My first real time in Chicago, and so I am so glad Tom thought it was as important to take me to Waldheim Cemetery as I thought it was to go. So many people I have read, looked up to, found inspiration in, are buried there. And not only does Tom have a car, but he also knows more than I do. And he has a lot of great stories I shall not repeat here…
Having looked it up as I invariably do, I was fascinated to find that Ferdinand Haase established it in 1873 as the only German non-denominational cemetery in the Chicago area. And he felt it necessary to expand by adding a second section for English speakers in 1876. Which I find interesting and rather inexplicable as this was one of the few places that did not discriminate based on race or religion…but I suppose not many people of color are German speaking? So my cynical self goes, but I’m prepared to believe another story. And as somewhere that absolutely anyone could get into, it has, of course, many of the very best people. That’s one of the secrets of life (and apparently death).
It’s now officially called Forest Home, we had to translate Waldheim.
It is where the Haymarket martyrs are buried…and I confess I expected it to be, well, not busy, but not empty. I would have thought everyone would have wanted to drop by, pay their respects, think about life and struggle.
But it was the two of us only, skating in just before the place closed at the abominable hour of 4:30 pm, and therefore sin flores. I am fairly certain the dead like flowers, just as they like fine liquor, the fragrance of food, candles, and a little company. This is a just a gut instinct that goes against most of what I think, but I listen to it. And yet showed up empty handed, there wasn’t time.
Haymarket…back from the time we didn’t have at least the stated standard of an 8 hour day. To win it there was a general strike on May 1st, 1884. On May 3rd, police killed two strikers. On May 4th there was a rally in Haymarket square, a bomb went off, people died. I think it was probably the Pinkertons, but the police arrested 8 anarchists for simply inciting the act and hanged 4 of them. It didn’t help when they were later cleared of all blame…the damage was done, the press had crucified all ideals of justice and so we live in a country that inspired May Day and yet has never celebrated it properly…
Lingg was one of the defendants, but not one of those hanged. He blew himself up in his cell.
If you think that by hanging us you can stamp out the labor movement, then hang us. Here you will tread upon a spark, but here, and there, and behind you, and in front of you, and everywhere the flames will blaze up. It is a subterranean fire, you cannot put it out.
August Spies…if I am to die on account of being an Anarchist, on account of my love for liberty, fraternity and equality, then I will not remonstrate. If death is the penalty for our love of the freedom of the human race, the I say openly I have forfeited my life…
Adolph Fischer
I am an Anarchist. Now strike! But hear me before you strike. What is Socialism, or Anarchism? Briefly stated, it is the right of the toiler to the free and equal use of the tools of production, and the right of the producers to their product.
Albert Parsons…as long as workingmen are economically enslaved they cannot be politically free
George Engel
And around this monument are gathered the graves of so many bright lights of the movement. Lucy Parsons, Black, Mexican, Native American…in a time and place where none of those was worthy of respect, she fought tirelessly her entire life for a better world.
Oh, Misery, I have drunk thy cup of sorrow to its dregs, but I am still a rebel.
The disinherited must work out their own salvation in their own way
Chicago Police Department description of Lucy Parsons: “More dangerous than a thousand rioters…”
And Emma Goldman, it was her birthday on Saturday!
Heaven must be an awfully dull place if the poor in spirit live there.
If love does not know how to give and take without restrictions, it is not love, but a transaction that never fails to lay stress on a plus and a minus.
The history of progress is written in the blood of men and women who have dared to espouse an unpopular cause, as, for instance, the black man’s right to his body, or woman’s right to her soul.
Voltairine de Cleyre, another anarchist and feminist
I never expect men to give us liberty. No, women, we are not worthy until we take it.
Josef Dietzgen, one of the inspirations for Marx, he developed his own theory of dialectical materialism independently, and fought in the 1848 uprising…
The terms anarchist, socialist, communist should be so “mixed” together, that no muddlehead could tell which is which. Language serves not only the purpose of distinguishing things but also of uniting them- for it is dialectic.
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, the rebel girl of legend, and a tireless labor organizer with the IWW
The IWW has been accused of pushing women to the front. This is not true. Rather, the women have not been kept in back, and so they have naturally moved to the front.
What is a labor victory? I maintain that it is a twofold thing. Workers must gain economic advantage, but they must also gain revolutionary spirit, in order to achieve a complete victory. For workers to gain a few cents more a day, a few minutes less a day, and go back to work with the same psychology, the same attitude toward society is to achieve a temporary gain and not a lasting victory.
Edward Balchowsky, who lost an arm fighting in the Lincoln Brigade in the Spanish Civil War…he still played the piano.
Ben Reitman, I confess, I know him mostly as the lover of Emma Goldman
Raya Dunayevskaya, founder (is that the word?) of Marxist Humanism. a theorist and the secretary of Trotsky while he was in Mexico…she broke with him though, and formed the Johnson-Forest tendency with CLR James
He who glorifies theory and genius but fails to recognize the limits of a theoretical work, fails likewise to recognize the indispensability of the theoretician. All of history is the history of the struggle for freedom. If, as a theoretician, one’s ears are attuned to the new impulse from the workers, new “categories” will be created, a new way of thinking, a new step forward in philosophic cognition.
And Claude Lightfoot, African American member of the CP, and indicted under the Smith Act
And so many more. Being a small piece of this movement, this struggle for a better world, is no small thing. Amazing people have come before me and so many more will come after…