on this day in recovered history, May 20, Emma Goldman, sans-culottes, Henri-Edmond Cross, Gustave Lefrançais, Errico Malatesta, Francesco Saveiro Merlino, Louise Michel, George Orwell, Paris Uprising 1968, anarchist, Situationists, anarchiste MAY 20

STANISLAV MARKELOV
Russian human rights lawyer, activist, martyr.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article5547721.ece

Old England: BEATING OF THE BOUNDS, ceremonial perambulation of Parish boundaries. Wicken, England: LOVE FEAST UNDER THE GOSPEL ELM. Florence, Italy: FESTIVAL OF THE CHIRPING CRICKETS. First of the month of Prairial (pasture) in the French revolutionary calendar. FEAST OF ST. LUCIFER. "Satan" is from a Hebrew word, "Saithan," meaning adversary or enemy; in original Jewish usage (see the book of Job), Satan is the adversary, not of God, but of mankind; i.e., the angel charged by God with the task of proving mankind an unworthy creation. Thus Satan is not in opposition to God but is doing His will. Later, the concept of an evil power ruling an underground domain of punishment for the wicked became fixed in Christian doctrine. In such, elements of the Graeco-Roman god Pluto/Vulcan/Hephaestus, the Underworld, & various aspects of Nordic/Teutonic mythology are traceable. http://ooze.com/toolofsatan/

4 -- Jesus of Nazareth (probable actual birthday) (BCE).


526 -- Syria: Earthquake kills 250,000 in Antioch.


1498 -- India: Vasco da Gama arrives at Calicut on the Malabar coast.



1506 -- Spain: Christopher Columbus, explorer, dies in poverty in Valladolid, at 55. Neglected & almost forgotten, never fully realizing the importance of his explorations.

Columbus was the first economist. He didn't know where he was going. He deceived his men. & he travelled on government money. — Victor García, cited The Heretic's Handbook of Quotations, edited by Charles Bufe (See Sharp Press; 2nd edition, March 2001).

1593 -- Christopher Marlowe is arrested for heresy, but he soon escapes.
Source: [Robert Braunwart][Hereafter attributed with symbol: ]


1609 -- England: Thomas Thorpe gets a license to print Shakespeare's sonnets.
http://shakespeare.mit.edu/works.html


1639 -- New Old World: First American public school established, Dorchester, Mass.


1683 -- Elijah Fenton, English poet, lives Shelton, Staffordshire. Collaborated with Alexander Pope & William Broome in a translation of the Odyssey. Fenton translated books 1, 4, 19, & 20.


1747 -- England: Annual Garrat Election by commoners asserting land & assembly rights in Wandsworth & Tooting: takes the ludic form of mock hustings, false names & impious oaths of allegiance [1747-1796].
Source: [Calendar Riots]


1776 -- US: Mohawks, under Joseph Brandt, defeat Americans at the Battle of the Cedars.


1795 -- France: Last major uprising of the sans-culottes against the reactionary authority of the Thermadorian government. Lasted four days; bloodily put down by military force. Main slogan was "For bread & the constitution of 1793" & against the big bourgeoisie.
http://www.historyguide.org/intellect/lecture13a.html


1799 -- Honoré de Balzac lives (1799-1850). French journalist & writer, one of the creators of realism in literature. "What Napoleon could not do with the sword, I shall accomplish with the pen." He adds "de" to his name & pretends to be of noble birth.
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/balzac.htm


1806 -- John Stuart Mill, philosopher & radical reformer, lives, London. Learns Greek at age three, Latin & arithmetic at eight, logic at 12.


1830 -- D. Hyde patents the fountain pen.


1844 -- US: Wisconsin's Fourierist Phalanx commune established.
http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/communalism6.htm


1845 -- Robert Browning pays his first visit to Elizabeth Barrett, an invalid confined to a bedroom by a despotic father.


1846 -- México: US fleet arrives at Veracruz to begin a blockade; Valentin Gomez Far¡as revolts against Mexican President Paredes.



1856 -- France: Henri-Edmond Cross (aka Delacroix) (1856-1910) lives. Neo-impressionist/pointillist painter, illustrator, anarchiste.



1859 -- Beginning date of Ivan Turgenev novel Fathers & Sons.



1862 -- US: Homestead Act is approved, granting 160 acres of western land stolen from Native Americans to settlers at $1.25 an acre.



1867 -- England: A-Hem?: John Stuart Mill's bill to permit women to vote is rejected by the British Parliament.



1871 --

"What does it matter to us what judgments may later be passed upon our obscure personalities? If we have seen fit to record the political differences that exist between the majority of the Commune & ourselves, this is not in order to apportion blame to the former & praise the latter. It is simply to ensure that, should the Commune be defeated, people will know that it was not what it has appeared to be up to now."

— Gustave Lefrançais (1826-1901) addressing constituents, 20 May 1871
(cited in Internationale Situationniste 12 [September 1969].)

Lefrançais was a member of the First International, of the Paris Commune, & a founder of the anarchist Jura Federation. Lefrançais helped Élisée Reclus in producing Géographie Universelle.

Lefrançais adamantly declared that he was "a Communalist, not an anarchist," & probably (according to Murray Bookchin) coined the term.

See "The Communalist Project" by Murray Bookchin, in the Harbinger (Vol. 3, No. 1)
https://ecotopianetwork.wordpress.com/2010/07/29/the-communalist-project-murray-bookchin/
http://www.notbored.org/why-art.html
[Background Details, click here]

1873 -- Levi Strauss awarded US patent for his blue jeans.


1882 -- Sigrid Undset lives (1882-1949), Kalundborg, Denmark. Norwegian writer, awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1928. Her masterwork is the trilogy Kristin Lavransdotter (1920-22).
http://www.nobelprize.org/
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/undset.htm

1882 -- Henrik Ibsen play "Ghosts" premiers, Chicago (in Norwegian).
http://recollectionbooks.com/links.html#Henrik Ibsen



1883 -- Italy: First (& only) issue of Il Popolo, a weekly anarchist-communist paper appears(?) Pre-publication publicity found the editors quickly arrested: Errico Malatesta & Francesco Saveiro Merlino, Dominico Pavani, Camillo Pornier, Edoardo Rombaldoni & Luigi Trabalza are held for the next eight months, then charged in November for criminal association [malfattori].

[Details / context]

1887 -- US: Yaqui Indian rebel leader Anastasio Cuca is apprehended in Tucson. He is later extradited to Mexico, where he is executed.


1895 -- England: Oscar Wilde's second trial for sodomy begins, London.



1898 -- France: Louise Michel

Elle revient à Paris pour s'occuper de l'édition de ses oeuvres (notamment la Commune) puis regagne l'Angleterre.

[Source: Michel Chronologie]

1899 -- US: Speed Kills?: Jacob German of NY City is the first driver ever arrested for speeding. Mr. German was whipping his taxicab all over Lexington Avenue & going over the posted 12 mile-per-hour speed limit.


1899 -- US: US: Emma Goldman arrives in Tacoma, Washington, where she participates in a debate on "Socialism versus Anarchism."

A group of spiritualists lend her use of their temple free of charge for a series of lectures, but when she proposes to lecture on "Free Love," they deny her the use of the hall. She delivers two well-attended lectures in Seattle.

1902 -- Cuba: US troops, present since 1898, leave (the first time); The "Republic" of Cuba is created under US control; Tomas Estrada Palma becomes the first president (-1906).
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/sawhtml/sawsp2.html



1904 -- US: Warships ordered to Tangiers, Morocco to "protect US interests." Making Tangiers safe for those late-coming Beatsters Paul & Jane Bowles, William S. Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, et al.



1911 -- México: The anarquista Magonistas of the Partido Liberal Mexicano publish a proclamation calling for the peasants to take collective possession of the land in the territories of Lower California where they have driven out the government, for "a free & happy life, without Masters or Tyrant." ANARCHIST
http://www.laneta.apc.org/magon/memoria.htm
http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/wap04


1911 -- México: Textile workers at Xia, Oax. pronounce in favor of Mexican rebels.

1913 -- US: Emma Goldman & Dr. Ben Reitman arrested on arrival in that bastion of "free speech," San Diego, California; vigilantes surround the police station. Police order Goldman & Reitman to board the afternoon train back to Los Angeles.


1915 -- Italy: Cambio di bandiera per la maggior parte dei deputati e per la totalità dei senatori che il 12 Maggio si erano espressi per la neutralità. Parliament (20-21st) grants extraordinary powers to the government in case of war (alla Camera favorevoli 407, contrari 74, astenuti 1; al Senato favorevoli 281 su 281). I voltagabbana quaquaraquà si sono espressi.
Source: [Crimini e Misfatti]


1916 -- US: Emma Goldman speaks from the back of a car at an open-air demonstration in Union Square in NY to protest Dr. Ben Reitman's imprisonment for distributing birth control information.

Sculptor/poet Ida Rauh Eastman, Bolton Hall, & Jessie Ashley are arrested later & charged with illegally distributing birth control information at the meeting.

[Details / context]

anarchist feminist

1925 -- Palestine: Hebrew newspaper Davar of the Palestinian labor movement is founded.


1926 -- Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Thomas Edison says Americans prefer silent movies over talkies.


1926 -- US: Enactment of Railway Labor Act in the aftermath of strikes & Federal seizure of the railroads, guaranteeing collective bargaining rights to railroad workers.


1927 -- Charles Lindbergh flies solo, New York to Paris, winning a prize & taking the cake.

1930 -- US: A Frisco newspaper reports a University of California committee awarded the sum of $1,500 to continue research on the prevention & cure of a burning issue of the day, "athletic foot."


1930 -- First airplane catapulted from a dirigible, with Charles Nicholson as pilot.


1931 -- France: At the now-famous Parisian bookstore & lending-library Shakespeare & Company (see 17 November) Anaïs Nin joins up & borrows e.e. cummings' Enormous Room.
http://www.gvsu.edu/english/cummings/Places.htm
http://libweb2.princeton.edu/rbsc2/portfolio/sb/


1932 -- Amelia Earhart flies solo across Atlantic ocean.
[Details / context]


1933 -- US: Condom shortage? Rubber workers strike in Akron, Ohio.

1935 -- Italy: E' istituita la sovraintendenza alle valute per controllare i movimenti di valuta estera secondo le restrizioni vigenti in tempo di guerra.
Source: [Crimini e Misfatti]


1937 -- Spain: Author & one-time used book seller George Orwell, sympathetic to the anarchists, & fighting for the Republic, is shot on the front lines. His Homage to Catalonia is based on his experiences during the Spanish Revolution.

It is the left-wing papers, the "News Chronicle" & the "Daily Worker," with their far subtler methods of distortion, that have prevented the British public from grasping the real nature of the struggle.

The fact which these papers have so carefully obscured is that the Spanish Government (including the semi-autonomous Catalan Government) is far more afraid of the revolution than of the Fascists.

— George Orwell, "Spilling the Spanish Beans," 1937

"When I see an actual flesh & blood worker in conflict with his natural enemy, the police[man], I do not have to say which side I am on."

       — George Orwell

http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/scw/anarchist.htm
http://www.resort.com/~prime8/Orwell/
http://www.k-1.com/Orwell/

1938 -- Canada: 500 unemployed workers start a sit-down strike in Hotel Georgia, Vancouver, BC.


1939 -- US: The "Yankee Clipper" takes off from Port Washington, NY, bound for Europe. The flagship of Pan American Airways, it establishes the first regular air passenger service across the Atlantic Ocean.


1940 -- Verner von Heidenstam dies, Ovralid, Sweden. Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, "in recognition of his significance as the leading representative of a new era in our literature."
http://runeberg.org/authors/heidstam.html


1942 -- Pierre Ramus (aka Rudolf Grossman), fleeing from Nazi-occupied Europe, boards ship for Veracruz, Mexico. Austrian writer, pacifist & prolific anarchist propagandist, he dies en route on May 27th, from a heart attack. In one of his last letters, from a refugee camp in Casablanca, Ramus wrote, "In a time where so many without a higher ideal must live & die, I suffer with my ideals & am ready to die with them."


1946 -- Author W. H. Auden becomes an American citizen.
http://www.sat.dundee.ac.uk/~arb/speleo/auden.html


1946 -- US: Government takes over control of the coal mines.


1946 -- US: Poste Haste?? NY Governor Thomas E. Dewey orders Lorenzo Reed, a black prison escapee, extradited to Florida; Reed had been convicted of stealing 20 cents & sentenced to 25 years in prison after a 10-minute trial.


1946 -- US: Army C-45 crashes into 48th floor of Bank of Manhattan, NY; five die.


1949 -- US: The AFofL rejects the reaffiliation bid of the United Mine Workers (UMW).


1949 -- US: The Armed Forces Security Agency is formed — first US government agency formed in total secrecy (as far as we know). Predecessor of NSA.


1950 -- Bolivia: A general strike & rebellion break out (suppressed May 22).


1950 -- Germany: Germany: A coal-dust explosion & fire kill 75 miners, Gelsenkirchen, W. Germany.


1952 -- Korea: Communist POWs riot at Koje Island prison camp, South Korea.


1952 -- US: Songster Paul Robeson overcomes red-baiters to appear in Seattle Civic Auditorium for a benefit concert for the Civil Rights Congress.


1952 -- Howard H. Quint writes the preface to his The Forging of American Socialism.


1953 -- French General Navarre says he can see "light at the end of a tunnel" in Vietnam. Can't call him a dim wick...big ol' tunnel.


1954 -- US: Attorney General Brownell gives the FBI carte blanche to bug anyone.


1954 -- Bill Haley's "Rock Around the Clock" is released.


1955 -- ¶ Beatster Jack Kerouac completes "cityCityCITY," a science fiction story.


1956 -- In Rapallo, Italy, his home for the past 45 years, English caricaturist, writer, & dandy, Maximilian Beerbohm, dies. As a parodist, he remains unsurpassed.
http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/mb/beerbohmov.html


1957 -- Cuba: Rebel leader Fidel Castro appeals to the US to stop arming dictator Batista.


1958 -- US: Air National Guard Lockheed T-33 Trainer collides with a Capital Airlines Viscount over Brunswick, Maryland, killing 12. The trainer pilot parachuted to safety.


1959 -- US: Japanese-Americans who renounced their US citizenship when imprisoned in American WWII concentration camps have it restored.



1959 -- US: Hawaiian protest songster Israel Kamakawiwo'ole lives (1959-1997). Activist for Hawaiian rights & Hawaiian independence. Best known for the song "Somewhere Over the Rainbow/What a Wonderful World."

Daily Bleed Saint 2006-2010
The Gentle Giant, "Bruddah Iz," tha Bob Marley of Hawaiian activism.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_Kamakawiwo%CA%BBole



1961 -- Wales: Protest demonstration by the CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament), in Aberystwyth.

[Details / context]

1962 -- US: Mountaineer Edmund Hillary is the mystery guest on television's "What's My Line?"


1963 -- US: White mob attacks "Freedom Riders" in Montgomery, Alabama. Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Kennedy sends 400 US marshals to Alabama to protect Freedom Riders.


1963 -- Canada: The RCMP arrests 20 young FLQ members for terrorist acts, Montreal.


1964 -- US: Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) wins free-speech fight, Roosevelt University, Chicago. anarchist
http://www.iww.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Workers_of_the_World



1966 -- Pete Townshend & Roger Daltrey of the Who, tired of waiting for the late John Entwistle & Keith Moon, go on stage & play a set with guys from a local band. When Moon & Entwistle show Townshend smacks Moon on the head with his guitar. Moon quits the band — for a week.


1966 -- US: PH Phactor Jug Band opens at 40 Cedar Street, also known as Cedar Alley, near Polk & Geary in Frisco. Capt. Beefheart & His Magic Band opens at the Avalon Ballroom, Sutter & Van Ness.
http://www.sfmuseum.org/hist1/rock.html



1966 -- South Vietnam: May 20-23 Buddhist & labor union demonstrations against Ky government in Saigon.


1966 -- Rolling Stones hit "Paint It Black" enters the British charts at #5. Auntie Dave is then a gardener...sort of..."We Mow For Our Dough."



1967 -- Seen it Coming?: BBC bans Beatle's "A Day in the Life." A neat trick considering it wasn't released until June 1. McCartney this month also reveals that all of the Beatles have now taken acid.


1967 -- US: NY City, Flower Power Day.



1967 -- Uruguay: Postal workers strike.



1968 -- France: The revolutionary upheavals of 1968 continue: Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader General de Gaulle howls as more than six million workers are now on strike.

---

20. May — An estimated 10 million workers are on strike; France is practically paralyzed.

[Sources]

---

ANARCHIST



1968 -- France: Se suspende el Festival de Cannes, a causa de los conflictos en Francia.
http://www.elmundo.es/larevista/num132/textos/crono.html


1968 -- US: Black Student Union members occupy President Odegaard's office, University of Washington, in Seattle.


1968 -- US: Brooklyn University is occupied by blacks.
[Details / context]


1969 -- Vietnam: Hold the McMustard? US troops make their 11th assault in 10 days on "Hamburger Hill," finally capturing it in one of the Vietnam War's bloodiest battles. The mountain proves of little strategic value, & is abandoned eight days from now. Plenty of time to pick up the bodies.


1969 -- US: 134 day class boycott of San Francisco State University settled.


1969 -- US: Kissinger & Haig request more FBI wiretaps to find government leaks.


1969 -- Ireland: Students sit in at University College, Dublin, over Northern Ireland.


1969 -- US: Donald Phelps, the only black school principal in Bellevue, Washington, resigns to protest racism.


1970 -- China: Mao Tse-tung issues "People of the World, Unite & Defeat the US Aggressors & All Their Running Dogs!"


1970 -- US: 100,000 march in NY in support of US policies in Vietnam.


1971 -- Chicago lead singer Peter Cetera beaten up by four creeps at a Cubs baseball game. The men objected to the length of his hair. Cetera underwent five hours of emergency surgery.


1971 -- Delegation of US pacifists travels to Cuba to exchange children's art.


1972 -- US: 21,000 acres in Gifford Pinchot National Forest returned to Yakama tribe.


1973 -- US: 17 of the "Camden 28" found not guilty (of destroying draft files).


1973 -- US: Doonesbury's Marvelous Mark declares Watergator John Mitchell "guilty, guilty, guilty." Most American newspapers in the coming decades either refuse to carry the strip or move him off the comic strip section.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doonesbury


1974 -- England: Pat Arrowsmith jailed for 1-1/2 years for leafleting soldiers about Northern Ireland.


1974 -- Russia: Human rights activist, martyr Stanislav Markelov lives, Moscow. Shot dead on January 19, 2009 while leaving a news conference. Anarchist/journalist Anastasia Baburova was also murdered when she tried to come to his aid.

http://anarkisterna.com/blog/2009/02/19/remembering-anastasia-baburova-and-stanislav-markelov/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Markelov

1978 -- US: Taxi!?: Mavis Hutchinson, 53, arrives in New York City — the first woman to run across America. 3,000 mile trek took 69 days, running an average of 45 miles each day.
http://www.beeramerica.com/


1980 -- South Korea: Uprising in Kwangju against repressive US-supported government.


1982 -- Animated cartoon "Dr. Seuss' [sic] The Grinch Grinches the Cat in the Hat" premiers on ABC-TV.


1985 -- Israel: Government trades 1,150 Muslim prisoners for three Israeli POWs.


1989 -- China: Martial law in Beijing ordered to quell the pro-democracy movement & massive student demonstrations.


1989 -- Gilda Radner, comedienne (Saturday Night Live), dies at 42 of cancer.


1990 -- A freelance Israeli terrorist murders eight Palestinians at random.


1992 -- Amnesty International accuses China of illegal arrests & torture in Tibet.


1993 -- Ireland: A massive IRA bomb explodes in Belfast, Northern Ireland.


1993 -- El Salvador: Salvadoran police kill three at a protest by wounded civil-war veterans.


1995 -- Iran: Government says it will not send assassins to hunt novelist Salman Rushdie.


1996 -- US: Supreme Court rules that a Colorado state law prohibiting any legislation protecting gays & lesbians against discrimination is unconstitutional.


1996 -- The UN & Iraq sign a deal allowing limited oil exports from Iraq.


1997 -- Germany: About 50 activists occupy & prematurely harvest a trial field of genetically engineered maize (corn), ruining the test. Schonfeld.


2002 -- Stephen Jay Gould dies.

Biologist/Paleontologist. Mr. Gould wrote a heck of a whole lot on evolution & the science of man. He thought evolution a "a fortuitous cosmic afterthought."

He debated creationists. A baseball fanatic, he appears in the Ken Burns documentary, Baseball. Among Stephen's works are Ever Since Darwin, The Mismeasure of Man, & The Panda's Thumb. An upcoming work, The Scientists Tumor, is postponed indefinitely.

2006 -- France: Centenary of the signing of the "Charte d’Amiens" (Charter of Amiens), 1906-2006.

Among the events in Paris, forums organized by Alternative Libertaire, video; includes buffet, bar, bookstalls. anarchist
http://www.alternativelibertaire.org

2006 -- Canada: 7th annual Anarchist Bookfair, May 20 & 21st, part of Montreal's annual 'Festival of Anarchy' begun earlier this month, the largest anarchist event in North America.

Free to all. 75+ distributors, vendors & groups at the bookfair, from North America, Latin America & Europe. Presentations, films, art exhibits, & workshops. (Includes photo exhibit from Kashipur with radio documentary by Seattle's Brook Thorndycraft & Tamara Herman, of the people’s movement resisting the Alcan-backed project.)

2006 -- Ireland: Demonstration in support of 41+ hunger strikers by Afghan asylum seekers for refugee status. Organized by Residents Against Racism with support from the Workers Solidarity Movement.
http://web.archive.org...struggle.ws/rar.html


3000 --

"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past. — George Orwell

4500 -- http://www.namebase.org/