Daily Bleed Radical Literary History for May 30th

one day we were selling them
so much killing hardware
their governmental teeth
were eroding with the metallic grind
but their appetites increased...

— Grace Paley, excerpt, "Leaflet"


Web double play:
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/0530.htm

May 30

RANDOLPH BOURNE
Birth-injured Greenwich Village literary radical.

MR BUCKET'S GOT A HOLE DAY.

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1593 -- Christopher Marlowe, dramatist, poet, brawler, & government agent,
is fatally stabbed with his own dagger in an argument over a tavern bill.

Elizabethan poet-dramatist Christopher Marlowe was not killed in 1593,
but banished; he continued writing under the pseudonym "William Shakespeare."

1814 -- Russia: Anarchist theorist Mikhail Bakunin lives, Prjamuchino.
Conspirator, rival of Marx, assassin of God.

"Inequality of conditions & rights, & the resulting lack of liberty for all,
is the great collective iniquity begetting all individual iniquities."

— Mikhail Bakunin

http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/Bakunin.htm

1883 -- US: Panic on the Brooklyn Bridge, six days after its opening, results in
12 people trampled to death.

1886 -- US: Randolph Bourne lives, (1886-1918). American literary radical, anarchist.

. . . If any man has a ghost,
Bourne has a ghost,
a tiny twisted unscared ghost in a black cloak
hopping along the grimy old brick & brownstone streets
still left in downtown New York,
crying out in a shrill soundless giggle:

War is the health of the State.

— John Dos Passos, 1919

http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/BourneRandolph.htm

1887 -- Julian West goes to sleep.

West had slept for 133 years, three months, & 11 days.

— Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward

1901 -- Russia: Maxim Gorky, arrested on charges of printing revolutionary literature, is
released from prison after the anarchist/novelist Leo Tolstoy intercedes on his behalf.

"For all, mother dear, for all! The world is ours!
The world is for the workers!
For us there is no nation, no race.
For us there are only comrades & foes..."

— Maxim Gorky, Mother

1902 -- Belgium: Hem Day lives (1902-1969). Belgian scholar, secondhand bookseller,
pacifist, anarchist, & writer.
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/DayHem.htm

1904 -- US: Last Chance? Baseball's Frank Chance gets hit by a pitch FIVE times in a doubleheader.

1912 -- US: Two companies of Marines rushed to Nicaragua to "protect US interests."

"So heavy the price that they pay
As daily the fruit it is stolen
Over the blue Caribbean
But the lengthening shadow of Cuba
will hinder the way."

— Phil Ochs, "United Fruit"

http://goodfelloweb.com/werbe/oats.htm

1937 -- US: Police murder 10 fleeing workers, wound 30 more, & beat 55 so badly they
require hospitalization, during the "Memorial Day Massacre" at the Republic Steel
plant in south Chicago.

It was a day for parades, picnics & boat-rides — & tear-gas, bullets & death.

http://www.trussel.com/hf/memorial.htm

1943 -- US: San Antonio, Texass bureaucrats shut down the Chili Queens,
now memorialized every year on Memorial Day.

The Chili Queens didn't take any back talk from men & were blind to segregation —
after all, they were minorities themselves. Each night this diverse melting pot
of cultures would eat & sing the night away, not as foes, but as equals...

Hail to the Queens!

http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/05ref.htm#30/1943

1968 -- France: Trains don't run, airports closed; millions of workers have barricaded
themselves within their factories & offices; soccer players have occupied their stadiums;
there is no mail & it is almost impossible to make a phone call; Universities are closed;
France is in the middle of a massive General Strike! Leading politicians warn of a civil
war/revolution.

1969 -- US: 20,000 rally in a peaceful protest in Berkeley, California, to oppose state
suppression of People's Park, put flowers on the fences.
http://www.peoplespark.org/history.html

1980 -- Switzerland: Beginning of the "movement of the discontented," youth rebellion in
Zurich, spreading throughout the country, involving thousands — young & not so young — in
demonstrations & confrontations with police, demanding places where they would be free to
meet & share counter-cultural experiences. Escalated into broader demands, one being
"No Leaders!," & another being:

"Make Cucumber Salad Out of the State!"

1993 -- Ark-Angel, composer Herman "Sunny" Blount dies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Ra


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"The intelligent man who is proud of his intelligence is
like the condemned man who is proud of his cell."

— Simone Weil

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— Anti-daily the fruit it is stolen 1997-2011