Chicago’s famed Waldheim Cemetery, final resting place for anarchists such as Emma Goldman, Lucy Parsons, and Voltarine DeCleyre, has been plundered of its liquid assets and is now in bankruptcy. Waldheim is also the site of the crypt and monument to the Haymarket martyrs, four labor activists and anarchists murdered by the state of Illinois in 1887. The Martyrs Monument, which has often been vandalized by political graffiti, now has suffered the outrage of metal thieves.
The magnificent floral spray, cast in bronze, on which visitors have laid flowers for more than a hundred years has been broken off to be sold as scrap. Worse, the cemetery has abandoned even a pretense of security, so there is no assurance that a replacement would not suffer the same fate.
A Waldheim employee, Jack Bokios, refused even to acknowledge the vandalism when reached by the Fifth Estate, and our phone calls to other officials were unanswered.
Thanks to David S., Penelope Rosemont and the Illinois Labor History Society Reporter, 28 E. Jackson Blvd., Chicago, Ill., for the information in this report.
