But that won't happen when guns get the job done better than just good.
One in thirty deaths in Holland are from euthanasia with most choosing to end their lives due to cancer
Around 3 per cent of all deaths in the Netherlands are now by euthanasiaThe country last year introduced mobile euthanasia unitsIn 2002 it became the first country since Nazi Germany to legalise it
9/23/13
A Worthwhile Yuk Yuk From A Politician
I did laugh because it's funny. It's in reference to this idiot who surfs and eats lobster,drives nice cars and hangs with beautiful women day in day out on his $200 of food stamps a month.
'I don't give a damn about surfer dude,' Democratic Congressman Jim McGovern said. 'As far as I'm concerned, he can walk off the nearest pier. To suggest that he's the face of SNAP is offensive.'
That may be worth a chuckle but not the fact so many actually believe this nonsense plus the whores in DC use this bullshit story as good reason not to allow children who are hungry a chance to be fed.
I'm so sick of this shit I tell you.
'I don't give a damn about surfer dude,' Democratic Congressman Jim McGovern said. 'As far as I'm concerned, he can walk off the nearest pier. To suggest that he's the face of SNAP is offensive.'
That may be worth a chuckle but not the fact so many actually believe this nonsense plus the whores in DC use this bullshit story as good reason not to allow children who are hungry a chance to be fed.
I'm so sick of this shit I tell you.
9/22/13
Someone Else's But Sure As Hell Not Mine
These things are all over the damn place with nonsensical drivel similar to this. It's tempting to put one of my own up but then you become a problem ya see.
9/13/13
Screwing The Little Guy As Usual
I'll help do the math here and I understand but do not agree with this rate structure. Everyone here in town pays the first 20 KWH at 31.5 cents a KWH and the next 130 @ 18.7 cents a KWH. After that the rest is billed at 12.4 cents a KWH.
That first 150 KWH costs 20 cents a KWH and this bill for 187 KWH averages before taxes at 18.9 cents a KWH.
I will now have some of the highest electric bills of my life and these rates per KWH have got to be some of the highest in the nation in counties that are the poorest in Colorado full of people who live below the poverty line.
Here you are like myself trying to live frugally but are penalized because you do not use massive amount of electricity. It appears for this month my usage will be around 230 KWH's and the average for that amount before taxes will be around 15.6 cents a KWH.
I don't give a shit what anyone says this is what you called getting screwed.
This bill is for 187 KWH's and was for three weeks.
Where I moved from the town owned it's own electric company and we bought on the open markets just like the big boys do and just like this company in this case. Bought electricity around 4.2 to 4.5 cents a KWH and the rates being charged to customers has remained fairly constant and are at 9.5 in the summer and 8.4 in the winter months.
San Isabel Electric is a co-op and supposedly a nonprofit. I just have an issue with ripping people off who have little to begin with and this little burg is full of people just like that.
That first 150 KWH costs 20 cents a KWH and this bill for 187 KWH averages before taxes at 18.9 cents a KWH.
I will now have some of the highest electric bills of my life and these rates per KWH have got to be some of the highest in the nation in counties that are the poorest in Colorado full of people who live below the poverty line.
Here you are like myself trying to live frugally but are penalized because you do not use massive amount of electricity. It appears for this month my usage will be around 230 KWH's and the average for that amount before taxes will be around 15.6 cents a KWH.
I don't give a shit what anyone says this is what you called getting screwed.
This bill is for 187 KWH's and was for three weeks.
| KWH CHARGE | $35.19 | |||||||
| 20.0 KWH x 0.315384 = $6.31 | ||||||||
| 130.0 KWH x 0.186668 = $24.27 | ||||||||
| 37.0 KWH x 0.124652 = $4.61 | ||||||||
| COUNTY TAX | $0.73 | |||||||
| CITY TAX | $1.09 | |||||||
| FRANCHISE TAX | $1.09 | |||||||
| TOTAL CURRENT BILL | $38.10 | |||||||
Where I moved from the town owned it's own electric company and we bought on the open markets just like the big boys do and just like this company in this case. Bought electricity around 4.2 to 4.5 cents a KWH and the rates being charged to customers has remained fairly constant and are at 9.5 in the summer and 8.4 in the winter months.
San Isabel Electric is a co-op and supposedly a nonprofit. I just have an issue with ripping people off who have little to begin with and this little burg is full of people just like that.
9/8/13
That Oughtta Teach Ya You Old Punk
I don't give a shit. Normal people do not kill with guns 107 year old people. Border line imbeciles could have come up with a way to subdue this man. I don't give a shit about this either. If an order was given to all those who carry a license to kill to start shooting make no mistake they will do just that!
A 107-year-old man was killed during a shootout with members of an Arkansas SWAT team Saturday evening.
This event illustrates how far downhill our society has gone.
107 and they had to fucking kill him. WTF anyway!
This is sick shit.
A 107-year-old man was killed during a shootout with members of an Arkansas SWAT team Saturday evening.
This event illustrates how far downhill our society has gone.
107 and they had to fucking kill him. WTF anyway!
This is sick shit.
9/7/13
Payback Time
From way back in March there was revenge last night.
Costa Rica slowed the USA's march toward the 2014 World Cup with a 3-1 win Friday, while Mexico were on even shakier ground after a 2-1 loss to Honduras. Costa Rica moved to the top of the six-nation final qualifying group in North and Central America and the Caribbean (CONCACAF) with the victory in San José that ended the USA's 12-match winning streak.
I thought playing the first game was wrong and a mistake but we all know about home field advantage. At the time I was giving my Tico friends a ration about how altitude was going to affect them along with the cold throwing in a line about it will probably dump as well.
And it did all that.
Costa Rica slowed the USA's march toward the 2014 World Cup with a 3-1 win Friday, while Mexico were on even shakier ground after a 2-1 loss to Honduras. Costa Rica moved to the top of the six-nation final qualifying group in North and Central America and the Caribbean (CONCACAF) with the victory in San José that ended the USA's 12-match winning streak.
And it did all that.
Recall Recall - We Go Make You Pay
UPDATE: And they did just that as both were recalled.
You may be aware of the recall against two Democrats here in Colorado based on the pissed offedness of "my feelings and fear of loosin ma guns" people who got this on the ballot. Voting ends the 10th I believe. The petitioner's also fought and won not to have mail in ballots. This is not in my district but just up the road.
What the hell do I know but just saw this and was surprised.
Anti-recall groups have raised $3.1 million while pro-recall groups have raised $266,231. These numbers do not include non-profits that have raised and spent money in the recalls but do not have to disclose their contributions.
There is a pretty cool interactive map that shows all the contributions and who made them. The problem with contributions is found here blatantly showing how these bastards in DC screwed us as always. The "non-profits" don't have to disclose ya see. I'd pay 10 smacks to see that number in this case and would bet a 20 that number exceeds the 3.1 mil raised by the anti-recall effort and and is much more than "non-profits" raised for the anti-recall effort as well.
Not sure what can be concluded if anything from this. A paltry 266K is all? There was strong support from around the country for these two people under recall. I hope they are not but all summer long recall efforts were seen all over the place.
You may be aware of the recall against two Democrats here in Colorado based on the pissed offedness of "my feelings and fear of loosin ma guns" people who got this on the ballot. Voting ends the 10th I believe. The petitioner's also fought and won not to have mail in ballots. This is not in my district but just up the road.
What the hell do I know but just saw this and was surprised.
Anti-recall groups have raised $3.1 million while pro-recall groups have raised $266,231. These numbers do not include non-profits that have raised and spent money in the recalls but do not have to disclose their contributions.
There is a pretty cool interactive map that shows all the contributions and who made them. The problem with contributions is found here blatantly showing how these bastards in DC screwed us as always. The "non-profits" don't have to disclose ya see. I'd pay 10 smacks to see that number in this case and would bet a 20 that number exceeds the 3.1 mil raised by the anti-recall effort and and is much more than "non-profits" raised for the anti-recall effort as well.
Not sure what can be concluded if anything from this. A paltry 266K is all? There was strong support from around the country for these two people under recall. I hope they are not but all summer long recall efforts were seen all over the place.
9/5/13
Day Tripping
Needed to have an adjustment and blasted up to Denver to see Doc. This morning there is a difference as there were issues plus complications from the bike crash a month ago tomorrow. Still several weeks away before it gets back close to normal. Chiropractics have helped me soooo much.
It was all pretty easy. Left early and drove the couple miles to the interstate. Get on it drive about 160 north - take a right turn go about a dozen blocks or so and another right turn and you're there.
I have always liked the architecture along the south part of Denver. Many of these buildings are getting some years on them but still look quite modern.
After getting worked on stopped at a place close by that I came across last time and had me some Pad Thai. Pretty good.
Headed south after that and stopped and saw my neighbor friends from Costa Rica. Ken has this very cool small still.
They live in this funky kinda neighbor just off of downtown Colorado Springs in a old house with some pretty old fixtures still being used.
Blasted outta there as stops needed to be made in Pueblo. Stopped at a hitch place to inquire about getting one installed on my Element. After doing a bit of checking theirs must be made out of silver.
Stopped and saw my brother who now lives close by in that area. Visited a bit and headed to my one of my meat markets of choice as I have been very disappointed with what I've bought here in Walsenburg. I don't care what anyone says the meat we buy in the States is not very good and as a general rule neither are the fruits and vegetables.
This is a busy place and has not been open that long. A Mexican Meat Market. You betcha.
You can buy meat here that actually has flavor and there is quite a selection. I stock up.
My other meat market of choice in Blende. They cut me very thin pork blade steak with bone in. Thick cut pork is not very good at all at least to me. I bought a pork shoulder steak the other day here and it may have been one of the worst pieces of pig I've ever had. Not the case here though. I did not stop here today.
I continued out east of Blende to Vic Morrow's place and picked up some of the best sweet corn that can be had in these parts plus other things as well. Most of what you see is grown here.
Got done here and drove the 50 or so miles home. Eleven and a half hours or so and 345 miles the work for the day was over.
It was a good day trip with a lot getting accomplished. I will be eating real good the next week or so. It's the best time of the year for that.
Cross posted at the other place.
It was all pretty easy. Left early and drove the couple miles to the interstate. Get on it drive about 160 north - take a right turn go about a dozen blocks or so and another right turn and you're there.
I have always liked the architecture along the south part of Denver. Many of these buildings are getting some years on them but still look quite modern.
After getting worked on stopped at a place close by that I came across last time and had me some Pad Thai. Pretty good.
Headed south after that and stopped and saw my neighbor friends from Costa Rica. Ken has this very cool small still.
They live in this funky kinda neighbor just off of downtown Colorado Springs in a old house with some pretty old fixtures still being used.
Blasted outta there as stops needed to be made in Pueblo. Stopped at a hitch place to inquire about getting one installed on my Element. After doing a bit of checking theirs must be made out of silver.
Stopped and saw my brother who now lives close by in that area. Visited a bit and headed to my one of my meat markets of choice as I have been very disappointed with what I've bought here in Walsenburg. I don't care what anyone says the meat we buy in the States is not very good and as a general rule neither are the fruits and vegetables.
This is a busy place and has not been open that long. A Mexican Meat Market. You betcha.
You can buy meat here that actually has flavor and there is quite a selection. I stock up.
My other meat market of choice in Blende. They cut me very thin pork blade steak with bone in. Thick cut pork is not very good at all at least to me. I bought a pork shoulder steak the other day here and it may have been one of the worst pieces of pig I've ever had. Not the case here though. I did not stop here today.
I continued out east of Blende to Vic Morrow's place and picked up some of the best sweet corn that can be had in these parts plus other things as well. Most of what you see is grown here.
It was a good day trip with a lot getting accomplished. I will be eating real good the next week or so. It's the best time of the year for that.
Cross posted at the other place.
9/3/13
From One To Another
The hypocrisy meter is off scale. It was off the scale when he was given the Peace Prize. This man is so bush like it's hard to take.
9/2/13
Labor Day - The Reason For It And The Innocent Men Who Went To Their Death
9/2/13 - Same as it ever was. While Americans are out chasing their freedoms the last day of this holiday weekend few know this story and few would probably care. And tomorrow when the freedom chase is over and they return to work each year getting less and less as the 1%continues to take more of the less that they have most have nary a clue.
9/3/12 - Attacks on unions and labor continue and with success. Next year will be the 100th anniversary of the Ludlow Massacre. They were fighting for the eight hour work day in 1896. Killing these men and others worked as it took 51 more years before that happened. Few in this country have a clue about this and many other things as well.
9/5/11 - Another year has flown by and this country continues to welcome misinformation and lies about unions and socialism and other things that originate from huge corporations including media. The mood of this country has many of the same traits as it had at the time of these murders at the hands of the powers that were in Chicago at that time.
2010 - The same post from last year in it's entirety (and the year before that). A piece that tells a very important story and why I get the day off to go explore because men like these died so I could do just that.
In this country there are not many who know why we celebrate this holiday but the story told below explains and we should all take pause now and then and remember those who came before us whether it's this or any number of other stories of people who sacrificed so our country could be a better place to live in.
Remembering the Haymarket Martyrs
By Charles SullivanInformation Clearing House' -- -- Every now and then events transpire that cut through the rhetoric, the carefully contrived images purveyed in the press and historical texts, and reveal a nation’s dark soul in ghastly detail. Such an event occurred in the streets of Chicago on May 4, 1886, and continued through November 11 of 1887. They were set in motion years before.
05/16/06 "
At noon on that day four of labor’s most courageous warriors: Albert Parsons, August Spies, Adolph Fischer and George Engel were hanged for a crime they did not commit. A fifth man, Louis Lingg, was slated to share the fate of his comrades but he cheated the hangman and the state of his innocent blood when he exploded a dynamite cap in his mouth from his jail cell just hours before the execution. The explosive had been smuggled in to him by an anarchist comrade. Another anarchist, Oscar Neebe, has sentenced to fifteen years of prison and hard labor. Three others had their death sentences commuted to life sentences.
In the U.S. only a relative few working class people know that Labor Day, originally May Day (May 1) originated with the hanging of these men. The rest of the world celebrates their heroism on May 1; however, the U.S. does not officially recognize their sacrifice by honoring them with a national holiday. Virtually every worker worldwide owes a tremendous debt to the Haymarket Martyrs, who provided the impetus and paid the ultimate price for many of the benefits that all workers, including the rank and file and upper management, now enjoy.
Those were tumultuous times not only in Chicago but all across America, when revolution was in the air and nationwide strikes crippled the burgeoning economy. In Chicago alone 400,000 were out on strike protesting not only reductions in wages but also demonstrating for the eight hour work day—one of the central organizing principles of the anarchist’s political philosophy. The Chicago anarchist movement that took root in 1884 was both strong and effective. Its leaders were skilled organizers and eloquent orators.
The Chicago police of the day were corrupt and routinely moved on the strikers at the behest of the business community, prodded by the daily newspapers. In those days companies had their own militias which were used to put down worker insurrections with coercion and violence. They also hired Pinkertons to intimidate and kill workers in order to prevent strikes and to maximize profits. But when the strikers began organizing militias for their own protection the state legislature outlawed them. The business militias, however, were allowed to continue their grim work, leaving the workers without protection and vulnerable. Strikers were routinely beaten, imprisoned and killed by their employers and the police.
On May 4, 1886, several unarmed strikers were shot dead by the Chicago police and hundreds were brutally beaten, including innocent bystanders at the McCormick Reapers Works. August Spies witnessed the affair with horror and righteous indignation. His comrades were being murdered in the streets and the killers did so with impunity. It seemed that all the forces of Chicago were arrayed against the working people.
An outraged August Spies organized a peaceful rally the following evening at the Haymarket Square. After beginning in clear moonlight, the weather suddenly turned cool and threatened rain, after a crowd of 3,000 gathered to hear the orators in the gathering gloom of the chilled night air. Standing upon a hay wagon near a lone street lamp the speakers berated the Chicago police for their indiscriminate killing of unarmed workers. Chicago Mayor Carter Harrison, a just and honest man, was in attendance. Satisfied that the gathering was peaceful and nearing conclusion, Mayor Harrison informed the chief of police, John Bonfield, who had sanctioned the shootings and mass beatings of the previous day, not to march on the group or disrupt their meeting.
It was getting late and the cold was penetrating when Albert Parsons and most of the speakers left the rally to warm themselves at Zephf’s Hall. Acting without legal authority, John Bonfield gathered a troop of 180 armed policemen and ordered them to disperse the dwindling crowd. After a mild verbal confrontation, Samuel Fieldon, who was speaking to the crowd when the police arrived, agreed to peacefully disperse. As Fieldon leaped down from the hay wagon, an unknown assailant hurled a stick of sizzling dynamite into the crowd of policemen. One officer was killed and six others died in the ensuing mayhem as the result of the panic stricken police firing indiscriminately into the fleeing crowd.
A reign of terror soon swept over Chicago in the aftermath of the Haymarket bombing. The press and the city’s business men, always hostile to the strikers, blamed the anarchists and the socialists and cried for their blood. The principal anarchists were quickly rounded up and put into jail, except for Parsons who, though far from the site of the incident, knew that Chicago’s business men demanded his head and skipped town.
Demonized in the press and the business community, the anarchists were immediately tried, convicted and executed in the Chicago Tribune and other daily newspapers even before any evidence was gathered. The judge presiding over the trial did nothing to conceal his prejudice and hostility toward the accused. Twelve impartial jurors could not be found, so those who openly proclaimed the guilt of the accused were paid to judge the case. During the early stages of the trial Albert Parsons dramatically walked into the courtroom and took his place at the side of his comrades to face his fate with them.
With the impossibility of a fair trial, and the irrational fear that Chicago’s ruling elite felt toward immigrant social agitators, the men were convicted and sentenced to death by hanging. Predictably, the trial was a farce, a media circus and a travesty of justice. The jury consisted of businessmen, their clerks and a relative of one of the dead policemen. Not a single working man or woman was selected for the jury.
No evidence was produced to link any of the accused with the bombing during the trial. None of them were at or near the scene of the crime. No evidence was brought forth to demonstrate that the anarchists had conspired to incite violence that evening. But they were anarchists and socialists, a threat to capital, and they were bound to hang for their political views.
State attorney Julius Grinnell openly declared that anarchism was on trial. By hanging the anarchists, Grinnell reasoned, the sacred institutions of society would be saved. In essence, free speech and the right of peaceful assembly were also on trial. Laws to protect the rights of suspects were suspended and new precedents established to hasten their conviction. The real agenda of Chicago’s business community, however, was to put an end to the successful drive for the eight hour work day and to permanently demonize organized labor. It would require another fifty-one years for the eight hour work day to become law as part of Roosevelt’s New Deal.
Just a few hours prior to the execution Albert Parsons wrote a friend that “The guard has just awakened me. I have washed my face and drank a cup of coffee. The doctor asked me if I wanted stimulants. I said no. The dear boys, Engel, Fischer and Spies, saluted me with firm voices. Well, my dear old comrade, the hour draws near. Caesar kept me awake last night with the noise, the music of the hammer and saw erecting his throne—my scaffold.” Parsons remained awake most of the night singing one of his favorite songs, “Annie Laurie” in a soft, melancholy voice filled with emotion.
More than 200 reporters gathered to witness the execution, as did the citizenry. None of the friends or relatives of the anarchists were permitted to attend. Albert Parson’s wife, Lucy, and their children were not permitted to bid their beloved husband and father a final farewell. Lucy Parsons was arrested in the attempt and taken to jail in another part of the city.
A few minutes before noon the four men were paraded onto the gallows scaffold. A reporter described the scene, “With a steady, unfaltering step a white robed figure stepped out…and stood upon the drop. It was August Spies. It was evident that his hands were firmly bound behind him beneath his snowy shroud.” Another reporter wrote, “His face was very pale, his looks solemn, his expression melancholy, yet at the same time dignified.” Fischer, Engel and Parsons followed in orderly procession. Another reporter noted that Parsons “Turned his big gray eyes upon the crowd below with such a look of awful reproach and sadness as it would not fail to strike the innermost chord of the hardest-heart there. It was a look never to be forgotten.”
The nooses were placed around the men’s necks and muslin shrouds placed over their heads. The executioner took up the axe that would in a moment cut the rope and spring the trap doors upon which the four men stood, sending them into ancestry. There was apprehension in the air thick as soup. Four innocent men were about to be executed by the state. Just then a “mournful solemn voice sounded.” It was August Spies speaking his final words, “The time will come when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today.” Next, George Engel shouted in his native German tongue, “Hurrah for anarchy!” Adolph Fischer chimed, “This is the happiest day of my life.” Just as Albert Parsons began to utter his final words that began, “Harken to the voice of the people,” the executioner’s axe fell. The trap doors sprung open with a bang and the four men jerked violently on the end of their ropes and then dangled in the air.
None of them died quickly of broken necks, as was supposed to happen; they violently twisted and strangled to death over a period of several minutes, some of them kicking and writhing in agony. The captains of industry celebrated the death of the anarchists while the workers mourned for their fallen comrades. But the dream of the eight hour work day, while strangled, did not die with the Chicago anarchists. It lived on in the lives of Emma Goldman, Eugene Debs, Mother Jones and Big Bill Haywood, who were inspired by the Haymarket Martyrs and went on to organize.
Some 600,000 workers turned out for the anarchist’s funeral. Lucy Parsons was inconsolable in her grief and spent the remainder of her life continuing the work that she and Albert had begun years before in Texas and later Chicago. This was the event that precipitated the eight hour work day, the internationally celebrated May Day, and Labor Day in the U.S. It is tragic that so few working class people are aware of the tremendous price that the Haymarket Martyrs paid for the freedoms that so many of us take for granted today.
On June 26, 1893, newly elected Illinois Governor John Altgeld set the remaining anarchists free and cleared the names of the hanged. Altgeld, a fair minded man, after examining transcripts of the trial and reams of related documents declared that all of the anarchists were innocent of the crimes for which they were convicted. Altgeld concluded that the hanged men had been victims of “hysteria, packed juries and a biased judge.” Later, evidence came to light that the dynamite may have been thrown by a police agent working for police captain Bonfield, as part of a conspiracy hatched by local business men to discredit the entire labor movement.
The state sponsored murder of the Haymarket anarchists, while particularly poignant, is by no means an isolated incident in American labor history. In the spring of 1886 America was on the verge of becoming something other than what she was. A new dawn in which working class people were on a par with business elites was almost within grasp and the eight hour work day virtually assured. Had justice prevailed that year in a hot Chicago courtroom and the normal procedures of the law followed, America would have been a very different place; a more just and peaceful future than the one we have now would have been possible and likely.
The entire Haymarket affair betrays the violent nature of capital and reveals its modus operandi. Aside from all the rhetoric about free speech and democracy, it exposes who runs the country, who makes the laws and who enforces them. It is capital, not we the people that are running things. Time and again the ugly side of America has been revealed when the status quo was threatened with real democracy. And it will happen again until the class struggle is finally resolved with just outcomes. The judgment of History has exonerated the fallen victims of predatory capital and indicted the real perpetrators of crimes against humanity, but who go unrepentant and unpunished.
Until millions of ordinary working class people awaken to the kind of country America really is, the death of Albert Parsons, August Spies, Adolph Fischer and George Engel will have been in vain. Workers the world over owes a great debt to these courageous men, whose lives, strangely, are celebrated abroad but scarcely known here. Unless we remember these men and honor what they did for us their sacrifice will have been in vain. We owe them nothing less and much more.
Author’s note: I urge those who wish to know more about these events to read labor historian James Green’s recently published book “Death in the Haymarkett: A Story of Chicago, the First Labor Movement and the Bombing that Divided Gilded Age America.”
Charles Sullivan is a photographer, social activist and free lance writer residing in the hinterland of West Virgina. He welcomes your comments at earthdog@highstream.net
9/3/12 - Attacks on unions and labor continue and with success. Next year will be the 100th anniversary of the Ludlow Massacre. They were fighting for the eight hour work day in 1896. Killing these men and others worked as it took 51 more years before that happened. Few in this country have a clue about this and many other things as well.
9/5/11 - Another year has flown by and this country continues to welcome misinformation and lies about unions and socialism and other things that originate from huge corporations including media. The mood of this country has many of the same traits as it had at the time of these murders at the hands of the powers that were in Chicago at that time.
2010 - The same post from last year in it's entirety (and the year before that). A piece that tells a very important story and why I get the day off to go explore because men like these died so I could do just that.
In this country there are not many who know why we celebrate this holiday but the story told below explains and we should all take pause now and then and remember those who came before us whether it's this or any number of other stories of people who sacrificed so our country could be a better place to live in.
Remembering the Haymarket Martyrs
By Charles SullivanInformation Clearing House' -- -- Every now and then events transpire that cut through the rhetoric, the carefully contrived images purveyed in the press and historical texts, and reveal a nation’s dark soul in ghastly detail. Such an event occurred in the streets of Chicago on May 4, 1886, and continued through November 11 of 1887. They were set in motion years before.
05/16/06 "
At noon on that day four of labor’s most courageous warriors: Albert Parsons, August Spies, Adolph Fischer and George Engel were hanged for a crime they did not commit. A fifth man, Louis Lingg, was slated to share the fate of his comrades but he cheated the hangman and the state of his innocent blood when he exploded a dynamite cap in his mouth from his jail cell just hours before the execution. The explosive had been smuggled in to him by an anarchist comrade. Another anarchist, Oscar Neebe, has sentenced to fifteen years of prison and hard labor. Three others had their death sentences commuted to life sentences.
In the U.S. only a relative few working class people know that Labor Day, originally May Day (May 1) originated with the hanging of these men. The rest of the world celebrates their heroism on May 1; however, the U.S. does not officially recognize their sacrifice by honoring them with a national holiday. Virtually every worker worldwide owes a tremendous debt to the Haymarket Martyrs, who provided the impetus and paid the ultimate price for many of the benefits that all workers, including the rank and file and upper management, now enjoy.
Those were tumultuous times not only in Chicago but all across America, when revolution was in the air and nationwide strikes crippled the burgeoning economy. In Chicago alone 400,000 were out on strike protesting not only reductions in wages but also demonstrating for the eight hour work day—one of the central organizing principles of the anarchist’s political philosophy. The Chicago anarchist movement that took root in 1884 was both strong and effective. Its leaders were skilled organizers and eloquent orators.
The Chicago police of the day were corrupt and routinely moved on the strikers at the behest of the business community, prodded by the daily newspapers. In those days companies had their own militias which were used to put down worker insurrections with coercion and violence. They also hired Pinkertons to intimidate and kill workers in order to prevent strikes and to maximize profits. But when the strikers began organizing militias for their own protection the state legislature outlawed them. The business militias, however, were allowed to continue their grim work, leaving the workers without protection and vulnerable. Strikers were routinely beaten, imprisoned and killed by their employers and the police.
On May 4, 1886, several unarmed strikers were shot dead by the Chicago police and hundreds were brutally beaten, including innocent bystanders at the McCormick Reapers Works. August Spies witnessed the affair with horror and righteous indignation. His comrades were being murdered in the streets and the killers did so with impunity. It seemed that all the forces of Chicago were arrayed against the working people.
An outraged August Spies organized a peaceful rally the following evening at the Haymarket Square. After beginning in clear moonlight, the weather suddenly turned cool and threatened rain, after a crowd of 3,000 gathered to hear the orators in the gathering gloom of the chilled night air. Standing upon a hay wagon near a lone street lamp the speakers berated the Chicago police for their indiscriminate killing of unarmed workers. Chicago Mayor Carter Harrison, a just and honest man, was in attendance. Satisfied that the gathering was peaceful and nearing conclusion, Mayor Harrison informed the chief of police, John Bonfield, who had sanctioned the shootings and mass beatings of the previous day, not to march on the group or disrupt their meeting.
It was getting late and the cold was penetrating when Albert Parsons and most of the speakers left the rally to warm themselves at Zephf’s Hall. Acting without legal authority, John Bonfield gathered a troop of 180 armed policemen and ordered them to disperse the dwindling crowd. After a mild verbal confrontation, Samuel Fieldon, who was speaking to the crowd when the police arrived, agreed to peacefully disperse. As Fieldon leaped down from the hay wagon, an unknown assailant hurled a stick of sizzling dynamite into the crowd of policemen. One officer was killed and six others died in the ensuing mayhem as the result of the panic stricken police firing indiscriminately into the fleeing crowd.
A reign of terror soon swept over Chicago in the aftermath of the Haymarket bombing. The press and the city’s business men, always hostile to the strikers, blamed the anarchists and the socialists and cried for their blood. The principal anarchists were quickly rounded up and put into jail, except for Parsons who, though far from the site of the incident, knew that Chicago’s business men demanded his head and skipped town.
Demonized in the press and the business community, the anarchists were immediately tried, convicted and executed in the Chicago Tribune and other daily newspapers even before any evidence was gathered. The judge presiding over the trial did nothing to conceal his prejudice and hostility toward the accused. Twelve impartial jurors could not be found, so those who openly proclaimed the guilt of the accused were paid to judge the case. During the early stages of the trial Albert Parsons dramatically walked into the courtroom and took his place at the side of his comrades to face his fate with them.
With the impossibility of a fair trial, and the irrational fear that Chicago’s ruling elite felt toward immigrant social agitators, the men were convicted and sentenced to death by hanging. Predictably, the trial was a farce, a media circus and a travesty of justice. The jury consisted of businessmen, their clerks and a relative of one of the dead policemen. Not a single working man or woman was selected for the jury.
No evidence was produced to link any of the accused with the bombing during the trial. None of them were at or near the scene of the crime. No evidence was brought forth to demonstrate that the anarchists had conspired to incite violence that evening. But they were anarchists and socialists, a threat to capital, and they were bound to hang for their political views.
State attorney Julius Grinnell openly declared that anarchism was on trial. By hanging the anarchists, Grinnell reasoned, the sacred institutions of society would be saved. In essence, free speech and the right of peaceful assembly were also on trial. Laws to protect the rights of suspects were suspended and new precedents established to hasten their conviction. The real agenda of Chicago’s business community, however, was to put an end to the successful drive for the eight hour work day and to permanently demonize organized labor. It would require another fifty-one years for the eight hour work day to become law as part of Roosevelt’s New Deal.
Just a few hours prior to the execution Albert Parsons wrote a friend that “The guard has just awakened me. I have washed my face and drank a cup of coffee. The doctor asked me if I wanted stimulants. I said no. The dear boys, Engel, Fischer and Spies, saluted me with firm voices. Well, my dear old comrade, the hour draws near. Caesar kept me awake last night with the noise, the music of the hammer and saw erecting his throne—my scaffold.” Parsons remained awake most of the night singing one of his favorite songs, “Annie Laurie” in a soft, melancholy voice filled with emotion.
More than 200 reporters gathered to witness the execution, as did the citizenry. None of the friends or relatives of the anarchists were permitted to attend. Albert Parson’s wife, Lucy, and their children were not permitted to bid their beloved husband and father a final farewell. Lucy Parsons was arrested in the attempt and taken to jail in another part of the city.
A few minutes before noon the four men were paraded onto the gallows scaffold. A reporter described the scene, “With a steady, unfaltering step a white robed figure stepped out…and stood upon the drop. It was August Spies. It was evident that his hands were firmly bound behind him beneath his snowy shroud.” Another reporter wrote, “His face was very pale, his looks solemn, his expression melancholy, yet at the same time dignified.” Fischer, Engel and Parsons followed in orderly procession. Another reporter noted that Parsons “Turned his big gray eyes upon the crowd below with such a look of awful reproach and sadness as it would not fail to strike the innermost chord of the hardest-heart there. It was a look never to be forgotten.”
The nooses were placed around the men’s necks and muslin shrouds placed over their heads. The executioner took up the axe that would in a moment cut the rope and spring the trap doors upon which the four men stood, sending them into ancestry. There was apprehension in the air thick as soup. Four innocent men were about to be executed by the state. Just then a “mournful solemn voice sounded.” It was August Spies speaking his final words, “The time will come when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today.” Next, George Engel shouted in his native German tongue, “Hurrah for anarchy!” Adolph Fischer chimed, “This is the happiest day of my life.” Just as Albert Parsons began to utter his final words that began, “Harken to the voice of the people,” the executioner’s axe fell. The trap doors sprung open with a bang and the four men jerked violently on the end of their ropes and then dangled in the air.
None of them died quickly of broken necks, as was supposed to happen; they violently twisted and strangled to death over a period of several minutes, some of them kicking and writhing in agony. The captains of industry celebrated the death of the anarchists while the workers mourned for their fallen comrades. But the dream of the eight hour work day, while strangled, did not die with the Chicago anarchists. It lived on in the lives of Emma Goldman, Eugene Debs, Mother Jones and Big Bill Haywood, who were inspired by the Haymarket Martyrs and went on to organize.
Some 600,000 workers turned out for the anarchist’s funeral. Lucy Parsons was inconsolable in her grief and spent the remainder of her life continuing the work that she and Albert had begun years before in Texas and later Chicago. This was the event that precipitated the eight hour work day, the internationally celebrated May Day, and Labor Day in the U.S. It is tragic that so few working class people are aware of the tremendous price that the Haymarket Martyrs paid for the freedoms that so many of us take for granted today.
On June 26, 1893, newly elected Illinois Governor John Altgeld set the remaining anarchists free and cleared the names of the hanged. Altgeld, a fair minded man, after examining transcripts of the trial and reams of related documents declared that all of the anarchists were innocent of the crimes for which they were convicted. Altgeld concluded that the hanged men had been victims of “hysteria, packed juries and a biased judge.” Later, evidence came to light that the dynamite may have been thrown by a police agent working for police captain Bonfield, as part of a conspiracy hatched by local business men to discredit the entire labor movement.
The state sponsored murder of the Haymarket anarchists, while particularly poignant, is by no means an isolated incident in American labor history. In the spring of 1886 America was on the verge of becoming something other than what she was. A new dawn in which working class people were on a par with business elites was almost within grasp and the eight hour work day virtually assured. Had justice prevailed that year in a hot Chicago courtroom and the normal procedures of the law followed, America would have been a very different place; a more just and peaceful future than the one we have now would have been possible and likely.
The entire Haymarket affair betrays the violent nature of capital and reveals its modus operandi. Aside from all the rhetoric about free speech and democracy, it exposes who runs the country, who makes the laws and who enforces them. It is capital, not we the people that are running things. Time and again the ugly side of America has been revealed when the status quo was threatened with real democracy. And it will happen again until the class struggle is finally resolved with just outcomes. The judgment of History has exonerated the fallen victims of predatory capital and indicted the real perpetrators of crimes against humanity, but who go unrepentant and unpunished.
Until millions of ordinary working class people awaken to the kind of country America really is, the death of Albert Parsons, August Spies, Adolph Fischer and George Engel will have been in vain. Workers the world over owes a great debt to these courageous men, whose lives, strangely, are celebrated abroad but scarcely known here. Unless we remember these men and honor what they did for us their sacrifice will have been in vain. We owe them nothing less and much more.
Author’s note: I urge those who wish to know more about these events to read labor historian James Green’s recently published book “Death in the Haymarkett: A Story of Chicago, the First Labor Movement and the Bombing that Divided Gilded Age America.”
Charles Sullivan is a photographer, social activist and free lance writer residing in the hinterland of West Virgina. He welcomes your comments at earthdog@highstream.net
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