Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff,
Speaker 2: your weekly podcast that once every now and then is
Speaker 2: rerun episode like today, I took a week off so
Speaker 2: that someone could cut into my face to remove teeth
Speaker 2: at my request, and so I'm running a rerun. But
Speaker 2: it's a very special week because it's Mayday week, my
Speaker 2: favorite holiday besides the other holidays that I really like,
Speaker 2: which I also talk about a lot on this show,
Speaker 2: but this one is May Day. Well, not today as
Speaker 2: this is released, but this week as it's released, the
Speaker 2: international workers holiday that comes from a really cool background,
Speaker 2: a little bit tragic. They do call it the Haymarket tragedy,
Speaker 2: but if you've listened to the show before, you know
Speaker 2: that I'm not afraid of thinking tragedy is cool. That
Speaker 2: sounds weird, But this is the first ever episode that
Speaker 2: I ever recorded of this show that we're rerunning, and
Speaker 2: it's about May Day. Here you go, Hello and welcome
Speaker 2: to Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff, which is a
Speaker 2: podcast about cool stuff that people did stuff cool. I
Speaker 2: suppose this is the very first episode, which means I
Speaker 2: should probably tell you what the show is. Okay, So
Speaker 2: there's bad stuff, right and fighting against bad stuff is cool.
Speaker 2: Cool people fight against bad stuff, so you should be cool.
Speaker 2: You should fight against bad stuff. And every week on
Speaker 2: this podcast, I bring you a new story about cool
Speaker 2: people who did cool stuff like fight against bad stuff.
Speaker 2: I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy, and with me today our
Speaker 2: first guest is Robert Evans.
Speaker 3: That's right. I am the opposite of you, and my
Speaker 3: podcast is the opposite of yours. And if we were
Speaker 3: to ever make physical contact, it would create a nuclear
Speaker 3: explosion that would destroy all life in the universe.
Speaker 2: That's true. Yes, So okay, So I'm looking at your
Speaker 2: your bio and it says that you're a podcaster, a
Speaker 2: war correspondent, a novelist, and you're the proud owner of
Speaker 2: the world's largest collection of please bleep this out.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, I used to belong to Jay Leno, but
Speaker 3: I bested him in a fight to the death, and
Speaker 3: now an impostor lives his life and I have taken
Speaker 3: over that collection. So really really been a good year
Speaker 3: for me?
Speaker 2: Allegedly, sure, allegedly a good year. And that voice that
Speaker 2: you'll hear from time to time, disembodied in commanding is Sophie,
Speaker 2: our producer. Hello. Okay, so today I'm feeling the spirit
Speaker 2: for a holiday that has not happened by the time
Speaker 2: I'm recording this, but will have happened by the time
Speaker 2: you listen to this, which is May Day, the workers
Speaker 2: Rights Day everywhere in the world except the US. Today,
Speaker 2: we're going to talk about where that comes from deciding
Speaker 2: to start the whole podcast series off with a bang,
Speaker 2: which is the best pun I will ever use on
Speaker 2: the show, and hopefully the last pun I ever use
Speaker 2: on the show. We're going to talk about the bomb
Speaker 2: that brought us the modern labor movement. Robert, are you
Speaker 2: familiar with the Haymarket riot, affair, massacre, or tragedy, depending
Speaker 2: on whatever people want to call it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So, a bunch of like anarchists and other people
Speaker 3: who didn't want there to be an eight hour or
Speaker 3: wanted there to be an eight hour workday were organizing
Speaker 3: and there were some cops, and then someone threw a
Speaker 3: bomb and it killed some of those cops, and then
Speaker 3: the cops arrested a bunch of anarchists, most of whom
Speaker 3: probably didn't have anything to do with the bomb, but
Speaker 3: a bunch of them got executed, and then we got
Speaker 3: an eight hour workday, right that's the gist.
Speaker 2: That is the rough strokes.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, although we didn't necessarily get the eight hour work
Speaker 2: day at the end of it, not to ruin the
Speaker 2: end of the episode, but that is yes, And we're
Speaker 2: going to be talking about the cool people and the
Speaker 2: mostly cool people and the like cool with caveat people
Speaker 2: who were busy fighting against capitalism and for immigrants, and
Speaker 2: they got very and labor and they got very not
Speaker 2: cool murdered by the state for it. Talking about a
Speaker 2: mystery person who chucked a bomb at some cops a
Speaker 2: few days after cops gunned down striking workers, which is
Speaker 2: a tale as old as time, or at least a
Speaker 2: tale as old as eighteen eighty six. Yeah, thanks for
Speaker 2: laughing at my joke. It's the story of a fight
Speaker 2: for the eight hour workday.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But it's also a story about a huge immigrant subculture
Speaker 2: that developed in Chicago and started off believing in the
Speaker 2: ballot box and wounded up believing only in revolution, and
Speaker 2: how the whole thing came crashing down in a moment,
Speaker 2: only to grow into something even bigger later. And it's
Speaker 2: a story about people who are put on trial for
Speaker 2: their beliefs, not their actions or really even their words.
Speaker 3: Well, that all just sounds cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the show.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: I want to start this with a story from folk
Speaker 2: singer Utah Phillips. It's about one of the stars of
Speaker 2: this week's episode, Lucy Parsons. One time she was speaking
Speaker 2: at a big May Day rally back in the Haymarket
Speaker 2: in the middle of the nineteen thirties, during the depression.
Speaker 2: She was incredibly old. She was led carefully up to
Speaker 2: the rostrum a multitude of people there. She had her
Speaker 2: hair tied back in a tight white bun, her face
Speaker 2: a mass of deeply incised lines, deep set, beady black eyes.
Speaker 2: She was the image of everybody's great grandmother. She hunched
Speaker 2: over that podium hawklike and fixed that multitude with those
Speaker 2: beady black eyes and said, what I want is for
Speaker 2: every greasy, grimy tramp to arm himself with a knife
Speaker 2: or a gun and stationing himself at the doorways of
Speaker 2: the rich, shoot or stab them as they come out.
Speaker 2: And then Utah, describing it, goes on to say, now
Speaker 2: I'm a pacifist by admire her spunk. And this wasn't
Speaker 2: the first time that Lucy Parson said anything like this.
Speaker 2: The first time had been like fifty years earlier, in
Speaker 2: the eighteen eighties, and she was remarkably consistent her entire life.
Speaker 2: There's a park named after her in Chicago, and a
Speaker 2: little bit we'll talk about how she reached the conclusions
Speaker 2: that she reached more famous than her dead husband Albert Parsons.
Speaker 2: But he gets to steal the show a bunch today
Speaker 2: because it's the story about how he died and he
Speaker 2: becomes one of the Haymarket martyrs, and sorry and give
Speaker 2: me a second. Well, most of the story is not
Speaker 2: about stabbing or the shooting of the rich, and it's
Speaker 2: not even really at its core a story about violence
Speaker 2: and the bombs and the stuff they just grab the
Speaker 2: most attention. I would argue that history teachers know that
Speaker 2: the good ones. Newspapers know it, at least at the time.
Speaker 2: The newspapers definitely knew that the bombs and the guns
Speaker 2: got the most attention, and as a podcaster, I know it.
Speaker 2: So that's why I'm starting with some stabbing and shooting
Speaker 2: of the rich. And this is as a personal story
Speaker 2: for me, right, I wanted to start the whole series
Speaker 2: off with this episode because it's so personal to me.
Speaker 2: I have a tattoo on my arm of one of
Speaker 2: the martyrs, not not Albert Parsons, but George Engel, who
Speaker 2: was a toy shop owner and the oldest of the bunch.
Speaker 2: He met his aunt calmly after a life lived trying
Speaker 2: to improve the conditions of his fellow workers. And his
Speaker 2: last words were in German it was hawk the anarchy
Speaker 2: or Hurrah for anarchy. And there's a there's a graveyard
Speaker 2: in Chicago with a big monument to these folks. And
Speaker 2: I've been a few times. I cry every time I go, oh,
Speaker 2: there were really nice people, some of them, most of them.
Speaker 2: They were cool people. I'll stop saying cool every single time.
Speaker 1: They're cool people who did cool stuff.
Speaker 2: They did actually mostly mostly cool stuff. Cool. Yeah, Okay,
Speaker 2: so now we get to talk about them. Lucy Parsons
Speaker 2: she was born Lucy Ella Gonzalez Waller, or maybe Lucy
Speaker 2: Elding Gathering's or maybe Lucia Carter, it depends on who
Speaker 2: you ask. Like, she was remarkably cagey about her history.
Speaker 2: She was maybe born enslaved in Texas, or maybe she
Speaker 2: was born enslaved in sometime around eighteen fifty one to
Speaker 2: eighteen fifty three, and she was Black Mexican in Creek.
Speaker 2: I actually kind of feel guilty talking to There's so
Speaker 2: much work modern historians have put into trying to discern
Speaker 2: her heritage, and her whole thing was that she did
Speaker 2: not want to talk about her heritage. She said itself
Speaker 2: one point, she said, I am not a candidate for office,
Speaker 2: and the public has no right to my past. But
Speaker 2: because being who she was would have been fundamentally illegal
Speaker 2: if she were if she claimed her black heritage, she
Speaker 2: maintained throughout her entire life that she was indigenous in
Speaker 2: Mexican and not African, though really no one believed her
Speaker 2: then or now. And you know, so it's interesting how
Speaker 2: she becomes like this very important early figure in black anarchism,
Speaker 2: and yet you know, because of the conditions that she
Speaker 2: was living in or whatever decisions that she made that
Speaker 2: I'm not really in a good place to judge. She
Speaker 2: didn't really talk about it much. In eighteen seventy two,
Speaker 2: she married a traveling journalist named Albert Parsons, and for
Speaker 2: fifteen years they were one of the biggest power couples
Speaker 2: in the American left.
Speaker 3: Ah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she gets to be powerful after that. But you
Speaker 2: can probably guess what happens in fifteen years to Albert
Speaker 2: A big spoiler alert that has already happened.
Speaker 3: Okay, technically I spoiled it.
Speaker 2: That's true. He spoiled the whole episode. I was thinking
Speaker 2: we could just end it there.
Speaker 3: But you know, a nice people got married hooray.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, and their marriage wasn't legal, but I'll get
Speaker 2: to that, Okay. So then there's Albert, and we have
Speaker 2: way more information about Albert because he was really forthcoming,
Speaker 2: like this guy wouldn't shut up. Honestly, by the end
Speaker 2: of all this, I don't actually like Albert all that much,
Speaker 2: not because he's like a bad person, but because he
Speaker 2: just doesn't shut up. But we have a lot more
Speaker 2: information about him because his wife wrote his biography after
Speaker 2: he died, and so he was one of ten kids
Speaker 2: born in Alabama to a shoe factory owner. And the
Speaker 2: Parsons family goes really far back, you know that like
Speaker 2: meme where it's like, if you go to a famous
Speaker 2: artist's Wikipedia page, all their parents name are always in
Speaker 2: blue because their parents of Wikipedia pages two. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's Albert Parsons, only it's not his parents, it's like
Speaker 2: his great great everyone there's so many Parsons.
Speaker 3: From a long line of people who wanted to function
Speaker 3: up for the state.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well yes, and no, I mean some of them
Speaker 2: fought in the Revolutionary War. But he doesn't necessarily come
Speaker 2: from a line of it.
Speaker 3: Was a state.
Speaker 2: Yeah that's true. Yeah, his family definitely was Southern slave
Speaker 2: owners at this point. And okay, but when he was two,
Speaker 2: his mom died, and then when he was four or
Speaker 2: five is his dad died? And this is going to
Speaker 2: be a running theme for all of these people, very
Speaker 2: early parent deaths. He was raised by his brother, who
Speaker 2: was like twenty years.
Speaker 3: Older than I have a running theme for that century too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I get that impression a lot of these people,
Speaker 2: even if they like they lived a long and happy
Speaker 2: life and died at fifty seven, And I'm like, huh, well, yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm hoping to do better than that.
Speaker 3: Ancient dogged I mean, if you're a parent and your
Speaker 3: kids make it to eighteen, you nailed it in this
Speaker 3: period of time. That's really the only no matter how
Speaker 3: drunk you were, like, they don't die before they're legally adults.
Speaker 3: You have hid it out of the park in the
Speaker 3: eighteen fifties.
Speaker 2: Yeah, or if you survive long enough to see them
Speaker 2: grow up.
Speaker 3: Oh now that's like, yeah, that's a little bit of
Speaker 3: an unreasonable expectation.
Speaker 2: Okay. Well, so when he's eleven, he moved to a
Speaker 2: town that you've probably never heard of, a town called Waco, Texas.
Speaker 3: Oh Waco, I mean, of all of the towns in Texas,
Speaker 3: it is in my bottom three. Okay, not the worst
Speaker 3: because it's not Lufkin, but bottom three.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, I think it's only famous because Albert
Speaker 2: Parsons lived there. Right, That's the only thing that's ever
Speaker 2: happened in Waco. That and the Confederacy fled there when
Speaker 2: the war went bad.
Speaker 3: A couple of other things. But hey, Waco beats out
Speaker 3: Amarillo and Lufkin in my Texas list.
Speaker 2: Well, no, it's okay, we're going to get to the
Speaker 2: Confederacy in a minute.
Speaker 3: Oh good. Yeah, I was worried we wouldn't get to
Speaker 3: the Confederacy, I know.
Speaker 2: So when he's twelve, he goes and he gets an
Speaker 2: apprenticeship at his local paper, which is the job that
Speaker 2: he takes with him the rest of his life is
Speaker 2: that he works on newspapers. His employer was an upstanding
Speaker 2: leader of the pro slavery movement whose nickname was Old Whitey.
Speaker 2: Then the Civil War broke out, and so Albert Parsons
Speaker 2: runs away at thirteen years old, lies about his age
Speaker 2: to join the Confederate Army. He fought in the infantry,
Speaker 2: then the artillery, then the cavalry, like he was just dumb,
Speaker 2: young teen, all in on the whole Confederacy thing. Fought
Speaker 2: the entire length of the war. When the war ended,
Speaker 2: he was seventeen, and he went back to Texas, which is,
Speaker 2: you know, a choice to have made.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I wouldn't have made that call. I didn't make
Speaker 3: that call.
Speaker 2: But yeah, okay, interesting, Yeah, but okay. So over the
Speaker 2: next two years he has a change of heart and
Speaker 2: he becomes this like very active person fighting for the
Speaker 2: rights of formally enslaved people. He starts his own Republican
Speaker 2: newspaper called The Spectator, which ooh wait.
Speaker 3: Is that the same as The Spectator today?
Speaker 2: I don't know, and I kind of doubt it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it couldn't be.
Speaker 2: I feel like newspapers all have the same name as
Speaker 2: each other.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's like four diffame things you could call, like
Speaker 3: and now, although you were the old shit we used
Speaker 3: to like pick a yune like, we don't use those
Speaker 3: words anymore, but they used to be all over newspapers, Ah,
Speaker 3: the good old days.
Speaker 2: Mark. I just remember that there's there's multiple newspapers in
Speaker 2: this story called the Tribune and the Times, and so
Speaker 2: there being a lot of spectators makes a lot of
Speaker 2: sense to me. And so it's during this time that
Speaker 2: he starts to understand how capitalism is also a problem, right,
Speaker 2: because he's seen the people who are formally enslaved are
Speaker 2: still just totally screwed over. And so he cruise up
Speaker 2: with a bunch of black speakers and they tore around
Speaker 2: Texas teaching tolerance and acceptance. And you want to guess
Speaker 2: how popular that made him in eighteen sixties Texas, very
Speaker 2: a lot of people were paying attention to him, that's true.
Speaker 2: And everyone he knew stopped speaking to him. He was
Speaker 2: completely shut out of society, except occasionally they said things
Speaker 2: to him like they said to him, we're going to
Speaker 2: lynch you. And then one of them said I'm going
Speaker 2: to shoot you in the leg. Now, actually they might
Speaker 2: not have said that, but they did it. They shot
Speaker 2: him in the leg. And then a different time some
Speaker 2: people kicked him down the stairs, so people were including
Speaker 2: him in society, but not incredibly politely. And he's still like,
Speaker 2: I'm going to be this upstanding guy. So he gets
Speaker 2: himself elected secretary of the state Senate. He becomes a
Speaker 2: tax collector. He's basically had every terrible job, like, wow,
Speaker 2: state senator, tax collector collector, guy, Confederate soldier. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 2: though he's an interesting guy to start with. And then
Speaker 2: he uh, and then he serves as an officer in
Speaker 2: the state militia, specifically to try and protect black citizens
Speaker 2: against white harassment. But then he married Lucy, and their
Speaker 2: marriage was not legally recognized because white people weren't allowed
Speaker 2: to marry black people in Texas at that time because
Speaker 2: of anti missid I hate. This were so much annoutrounds. Yeah,
Speaker 2: anti miscegenation laws.
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm sure were they allowed to marry anywhere
Speaker 3: in the US at this point. There must have been
Speaker 3: some places.
Speaker 2: So when they moved to Illinois, their marriage is not
Speaker 2: legal until the next year.
Speaker 3: Okay, well that's something.
Speaker 2: In eighteen seventy four, and Texas didn't repeal their laws
Speaker 2: until nineteen sixty seven when the Supreme Court made everyone
Speaker 2: do it.
Speaker 3: Hey, it's the same thing with their sodomy laws except
Speaker 3: two thousand and three.
Speaker 2: Well, do you want to guess what year Alabama finally,
Speaker 2: the place that Parsons was born, finally got their shit
Speaker 2: together and got rid of those laws.
Speaker 3: Oh, have they done it yet?
Speaker 2: The year two thousand, the year two thousand they held
Speaker 2: on thirty three years after.
Speaker 3: A Wow, they made it out of the twentieth century. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know what was. By the way, this is random,
Speaker 3: but do you remember that period of time after the
Speaker 3: year two thousand, but before two thousand and one, when
Speaker 3: a bunch of very frustrating people were like, well, actually
Speaker 3: it's not the twenty first century until two thousand and one.
Speaker 3: That's the millennium hasn't changed. You remember that being like
Speaker 3: a thing.
Speaker 2: That actually played into how I wrote this script, because
Speaker 2: I almost wrote a thing about they made it into
Speaker 2: the next millennia. And then I was like Pedance, I
Speaker 2: don't want to deal with Pedance.
Speaker 3: I fuck them, you're wrong, you're wrong. Yeah, I don't
Speaker 3: care about the Pluto discourse. Who gets a shit? What
Speaker 3: a plan? And it is? But like the year two thousand,
Speaker 3: that's when the millennium changed. I'm not going to hear
Speaker 3: anything else.
Speaker 2: About it, the numbers rolled over.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you can yell at us on Twitter, but I
Speaker 3: will not hear you.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And so even though it was eventually legally recognized,
Speaker 2: they were not socially accepted for who they were. Right, sure, right,
Speaker 2: they dealt with a lot of shit when they moved
Speaker 2: to Chicago.
Speaker 3: I'm going to guess the year they make it legal
Speaker 3: in Illinois is still not the year in which everyone's
Speaker 3: fine with it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's it. Yeah, totally okay. So in Chicago they
Speaker 2: find their new cause which they devote the rest of
Speaker 2: their lives too, which is labor rights. And Albert didn't
Speaker 2: have as long left to devote to the rest of
Speaker 2: his life to it, but Lucy got to do it
Speaker 2: for a long time. And I want to bring this
Speaker 2: back to that opening quote about by Lucy Parsons about
Speaker 2: stabbing and shooting rich people. But this time I'm going
Speaker 2: to say the whole thing. Let every dirty, lousy tramp
Speaker 2: arm himself with a revolver or knife and lay in
Speaker 2: weight on the steps of the palaces of the rich
Speaker 2: and stab or shoot their owners as they can come out.
Speaker 2: Let us kill them without mercy. Let it be a
Speaker 2: war of extermination and without pity. Let us devastate the
Speaker 2: avenues where the wealthy live, as General Sheridan devastated the
Speaker 2: beautiful valley of the Shenandoah. Because I think this context matters, right,
Speaker 2: she was born and slaved, and she saw with her
Speaker 2: own eyes that the only way to end slavery was
Speaker 2: to run the rivers red with the blood of the
Speaker 2: people who thought that owning people was like cool and good.
Speaker 2: And so this is my opinion, probably a huge part
Speaker 2: of how she ended up with this framework that the
Speaker 2: rich were not going to give up their hoarded wealth
Speaker 2: at least without at least the threat of violence.
Speaker 3: Well, is something that hasn't been born out by history.
Speaker 3: So I feel like probably can ignore more or less
Speaker 3: what she was saying.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally, Yeah, I mean that is really.
Speaker 3: Important context that like, because it also makes the point
Speaker 3: she's looking at like these masses of like starving and
Speaker 3: desperate people and this tiny number of people who have
Speaker 3: hoarded the resources, and she's saying, well, this is a
Speaker 3: system of inequality, just like the system of inequality that
Speaker 3: I was raised in. And the thing that had to
Speaker 3: end the Confederacy was violence on a terrific scale. And
Speaker 3: perhaps that's the only way to end this system as well. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: Faulter logic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that logic plays through the whole thing that
Speaker 2: we're going to be talking about. And so now let's
Speaker 2: give you background on Chicago. Everyone's favorite city. I don't
Speaker 2: know if it's anyone's favorite. Actually, it's probably a lot
Speaker 2: of people's favorite city. In the eighteen and fifties and sixties,
Speaker 2: Chicago's a boom town and it was mostly German and
Speaker 2: Irish immigrant labor. Like it grew from four thousand people
Speaker 2: to ninety thousand people over twenty years.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Basically, since all of the trains coming from the
Speaker 2: West went to Chicago, it became a hub where all
Speaker 2: of the raw materials that were extracted from the colonial
Speaker 2: project of the United States, that were extracted out from
Speaker 2: the West turned into goods that could sent east. Right,
Speaker 2: And so at first it's like there's some decently high
Speaker 2: wages in this particular boomtown kind of in that way.
Speaker 2: Have you ever been to like one of those oil
Speaker 2: boomtowns that are, yeah, where everything costs a ton of
Speaker 2: money because everyone who works there is getting a ton
Speaker 2: of money.
Speaker 3: Everybody lives in trailers. Yeah, it's in Wyoming.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, so that's Chicago, and there's a shanty town
Speaker 2: that's spreading out from the city center.
Speaker 3: Love a good shanty town.
Speaker 2: And I want to tell you about the opening salvo
Speaker 2: in Chicago labor struggle or class war or whatever you
Speaker 2: want to call it, which happened at eighteen fifty five.
Speaker 2: None of our characters are really on the scene yet,
Speaker 2: but it's still it's too cool to not include it.
Speaker 2: And it's the lagger beer riot like lagger, not like
Speaker 2: loggers who cut down trees.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Like he takes a
Speaker 3: whiskey drink, he takes a lager drink, that kind of lagger.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Have you heard of this political party that was rolling
Speaker 2: around at this time called the No Nothing's.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're basically like kind of it to sort of
Speaker 3: flatten them in a way that makes them sensible to
Speaker 3: kind of modern sensibilities. They were broadly like the Tea
Speaker 3: Party of its time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's pretty accurate, especially if the Tea
Speaker 2: Party started as a secret society, which the Tea Party
Speaker 2: might have.
Speaker 3: Yeah, again, like anytime, you're kind of being like this
Speaker 3: thing from one hundred years ago, was like this thing now,
Speaker 3: like you're losing all because there was also weird specific
Speaker 3: political grievances that aren't really a part of modern politics
Speaker 3: that were important to them. But like totally they were
Speaker 3: kind of tea party esque for the time. That's how
Speaker 3: like people like us back then would have looked at them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. Yeah, they got their name. It took to
Speaker 2: be a while to find out where they got their
Speaker 2: name from. It's because it was a secret society. It's
Speaker 2: basically like if they were asked if they were a
Speaker 2: part of this, they're supposed to say, I know nothing.
Speaker 3: Well that's actually kind of based like not the politics,
Speaker 3: but like that's a neat like if you were writing
Speaker 3: a fictional secret society, that would be like fun that
Speaker 3: people would enjoy that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally, But it also becomes a fitting name for
Speaker 2: them because I mean I don't think that they're very
Speaker 2: that they've made intelligent choices with their life. They're anti immigrant.
Speaker 2: They specifically hate the Catholics and the Irish, okay, and
Speaker 2: they're nativists, which was a big thing back then, which
Speaker 2: basically means they like white Americans who were born in
Speaker 2: America and basically nobody else and they also hated drinking,
Speaker 2: and well.
Speaker 3: These guys are not winning me over so far. No,
Speaker 3: I'm going to be honest with you.
Speaker 2: So they came for the Irish and the German immigrants.
Speaker 2: They worked six days a week, like fourteen twelve to
Speaker 2: fourteen hour days, and then on Sunday is their only
Speaker 2: day off. So they all go to the bar and
Speaker 2: drink and hang out. And so what they do is
Speaker 2: they say, oh, you're not allowed to sell alcohol on Sundays,
Speaker 2: and it's just specifically to piss these people off. I'm
Speaker 2: sure they clouded it and like it's the Holy Day
Speaker 2: and this and that. Yeah, but it was entirely just
Speaker 2: because they hated the immigrants. And so there was this
Speaker 2: massive civil disobedience where two hundred people got arrested for
Speaker 2: alcohol sales.
Speaker 3: Jesus Christ, Okay, sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and uh and they're like because I mean, they're
Speaker 2: you know, like the fuck this, I'm going to keep
Speaker 2: drinking anyway. And so then on the day of the trial,
Speaker 2: thousands of Germans marched downtown and they have like fife
Speaker 2: and drum and shit, and the cops freak out. And
Speaker 2: at the time in Chicago, the river had swing bridges
Speaker 2: instead of lift bridges, so the bridges would like swing
Speaker 2: open like a door kind of, And so the cops
Speaker 2: swung them open while everyone was still on them and
Speaker 2: then just opened fire into the crowd.
Speaker 3: Jesus Christ.
Speaker 2: Only one person ended up killed, who apparently.
Speaker 3: For the shitty guns of that time, I.
Speaker 2: Know, and he shot back. The guy who got killed,
Speaker 2: he injured a cop.
Speaker 3: Well, that's good for him.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And they had like loaded cannons and stuff ready
Speaker 2: for all of this. And part of the reason I
Speaker 2: bring this up is because it's like, this is something
Speaker 2: that I feel like people need to understand when we're
Speaker 2: talking about nineteenth century movements, is that like, like the
Speaker 2: cops are just totally ready to open fire on huge
Speaker 2: crowds of people.
Speaker 3: Yeah, open fire with like artillery.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like when we.
Speaker 3: Say cannons, what they're what they're preparing is a big
Speaker 3: metal tube that they fill with shrapnel and gunpowder. It's
Speaker 3: called grape shot. They're making like a giant shotgun the
Speaker 3: size of a car and readying to fire that into
Speaker 3: a crowd of human beings.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: That's that's crowd control.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so that's that's the that's the opening salvo
Speaker 2: in all of this, and then in eighteen seventy one,
Speaker 2: the entire city of Chicago burns down.
Speaker 3: Well that was that was really nobody's fault, like right,
Speaker 3: every like that is one of those things back in
Speaker 3: the days, Chicago just burned down. Sometimes you know, nothing
Speaker 3: anyone can do about it. You just every now and
Speaker 3: then you're going to lose a Chicago or two.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally, and this just sends everything into recession the
Speaker 2: or actually not sends everything into a recession. They're starting
Speaker 2: to rebuild, and then there's a great depression that was
Speaker 2: called the Great Depression until we got another one in
Speaker 2: the twentieth century. And basically when I do a.
Speaker 3: Thing sometime about like that's that style of thing where
Speaker 3: like there's this moment in history that's super well known today,
Speaker 3: but there was another very similar moment that went by
Speaker 3: the same name until the bigger thing happened. Because the
Speaker 3: same time, I'm reading about the potato famine in Ireland
Speaker 3: right now, and there was a famine that killed like
Speaker 3: nearly a million people that was like a generation or
Speaker 3: so before it that they called the Great Famine. But
Speaker 3: then there wasn't even bigger famine, and so nobody remembers
Speaker 3: the first famine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly, and which is why, Sophie, if it's
Speaker 2: all right, I'd really like us to be sponsored by potatoes.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1: I mean that would be our preferred sponsor forever.
Speaker 3: But we have a lot of unfortunate ads from the
Speaker 3: potato blight, which we are working to stop. But yeah,
Speaker 3: it is. It is really hard to get them removed,
Speaker 3: probably due to their financial partnership with the Washington State
Speaker 3: Highway Patrol.
Speaker 2: I'm definitely pro potato. And here's some ads. So in
Speaker 2: the middle of the worst depression in US history, while
Speaker 2: Chicago has just burned down, that's when Lucy and Albert
Speaker 2: decided to move to Chicago. And right, normally that would
Speaker 2: sound like a bad deal, but they were coming from
Speaker 2: the place where everyone was trying to murder them.
Speaker 3: So also, I feel like Rint's pretty cheap when the
Speaker 3: whole city just burned down.
Speaker 2: There's not a lot of buildings though.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but like you could probably camp pretty cheap. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's true, low cost of living.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so they moved there. Albert finds work as
Speaker 2: a type setter, and it's pretty quickly they start calling
Speaker 2: themselves socialists.
Speaker 3: That's nice.
Speaker 2: Of them, and words like socialism and anarchism get thrown
Speaker 2: around an awful lot, including in this particular episode. So
Speaker 2: I'm I'm gonna like really quickly try and say what
Speaker 2: I mean by those things, because everyone's going to use
Speaker 2: those words really differently. Yes, socialism in this case is
Speaker 2: like the it's the broader social movement towards workers or
Speaker 2: society at large owning the means of production, which is
Speaker 2: to say, rather than having a business owner who owns
Speaker 2: a factory and hiring the workers, the workers themselves or
Speaker 2: society would own the factory. And it basically the difference
Speaker 2: between the value produced by the worker and the amount
Speaker 2: that the owner sells the product for is the owner's profit.
Speaker 2: And so basically they're saying, this is theft.
Speaker 3: This is like the sort of marketers stealing it from
Speaker 3: the people doing the thing. It's this. There's this very
Speaker 3: frustrating discourse around anarchism that hit on Twitter a week
Speaker 3: or two ago, where people are like, well, how would
Speaker 3: you have in an ericist society, how would you handle
Speaker 3: you know, the widespread production of food or the manufacturing
Speaker 3: of goods, Like you can't do that with like just
Speaker 3: like you and your friends hanging out in an affinity group,
Speaker 3: and it's like, well, actually, anarchists have been talking about
Speaker 3: this for like one hundred and seventy years and a
Speaker 3: number of different and those solutions have been acted on
Speaker 3: in places like revolutionary Spain and whatnot, and parts of Korea,
Speaker 3: and in some cases have have seen substantial successes. For
Speaker 3: periods of time, this has all been discussed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just about who owns the means of production
Speaker 2: and like how decisions are made.
Speaker 3: It's not saying we don't have factories. It's saying, like,
Speaker 3: perhaps we don't need the factories to be owned by giant,
Speaker 3: multinational conglomerates that are able to, for example, build waste
Speaker 3: disposal plants that pump poison into the Gulf of Mexico,
Speaker 3: and because they lobby the politicians in that area, the
Speaker 3: people who actually live there aren't able to complain in
Speaker 3: any meaningful way, and several of them get exploded because
Speaker 3: the natural gas pipelines run by that company underneath the
Speaker 3: area lea coals, which since explosive gas up into trailer parks.
Speaker 3: Perhaps we don't need that, and we could still have
Speaker 3: ways of distributing fuel.
Speaker 2: I don't know that sounds crazy. You probably distribute fuel.
Speaker 3: To get out of here with my radical politics.
Speaker 2: Yea, and so so socialists in this case is like
Speaker 2: the broader word for what is, what the goal is,
Speaker 2: and how people are trying to actually create that is
Speaker 2: kind of unrelated. So anarchism, which will come up more
Speaker 2: soon as our characters become more and more anarchists, is
Speaker 2: the idea that we can have a society without state
Speaker 2: or capitalism, without course of hierarchies. And lots of different
Speaker 2: people conceive of this in very different ways, but in general,
Speaker 2: the people that we're talking about today, like myself, want
Speaker 2: a socialist society that is also anarchist.
Speaker 3: And yeah, I mean a lot of these people would
Speaker 3: say they were like working towards communism, which meant a
Speaker 3: different thing. Like now you get a lot of fights
Speaker 3: between anarchists and communists because communism has become so like
Speaker 3: tight in with the ideas of state communism that we
Speaker 3: saw with the USSR right. But like back in this day,
Speaker 3: a lot of these people would have been happy to
Speaker 3: just call themselves communists totally.
Speaker 2: And like all these people like go to their grave
Speaker 2: being like I died for socialism, and then they're like yeah,
Speaker 2: but they're not like and so unfortunately so so now
Speaker 2: sometime whatever, people get into arguments about who does and
Speaker 2: doesn't count for this and that. But that seems like
Speaker 2: a decent starting place for where these people are at.
Speaker 2: And then in eighteen seventy seven there's this big fuck
Speaker 2: off railway strike, which at some point I'd love to
Speaker 2: do an episode all about, because it covers the entire country.
Speaker 2: And by the entire country, I mean the entire country
Speaker 2: at the time where people actually or whatever. It covers
Speaker 2: like the mid Atlantic, in the Midwest and all those things.
Speaker 2: It starts in West Virginia and Maryland when workers got
Speaker 2: their third pay cut in a year and we're like
Speaker 2: fuck this, and they went on strike. It spread across
Speaker 2: most of the country. Railways shut down everywhere, people were
Speaker 2: riding everywhere. And in Chicago people went hard as fuck,
Speaker 2: and they had all these banners like life by work
Speaker 2: or death by fight. One speaker said, better a thousand
Speaker 2: of us shot dead in the streets than ten thousand
Speaker 2: dead of starvation, because I mean people were starving, right.
Speaker 2: This isn't like just a you know, miners, they.
Speaker 3: Don't just like want to be able to afford a
Speaker 3: new Xbox, like they're trying to like not die. Yeah,
Speaker 3: because people don't serve nice things too. But the situation
Speaker 3: was a lot was quite dire, Yeah, totally.
Speaker 2: And so in Chicago, the shot dead in the streets
Speaker 2: thing was a little bit prescient. Actually it wasn't a
Speaker 2: lot of cities because after three days of striking, the
Speaker 2: police and the military as well as hundreds of deputized
Speaker 2: civilians of the middle and upper classes attacked and shot
Speaker 2: into the crowd, and in the end they killed thirty
Speaker 2: workers and like ten cops were injured. Jesus, and like
Speaker 2: everywhere else in the country, the work.
Speaker 3: Or not to the ten cops injured, that seems like
Speaker 3: not quite enough.
Speaker 2: But yeah, you know, yeah, well we'll stick with me.
Speaker 3: Good. Well, no, because I know where the story goes broad,
Speaker 3: so I guess it's not really good either way. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that is the thing, Like, it's hard not to cheer
Speaker 3: on retribute a violence when like terrible things are being
Speaker 3: done by people in violence is visited upon the people
Speaker 3: doing the terrible things, but it generally doesn't resolve itself neatly.
Speaker 2: Right, That is absolutely that is absolutely true. And so
Speaker 2: the media attacked the strikers as well, and they basically,
Speaker 2: of course, they called for their extermination, like they use
Speaker 2: the word extermination. This is ten years before Lucy Parsons
Speaker 2: used that, like we should exterminate the rich. And I
Speaker 2: feel like that that cause and effect matters, you know, Yeah, and.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: Basically, people are trying everything they could think of to
Speaker 2: get better conditions, and they were basically just told you
Speaker 2: should all be killed. And during all.
Speaker 3: Of this that's also important because yeah, she didn't just
Speaker 3: like start at like, well, the only solution is violence.
Speaker 3: A bunch of powerful people and influential people were like,
Speaker 3: the only solution is violence against you, and she was like, okay, yeah, exactly, exactly,
Speaker 3: all right then.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and even during all of this until this, basically
Speaker 2: Albert and Lucy are both like pretty moderate in their socialism.
Speaker 2: Like Albert gave some speeches that's this whole thing at
Speaker 2: this point, but he's like advocate restraint and that people
Speaker 2: should avoid sabotage and that everyone should go vote in
Speaker 2: the upcoming elections to make everything better. Yeah, and his
Speaker 2: moderate position got him fired from the Chicago Times where
Speaker 2: he worked, and so suddenly he was completely without a.
Speaker 3: Job because and I'm guessing because the Chicago Times thought
Speaker 3: he was too extreme, yes, yes, or were they are
Speaker 3: too extreme? Yeah yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: And at this point Lucy opens up a dress shop. Sure, yeah,
Speaker 2: he gets canceled, and so Lucy Parsons opens up a
Speaker 2: dress shop and is supporting her husband and her two
Speaker 2: kids at the point, and this kind of rerex socialism
Speaker 2: in Chicago and the like, especially like party socialism, the
Speaker 2: kind of like let's all go vote socialism. They actually
Speaker 2: tried to go more and more moderate, not Lucy and Albert,
Speaker 2: but like the larger socialist parties, they tried to go
Speaker 2: more and more moderate to bring in new members. But
Speaker 2: it had literally the opposite effect, and everyone became more
Speaker 2: and more radical cool, And in eighteen eighty three they
Speaker 2: all joined new anarchist organization called the IWPA, the International
Speaker 2: Working People's Association, which is a dead boring name, yes,
Speaker 2: vile name. It at least is the Working People's Association
Speaker 2: instead of the Workingmen's Association, which I feel like is said.
Speaker 3: That is that is, it's actually pretty based.
Speaker 2: It was somewhere between a federation and a loose network.
Speaker 2: There was no party, there was no membership organization, different
Speaker 2: collectives or which were called clusters joined just by endorsing
Speaker 2: a manifesto that some of them had written in Pittsburgh
Speaker 2: called can you guess the really original name of the
Speaker 2: manifesto that they wrote in Pittsburgh.
Speaker 3: Working People Association Manifesto?
Speaker 2: Close? It was the Pittsburgh Manifesto.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, yeah, to day at Pittsburgh manifesto would be
Speaker 3: all about I don't know, what's it Pittsburgh sandwiches with
Speaker 3: a lot of meat in them.
Speaker 2: Well, that's the seventh point that they considered in the
Speaker 2: six point manifesto that they settled on. I think it's
Speaker 2: because some people from out of town were there.
Speaker 3: More roast beef, whitter roast beef, that's right, Pittsburgh.
Speaker 2: Now, I'm just actually wondering how many of these people
Speaker 2: back then were actually vegetarian, because there's this whole weird
Speaker 2: overlap between the left and vegetarianism that goes back hundreds
Speaker 2: of years. But we'll talk about that some other time.
Speaker 3: Yep. Oh, yes, okay.
Speaker 2: So the six points of this of their program that
Speaker 2: you had to agree to in order to join. First,
Speaker 2: destruction of the existing class rule by all means, i e.
Speaker 2: By energetic, relentless revolutionary and international.
Speaker 3: Action on That sounds good.
Speaker 2: Second, establishment of a free society based on cooperative organization
Speaker 2: of production.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that would be nice.
Speaker 2: Third, free exchange of equivalent products buy and between productive
Speaker 2: organizations without commerce and profit mongery.
Speaker 3: Sure.
Speaker 2: Fourth organization of education on a secular, scientific and equal
Speaker 2: basis for both sexes.
Speaker 3: Also sounds fine. Like the both sexes part. These folks
Speaker 3: are really really really hitting hard on that on that part, yep.
Speaker 2: Fifth equal rights for all without distinction to sex or race.
Speaker 3: Dope, very good.
Speaker 2: Sixth regulation of all public affairs by free contacts between autonomous,
Speaker 2: independent communes and associations resting on a federalistic basis.
Speaker 3: That sounds pretty nice. It would be good to have that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like I look at this and I'm like, Okay,
Speaker 2: that's good.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean I don't particularly disagree with anything there. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I might have some additional questions about how to handle
Speaker 3: the exchange of goods without commerce thing, because that's a
Speaker 3: complicated matter.
Speaker 2: But I know, I feel like they've meant something pretty
Speaker 2: specific there that I just don't know what is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think there's a number of ways you could
Speaker 3: try to do that. You know, there's like you get
Speaker 3: your mutualists and your whatnots. But I don't know. I'm
Speaker 3: not an economy expert, but broadly speaking, I don't disagree
Speaker 3: with any of that. That all seems like good stuff
Speaker 3: to just strive for in a society.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And they grew really rapidly, especially in Chicago, but
Speaker 2: all over the country, and as the Socialist Party and
Speaker 2: especially the sort of more moderate socialists kind of diminished.
Speaker 2: Basically everyone's like, oh, no, this sounds good.
Speaker 3: It's hard to be moderate when they've just shot thirty
Speaker 3: of you in the street. Yeah, yeah, that makes me
Speaker 3: not very moderate. The American branch, because this actually was
Speaker 3: an international organization, the American branch was mostly European immigrants.
Speaker 3: Their newspapers were like five of the seven newspapers or
Speaker 3: something or I don't know, some number. A lot of
Speaker 3: them were in German, but then there were other ones,
Speaker 3: other newspapers in Czech, English and Norwegian. And they took
Speaker 3: their inclusive policies really seriously. At one point, a socialist
Speaker 3: organization wanted to merge with them, but the anarchists were like,
Speaker 3: you all exclude Chinese folks from your organization, and so
Speaker 3: they refused, and in one of the papers, the IWPA
Speaker 3: said the IWPA would never feel that its ranks were
Speaker 3: complete if it excluded working people of any nationality whatsoever.
Speaker 3: And they went on to say that the socialist organization
Speaker 3: was basically serving as tools of the CAPS by letting
Speaker 3: racism divide the working class. They kind of ruled, Oh,
Speaker 3: I like that.
Speaker 2: And all of the different clusters had total autonomy. The
Speaker 2: Chicago cluster was really excited about building a mass movement
Speaker 2: through union organizing. Some of the other clusters were more
Speaker 2: into like autonomous and individual action. In Chicago, each meeting
Speaker 2: elected a chairman to facilitate and they rotated it. The
Speaker 2: recording secretary and treasurer rotated. But they were a subculture also, right,
Speaker 2: and that doesn't get talked about enough. I really like subcultures.
Speaker 2: That's why I'm always pointing out when this thing's happened
Speaker 2: in history. But they hung out in the Chicago beer halls,
Speaker 2: and that's basically where they did all of their propagandizing.
Speaker 2: And to talk about their subculture, I'm going to quote
Speaker 2: the historian Paul Averich in his book The Haymarket Tragedy.
Speaker 2: Beyond their publishing ventures, the anarchists engaged in a broad
Speaker 2: range of cultural and social activities which enhanced their feelings
Speaker 2: of solidarity and greatly enriched their lives. In a relatively
Speaker 2: short period. They created a network of orchestras, choirs, theatrical groups,
Speaker 2: debating clubs, literary societies, and gymnastic and shooting clubs, involving
Speaker 2: thousands of participants. They organized lectures, concerts, picnics, dances, plays
Speaker 2: and recitations in which children as well as adults took part.
Speaker 2: Saloons and beer gardens became bustling centers of radical life.
Speaker 2: The International moreover engaged in mutual aid services, providing assistance
Speaker 2: to members and their families in times of need. Bad ass,
Speaker 2: I know, And like, the thing that I really like
Speaker 2: about it is that it's like these were all really
Speaker 2: poor people who were like working six days weeks, twelve
Speaker 2: hour days, and they managed to have fulfilling, rich cultural lives.
Speaker 2: They had masquerade balls and shit. They had shooting contests,
Speaker 2: and some of the plays were written by participants. They
Speaker 2: wrote like new words to popular songs, and they basically
Speaker 2: were like completely punk and I really like them.
Speaker 3: Ah. Yeah, they were doing some remix art.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean everything you've described sounds so like high end
Speaker 1: and expensive for lack of a better word. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: it just makes it even cooler. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And they just did it by actually all just doing
Speaker 2: it together collecting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, teamwork makes the dream work.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And they would have these They would have huge
Speaker 2: celebrations of the Paris Commune every year on the anniversary
Speaker 2: of the Paris Commune, which was basically when the city
Speaker 2: of Paris like stole itself back from its government for
Speaker 2: a while, and then they had protests, and the protests
Speaker 2: were even more popular than everything else, and they regularly
Speaker 2: drew thousands of workers to march through the streets, and
Speaker 2: their banners were things like millions labor for the benefit
Speaker 2: of the few, we want to labor for ourselves. They
Speaker 2: would have multiple brass bands, They had fucking floats, They
Speaker 2: had carriages drawn by mules with like allegorical displays like
Speaker 2: Uncle Sam driving around like a policeman because he serves
Speaker 2: the policemen. And the speakers like kept hitting the same
Speaker 2: points about including equal participate patient by women in the
Speaker 2: labor movement. And their newspapers were not just they were
Speaker 2: like there was like muck raking about, like this is
Speaker 2: what the cops are doing. That's bad and stuff. But
Speaker 2: they also included like philosophy and translations of literature from
Speaker 2: other languages, and there was like fiction and poetry. And
Speaker 2: again it's this idea that these like like some of
Speaker 2: the people writing this poetry, which I'm sure some of
Speaker 2: it was terrible, but whatever was like written by workers
Speaker 2: who had never considered literary things before. And so it just,
Speaker 2: I don't know, a whole other way to raise people
Speaker 2: out of poverty, it seems like. And you'll be shocked
Speaker 2: to know their hatred of government and capitalism was completely mutual.
Speaker 2: The media spent a lot of time villainizing them, and
Speaker 2: in particular the same as the anarchists focused on the
Speaker 2: Paris Commune, so did the media. Basically it was like, oh,
Speaker 2: you'll like this. They were like, don't let it happen here,
Speaker 2: because God forbid people self organize and rule themselves. If
Speaker 2: they did, we'd have total anarchy.
Speaker 3: Oh no, oh no, yeah, I mean it makes sense
Speaker 3: like that. They of course they're scared of that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but you know what, they're not scared.
Speaker 3: Of products and services. No, of course not.
Speaker 2: Mainstream society was not scared of goods and services, including
Speaker 2: the ones that support this podcast. Here's the ads. Okay,
Speaker 2: we're back, and we are all excited to talk about
Speaker 2: people with a bunch of guns and cool outfits. We're
Speaker 2: going to talk about the people whose name I don't
Speaker 2: know how to pronounce because I cannot speak German, and
Speaker 2: every time I try to learn it goes in one
Speaker 2: part of my brain and out with the other.
Speaker 3: I speak fluent German. I'll figure it.
Speaker 2: Out, Okay. Leir and vera Varian, Yeah, yeah, you got
Speaker 2: it right. Okay. The Leir and vere Varin were a
Speaker 2: group that we kind of can't leave out because the
Speaker 2: labor organizers were organizing themselves into armed formations ready for
Speaker 2: community defense revolution, both defensive and offensive action, and at
Speaker 2: least two of the labor unions, the metal workers and
Speaker 2: the carpenters, had armed sections that met regularly for drill
Speaker 2: and instructions in armed conflict, and the American group of
Speaker 2: the IWPA had a similar auxiliary, but none of them
Speaker 2: could compete in numbers or sheer coolness with the learan
Speaker 2: vere Verin, which was the Education and Defense Association. Because
Speaker 2: these are very literal namers here, especially the Germans, it
Speaker 2: was a leftist militia movement in response to the right
Speaker 2: wing militias that have been forming and in response to
Speaker 2: all the strikers getting murdered. And this is how we
Speaker 2: get the first real challenges to the at least some
Speaker 2: of the first challenges the Second Amendment and gun control
Speaker 2: in the United.
Speaker 3: States that that inspires people to want gun control.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the state freaked out and banned all the non
Speaker 2: official militias and the open carry of rifles learon Vere
Speaker 2: fought it to the Supreme Court and they lost, basically
Speaker 2: paving the way for states rights to restrict firearms ownership
Speaker 2: and militia formation.
Speaker 3: But that's an exciting piece of history, I know, no comment.
Speaker 2: And so they would march in anarchist parades and different
Speaker 2: historians will describe their outfits differently, but all of them
Speaker 2: sound really good. And I'm going to pick the blue
Speaker 2: blouses and black pants and cult revolvers when the laws
Speaker 2: wouldn't allow rifles and they would like march information alongside
Speaker 2: the parades. There's four companies of them. They had somewhere
Speaker 2: between four hundred and three thousand members because didn't keep
Speaker 2: really good membership records for very good reasons. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: they drilled weekly and then monthly. All of the companies
Speaker 2: came together and drilled, and then also when they had
Speaker 2: the anarchist picnics, they'd have these like mock battle where
Speaker 2: they'd run around in practice fighting at the picnics.
Speaker 3: It just sounds that seems like the thing people ought
Speaker 3: to be doing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And basically this is like they raised a ton
Speaker 2: of money from people who had no money in order
Speaker 2: to buy guns for everyone. One six month period and
Speaker 2: anarchist quartermaster raised two hundred and fifty five dollars for
Speaker 2: new weapons, which is thirty seven thousand dollars today.
Speaker 3: I mean that probably went further than thirty seven thousand
Speaker 3: dollars for new weapons would go today.
Speaker 2: I assume, but I don't know. I mean, they probably
Speaker 2: all weren't trying to get the like two thousand dollars ars.
Speaker 2: You know, this is a real palmetto sure crash.
Speaker 3: Sure, that's still like eighty weapons.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and there was you know, probably three thousand of them. Okay, Okay,
Speaker 2: I see where I seehere. You're going with this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm just assuming it went further than
Speaker 3: it would today, because again that's about like eighty ninety guns.
Speaker 3: You know, more if you're doing some of your own
Speaker 3: milling and shit like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they were all a bunch of cattle workers.
Speaker 3: So yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, basically there were community defense organizations and they perceived
Speaker 2: the revolution as completely inevitable also, and they wanted to
Speaker 2: be ready. They they thought capitalism was about to collapse
Speaker 2: under its own weight. How could it not with all
Speaker 2: the stuff they were seeing they were in. I mean,
Speaker 2: after all, they like everybody thinks that and it's never right. Well,
Speaker 2: but hear me out. They were in a major depression
Speaker 2: about ten years after another major depression. I so, but yeah,
Speaker 2: capitalism didn't collapse this time that time, but it will
Speaker 2: just now, I probably won't collapse this time either.
Speaker 3: Yeah. It's it's it's pretty it's pretty durable. It can
Speaker 3: take the punches. Look, you got to give capitalism credits.
Speaker 3: It's a prize fighter. I can take the hits.
Speaker 2: It rithes away, you know, it could take the hit.
Speaker 2: But it's especially good at like dodging, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it just like blobs around your fist. Yeah, and
Speaker 3: then raises your rent thirteen times in seventeen months.
Speaker 2: Yeah, anyway, exactly, Okay, which brings us quite naturally to
Speaker 2: the fight for the eight hour workday, which is you know,
Speaker 2: promised at the top of the hour. The fight for
Speaker 2: the eight hour workday is what all this is about.
Speaker 2: But it's also not what all this is about. But
Speaker 2: it was this thing that was happening at the time,
Speaker 2: and it was come into a head around this time. Basically,
Speaker 2: people didn't like working from sun up to sundown or
Speaker 2: sometimes fourteen hour days regardless of whether or not the
Speaker 2: sun was up.
Speaker 3: And really, but that's ten whole hours for them to,
Speaker 3: you know, have families in sleep. I know, I feel
Speaker 3: like that's just greedy, I think.
Speaker 2: So they're pretty much stealing from the bosses.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, we don't give our workers that much
Speaker 3: free time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I didn't spend I didn't. I wasn't up till
Speaker 2: three in the morning last night working on this. I
Speaker 2: don't know what you're talking about. Okay, So in city
Speaker 2: after city and trade after trade, basically all of these
Speaker 2: people started fighting for Originally, they weren't even fighting for
Speaker 2: the eight hour work day, or they were fighting for
Speaker 2: the like ten hour work day, you know, or even
Speaker 2: just please not fourteen hours or whatever. Yeah, what if
Speaker 2: we had two days for the weekend, and so they
Speaker 2: had a whole bunch of strikes all throughout the nineteenth century,
Speaker 2: and some of them were one, some of them are lost.
Speaker 2: It went on like that for over a hundred years.
Speaker 2: Every few years, some trade in another city would or
Speaker 2: other country would win the ten hour day or the
Speaker 2: eight hour day, but sometimes they would win in legislation
Speaker 2: and it wouldn't do anything. So Chicago actually won the
Speaker 2: eight hour workday in the eighteen sixties, but they didn't.
Speaker 2: They won it in legislation, but it was so full
Speaker 2: of loopholes that it was never enforced, and so kind
Speaker 2: of ironically or maybe fittingly, a ton of the strikers
Speaker 2: and socialists and even some of the anarchists were on
Speaker 2: some level just actually fighting for the law to be
Speaker 2: applied evenly across classes, which obviously they won because that
Speaker 2: happens now. The law is definitely applied evenly across classes.
Speaker 2: I think. I hope it's not spoiler. It's not okay.
Speaker 2: So in eighteen eighty four, members of the labor movement
Speaker 2: from across the country met in Chicago, which was kind
Speaker 2: of the center of a lot of the labor movement stuff,
Speaker 2: and they declared two years later May first, eighteen eighty six,
Speaker 2: they were going to enforce the eight hour day through
Speaker 2: strikes and walkouts just nationwide, all industries, which I feel
Speaker 2: like it's like worth noting that they gave themselves two
Speaker 2: years in order to plan a general strike.
Speaker 3: Yep, that's probably worth noting. The statement of like a
Speaker 3: really single, singular, specific goal. I also really like the
Speaker 3: idea of like this is a thing we've decided we're getting,
Speaker 3: and then we're going to enforce the fact that we're
Speaker 3: getting that using that kind of language that the state uses,
Speaker 3: and thus that like people are very familiar with as
Speaker 3: opposed to kind of the we're agitating for change or
Speaker 3: we're trying to like bring electoral change. No, no, no,
Speaker 3: we are in the same way that the state enforces things,
Speaker 3: you know, through its police, we are enforcing that we
Speaker 3: get this eight hour workday through our action. We're organizing
Speaker 3: to do that. I think that's a really smart way
Speaker 3: of like framing it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, they weren't fucking around. Even like the moderates
Speaker 2: and the you know, the less radical among the labor
Speaker 2: movement still knew what was at stake. At the beginning.
Speaker 2: The Chicago anarchists were opposed to the eight hour struggle,
Speaker 2: not because they were opposed of better conditions for workers.
Speaker 2: But they were basically, yeah, baby steps, what's a baby step?
Speaker 2: We need to all seize control of the workplaces in
Speaker 2: our cities and have a revolution.
Speaker 3: It's that old. I mean, it wasn't an old argument
Speaker 3: then that it is now We still have that like
Speaker 3: why would you? Yeah, anyway, we don't need to get
Speaker 3: into that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, although I will say.
Speaker 3: It is an argument that people have not ever resolved though. Yeah.
Speaker 2: But actually I find it interesting the way they came
Speaker 2: around to it, which is, on some level they realized
Speaker 2: which way the wind was blowing, and maybe that was
Speaker 2: cynical and they were like, Okay, well we better join
Speaker 2: up with everyone else. But I kind of think that,
Speaker 2: like maybe they took some of their own lessons to heart,
Speaker 2: because they don't want to tell other people what to do,
Speaker 2: and they don't want to have like a revolutionary vanguard
Speaker 2: that tells everyone what they should want. And what people
Speaker 2: wanted was to fight for the eight hour workday, and
Speaker 2: so instead, by eighteen eighty six, the Chicago anarchists were
Speaker 2: all in, and they were really really good organized and
Speaker 2: propagandas and soon Chicago is the center of all this
Speaker 2: struggle and there's a quote from another anarchist and Italian
Speaker 2: anarchist Malatesta. He wrote in an essay called reformism that
Speaker 2: I feel like applies here, which is, we will take
Speaker 2: or win all possible reforms with the same spirit that
Speaker 2: one tears occupied territory from the enemy's grasp in order
Speaker 2: to keep on advancing. That's how I've always seen reformism personally, honestly,
Speaker 2: is like, well, of course we should get that. It's
Speaker 2: a good thing, we should get it.
Speaker 3: I feel fine about this so far.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well yeah, so then they strike and they win,
Speaker 2: and everything has been happily ever after, and slowly we've
Speaker 2: all adopted the six point platform and we live in
Speaker 2: utopian society which has no inner conflict.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's how it happened. Huh oh yeah, I was
Speaker 3: wondering why things were still perfect.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, okay, So but during this build up, okay,
Speaker 2: it's important to note the anarchists weren't alone and thinking
Speaker 2: there was about to be a revolution. General Sherman of
Speaker 2: the US Army wrote, there will soon come in armed
Speaker 2: contests between capital and labor. They will oppose each other,
Speaker 2: not with words and arguments and ballots, but with shot
Speaker 2: and shell gunpowder and cannon. The better classes are tired
Speaker 2: of the insane howlings of the lower strata, and they
Speaker 2: mean to stop them.
Speaker 3: Oh, buddy, Sherman, Sherman, Sherman Sherman. Uh, problematic faith, not
Speaker 3: even really a faith. I mean he was actually critical
Speaker 3: to the invention of concentration camp as a concept because
Speaker 3: of the things that he did to Indigenous Americans. It's
Speaker 3: like it's like you've got this artist who releases a
Speaker 3: great album and then it turns out they were like
Speaker 3: doing some sort of horrible crimes too, and it's like, ah,
Speaker 3: I really liked it when you were burning large jokes
Speaker 3: of the Confederacy, but I can't back the rest of
Speaker 3: your career.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: It's like with William Henry Harrison, totally supportive of his presidency,
Speaker 3: the only really perfect presidency anyone's now. The stuff he
Speaker 3: did before that I won't defend. But as while he
Speaker 3: was president flawless.
Speaker 2: I do not know enough to comment. Unfortunately, Oh he
Speaker 2: died thirty days in doing Ah, that was him. Okay,
Speaker 2: he's the one who died to me. Yeah, he didn't
Speaker 2: get a chance to do anything bad. Yeah, great president. Yeah,
Speaker 2: no notes. Okay, So during this build up towards eighteen
Speaker 2: eighty six, Basically all of America is like, this is
Speaker 2: also completely unfamiliar to the modern audience. All of America
Speaker 2: is like, are we about to have another civil war? Like?
Speaker 2: What's about to happen?
Speaker 3: That is one of the things that comforts me sometimes
Speaker 3: is that we've been asked, We've asked that question pretty regularly,
Speaker 3: and we've only occasionally had civil wars.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's true. Both the press and the clergy are
Speaker 2: basically working really hard to smear anarchists and spread fear.
Speaker 2: They were all painted as aliens and mad men and
Speaker 2: they're trying to destroy America's prosperity and freedom, and it
Speaker 2: kind of worked, and public opinion started turning against them
Speaker 2: as the incarnation of evil. And then the anarchists, for
Speaker 2: their part, started saying the same thing back about capitalists
Speaker 2: and cops, calling capitalist leeches and cops bloodhounds, which was
Speaker 2: basically like calling them pigs. And so both both sides
Speaker 2: are working to the yeah, which brings it to a
Speaker 2: head in spring eighteen eighty six, and the stage was
Speaker 2: set for tragedy. On May first, a ton of owners
Speaker 2: and a ton of industries across the country actually capitulated
Speaker 2: without a strike and granted the eight or nine hour
Speaker 2: day to their employees a ton more nice did not.
Speaker 3: Well, that's not nice, y.
Speaker 2: So something like three hundred and forty thousand people went
Speaker 2: on strike on May first, which is impressive.
Speaker 3: And there were only like three hundred and fifty thousand
Speaker 3: people in the country at this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. So there's ten thousand people not on strike
Speaker 2: and they're all cops probably, And in Chicago alone, people
Speaker 2: walk off the job, which is like half the population
Speaker 2: of Chicago. It's not actually half, I'm being hyperbolic, but.
Speaker 3: It's a lot. It's a lot significant chunk of the
Speaker 3: people who did not burn to death in the.
Speaker 2: Fire right, and then another forty thousand the other half
Speaker 2: practically joined joined them in a march of eighty thousand
Speaker 2: people in Chicago. And so this is the first May
Speaker 2: Day labor march in history.
Speaker 3: And are the people who work with the companies that
Speaker 3: yielded are they going on strike as part of the
Speaker 3: general strike or are they like not.
Speaker 2: I'm not certain. I kind of my general impression is
Speaker 2: that probably the workers who yielded might have been like
Speaker 2: it's Saturday, and I don't know we're about to have
Speaker 2: a war. Let's go go to your parade. That's my
Speaker 2: gut feeling, but I don't actually know, okay. And then
Speaker 2: like in all the history books they're always or at
Speaker 2: least the ones I read, they're like, and it was
Speaker 2: led at the front by Lucy Parsons, Albert Parsons and
Speaker 2: their two kids. And I kind of want to like
Speaker 2: point this out, partially because I'm like, they were probably
Speaker 2: near the front or maybe at the front, but it's
Speaker 2: it's not like this was Lucy and Albert Parsons who
Speaker 2: did this. You know, they if they let it, they
Speaker 2: were not alone in it, but they might have been
Speaker 2: at the front. And it's also a really nice image
Speaker 2: to have them at the front. They're two kids, they're like,
Speaker 2: I don't remember, they're like seven or something at this point,
Speaker 2: one of them, the older one is And during this big,
Speaker 2: happy march, you'll be shocked to know it all happened
Speaker 2: under the watchful gaze of police, private security, and deputized
Speaker 2: civilian snipers perched on rooftops all along the route.
Speaker 3: Another thing that hasn't happened again, deputized civilian snipers, I know.
Speaker 2: And then this also will totally surprise you out of sight.
Speaker 2: Militia waited with gatling guns with gatling guns.
Speaker 3: Fun.
Speaker 2: So this all feels pretty familiar to me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this all feels like a thing that's happened repeatedly.
Speaker 2: But nothing bad happened, and then the next day.
Speaker 3: But also is something that's happened before, and.
Speaker 2: Then the next day Sunday, nothing bad happened. There wasn't
Speaker 2: a strike on Sunday because they didn't have to because
Speaker 2: but everyone hates a Monday, am I right?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Worst, So on Monday, May third, more workers walk off
Speaker 2: the job, including the lumber shovers, which is the coolest
Speaker 2: name of a job but actually sounds like a terrible job.
Speaker 3: There, funny for a job. I'm sure it's it's a
Speaker 3: nightmare of a job, but it's a very funny thing
Speaker 3: to call you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it just basically means you like move logs and
Speaker 2: lumber around.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I kind of guess what lumber shoving was from
Speaker 3: the contest.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, fair enough. And then the seamstresses also went
Speaker 2: on strike. I'm sure other ones did, but those are
Speaker 2: the two that I like found about and I got
Speaker 2: excited about. And then there's the McCormick Reaper Works.
Speaker 3: Which that's a that's a pretty tough name for a business,
Speaker 3: the Reaper Factor. It does it does sound like they
Speaker 3: make war crimes.
Speaker 2: What they did is they automated the jobs of all
Speaker 2: the farmers and or fed the world, depending on who
Speaker 2: controls the means of production. Basically, and it was the
Speaker 2: first automated harvesting machine at like revolutionized farming. And it's
Speaker 2: factory had this long history of labor struggle and they
Speaker 2: had a union until earlier that year. McCormick, not the
Speaker 2: original McCormick who invented it, but I think his kid.
Speaker 2: Basically he was like, you know what, I want to
Speaker 2: automate your jobs, and I don't like having a union around.
Speaker 2: So he fired his entire workforce who were not out
Speaker 2: on strike at the time, and then he just hired
Speaker 2: non union workers. So and a lot of anarchists from
Speaker 2: the metal Workers' Union had worked there. And so every
Speaker 2: time there was a picket, police and Pinkertons arrived armed
Speaker 2: to the teeth. Pinkerton's are the private security of the
Speaker 2: capitalists at this time?
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, So on.
Speaker 2: May third, at the lumber Shover's rally, a few blocks
Speaker 2: away from the McCormick Reaper factory. They heard the McCormick
Speaker 2: bell strike the end of the day, and so all
Speaker 2: the lumber shovers ran over to join the picket and
Speaker 2: to throw rocks at the scabs who had stolen their jobs.
Speaker 2: The picketers drove the scabs back into the factory. Then
Speaker 2: the cops arrived, and then they threw stones at the cops,
Speaker 2: and then the cops drew revolvers and fired into the crowd.
Speaker 2: Two people at least were killed. No cops were so
Speaker 2: much as injured. And I want to give you a
Speaker 2: sense of how the media handled this, the mainstream media,
Speaker 2: that bastion of neutrality. The New York Times reported it
Speaker 2: like this, Oh good. The eight hour movements spilled us
Speaker 2: first blood today and Joseph Vottlech, a lumber shover eighteen
Speaker 2: years old, was fatally wounded, and a dozen more strikers
Speaker 2: with bullet holes in their bodies. Representing the result of
Speaker 2: the first encounter. There was a collision at McCormick's Reaper
Speaker 2: works between a mob of seven or eight thousand anarchist
Speaker 2: workmen and tramps maddened with free beer and free speech,
Speaker 2: and a squad of policemen. More than five hundred shots
Speaker 2: were fired, and hundreds of windows in the works were stoned.
Speaker 2: There are broken heads and bruised bodies all through the
Speaker 2: lumber District tonight. But the downtrodden masses have risen and
Speaker 2: had their fun.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, to be fair, New York Times, like I
Speaker 2: think it's like thirty years later came up with the
Speaker 2: concept of being a neutral newspaper, and they had not
Speaker 2: done so at this time, ah, or since Yeah, well
Speaker 2: they came up with the concept.
Speaker 3: Thinking about that time they had the dictator of Turkey
Speaker 3: write a column or was that the Washington I forget Okay.
Speaker 2: So the article goes on at like great length and
Speaker 2: it talks about how heroic the police are and how
Speaker 2: it includes all these like completely impossible details like the
Speaker 2: entire crowd roared in one voice kill the police, and.
Speaker 3: How that does sound, don't I know?
Speaker 2: And how But they also claimed that the crowd was
Speaker 2: throwing stones and then shooting guns in the air, but somehow,
Speaker 2: miraculously wasn't shooting at the cops even though they were
Speaker 2: ostensibly trying to murder the police.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they were maybe trying to arc it down, you know,
Speaker 3: it's like Fielder, Oh yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah totally. They were like, we've read about these can
Speaker 2: using them as mortars.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So some of the anarchists who are there run off
Speaker 2: and they call for a demonstration the next day to
Speaker 2: be called at Haymarket Square. Most of the flyers just
Speaker 2: say like, hey, show up, but then a few of
Speaker 2: them show say hey, show up with guns. What the fuck?
Speaker 3: Okay, because they well, that's good, that's going to get
Speaker 3: you in some Trump.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Just knowing the America, I know that's going to get
Speaker 3: you in some Trump and not judging it, but that's
Speaker 3: going to get you in some Trump.
Speaker 2: And so first they printed the show up with guns
Speaker 2: one and then actually one of the people who later
Speaker 2: dies was like, uh, that's a bad idea. Yeah, that's
Speaker 2: going to get us in some trouble, and so they
Speaker 2: reprint it all. Fortunately they're all they all work for
Speaker 2: these newspapers they own, so they like because they all
Speaker 2: work for the different anarchists newspapers, so they can print
Speaker 2: whatever they want. So then they print a new one
Speaker 2: that does not say show up with guns, but a
Speaker 2: couple hundred of the like show up with gun ones
Speaker 2: slip out, probably by accident. Maybe not by accident, who
Speaker 2: the fuck knows. So the next day, cops attack striking
Speaker 2: workers throughout the city. Some strikers destroyed a drug store
Speaker 2: that police were using to telephone back to their headquarters.
Speaker 2: But the rally, the one that had some flyers in, Hey,
Speaker 2: show but guns, was not fierce. It started off really late.
Speaker 2: The turnout was like two thousand people instead of the
Speaker 2: twenty thousand people expected. Probably people have been frightened off
Speaker 2: because they were like, Oh, no, we don't actually want
Speaker 2: a war.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we don't want to. Maybe this show up to
Speaker 3: the gun with gun situation isn't the right thing to
Speaker 3: bring my kids to.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly exactly.
Speaker 3: This may not be the one for me though.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So a hundred cops are waiting in the wings
Speaker 2: and the mayor shows up, and the mayor is just
Speaker 2: there to make sure everything's peaceful. He was this like,
Speaker 2: he's a big free speech guy and a big free
Speaker 2: assembly guy and also a don't invite federal troops to
Speaker 2: shoot striking workers guy.
Speaker 3: Well that sounds fine, it sounds like your best case
Speaker 3: scenario in this.
Speaker 2: Exactly the best case scenario of a mayor. Absolutely, and
Speaker 2: he also but he doesn't actually have control of the police,
Speaker 2: which is completely unfamiliar to the modern audience. He tells
Speaker 2: the police what to do, and then they think about it,
Speaker 2: and then they do whatever they want. That's the same
Speaker 2: what what are you talking about. I've never heard of
Speaker 2: a COVID man that ever. They would obey it if
Speaker 2: it happened. Okay. So, so the mayor's friends are like,
Speaker 2: don't be so conspicuous, and he's like, no, I'm going
Speaker 2: to be conspicuous. I want the people to know their
Speaker 2: mayors here because he's a reasonably stand up guy, you know,
Speaker 2: he seems he seems fine. So first this guy, August
Speaker 2: Spies goes up and he's the runs one of the newspapers.
Speaker 2: He's actually the one who canceled the police show up
Speaker 2: armed thing. I think I'm not entirely sure again cancel
Speaker 2: culture yeah uh. And then Albert Parson goes up, and
Speaker 2: Albert Parsons he talks for like an hour, and I
Speaker 2: kind of suspect I wouldn't actually like Albert Parsons as
Speaker 2: a person, Like who shows him to this.
Speaker 3: Mel You shouldn't ever talk for an hour at a
Speaker 3: round like minutes?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so okay, So the mayor realizes that everything's fine,
Speaker 2: and the speakers are actually kind of toning down. Often
Speaker 2: they give speeches where they're like, we're gonna, you know,
Speaker 2: find the rich where they live and blow them up
Speaker 2: and all this shit. Like they're not subtle speakers normally,
Speaker 2: but they're being a little more subtle tonight because they're
Speaker 2: a little bit like, oh shit, oh shit, this is
Speaker 2: all about to go really weird. So the mayor realizes
Speaker 2: it's fine, and he fucks off and he goes over
Speaker 2: to the cop shop and he tells the police captain
Speaker 2: to stand down. The police captain didn't agree, and then
Speaker 2: the third speaker goes on, and this is a guy
Speaker 2: named Samuel Fielden, and I just feel bad for this
Speaker 2: guy because he goes on at ten pm.
Speaker 3: Feel for field Yeah, he goes on at.
Speaker 2: Ten pm, a storm is rolling in. Most of the
Speaker 2: crowd disperses because the rain is coming, and then Albert Parsons,
Speaker 2: the fucking dick, is like, hey, everyone, let's go to
Speaker 2: the beer hall, even though Fielden is still up there speaking,
Speaker 2: And that's gotta be heartbreaking, Like you get all this adrenaline.
Speaker 3: So he really seems like the dannie of this situation.
Speaker 2: I once played a show where the main draw was
Speaker 2: the band that went on before me, and then everyone left,
Speaker 2: and then I just like played for like the person
Speaker 2: who booked the show, after like one hundred people have
Speaker 2: been watching the band before. It's like the same, only
Speaker 2: people end up dead. So but and he spoke to
Speaker 2: the two hundred or so people who were left, and
Speaker 2: at one point he made a reference to how the
Speaker 2: only thing to do with the law was to throttle it,
Speaker 2: to kick it, to stab it. And two detectives who
Speaker 2: are watching it run off and tell the police Captain
Speaker 2: Bonfield that the speech was too naughty, so the cops
Speaker 2: come running immediately. Fielden was still speaking. He ended his
Speaker 2: speech with and I quote, people have been shot, men,
Speaker 2: women and children have not been spared by the capitalists
Speaker 2: and minions of private capital. It has no mercy. So
Speaker 2: at you. You are called upon to defend yourselves, your lives,
Speaker 2: your future. What matters it whether you kill yourselves with
Speaker 2: work and get a little relief or die on the
Speaker 2: battlefield resisting the enemy. What is the difference? Any animal,
Speaker 2: however loathsom will resist when stepped upon. Are men less
Speaker 2: than snails or worms? I have some resistance in me,
Speaker 2: I know that you have two. You have been robbed,
Speaker 2: and you will be starved into a worse condition. The
Speaker 2: captain of the police orders the crowd to disperse. A
Speaker 2: light flashes through the air, falling into the crowd of police,
Speaker 2: and a bomb explodes. And that's what we'll leave it
Speaker 2: for today.
Speaker 3: Okay. I do have a note, yeah, which is that
Speaker 3: I don't feel like snails and worms really do resist
Speaker 3: much when you step on them. I feel like, biologically
Speaker 3: he wasn't one hundred percent on there. I don't disagree
Speaker 3: with the statement in broad but I have stepped on
Speaker 3: the odd worm and I did not didn't seem like
Speaker 3: they resisted. I'm getting to into the week.
Speaker 2: I mean, have you checked right above your bed and
Speaker 2: the rafters in the attic space.
Speaker 1: Uh?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's always filled with worms. Yeah that like it's
Speaker 3: supposed to be.
Speaker 2: No, they're they're there as organizing revenge.
Speaker 3: Oh well that's probably fair. Yeah, Robert, we're talking about
Speaker 3: worms now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, speaking of worms, do you have anything you want
Speaker 1: to plug that made no sense?
Speaker 3: Well, my friend Margaret has a show called Cool People
Speaker 3: Who Did Cool Things, So you probably check that out.
Speaker 1: Except that that's not the title. You were really close.
Speaker 3: I was really close. What did we land on?
Speaker 2: Stuff?
Speaker 1: Cool?
Speaker 2: People who did cool suck? Right?
Speaker 3: We talked about whether or not to use stuff for
Speaker 3: things for like thirty minutes.
Speaker 1: Didn't we there was there was a thirty minute combo
Speaker 1: and stuff was the choice.
Speaker 3: I think I probably argued for stuff specifically too. This
Speaker 3: is great, I'm I'm I'm really see. This is why
Speaker 3: you got to have someone like me as the brains
Speaker 3: of this out but really keeping everything together.
Speaker 1: Really, it's like the time that I changed it could
Speaker 1: when you wanted to name it could happen here, it
Speaker 1: can happen here, and I changed it, and then it.
Speaker 3: Was just that's good, because then I would have been
Speaker 3: preemptively ripping off the book by the head of the ADL.
Speaker 3: It can't happen here. I was published a year and
Speaker 3: a half after It Could Happen Here came out and
Speaker 3: had a similar premise but wasn't wasn't at all related
Speaker 3: to my work and was not not at all anyway.
Speaker 3: It's fine, It's fine.
Speaker 1: See I always hob You're back there we go.
Speaker 2: Thanks, Sophie, You're welcome. BIG's head of the ad L.
Speaker 1: Margaret is there where can people follow you?
Speaker 2: You can find me on Twitter at Magpie Killjoy, and
Speaker 2: you can find me on Instagram at Margaret Kiljoy. And
Speaker 2: you can listen to my new podcast which is called
Speaker 2: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff.
Speaker 1: And we'll be back on Wednesday with Part two. Cool
Speaker 1: People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of cool
Speaker 1: Zone Media. For more podcasts and cool Zone Media, visit
Speaker 1: our website coolzonmedia dot com, or check us out on
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.