://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/bulletin/publications.htm, also emphemeride; auteur de nombreux articles, dont ses recits de voyages publiés dans la presse libertaire. Translator (in Castillan) of l'Encyclopédie Anarchiste of Sébastien Faure, author of Antologia del anarcho-sindicalismo, Museihushugi, el anarchismo japonés, Three Japanese Anarchists: Kotoku, Osugi & Yamaga (Kate Sharpley Library, 2000), etc.
http://www.ephemanar.net/aout24.html#victorgarcia
1922 -- Virginia Woolf writes Lytton Strachey after reading the first six chapters of James Joyce's Ulysses: "Never have I read such tosh.... Of course, genius may blaze out on page 652 but I have my doubts."
Ford Madox Ford, James Joyce, Ezra Pound & John Quinn
at Pound's place, Paris 1923. Quinn was a lawyer who defended
the publication of Ulysses in "The Little Review" in 1921.
1922 -- US: American radical historian, human rights activist Howard Zinn lives (d.2010), Brooklyn, New York. http://howardzinn.org/
1923 -- Italy: Don Giovanni Minzoni is murdered by Mussolini's Fascist Silvershirts. They continue their violent acts & devastation of Catholic circles. http://www.polyarchy.org/basta/crimini/sette.html
1930 -- Indochina: Two killed in riots on third anniversary of Sacco & Vanzetti execution (see August 23, 27).
The Sacco & Vanzetti prosecutors left a trail of doctored eyewitness accounts, altered testimony & false ballistics reports in the judicial murder that aroused millions around the world.
1932 -- US: Amelia Earhart becomes the first woman to fly non-stop across the country.
1934 -- US: IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) labor pickets attacked by capitalist farmers, Yakima, Washington. (Same attack as yesterday?)
http://www.iww.org/
1943 -- England: Simone Weil dies, Ashford, Kent. Seven people attend her funeral. Mystic philosopher, journalist, laborer & christian anarchist.
"As I worked in the factory, the affliction of others entered into my flesh & my soul....
There I received for ever the mark of a slave, like the branding of the red-hot iron which the Romans put on the forehead of their most despised slaves.
Since then I have always regarded myself as a slave.''
1944 -- France: Spanish anarchists aid in the liberation of Paris, & are the first to enter the city. On the 26th they are triumphant on the Fields-Elysées (preceding General de Gaulle), & elsewhere & are among the last combatants in Germany. Their hopes to next liberate Spain, however, are dashed.
[Details / context]
1949 -- North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) established by the US, Canada, & 10 Western European nations. It declares that an armed attack against one or more of them will be considered an attack against all.
1954 -- US: Congress passes Communist Control Act, signed by Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Dwight D. Eisenhower. & you probably thought Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Stalin already had them under control...
"Is Control in control?
Yes."
— William S. Burroughs
...the jury, under instructions from the court, shall consider
evidence, if presented, as to whether the accused person...
... 8. Has written, spoken, or in any other way communicated by
signal, semaphore, sign, or in any other form of
communication, orders, directives,
or plans of the organization...
1958 -- Belize: 6,000 in the sparsely populated Central American colony of British Honduras (now Belize) march for self-government.
1960 -- Coldest temperature ever recorded in the world was reached at Vostok Station at -126.9 degrees fahrenheit.
1967 -- US: Abbie Hoffman & Jerry Rubin throw 300 one-dollar bills from balcony onto floor of New York Stock Exchange, to disrupt business as usual. It worked, creating instant bedlam as people scrambled for the bucks.
Abbie Hoffman
Received a master's degree in psychology from the University of California at Berkeley. Co-founder of the Youth International Party (YIP), tried in Chicago Seven trial. Author of several books including Steal This Book & Revolution for the Hell of It. Committed suicide in 1989.
Jerry Rubin
Co-founder of the Youth International Party (YIP). Helped organize the first Vietnam teach-in at University of California at Berkeley. One of the Chicago Seven, charged with conspiracy after Chicago convention. Worked on Wall Street during the 1980s & became a business entrepreneur. Killed by a car while jaywalking in Los Angeles, December 1994.
Trading on the floor of the Exchange stops spontaneously for the second time in history as brokers cheer, applaud, & scramble for ones & fives. Once their currency is exhausted the Yippies throw coins & receive boos & catcalls.
1970 -- US: Bomb kills one at University of Wisconsin's US Army Math Research Center in Madison.
1971 -- US: State Attorney Edward Hanrihan of Illinois indicted in Chicago for attempting to block the prosecution of a policeman who raided a Black Panther apartment, murdering two activists.
1979 -- Netherlands: Strike in the Port of Rotterdam, begins, lasting for three weeks. Thirteen thousand men participate, but the official trade unions do not. http://www.iisg.nl/today/en/24-08.php
1982 -- France: Ludovic Masse dies in Perpignan. Proletarian & libertarian writer.
A teacher & friend of Henry Poulaille, to whom he sends his first writings. In 1940, his pacifist & anarchiste ideas force him to quit teaching & he devotes himself to writing fiction: Le Refus (Apology for Pacifism) (1946), Le vin pur (The Vigneronnes Revolts) (1945), & many others such as Le mas des Oubells (1932), Les trabucayres (1955), La terre du liège (1953).
1982 -- US: In one of the handful of murders he will be convicted of, Henry Lee Lucas kills his teen common-law wife & cuts up her body into "teeny little pieces," Denton, Texass.
1986 -- Cameroon: Eruption of a volcano in northwest kills over 1,700 people.
1987 -- US: Bayard Rustin, prominent civil rights & anti-military activist in 1950s & 1960s, dies. African American, pacifist, executive secretary of the War Resisters League, & an important figure in the Civil Rights Movement given little recognition because he was gay. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayard_Rustin
1987 -- Kansas? Toto?: Announcement of possible Martian tornadoes.
1994 -- Italy: In Reggio Emilia, a Congress extraordinaire of the Italian Anarchist Federation (FAI) convenes (August 24-28).
http://www.carnesecchi.eu/note3pagina27.htmAppel to regroupement de a anarchisme organisé
1999 -- US: Free Speech Seattle holds a rally at City Hall Park to coincide with a signature turn-in.
2000 -- The City Wears a Slouch Hat in NY City. This radio play by Kenneth Patchen was performed only once in 1941 on CBS Radio. The original music score was written by John Cage. The revived play shows this week at the Experimental Theatre, Henry Street Settlement, Aug. 16-27.
Patchen, novelist, poet & anarchist, is regarded as one of the forefathers of the beat movement, & was the first poet to combine spoken word with Jazz music, performing with the likes of Charlie Parker & Charles Mingus. Patchen's friend Kenneth Rexroth was another prominent poet involved in this development of jazz poetry.
The birthday event celebrates the 94th birthday of Copenhagen's famous waterside Little Mermaid statue— based on the fairytale figure created in 1836 by Hans Christian Andersen. Women clad in bikinis release red & white balloons in the air, the colors of the Danish flag, then jump in the water just behind the statue, forming the number '94' in the water.
But swimming protesters wearing shark fins with the number '69' toss a wet blanket on the party. They swim around in the water, then placed a mask on top of the statue.
The jaws-dropping protest is staged by supporters of the Youth House, a famous building that for years served as a popular cultural centre for anti-authoritarians, punk rockers & left-wing groups, which was demolished by the authorities in March 2007. Located on Jagtvej 69, the eviction in March sparked riots during which at least 170 people were arrested.
2011 -- Chile: August 24—25 protests. March for free education in Pichilemu on August 25. Large sign says "We teachers that are marching, are also educating." Another says "No more profit [in education]".
The Workers' United Center of Chile organized a nationwide two-day strike on August 24 & 25. During the strike, four separate marches occur in Santiago, with additional protests across the country. According to union officials, a total of about 600,000 people are involved.
The marriage of reason & nightmare which has dominated the 20th century has given birth to an ever more ambiguous world. Across the communications landscape move the specters of sinister technologies & the dreams that money can buy.
Thermonuclear weapons systems & soft drink commercials coexist in an overlit realm ruled by advertising & pseudoevents, science & pornography...[culminating] in the most terrifying casualty of the century: the death of affect...
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_léo ferré
[Details / context]
Abbie Hoffman
Jerry Rubin
