http://www.voxunion.com/?p=3703

Check it out!

The ILHS has a good article about the whole pardon:
http://www.kentlaw.edu/ilhs/prisoner.htm
which concludes with a quote from Lucy Parsons, no less, about Altgeld: “He was a man before he was a politician.”

Don’t get me wrong: I’ve been on pilgrimage there myself, and it was one of the more emotional moments of my life. I have George Engel and his last words (“Hoch Die Anarchie!”) tattooed on me. The Haymarket martyrs matter to me.

But two things about this bother me. One of the plaques at the site is incredibly offensive to me, and if it were the one that was stolen I would be absolutely glad. The dominant plaque on the back of the monument is the words of the Governor who pardoned them after their deaths. I do not care one whit that the State determined after they were already dead to pardon them.

I expect Mumia and Mr. Peltier will be posthumously pardoned as well.

Second, I don’t know if I trust the Chicago Labor History society if they make statements like ” Some may visit in worship of ancient dogmas.”

I am not an adherent of an “ancient dogma.” And the goals have not changed. We demand the abolition of wage labor, capitalism, and the stateform.

$30,000 would go a long way towards maintaining existing anarchist spaces or creating new ones. The most inspiring elements of the gravesite in chicago is the “graffiti” left by the “vandals” anyhow.

I’m sure there is an anarchist sculptor or metalworker who would be honored to replace the missing portions of the sculpture.

http://www.redemmas.org/books/102/

Also, Team Colors will present the book at Modern Times Books in SF on Sunday, August 8, at 3PM. Two chances to see your favorite geographically-dispersed militant research collective in the Bay!

The way I read Joe’s message is that he’s more comfortable taking the liberals to task for three reasons: a) he was an admitted “coastal” liberal for some time before moving back “home” so he’s maybe exorcising his own demons a bit and b) related to the former he sees liberals as imperfect, yet natural, allies and c) illuminating a working class culture that’s worthy as-is, and capable of transformation in the here and now, and framing it in opposition to liberal and conservative ideologies could potentially build confidence for the class as-such, without Joe having to perpetually frame his arguments in reaction to white middle class values (your example above is illustrative).

Now, if I am guessing correctly about Joe’s approach we have to remember, as he says, the book wasn’t written with an expectation that his family and neighbors would devour it—it was aimed at liberals. And people can agree or disagree whether liberals are natural allies (or to what extent they may be in the US today). That said, it’s a refreshing book and offers much food for thought for radicals too. Which only brings us back to your point, to paraphrase: how does the US working class define its own interests without being influenced, led, or hijacked by middle and upper class values (which includes a healthy dose of racism, xenophobia, etc., etc.)? And yet still, how does it navigate those persistent values on its own terms, accepting and rejecting what’s useful with an eye toward social and economic freedom?

These questions are as crucial today for anarchists as they’ve been for the last 150-odd years. I guess that’s what struck me most about Joe’s book: it reminded me how far removed the vast majority of the anarchist movement is from the very people that at its most heroic times were its allies and constituents.

thanks.

The only problem that I have with his reflexive condemnation of middle class “liberals” is that he tends to leave out the middle class reactionary statists who manage to do so much more damage to the ideological landscape. While it is correct that, as a demographic, the rightist middle class tends to be lower on the socioeconomic scale than its liberal counterpart on the coasts, it constitutes a body of resentment far away from being anywhere near the bottom-rung earning categories of those whom Joe so vigorously defends.
What is crucial here is that we somehow manage to distinguish between a legitimate grievance among the working poor (e.g. “liberals have the gall to ridicule our religious faith and cultural habits while simultaneously living in affluence via the surplus extracted from generations of our labor”) manifesting itself in knee-jerk jingoism from an illegitimate grievance among the white middle class (e.g. “My 401k took a major it because the Community Reinvestment Act forced a bank to hand money to some lazy blacks in the form of a home loan”) organizing itself into concerted political action via the machinations concentrated capital.

http://coldtype.net/joe.html