MAY 5

KARL MARX
Promised the withering-away of the state, which has happened recently in places he never imagined. We're a little behind schedule on some others.

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CINCO DE MAYO

Japan: FEAST OF BANNERS, fish kites fly.

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1260 -- Kublai unanimously elected KaKhan in succession to Mīngke.


1606 -- Death of Jean Nicot, who introduced tobacco to France.


1780 -- Anti-American?: Units in George Washington's Revolutionary War Camp in New Jersey mutiny, but the rebellion is put down by Pennsylvania troops.


1813 -- Sųren Kierkegaard lives, Copenhagen. Danish philosopher/religious writer, who deeply affected theologians & Existential philosophy. He criticized prevailing Hegelian assumptions, attacked all philosophical system building, & formulated the thesis that subjectivity is truth. At his creative peak he published 12 books in 1-1/2 years, using many pseudonyms, sometimes attacking his own books under a different name.

"Carking care is my feudal castle. It is built like an eagle's nest upon the peak of a mountain lost in the clouds. No one can take it by storm. From this abode I dart down into the world of reality to seize my prey; but I do not remain down there, I bear my quarry aloft to my stronghold. What I capture are images."

— Soren Kierkegaard, Entweder-Oder (1911).

1814 -- Percy Bysshe Shelly & Mary Godwin meet & fall in love (or May 6); Unfortunately, he is already married.
[Source: Robert Braunwart] [Hereafter denoted with symbol:]


1816 -- John Keats' first published poem, "O Solitude," appears.
http://www.rjgeib.com/thoughts/keats/keats.html



1818 -- Germany: Communist theorist, philosopher of labor, capitalist critic, Karl Marx lives, Trier. Nemesis of Michael Bakunin.

"WE have nothing to lose but our bricks."

1822 -- Sir Harry Paget Flashman lives (1822-1915). A dyed-in-the-wool rogue who'd sooner die than face danger.

The only white man to survive Custer's Last Stand

"I never did learn to speak Apache properly. Mind you, it ain't easy, mainly because the red brutes seldom stand still long enough — & if you've any sense, you don't either, or you're liable to find yourself studying their system of vowel pronunciation... while hanging head-down over a slow fire or riding for dear life across the Jornada del Muerto with them howling at your heels & trying to stick lances in your liver."

He rode, farting with terror, in the charge of the Light Brigade... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Paget_Flashman http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/jan/04/pressandpublishing.georgemacdonaldfraser

1846 -- Henryk Sienkiewicz lives, Okrzejska. Polish novelist & winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1905. Among his novels is the widely translated & filmed Quo Vadis (1896).


1852 -- US: National Typographical Union founded, Cincinnati, Ohio. Oldest existing national union in the US.


1856 -- US: Morrison Swift lives (1856-1946). Boston-based philosopher, anarchist, anti-imperialist, journalist, pamphleteer, publisher, & utopian fiction writer.
(Exact dates of birth & death currently unavailable; see 1946 below.)


1857 -- US: Dred Scott decision rendered, anticipating civil war in America.


1862 -- México: Battle of La Puebla marks victory over imperial France. Mestizo & Zapotec soldiers defeat the French army in the Battle of Puebla.
[Details / context]


1862 -- Max Elskamp lives, Antwerp, Belgium. Outstanding Symbolist poet whose material is based on everyday life & folklore of his native city, & Roman Catholic religious sentiments.



1865 -- First train robbery occurs.


1867 -- Nellie Bly, famous for around-the-world race, lives, Corchran's Mills, Pennsylvania. Daily Bleed Saint January 27.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nellie_Bly


1874 -- Jean Marestan (born Gaston Havard) lives, Liege, Belgium. Anarchist, pacifist & militant néo-Malthusian, writer.
[Details / context]



1876 -- México: Esteban Baca Calderon lives. Mexican strike leader (Cananea Copper Mine, June 1, 1906).

Up the street, Francisco Villavicencio Vigilante fidgets behind the front desk in Cananea's museum...

[Details / context] | Details on the [Cananea Mine strike]

1884 -- US: Knights of Labor strikes Union Pacific because of wage cuts, & wins.


1886 -- US: Police attack on Jewish Workers from the Chicago West Side as they attempt to march into the Loop to protest slum conditions.
http://www.iisg.nl/exhibitions/art/voorstellen2.html


1886 -- US: The Bay View Massacre at Rolling Mills. See Howard Zinn article, "A Look at Milwaukee's 8-hour march, killings from the workers' point of view,"
http://www.zinnedproject.org/
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/05ref.htm#3/1886b


1888 -- US: Founding of the International Association of Machinists.



1890 -- Christopher Morley lives; novelist, poet, essayist (Where the Blue Begins).


1896 -- James McLennegan transfers the brain of Edward Framingham into the body of an elasmosaurus, in Wardon Allan Curtis 1899 story "The Monster of Lake Lametrie."



1897 -- Italy: Giovanna Berneri lives (nee Giovannina Caleffi; 1897-1962). Teacher, anarchist propagandist, companion of Camillo Berneri (murdered by the Communists in Spain on this day in 1937; see below). Mother of Marie Louise Berneri (1918-1949) & Giliane Berneri — like their parents, also anarchists.
[Details / context]



1898 -- Italy: A Pavia la polizia di stato uccide lo studente Muzio Mussi durante una manifestazione.
[Source: Crimini e Misfatti]


1902 -- Bret Harte dies in London at 65. Author of The Outcasts of Poker Flat. Mark Twain characterizes him as:

"An invertebrate without a country."

1903 -- Pierre Odeon (aka Pierre Perrin) lives, in Morbihan. French anarchist, anti-militarist, aided the Spanish Revolution, member of the Resistance.
[Details / context]


1903 -- US: Small Fry? James Beard lives; culinary expert, author (Delights & Prejudices).


1907 -- Pat Frank, Chicago, writer (Alas Babylon, Hold Back the Night).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Frank


1909 -- Carlos Baker, novelist, critic, biographer of Hemingway.


1910 -- Leo Lionni, author & illustrator of fables, lives.



1911 -- Aristide Delannoy dies. French artist & contributor, along with Paul Signac, Maximilien Luce, Alexandre Steinlen, Van Rysselberghe, Camille Pissarro, Van Dongen, George Willaume, etc., to the anarchist magazine "Temps Nouveaux."



1916 -- Dominican Republic: US marines invade, to "protect" US interests, stay there "protecting" until 1924.


1916 -- US: Large gathering at Carnegie Hall to celebrate Emma Goldman's release from jail.

Program includes speeches by "Masses" editor Max Eastman, Harry Weinberger, Arturo Giovannitti, & socialist Rose Pastor Stokes. At the close of the meeting, Rose Pastor Stokes hands out 100 typewritten notices including outlawed information about birth control.

1916 -- Ireland: John MacBride, Irish rebel, is executed.


1920 -- Massachusetts: Nicola Sacco & Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two Italian-American anarchists, are arrested for murder & payroll robbery & eventually they are executed for a crime they quite possibly did not commit. Climaxes postwar anti-radical, anti-labor & anti-immigrant hysteria of the Wilson-Mitchell period.

Sacco & Vanzetti lie to police about their politics, their guns, why they were in Bridgewater, & deny knowing Coacci & Buda. They repeat these lies to the District Attorney.

[Details / context]

1920 -- Amos Tutuola lives. Nigerian writer, who gained world fame with his story The Palm-Wine-Drinkard, which was found on Yoruba folktales, although in his own country he was accused of falsifications & uncivilized language.


1920 -- Charles Ange Laisant dies (b. 1841). French Conseiller Général in Nantes, & Député in Paris (18čme) who later became an anarchist under the influence of his son Albert (who also led his two sons, Maurice & Charles, down the errant path). Charles wrote educational texts for children, in mathematics, physics, etc, as well as radical (La barbarie moderne, (1912)). He was a friend & correspondent with the Spanish educator Francisco Ferrer.
[Details / context]


1921 -- Italy: Fascists in Pisa attack & set fire to the printing works of the newspaper "Avvenire anarchico."


1921 -- Alfred Hermann Fried, Austro-German pacifist (Nobel 1911), dies at 56.


1921 --

Italy: Riccardo Siliprandi (pseudonym, Arič) is assassinated by a fascist squad in Luzzara, in the Piazza del Teatro. Militant antifascist, anarchosyndicalist & part of the Luzzara anarchist group which had some 36 members. Interred with other antifascist partisans in the Mausoleo dei partigiana Luzzaresi. See G. Laghi & R. Cavandoli, Storia di Luzzara (1978) & A. Paterlini, Il sacrificio reggiano per la pace e la libertą 1915-1943 (1982).

http://www.anarca-bolo.ch/a-rivista/318/15.htm

1922 -- During May-June, Arthur Svensson joins Emma Goldman & Alexander Berkman in Berlin.

Later, her niece Stella Ballantine visits with six-year-old son Ian.

Emma develops friendship with anarchist theorist Rudolf Rocker & his wife, Milly, with whom she had begun to correspond while in Russia.

Emma also begins work on book-length manuscript with the intended title My Two Years in Russia.

anarchist



1925 -- US: Biology teacher John T. Scopes arrested for teaching the theory of evolution in a Tennessee school, a violation of state law.


1926 -- Sinclair Lewis declines the 1926 Pulitzer, declaring that all such prizes tend to make writers "safe, polite, obedient & sterile." He does, however, (politely?) accept the Nobel Prize for Literature (the first American novelist so honored) in 1930. His last best work was It Can't Happen Here, a speculative novel about the election of a Fascist as US President.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_Lewis



1927 -- Novel To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf is published.


1928 -- Kit Denton lives, England; Australian broadcaster, historian, author.


1930 -- Gandhi is arrested by the British (-Jan. 26, 1931).


1930 -- Nicaragua: Sandino returns empty handed because of US pressure on the Mexican government.



1931 -- US: Infamous Battle of Harlan County ("Bloody Harlan"), Kentucky. Coal workers have been shafted too long. The Harlan County class war provided the inspiration for Florence Reece's "Which Side Are You On?".

My daddy was a miner, And I'm a miner's son, And I'll stick with the union 'Til every battle's won. They say in Harlan County There are no neutrals there. You'll either be a union man Or a thug for J. H. Blair.

See "Harlan: Working under the Gun" by John Dos Passos
http://newdeal.feri.org/voices/voce04.htm
& John Hevener's Which Side Are You On?: The Harlan County Coal Miners, 1931-39
Google e-book

1932 -- US: In Evarts, Kentucky, a fight breaks out between miners & the coal companies' industrial police. The goons draw their pistols, as do many of the miners. The shootout kills a miner & three company guards.

The Evarts battle shatters the mining industry's campaign of fear & intimidation in the region. Until now, a coal-company reign of terror has included kidnapping & murder of suspected union organizers.

As the attacks intensified, however, many miners began carrying 38-caliber revolvers, known as "John L. Lewis peacemakers." The violence continues for years, as the miners openly call for strikes & collective-bargaining agreements.

By 1940, they win most of their demands.

1937 -- Barcelona: "May Days" erupt in Spain, as Communists attack anarchist strongholds. (If the right one don't get you, the left one will.)
http://recollectionbooks.com/anow/history/spain/



1937 -- Spain: This evening, in Barcelona, the Italian anarchist theorist/activist Camillo Berneri & Francesco Barbieri are seized by the Communists, presumably on Moscow's orders (Stalinist purges). Their bodies are found tomorrow, riddled with bullets. Camillo's eldest daughter, Marie-Louise Berneri, fighting on the front in Aragon, returns to Barcelona for her father's funeral.



1937 -- Spain: (Wednesday) May 5, 1937: A handbill is distributed by the Friends of Durruti. Over the radio, the CNT disowns the Friends of Durruti Group. Fighting is now confined to the city center: the rest of the city is in the hands of the confederal Defense Committees.
[Details / context]


1939 -- US: The United Mine Workers force a stoppage of soft-coal production when union & operators fail to reach an agreement. Work resumes May 13 when a contract is signed.
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~1930s2/Time/1939/1939fr.html


1942 -- Jesus Gonzalez Davila lives. Mexican playwright (La rana, La venturina).


1945 -- Beginning date of Jerzy Andrzejewski novel Ashes & Diamonds.


1946 -- US: Morrison Swift (1856-1946) dies. Boston-based philosopher, anarchist, anti-imperialist, journalist, pamphleteer, publisher, & utopian fiction writer. Author of The Evil Religion Does, Imperialism & Liberty, The Monarch Billionaire, The Damask Girl & Other Stories, Marriage & Race Death, etc. Member of the New England Industrial Army. Like numerous progressives, Swift later soured & became a militarist & his interest in eugenics ultimately led him off into extreme anti-semitism.

"Religion . . . its time is up . . ."

— Morrison I. Swift (quoted by Thomas Hardy in his poem "God's Funeral")
(Exact dates of birth & death currently unavailable. — ed.)

"Every major demonstration of the unemployed that took place in Boston between 1894 & 1914 was led by Morrison Isaac Swift."

— Alexander Keyssar, Out of Work (1986)

... show more

Morrison I. Swift was intermittently a graduate student of philosophy at The Johns Hopkins University from 1880 to 1885, when he was awarded the Ph.D. degree. Documents in the Hopkins archives show that Professor Morris recommended him for academic appointments in 1882, including an instructorship at Hamilton College, & that he taught philosophy at Hobart College in 1882-83.

He is known, however, primarily as a radical activist & publicist. He led the New England contingent in Coxey's Army in 1894, & published numerous books between 1890 & 1927 on topics ranging from American imperialism & the plight of the unemployed to marriage reform & the evils of religion. "The Judependent", Apr. 19, 1894, p. 487, commented on his role in Boston demonstrations preceding the march on Washington:

"In the line of agitation for public action, efforts have centered about a young man named Morrison I. Swift. Mr. Swift is perhaps thirty-five years of age, quiet in bearing, & possessed of a certain personal charm, winning in his manner before a conversational group, & very able before a promiscuous crowd. He is well educated, has traveled, & has dwelt much upon economic ills & their cures. He is a socialist of the extreme type. He advocates peaceful methods, but would not hesitate at radical measures provided they promised success."

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"One of the most violent & prolific anti-imperialists...." Donald Egbert, Socialism & American Life p. 326.

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http://www.google.com/...book_result...Morrison+I.+swift...

1947 -- France: French CP ministers expelled from the government.


1950 -- Edgar Lee Masters dies, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Wrote the popular Spoon River Anthology, about small town America.
http://www.outfitters.com/illinois/fulton/masters.html


1955 -- US: Move In Now? Way cheap housing available, will have your family glowing... Nuclear explosion atop a 150-m tower batters but does not destroy a model community built at the atomic proving grounds in Nevada.


1956 -- New series of US nuclear tests at Eniwetok Atoll, Pacific.


1958 -- James Branch Cabell, US novelist (Jurgen), dies at 79, Richmond, Va.


1960 -- US spokesman announces the spy plane shot down by the Russians on 1 May was a "weather research plane" & pilot Francis Gary Powers was a "civilian employed by Lockheed."


1961 -- Alan Shepard rocketed from Cape Canaveral, Florida, 116.5 miles above the earth in a Mercury capsule in the first US manned sub-orbital space flight.


1967 -- US: Grateful Dead, & the Paupers at Fillmore Auditorium, Frisco.



1968 -- Film actor Albert Dekker ("Dr. Cyclops," "Death of a Salesman") found handcuffed in his bathtub with a noose around his neck & obscenities scrawled on his body, dead of an autoerotic accident, Hollywood, California.


http://classics.mit.edu/Euripides/cyclops.html
http://www.monstrula.de/filme/drcyclops/drzyklop.htm



1968 -- France:

May Uprisings, 5 mai 68
Les manifestants du 3 mai sont condamnés ą des peines de prison.
Courts convict 13 demonstrators; give four jail terms.
http://www.metropoleparis.com/1998/318/chron318.html

1969 -- US: 231 military induction orders burned, Los Angeles.



1970 -- US: In response to Kent State killings, protests engulf campuses across United States. The first protest occupation of I-5 Freeway occurs in Seattle as 1,000 U.W. marchers spontaneously seize the freeway. Traffic backs up past Everett (30 miles north). BleedMeister be there, bullhorn & all.

The University of Washington Daily announces that a strike had begun to honor the dead & bring home the living. No more business as usual; it was time to shut the place down & work to end the war. That day, 5,000 students "took the freeway," headed for downtown; next day, 10,000 kids marched from campus to downtown, joined along the way by hundreds of Seattle residents.

On campus, the Strike Coalition takes over the old Physics Annex, & set up a mimeograph machine & a day-care program. Radicals made fitful attempts to barricade campus entrances, occupy buildings & establish a Free University.

KUOW radio was liberated as Radio Free Seattle, & strike organizers demanded an end to war-related research on campus.

http://www.islavista.org/mm/ohio1.mov
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/special/centennial/october/outrage.html

1971 -- US: Nixon administration arrests the last of 14,000 anti-war protesters in three days. 18 are arrested in Seattle during a 2,000 person anti-war march downtown.

Under White House orders, Washington police arrest so many Vietnam War demonstrators that there isn't enough jail space.
[Details / context]

BleedMeister, College Press Service correspondent & staff member of the US Student Press Association, was there — on the outside looking in. Very spooky stuff.

1972 -- Rev. Gary Davis, blues & folk singer, dies at 76.


1973 -- US: American Indian Movement (AIM) ends occupation of Wounded Knee, South Dakota.


1975 -- Dominick Argento's "From the Diary of Virginia Woolf" wins the Pulitzer Prize for music; Garry Trudeau wins Pulitzer Prize in editorial cartooning (Doonesbury).


1978 -- Enrico Arrigoni (aka Frank Brand) addresses a meeting at the New York Freespace Alternate U [University] on Max Stirner.

Let's make it clear that Stirner is not against society, nor does he preach isolation, since the “union of egoists” is also a society. He is only against certain kinds of societies, the forced, the codified, the authoritarian societies. To these he opposes the free, voluntary which is the union of egoists...

No individualism, no anarchy. Because then there would be no real freedom — only a flock of tamed, enslaved individuals, no matter what you called it.

— Enrico Arrigoni, “The Afflictions of the Critics of the Ego," Minus One (No. 36, 1975)

On Arrigoni, see Anarchist Voices: An Oral History of Anarchism in America by Paul Avrich.
Google e-book online

1979 -- US: 1,500 gather in Livermore, Calif. to protest nuclear research laboratory run by the Univ. of California. Livermore becomes the focus of numerous rallies & direct actions in subsequent years.



1981 -- Ireland: Bobby Sands (1954-1981), Irish political prisoner & member of Parliament, dies, in Maze Prison near Belfast, after 66-day hunger strike asking the British government to grant political prisoner status to Irish Nationalist inmates, instead of treating them as common criminals.

http://larkspirit.com/?page_id=4
http://larkspirit.com/hungerstrikes/bios/sands.html
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/ira/readings/diary.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Sands


1982 -- US: The Unabomber's 6th bomb injures one at Vanderbilt University, Tenn.


1983 -- Sicily: Over 1 million Sicilians have signed a petition against US base at Comiso (1/5 of the total population).


1984 -- Jacques Reclus dies. French anarchiste.

Le vendeur d'huile qui conquiert la reine de beauté de Feng Menglong.
Récit traduit du chinois sous la direction de Jacques Reclus. Les amours d'un petit artisan sans le sou et de la plus convoitée des courtisanes : le romantisme ą la chinoise. Nouvelle édition illustrée. 86 p., éd. Philippe Picquier, 1990.

1986 -- Labor of Love?: After 72+ grueling hours of labor, Brandon Letsinger-Brown lives, Seattle. #1 Son of Sue Letsinger & Auntie Dave.

Kind, curious, questioning, healthy, fun. Activities have variously included swimming, biking, chess, reading, collecting Hardy Boys books, Magic Cards & signed books of author Vonda McIntyre (a neighbor), fishing, camping, baseball, basketball, & The Simpsons, WWII, War Hammer, bowling, computer games (Civilization, EverQuest, Diablo), science fiction, architecture, antiwar-WTO-G8-BushCheneyJunta activities (certified paramedic) & book collecting & selling.

Great grandson of folklorist Stith Thompson. Descendent of a long line of Clan Lockharts. & more.

Still talks to his parents in 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 (from under his car), 2010 (from atop his touring bike). Good kid (Probly). No less stubborn now than then.

http://www.clanlockhart.org/
http://www.tartans.com/

1987 -- US: Iran-Contra Hearings begin.


1989 -- US: Sick? The World Freedom [sic] Institute registers in the US as an agent for Nicaraguan contra terrorists.


1990 -- US: Serial Killer? Jesse Tafero is executed, Florida; the electric chair malfunctions three times & flames leap from his head.


1991 -- England: Last US cruise missile leaves Greenham Common Air Base, site of a decade of strident women's anti-nuclear protests.


1991 -- Cuba: Human-rights leader Elizardo Sanchez is freed from jail.


1992 -- Serbia: Mothers of soldiers demand return of sons from extra-territorial fronts, Belgrade.


1992 -- US: SpokesMen?: L.A. riots: 600 gang members meet to co-ordinate collective action against the police.
[Source: Calendar Riots]


1992 -- US: Two men break into the Rockwell International Facility & damage a $50 million NavStar satellite with axes, causing $2.8 million damage:

"They will beat their swords into axes ... & none shall make them afraid."

1993 -- Irving Howe, US literary & social critic ("Dissent" magazine), dies at 72, NY.


1993 -- Amnesty International accuses Tajikistan of political torture & murder.


1996 -- Germany: This month during the Squatter's Movement (under heavy government attack), raids a punk squat in the Kreutziger Strasse & the Samariterstrasse 31 are evicted.
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/10ref.htm#03/1990
http://www.notbored.org/squatworld.html


1997 -- Crosby, Still & Nash perform their hit "Ohio" to mark the 27th anniversary of the Kent State massacre, Kent, Ohio.


1998 -- Denmark: Mass strike continues into day nine. Today, 15 to 20,000 workers demonstrate in front of the employers federation building in Copenhagen as part of the national day of action called by the national meeting of shop stewards.


2000 -- US: First Anarchist Film Festival in Chicago, Illinois, May 5-7, as part of "Matches & Mayhem".


If revolution can't be fun, then whats the point?"

http://anarchistsoccer.pbwiki.com/



2001 -- Cliff Hanger? Clifton Keith Hillegass, Cliffs Notes creator, dies at 83, Nebraska.


2001 -- Morris Graves, "Northwest Mystic" painter, dies at 90, California.


2010 -- US: 10th Annual Chicago Anarchist Film Festival. Two weekends, 10 events. This years theme, "Crossing Boundaries," seeks to project voices that transcend borders & cultures — voices that normally do not get heard. Radical cinema from around the world with features, shorts, documentaries, animation, & found footage. "Anarchist films cross boundaries, take risks, & subvert passivity." Participants will also find humor, silliness & fun in the offerings.
http://home.comcast.net/~more_about_it/

2010 --

One seventh of your life is spent on Wednesday!!

Most modern calendars mar the sweet simplicity of our lives by reminding us that each day that passes is the anniversary of some perfectly uninteresting event.

                                — Oscar Wilde

3500 --

"La Injusticia en cualquier sitio, es una amenaza para la Justicia en todas partes"

("Injustice Anywhere is a Threat to Justice Everywhere")

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