Haymarket pics at SoapBlog Chicago
Ok, I wasn't planning on posting this one here, but Rich asked for more posts.
Here's one I have posted on my own blog this morning. It's a follow up to a polite discussion I've been having with SoapBlog Chicago about their logo.
It may seem thin beer to you, and if so, just enjoy the link to the Chicago Historical Society and their digital collection of images.
In an earlier posts, I suggested to the folks over at SoapBlog Chicago that they look for a different picture for their logo instead of the Chicago Anarchist Samuel Fielden inciting the crowd as the bomb goes off at the Haymarket riot.
Eleven Chicago cops gave their lives then and the Chicago Police Department still remembers and commemorates them.
I didn't think this the best image to use after 911; or before either. (Note SoapBlog cropped the bomb going off from the picture. The full pic is shown above.)
So I looked for images of the Police Statue the SDS-Weathermen kept blowing up when I was a kid, as an alternative for them; but I couldn't find one.
Then today I stumbled on this great site at the Chicago Historical Society with a digital collection of images from the Haymarket riot, and below's a banner carried by the Chicago Police Department's Veterans of the riot. It has an image of the statue --still standing in the lobby of Chicago Police HQ-- in the center.
There is also an engraving of Chicago's Anarchist Louis Ling preparing to blow himself up with a blasting cap in his mouth in his cell in Cook County Jail. He succeeded. Blowing his jaw off and then writing Hoch de Anarchie! in his own blood on the jail cell floor before dying.
There are plenty of good pictures here so I hope the SoapBlox Chicago folks check it out instead of commemorating Chicago's own suicide bombers.
UPDATE: Looks like Emma Goldman's picture is in the logo displayed on Arch Pundits site although Fielden is still showing on the main site.
Emma Goldman a nice choice.
Let me quote something from Ron Radosh's essay in FrontPageMag.com back in 2003 about Goldman's relentless opposition to Stalin's Communism.
It's something today's Left largely overlooks beause, I think --and as Radosh writes below-- it reasonably leads one to conclude if Emma Goldman were here today that,
As for Saddam Hussein, one suspects that even Emma Goldman—an opponent of Lenin and Trotsky and Mussolini and Hitler—might herself have had second thoughts about the brutal tyranny Saddam has brought to Iraq, and the threat to world peace that his regime poses in the nuclear age. She might even have awoken from the dream of pacifism and seen the need for military action, hard as such a step might have been for her to bear. 1915, after all, is hardly similar to 2003.
14 comments:
May 4 was when Haymarket happened, that morphed into the Labor's May Day holiday.
It is every where else except the US, where we celebrate in Sept.
I have a funny story about a West Town bus driver and a delegation from the Soviet Union's Young Communist League.
The American party's counterpart, the Young Workers Liberation League (their office was over on Madison and Central in the early 70s).
The YWLL rented a West Town Bus and gave the Soviets a tour of the Haymarket graves at Forest Home Cemetary. Emma Goldmen is buried there along with the early leaders of the American Party.
The African American Bus Driver was also a Vietnam Vet and got mad at the stuff he heard on the Bus from the American Communists. So hijacked the lot and drove them over to his house in Maywood to show how he lived. Gave them all a stern lecture on American patriotism.
If you look through old copies of the Oak Leaves you should find the story. I remember my Dad having a big laugh over it.
Go back to some of the first posts on my blog and you'll see a picture of a West Towns bus... we'd hang on the sign on the rear to get a free ride down Oak Park Ave. My friend fell flat on his tail once when the sign broke off....
I got a lot of stories.
Awfully convenient that you neglect to mention that the Haymarket riot began as a peaceful protest in support of the eight-hour work day. Of course it's awful that a bomb was thrown at police, killing 12 officers, but I'd say it's equally awful that 11 people were killed when police opened fire into the crowd. This was a lose-lose incident.
Of course you cheap-labor Republicans are doing your best to bring back the wonderful working conditions of the late 1800s, so why should anyone expect a fair portrayal of the Haymarket riot from you?
Not to mention that the cheap labor Republicans also tend to forget that the May 4 protest was called after the peaceful protest on May 3 was broken up by police who killed 2 and injured dozens. Not that this justified the bomb throwing, but no mention of May 3 or that the trial is to this day cited by real historians as one of the most serious miscarriages of justice in US history is curious given the political viewpoint of the poster.
It's always interesting how many who take the time to try to educate people about history make such a point to ignore those parts of the story that make their political thesis less black and white.
Republicans bringing back the working conditions of the 1800s??? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Hey Anon 11:42...look at the post above yours, who is making things up now???
anon 11:49:
Hey genius, if you've bothered to read anything about the Abramoff lobbied and DeLay supported effort in the Mariana Islands to allow companies to sell clothing manufactured by sweatshop labor labeled "made in America," you'd realize Insider isn't too far off. But, as indicated by your post, critical thinking is way too much to ask from you.
re: faithfullness to history.
I didn't crop the bomb going off. That should say something.
re: cheap labor
My great grandparents were immigrants working cheap in Chicago in the 1880s and living just a few blocks from this riot.
Their kids, my grandparents, told me to be thankful they came to Chicago and did just that.
Why should not cropping the bomb going off be an indication of your fairness? That's the historical record. You shouldn't be credited for portraying an event as it happened, that should be a given. But you sure should be called out for your selective use of facts.
LOL 12:03...I keep forgetting that republicans are evil and democrats are good...thanks for the refresher course...moron.
anon: 12:15
Go back to the initial post. You'll see I suggested googling for the full history.
The fact I selected --and took issue with-- was SoapBlog selected a bomb blast as the symbol for their blog. And they clipped out the attack part, and just left the Anarchist.
Small issue maybe. But go back to my original post and you'll see a link to a recent protest by the Chicago Police Department over naming a Northside Park after Lucy Parsons (wife of Albert Parsons and an Anarchist herself).
I'm betting most readers of soapblog Chicago were completely unaware of what this picture was all about.
So that was my point, which is accurate history.
Whether the Anarchist had good reason for throwing the bomb not relevant.
Look at the logo on Archpundit's site and you'll find Fielden's picture replaced with the Police Officer who died first in the blast.
as far as History goes with a Chicago link, here is a post I wrote on some recent papers from Upton Sinclair showing he had knowledge of Sacco and Vanzetti's guilt in another anarchist bombing episode,
I faced the most difficult ethical problem of my life at that point," he wrote to his attorney. "I had come to Boston with the announcement that I was going to write the truth about the case."
Other letters tucked away in the Indiana archive illuminate why one of America's most strident truth tellers kept his reservations to himself.
"My wife is absolutely certain that if I tell what I believe, I will be called a traitor to the movement and may not live to finish the book [Boston]," Sinclair wrote Robert Minor, a confidant at the [Communist] Daily Worker in New York, in 1927.
rs of Upton Sinclair indicating he knew of Sacco and Vanzetti,
Glad to see you are still working to find us the perfect logo picture. I'm also glad to see that you are educating people about some of the facts of labor history. I say some of the facts because there are so many that there is no way anyone could educate others about all of them. Everybody would have to leave out some facts.
Lets face it, the Haymarket "tragedy", as the police department calls it, was a multi faceted event. It was a peaceful rally that the governor had attended earlier; it was a "terrorist" act at a time when terrorists were called anarchists; and it was a riot at a time before the riots at the 1968 convention when we divided them into ordinary riots and police riots.
But I don't think your purpose here is either education nor a search for a good logo for SoapBlox/Chicago. Your goal is more likely to stir the pots of political anymosity.
BTW, the picture on our premium advertisment that we paid for at ArchPundit has once again changed to that of someone not related to the rally/riot/tragedy.
Anyway, if you want us to defend or explain our logo, stop by and post a diary.
Hi Jeff,
Call me rabble rouser.
I did try to post on SoapBlog but I never got the registration to work. I'll give it another go.
I do have a regret I've carried with me, and the guilt surfaces when I see that image from Haymarket; or again with Kos's comments about the guys killed at Fallejuah.
I remember when the anti war folks blew up the Math Building at Madison and killed a grad student. I remember my Dad --who rarely got angry with my left wing politics-- telling me I thought that was just ok. That this grad student was just collateral damage as far I thought.
It shocked me because I had never had him check me like that.
Worse, he was right. For me, and most others I marched with in Oak Park against the war back then, it was tough luck for that dead kid.
I'm ashamed of myself.
So what ever the political merits or arguments are --and they're really irrelevant-- is it worth having someone killed over it?
Of course not, and it seems sometimes the left especially gets hard about the death and injury.
A good example are cops injured during the anti-Globalization demos-turned-riots. I hope the people participating and survive the life-style of leftist activist, think about how they'll feel about their acts later.
First a little housekeeping, it's SoapBlox with an "x". Cute eh?
I too was pained by the death at the Math Center in Madison. I too considered myself a leftist. But I did not think that every action committed by someone who considered themself to be a leftist was something that I had to own or agree with. Just like the spitting on soldiers returning, which maybe happened all of one time for all we know and got blown up all out of proportion by some hostile media. Just because someone calling themself a leftist did something did not mean I had to agree and defend it.
The "left" in the sixties as now is a very wide and diverse concept. We did not then and we do not now have to subscribe to everything that went on then or now in its name.
The same, of course, with the 1890's. Free speech and the right to gather are embodied in the left side of the image. Police enforcement of orderliness and safety are in the middle. And to the right, a lone individual with who knows what kinds of ideas, representing the use of violence towards political ends. As Clauswitz said, war is the extension of politics by other means. (Something like that. You are the historian here so correct me, and for the spelling as well.)
Are you a pure pacifist? I doubt it. I bet you supported the American Revolution and WWII. So you draw lines. You draw different lines than other people. Sometimes you understand why someone draws a slightly different line than you do even though you disagree. Sometimes you change where you draw the line after you get new information. That's what happened for you with the Math Building. New information, new line. But did drawing the new line change your opposition to the Vietnam war? Need we feel guilty that we grow and mature and are able to see past mistakes? NO. We should feel proud that we can do that.
My father died in 1974. I regret that I cannot tell him of my political maturations and share with him my new takes on things. But I'm confident that he was quite aware that I would be making changes because he probably went through similar changes. If I embarassed him by my views, I know he chalked them up to youth and that it in no way changed his confidence in my eventual judgements.
Be careful about over-generalizing. The actions and beliefs during things like the anti-Globalization demons-turned-riots are various. If I go to one and someone else does something stupid that's not on my conscience. Hell, for all I know they are a police provacatuer, it has happened, you know. Calling it a "life-style" is an over-generalization. The phrase may have some usefulness, but I suspect that it's limited.
As for your SoapBlox (with an x) registration there is an auto-matic process to get your password reset but if that doesn't work send me or one of the other admins an e-mail and we can reset your password.
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