it plunges into the blaxing flesh of the sky
my negritude riddles with holes
the dense affliction of its worthy patience.
— Aimé Césaire, excerpt,
"Cahier d'un retour au pays natal"
(Return to My Native Land)JUNE 25
GEORGE ORWELL
British novelist, anarchist journalist, anti-Stalinist.
Spain: FIESTA OF STANA OROSIA. Pilgrims climb to murdered
maiden's mountain sanctuary where the saint's head is displayed,
picnic, sing, dance, drink, fight & make love.
FESTIVAL OF THE OPTIONAL HOLIDAY.
______________________________
1178 -- Five Canterbury monks report something exploding on the Moon.
http://recollectionbooks.com/
1694 -- Viagra? London contracts for the erection
of the first British lamp-posts.
1822 -- German phantasist ETA Hoffman dies, Berlin.
Daily Bleed Saint 2002-2005
German phantasist, visionary, proto-surrealist.
1825 - Capture of Bob Forbes, leader of Maroons
(blacks resisting slavery) in Virginia.
Gone to Croatan: Origins of North American Dropout Culture
— Ron Sakolsky & SaintMeister James Koehnline, editors:
Lost history viewed through cracks in the
cartographies of control, including "tri-racial
isolate" communities, buccaneers, "white Indians",
black Islamic movements, the Maroons of the
Great Dismal Swamp, the Métis nation, scandalous
eugenics theories, rural "hippie" communes, & many
other aspects of North American autonomous cultures.
A festschrift honoring historian Hugo Lemming Bey of
the Moorish Science Temple.
1852 - Catalan architect Antoni Gaudi lives, Reus, Spain.
http://www.red2000.com/spain/
1856 - German ego-philosopher-anarchist Max Stirner dies, Berlin.
A left Hegelian with Karl Marx & others, gone bad. Wrote The Ego
& Its Own.
http://recollectionbooks.com/
1857 - Baudelaire's volume of poems Les Fleurs du Mal is
published. He & his publishers are prosecuted for offending
public morals.
1867 -- Lucien Smith patents barbed wire. Rhymes with Empire:
First used for military defense by US occupation forces in Cuba in 1898.
1876 -- Got Reservations?: Lakota, Cheyenne & Arapahoe, resisting
the authority of the US government efforts to herd them onto
"reservations", kill Red-baiting General Richard Armstrong
Custer & wipe-out his troops at Little Big Horn, Montana.
Euphemistically called "Custer's Last Stand".
1878 -- US: Despite mass protests, Ezra Heywood gets two years
hard labor for advocating free love / sexual emancipation as part of
women's rights in the US. Individualist anarchist "arrested" by
prude Anthony Comstock. Released on 19 December, & Beloved &
Respected Comrade Leader President Hayes issued a pardon the
following day.
1893 - Haymarket Martyrs' Monument is dedicated. Erected by the
Pioneer Aid & Support Association, an organization begun by the
anarchist Lucy Parsons, Albert's widow.
It features a woman as Justice placing a crown
of laurels on the brow of a fallen worker, while
preparing to draw a sword.
Sculptor Albert Weinert's design was inspired by
a verse from the French anthem, the "Marseillaise",
which the five anarchists sang before their hanging.
On the front of the monument are the last words
of August Spies:
"The day will come..."
On this day thousands of workers & visitors
to the World's Columbian Exposition marched to a
train station & rode to the cemetery. Floral tributes
were sent by several nations. Speeches were made
in English, German, Polish & Bohemian, & an orchestra
played the Marseillaise.
Every year on the Sunday closest to May 4,
& the anniversary of Black Friday, November 11th, labor
organizations come to this monument to pay tribute —
though most are loathe to recall or
avoid mention that the martyrs were anarchists.
"The day will come when our silence
will be more powerful than the voices
you are throttling today."
— August Spies
1894 - Eugene Debs leads strike of American Railway Union.
http://recollectionbooks.com/
1903 - Modern prognosticator George Orwell lives, as Eric Blair,
Motihari, Bengal, India.
The biting satire of Communist ideology, The Animal
Farm, followed his horrendous experiences with the Stalinists,
especially in the Spanish Revolution (see his Homage to
Catalonia). Then came his anti-utopian Nineteen Eighty-Four.
'All animals are equal,
but some animals are more equal than others.'
1913 -- Martinique: Anti-colonialist surrealist poet Aime Cesaire
lives, Basse-Pointe.
"I am talking of millions of men who have been
skillfully injected with fear, inferiority complexes,
trepidation, servility, despair, abasement."
— Discours sur le colonialisme
1921 -- Czechoslovakia: The word "robot" enters the world's
languages when Karel Capek's play "R.U.R." (Rossum's Universal
Robots) premieres. Even the robots won't put up with lousy work &
crummier wages, & rebel.
1937 -- José Martins Fontes dies. Portuguese doctor, lecturer,
poet, anarchist, militant activist in Brazil.
http://recollectionbooks.com/
1940 -- Earl Robinson's "Ballad for Americans" premiers, NY Philharmonic.
1952 - Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges publishes Otras
inquisiciones.
1955 -- France: Pierre Morain, militant of the F.C.L. (Fédération
Communiste Libertaire) arrested. Sentenced to prison for one year.
Pro-Algerian revolution, the FCL's paper "Le Libertaire" was seized
seven times between 1954 & 1956. The five editors of the paper were
repeatedly prosecuted by the Ministry of the Interior. Criminalization
& surveillance of FCL activists led to it's dissolution in 1956.
1961 -- Iraq announces that Kuwait is a part of Iraq (Kuwait disagrees).
US marches in on it's moral horse to save the day, right?
http://recollectionbooks.com/
1962 -- U.S. Supreme Court rules official prayers unconstitutional
in public schools.
1967 -- "Summer of Love": 75,000 - 100,000 in Hashbury. Also, on
or about this day, author Ken Kesey is sentenced to 6 months in jail.
"You are either on the bus or you're not on the bus."
Kesey formed the 'Merrie Pranksters', bought an old school bus, &
toured America & Mexico with his friends. Their exploits were
immortalized in Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1973).
1968 -- Got Civilization?: Pan-American Health Organization
reports that Central American Indians have a worse diet than the
pre-Columbian Mayans.
1968 -- In response to the passage of an anti-gay ordinance in
Miami, 240,000 people march in San Francisco in the first large-
scale version of that city's annual Gay Freedom Day Parade.
1968 -- US: Red, White & Rue? Congress makes it a crime
to desecrate the Merican flag.
1972 -- US: Help, I'm A Republican!? Martha Mitchell phones
a reporter, claiming to be a political prisoner.
1984 - French philosopher Michel Foucault dies, of AIDS, Paris.
1986 -- US: House reverses itself, approves aid to Nicaraguan contra
terrorists. & here you thought the American government was always
in reverse.
1990 "I am freer than anybody else. I am free to choose the
parents I want, the country I want, the age I want."
— author B. Traven,
according to Mrs Lujan (his widow),
"New York Times," June 25, 1990
http://recollectionbooks.com/
2002 -- European Court of Justice rules that if cheese does not come
from Parma, it can't be Parmesan cheese. Daily Bleed rules if Blue
Cheese does not come from the (Blue) Moon it cannot be Blue Cheese.
________________
"No daring is required to protest against a great injustice."
— Emma Goldman
No comments:
Post a Comment