TO MILTON.
MILTON! I think thy spirit hath passed away
From these white cliffs, and high-embattled towers;
This gorgeous fiery-coloured world of ours
Seems fallen into ashes dull and grey,
And the age changed unto a mimic play
Wherein we waste our else too-crowded hours:
For all our pomp and pageantry and powers
We are but fit to delve the common clay,
Seeing this little isle on which we stand,
This England, this sea-lion of the sea,
By ignorant demagogues is held in fee,
Who love her not: Dear God! is this the land
Which bare a triple empire in her hand
When Cromwell spake the word Democracy!
— Oscar Wilde
excerpts:
APRIL 27
AUGUST WILSON
Noted black American playwright, social critic.
FESTIVAL OF ART SABOTAGE.
____________________
1667 - Pound foolish?: John Milton sells "Paradise Lost",
written after he went blind, to Samuel Simmons for 10 pounds.
1737 - Large historian Edward Gibbon lives, England.
Gibbon was smitten with Lady Elizabeth Foster, the Duke of
Devonshire's mistress. He dropped, one day, to his knees with
a proposal of marriage. When she bids him rise, the corpulent
author, after a brief struggle, is obliged to admit that he
can do no such thing.
1759 - Feminist Mary Wollstonecraft lives, Hoxton, England.
In 1792, she wrote "A Vindication of the Rights of Women",
one of the earliest surviving works of feminism. The treatise
attacks the social forces that suppress women as the
economic, political and intellectual inferiors to men.
Labeled "a hyena in petticoats," Wollstonecraft died at an age
prompting criticism that her death was the fitting punishment
for such strong-mindedness. For the next century, women who
similarly publish & defend their work will also damage their
reputations.
1825 - US: The first strike for the 10-hour work-day,
by carpenters in Boston.
1825 - US: Robert Owen sets up Utopian Socialist
Colony at New Harmony, Indiana.
1855 - Jules Jouy lives (1855-1897), Paris. Songster, poet,
anarchiste, pioneer of the social song. An obsession with the
guillotine & its resulting dead lead him to madness, & he was
interned in an asylum until his death.
http://recollectionbooks.com/
1894 - Trial of the French anarchist Emile Henry for bombing
the Terminus cafe February 12, 1894 & blowing up the Bons-
enfants police station, November 8, 1892.
http://recollectionbooks.com/
1942 - US: 16 pacifists, including A.J. Muste & Evan Thomas,
refuse to register for the draft (old guy's draft, age 45-65).
1945 - England: Three anarchist editors jailed for nine months
for "incitement to disaffection"..
1946 - James Oppenheim's poem "Bread & Roses"
published in Industrial Workers of the World's
(IWW) "Industrial Solidarity".
As we go marching, marching
In the beauty of the day
A million darkened kitchens
A thousand mill lofts grey
Are touched with all the radiance
That a sudden sun discloses
For the people hear us singing
Bread & Roses, Bread & Roses...
— James Oppenheim (1912)
Mimi Farina, Judy Collins, & The Ranting Sleezos,
among many others, have recorded "Bread & Roses".
1957 - Italy: Situationist International (1957 - 1972)
founding conference, at Cosio d'Arroscia.
The founding conference is composed of eight men &
women from different European countries. Some founders
of the SI came from radical art groups that emerged around
1950 but were still little known: COBRA, called after the
magazine of a northern-European (Copenhagen - Brussels -
Amsterdam) group of experimental artists & members from
the Lettrist International in Paris.
http://www.bopsecrets.org
http://www.nothingness.org/SI/
1960 - South Korea: Student protests in the wake of rigged
elections force the resignation of US-backed Beloved &
Respected Comrade Leader President Syngman Rhee.
1962 - US: LA Negro uprising (according to "Eyes on The
Prize"). In Griffith Park, where BleedMeister used to hang out
in the mid-60s, 200 youths vs police when one is arrested for
horseplay on a merry-go-round.
1974 - A four-hour long battle with police occurs after the
Cherry Blossom Music Festival in Richmond, Virginia.
The concert — billed as "a day or two of fun & music,"
features Boz Scaggs, Stories, the Steve Miller Band & others.
1974 - US: 10,000 march in Washington, D.C., calling for
impeachment of Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader
President Dick m Nixon.
1977 - Soweto protest starts demonstration against South
African educational system.
1986 - Captain Midnight (John R MacDougall) interrupts
HBO with an important public service message.
1987 - US: CIA HQ in Langley, Virginia is blockaded & shut
down by protesters of US policies in Central America &
southern Africa. 700 are busted.
1996 - US: Drinks On Us?: Twenty-seven arrested at Watts Bar
nuclear power plant, Spring City, Tennessee.
1997 - US: Grave Times? Seventeen activists protesting
continued funding of the School of the Americas are arrested
for digging a mass grave on Pentagon grounds.
2001 - Australia: N O G O D S , N O M A S T E R S:
Conference for an Anarchist Future,
in Melbourne, 27th -30th.
"If You Don't Stand For Something,
You'll Fall For Anything"
2003 - US: 34th Anniversary Celebration for People's Park.
____________________
Companions, let's destroy all the prisons,
Those walls which lock away our desires,
That money may burn in the fire of passion,
Let's change everything so that we exchange nothing.
— Raoul Vaneigem
____________________
— Anti-Fall 1997-2010
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