A motley flush passed lightly over the marble man; raising
Korotkov's hand delicately, he drew him toward a little table,
reiterating, "I'm very glad, too. But here's the rub, imagine it
— I don't even have a place where you can sit down. We're being
kept in a pen in spite of our significance.
— Mikhail Bulgakov, Diaboliad p30
Web version, 61 entries 6 years ago, 91 this; in full:
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/0514.htm
Excerpts, now sent semi-daily to some 597+ crazed stalwarts:
MAY 14
ROQUE DALTON
Salvadorean poet, martyred by former comrades.
UNDERGROUND AMERICA DAY.
______________________________
1771 - Industrialist utopianist Robert Owen lives, Wales.
1812 - Luddites involved in Loughborough Market riot.
As the Liberty lads o'er the sea
Bought their freedom, and cheaply, with blood,
So we, boys, we
Will die fighting, or live free,
And down with all kings but King Ludd!
— Thomas Pynchon , "Is It O.K. to Be a Luddite?"
1856 - Daily Bleed Competitor?: The editor of the "San Francisco
Daily Evening Bulletin" is assassinated by a rival newspaper
owner. A vigilante group seized the assassin from the sheriff, &
tried, convicted, & executed him.
1874 -- England: Sotheby's holds an important chess-book auction.
1887 -- US: Lysander Spooner (1808-1887) dies. Utopian,
individualist anarchist Massachusetts abolitionist & anti-monopolist.
http://www.lysanderspooner.org/
1905 -- US: The Asiatic Exclusion League is formed in San Francisco,
marking the official beginning of the anti-Japanese movement.
Among those attending the first meeting are labor leaders
(& European immigrants) Patrick Henry McCarthy & Olaf
Tveitmoe of the Building Trades Council of San Francisco
& Andrew Fufuseth & Walter McCarthy of the Sailor's Union.
1912 - August Strindberg dies. Wrote bold & concentrated
dramatic works combining naturalism with his own conception
of psychology.
1920 -- Italy: During this month in Livorno, Carabinieri & Royal
Guards are called in following rioting by anarchists & footballers.
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/05ref.htm#14/1920
1931 -- Italy: Arturo Toscanini refuses to conduct a fascist song in
Bologna & is attacked by a fascist youth.
1932 -- "We Want Beer" marches are held in cities all over
America, with 15,000 unionized workers demonstrating in Detroit.
1940 - Death of feminist anarchist Emma Goldman (1869-1940) while
in Toronto, Canada raising money for anti-Franco forces in Spain.
Outspoken birth control advocate & champion of women's rights.
"If I can't dance I don't want to be part of your revolution."
Her death finally allowed her a visa back into the
US, where she was buried in Waldheim Cemetery, next to the
Haymarket Martyrs in Chicago.
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/GoldmanEmma.htm
Karl Shapiro's early poem, "Death of Emma Goldman," described
that passionate anarchist, "dark conscience of the family" (her
own and humanity's), with gentle appreciation. At the same time, it
reviled the people who, after her death, called her immoral
because she never married her lover, Alexander Berkman:
Triumphant at the final breath,
Their senile God, their cops,
All the authorities and friends pro tem
Passing her pillow, keeping her concerned.
But the cowardly obit was already written:
Morning would know she was a common slut.
— Karl Shapiro, "Death of Emma Goldman,"
from Person, Place, & Thing (1942)
http://recollectionbooks.com/siml/library/index.html#Death
There is also a Kenneth Rexroth poem on her death ("Again at Waldheim")
"Your stakes were on the turn
Of a card whose face you knew you would not see."
http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/poems/1940s.htm
1961 - US: Bus with the first group of Freedom Riders is bombed &
burned in Alabama. Segregationists attack & burn the "Freedom
Rider" Greyhound bus near Anniston. (Bob Dylan writes "Ballad of
Emmett Till.")
"Then they rolled his body down a gulf amidst a bloody red rain
And they threw him in the waters wide to cease his screaming pain.
The reason that they killed him there, and I'm sure it ain't no lie,
Was just for the fun of killin' him and to watch him slowly die..."
— Bob Dylan, Ballad of Emmett Till
1965 -- US: Beloved & Respected Comrade Labor Leader
AFL-CIO Pres. George Meany criticizes opponents of the Vietnam
War. American labor, like most of the US, has a ring in its nose,
allowing it to be happily led from one humiliation to the next.
1966 - The Kingsmen's "Louie Louie" on pop charts since '63,
enters the Hot 100 for the ninth & last time with a re-released
version. Incites controversy over its unintelligible, but assumed
obscene lyrics.
"Smash your left hand down about right here three times, then
twice up in this area, then three times right about here . . .
that's "Louie Louie.""
1968 - Paris '68: Sorbonne students occupy & open the University
to the population, inviting "the workers to come & discuss with
them the problems of the University". Between May 13-30 similar
events & demonstrations are inspired, bringing daily life in the
modern industrial countries & authority itself into question -- in
Madrid, Rome, Berlin, NY, & Czechoslovakia (during "Prague
Spring").
"Be realistic. Demand the Impossible!"
"Beneath the paving stones, the beach!"
There is a story told about how at 4 in the morning on the "night
of the barricades," several students phoned up George Séguy, head
of the General Trade Union Confederation (CGT), led by the PCF,
& told him:
"We can't hold out. We need the proletarians to come &
help us."
"One does not mobilize the working class at this time
of night," Séguy reportedly replied.
Workplace occupations start. A significant aspect of the May
Upheaval. By the end of this month over 10,000,000 workers are
involved in occupations. In Nantes, the workmen of South-Aviation,
begin the first occupations of factories.
http://www.recollectionbooks.com/bleed/sinners/Paris6814th.htm
1969 - US: Police build fence around People's Park in Berkeley,
California, tonight.
NOT PEOPLE'S PARK
PEOPLE'S PLANET, CAN THEY
FENCE THAT ONE IN, BULLDOZE IT
4 A.M.?
— Diane di Prima, "Revolutionary Letter #38"
1970 -- US: Exterminate Dorm Rats? Mississippi: Jackson State
Riot Number Two. Two African-American students killed & 10
others wounded when state police fire into a Jackson State College
woman's dorm during anti-war demonstrations.
1974 -- Only Group Riding Their Hearst Before the Funeral?:
Symbionese Liberation Army destroyed in shoot-out, six killed.
"Death to the fascist insect that preys upon the working masses."
1980 -- Some 600 Salvadoran refugees are killed attempting to
cross the Sumpul River from El Salvador to Honduras by
US-supported government troops from both countries.
1999 -- US: Seattle Spoonster, Artis the Spoonman,
plays The Moore Theater with KVHW.
All my friends are Indians
All my friends are brown & red, Spoonman
All my friends are skeletons
They beat the rhythm with their bones, Spoonman
Feel the rhythm with your hands
Steal the rhythm while you can, Spoonman
— Soundgarden
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artis_the_Spoonman
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soundgarden
2000 -- Karl Shapiro, American poet, professor & Pulitzer
Prize-winner, dies. He was 86.
"I am an atheist who says his prayers. I am an anarchist, &
a full professor at that. I take the loyalty oath."
— Karl Shapiro, "The Bourgeois Poet"
2005 -- US: 2nd annual Art of Resistance (Criminal Beauty)
conference, Seattle Washington.
________________
"Fighting against the government is like
fanning the flames of a dying fire"
— John Cage
________________
— Auntie-Fire 1997-2011
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