Emma Goldman: An Exceedingly Dangerous Woman Page #5

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especially as

she got older

She put on

considerable weight

I mean, she appeared

like a tower of concrete

upon the platform

She has something

in common I think

with American

tent preachers

with great con men

and hucksters

of the 19th century

who were able to

sell snake oil

to an audience

by bringing them

to a frenzy

Being in the public

sphere

is action

is the deed

is a way to transform

people

To make them change their lives

change their opinions

She lectured

on anarchism

to Congregationalists

in Cleveland

on violence to Single Taxers

in Houston

and about sex to lumberjacks in Eureka

Society considers the

sex experiences of a man

as attributes of his

general development

while similar experiences

in the life of a woman

are looked upon

as a terrible calamity

I intend to speak

in Philadelphia

I intend to insist on

my right of free speech

If the police stop me

then it is up to them

to explain why

As long as I live

I must be a crusader

What I think, what I feel

I must speak

Not for a hundred

not for five hundred years

will the principles

of anarchy triumph

But what has that

to do with it?

She must have tapped

into something

some stream

running through American society

at that time

Because she

gained converts

if not to anarchism

then to her ideas

especially about

free speech

from all classes and

from all areas of the country

Goldman's celebrity status

didn't wash with everyone

Her closest comrades criticized

her new circle of friends

One worried the movement

was becoming too middle-class

"Instead of organizing

the unemployed"

he argued

"we rent comfortable halls

and charge ten cents admission"

Even government agents

sent to spy on her

understood her appeal

"She is womanly, a remarkable orator

tremendously sincere"

one wrote in a report

"She is doing

tremendous damage"

At home

in New York

unemployed workers, trade unionists

and socialists

kept up a daily round of rallies

and demonstrations

One of the biggest

The Revolt of the Unemployed

was brutally suppressed

Conflicts between capital

and labor escalated

In Lawrence

Massachusetts

striking workers faced the

rifle butts of the state militia

At the Standard Oil Company

in Bayonne, New Jersey

workers striking for humane

treatment on the job

and a living wage

were shot by hired guards

And in Ludlow

Colorado

striking coal miners

and their families

were gunned down

by the local militia

It seemed that..

whatever happened

you could get away with

if you were rich

You could do anything

You could kill

women and children

and nothing would happen to you

Ah, there you go

Tough

And so it just created

this desire to strike back

Anarchists have

taught people

that violence is justified

in the struggle of labor

against capital

Labor will ultimately knock

the last master off

the back of the last slave

Things are so bad

that the..

radical reaction was

in inverse proportions

The more violent

and dangerous life was

the more violent and dangerous

the radicals would be

They were always

a mirror of disaster

of the on-going disaster

They were more

extreme then

And there was less

rueful historical knowledge

about the final counterproductive

nature of violence

Goldman's position

on violence

was never

totally clear

She rejected violence

intellectually

but always

her sympathies

went to the

motivations of those

who committed

acts of violence

"Violence never has..

and never will bring

constructive results"

she wrote

"But my mind and

my knowledge of life

tell me that change

will always be violent"

She felt that violence

sometimes was necessary

because of the

implacable opposition

of governments

and industrialists

to workers

Over time

she recognized that

almost invariably

however those acts

were counter productive

You are giving them

a sword

if you talk about

using a sword yourself

In 1915

Alexander Berkman started

a publication of his own

He named his

new magazine The Blast

Goldman went back on the road

with Ben Reitman

this time to campaign

for birth control

This tour would be their

most successful ever

It was also

quite illegal

Talking about sex

and contraceptives in public

was a crime

She sees birth control

as a social issue

For her it was in a sense

of freedom for the woman

to have whatever

relationships they wanted

whatever life they wanted

It was critical

And it was also critical in terms

of social change

Of empowering

poor women

In February

Goldman was arrested

in New York

and sentenced to fifteen days

in the workhouse

Ten months later

Reitman was arrested

He received

a six-month sentence

the longest sentence served

in the United States

by a birth control

advocate

After his release

Reitman confessed

he'd fallen in love

with a young woman

he'd met in New York

two years before

"I had been seduced

by an ordinary man's desire

for a home, a wife

and a child"

he wrote

His love affair

with Goldman was over

In 1917

Ben Reitman and Anna Martindale

were married

Goldman was stunned

I felt unutterably weary

possessed only of a desire

to get away somewhere

and forget the failure

of my personal life

to forget even

the cruel

urge to struggle

for an ideal

Between the summer of 1916

and the spring of 1917

the mood of the country

darkened

The war in Europe

was dragging into its third year

a year of military stalemates

trench warfare

and mud

When America entered

World War

One in April

Goldman saw it

as a disaster

You cannot support

any country

in war when innocent

as she would see it

men would be

slaughtered

Innocent families

would have

brothers, husbands

taken away from them

and slaughtered

No, you can't do that

That's the basis

of your anarchism

The idea of nationalism

appalled her

She though nationalism

was a big scam

Her point of view

was that

these wars were a matter of

the property interests of

the upper classes

that were sending

the working classes out

to fight for them

And that didn't

make sense for

a butcher's assistant

in Hamburg

to fight a butcher's assistant

in London

Goldman was far from alone

in her opposition to the war

Dozens of organizations

throughout the country

had argued the war

was morally wrong

"paz"

The First World War

was marked

by the insecurity

of the administration

I mean this is an administration

that promised

not to enter the war

Once it decided otherwise

it became very

very defensive

insecure and therefore

insisted on consensus

Consensus by

any means

We're not a liberal society

when we go to war

During the Civil War

we weren't

Abraham Lincoln

one of our great presidents

arrested hundreds of people

who wrote against the war

And during the

first World War

there was a combination

of vigilantism

and official repression

In June, the Espionage Act

went into effect

It decreed stiff fines

and prison terms

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