Sunday, April 25, 2010

Emma Goldman is on the Tour

Emma Goldman (June 27, 1869 – May 14, 1940) was an anarchist known for her political activism, writing and speeches. She played a pivotal role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in North America and Europe in the first half of the twentieth century.

Born in Kovno in the Russian Empire (now Kaunas in Lithuania), Goldman emigrated to the US in 1885 and lived in New York City, where she joined the burgeoning anarchist movement.[1] Attracted to anarchism after the Haymarket affair, Goldman became a writer and a renowned lecturer on anarchist philosophy, women's rights, and social issues, attracting crowds of thousands. She and anarchist writer Alexander Berkman, her lover and lifelong friend, planned to assassinate Henry Clay Frick as an act of propaganda of the deed. Though Frick survived the attempt on his life, Berkman was sentenced to twenty-two years in prison. Goldman was imprisoned several times in the years that followed, for "inciting to riot" and illegally distributing information about birth control. In 1906, Goldman founded the anarchist journal Mother Earth.

In 1917, Goldman and Berkman were sentenced to two years in jail for conspiring to "induce persons not to register" for the newly instated draft. After their release from prison, they were arrested—along with hundreds of others—and deported to Russia. Initially supportive of that country's Bolshevik revolution, Goldman quickly voiced her opposition to the Soviet use of violence and the repression of independent voices. In 1923, she wrote a book about her experiences, My Disillusionment in Russia. While living in England, Canada, and France, she wrote an autobiography called Living My Life. After the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, she traveled to Spain to support the anarchist revolution there. She died in Toronto on May 14, 1940.

During her life, Goldman was lionized as a free-thinking "rebel woman" by admirers, and derided by critics as an advocate of politically motivated murder and violent revolution. Her writing and lectures spanned a wide variety of issues, including prisons, atheism, freedom of speech, militarism, capitalism, marriage, free love, and homosexuality. Although she distanced herself from first-wave feminism and its efforts toward women's suffrage, she developed new ways of incorporating gender politics into anarchism. After decades of obscurity, Goldman's iconic status was revived in the 1970s, when feminist and anarchist scholars rekindled popular interest in her life.

The Stonewall Inn is on the Tour

The Stonewall Inn, often shortened to Stonewall is an American bar in New York City and the site of the Stonewall riots of 1969, which are widely considered the start of the modern gay liberation movement. It is located at 53 Christopher Street, between West 4th Street and Waverly Place, in Greenwich Village. The Stonewall riots are regarded as the single most important event that led to the modern movement for gay and lesbian issues.[1] Later the western, left hand half was reopened called "Stonewall" (1990s) and recently it was renovated and returned to its original name "The Stonewall Inn" (2007).

The Village Voice Building is on the Tour

The Village Voice is a free weekly newspaper in New York City, United States featuring investigative articles, analysis of current affairs and culture, arts reviews and events listings for New York City. It is also distributed throughout the United States on a pay basis.

It was the first and is arguably the best known of the arts-oriented tabloids that have come to be known as alternative weeklies, though its reputation has been unstable since a recent buyout by publishing conglomerate New Times Media. The turbulent times its writers have covered has often been matched by the intrigue in its own offices, most recently including the firing of several high-profile contributors and a scandal over a fabricated story in 2005, the year the paper turned 50. The Voice's spirit can be captured in its 1980s advertising slogan: "Some people swear by us...other people swear AT us."

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn is on the Tour

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn (August 7, 1890 – September 5, 1964) was a labor leader, activist, and feminist who played a leading role in the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Flynn was a founding member of the American Civil Liberties Union and a visible proponent of women's rights, birth control, and women's suffrage. Late in life, she became chairwoman of the American Communist Party. Flynn died in the course of a visit to the Soviet Union, where she was accorded a state funeral.

Flynn's influence as an activist was far-reaching, and her exploits were commemorated in a popular ballad. The song "Rebel Girl" was written by Joe Hill in honor of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn.

A fictionalized version of Flynn is depicted in John Updike's novel In the Beauty of the Lilies in which she is said to have had an affair with the anarchist Carlo Tresca, which is supported by Flynn's letters and memoir.

John Reed is on the Tour

John Silas "Jack" Reed (1887 – 1920), often referred to by his nickname, was an American journalist, poet, and communist activist, remembered for his first-hand account of the Bolshevik Revolution, Ten Days that Shook the World. He was married to writer and feminist Louise Bryant.

The uses of John Reed as a symbol in popular culture have been varied. Some have dismissed him as a "romantic revolutionary" and a "playboy" — a vapid dilettante pretending to profess revolutionary sensibilities. For the Communist movement to which he belonged, Reed became a symbol of the international nature of the Bolshevik revolution, a martyr buried at the Kremlin wall amidst solemn fanfare, his name to be uttered reverently as a member of the radical pantheon. Others, such as his old friend and comrade Benjamin Gitlow, made the claim that Reed had begun to shun the bureaucracy and violence of Soviet Communism late in his life and have thus sought to posthumously enlist Reed in their own anti-communist cause.

John Reed has also been an influence upon the cinema. Soviet director Sergei Eisenstein's influential 1927 silent film October: Ten Days That Shook the World was based on Reed's book.

Half a century later, Warren Beatty made the 1981 film Reds, based on the life of John Reed. Warren Beatty starred as Reed, while Diane Keaton played the part of Louise Bryant and Jack Nicholson that of Eugene O'Neill. The movie won three Academy Awards, and was nominated for nine others. Other film portrayals of Reed include the 1982 two-part Soviet production Red Bells, starring Franco Nero, and the 1973 film Reed: Mexico Insurgente, based on his accounts of the Mexican Revolution.

A persistent urban legend exists that John Reed came from the family for which Reed College, an elite liberal arts school located in Portland, was named. Despite the college's reputation for leftist politics, there is no truth to this rumor. The College was named for Simeon Reed by his widow Amanda Reed who donated a significant part of her inherited fortune to establish the college in 1911.

Eugene O'Neill is on the Tour

Eugene Gladstone O'Neill (16 October 1888 – 27 November 1953) was an American playwright, and Nobel laureate in Literature. His plays are among the first to introduce into American drama the techniques of realism, associated with Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, and Swedish playwright August Strindberg. His plays were among the first to include speeches in American vernacular and involve characters on the fringes of society, engaging in depraved behavior, where they struggle to maintain their hopes and aspirations, but ultimately slide into disillusionment and despair. O'Neill wrote only one well-known comedy (Ah, Wilderness!). Nearly all of his other plays involve some degree of tragedy and personal pessimism.