Continuing on our Alex Berkman theme, I thought I would take a minute to introduce you, most valued reader, to the adventure that cost him 14 years of his life.
Everybody wants to talk about how greedy crapitalusts are the scum of the earth, but nobody wants to do anything about it.
Well, maybe not everybody, yet, but a substantial number of us already know what the rest of ya'll gonna figure out before much longer.
The love of money is the root of all evil.
Here he is in nyc giving a speech in solidarity with the miners of Laidlaw, Colorado.
source
Alex was the public facing face of anarchism for many, many years.
This is him on July 11, 1917 at the I.W.W. (Industrial Workers of the World) Meeting in Union Square.
Alex Berkman is shown speaking.
source
But, the thing that really got his name in the history books was the incident in Homestead, Pa.
For those of you that are unaware, because heaven forbid you should read a book, the homestead affair was the result of a steel mill locking out the workers over lower wages and worse working conditions while hiring pinkertons to suppress the dissent.
Of course, the pinkertons suppressed it by firing on the crowd of workers who once again proved that the crowd is the power by overwhelming the pinkertons, forcing them to retreat and surrender, then beating the crap out of them.
Naturally, the official record records it in the light most favorable to the crapitalusts, but what do you expect from yellow 'journalists'?
In the aftermath of this slaughter, our anarcho-hero took it upon himself to (attentat!!) make a meeting with the steel mills' manager, Henry Clay Frick.
To this meeting he took a .38 pistol and a dagger fashioned from a sharpened file.
He took three shots, two connecting in the shoulder and neck, when he saw that the wounds were not mortal, he pulled the dagger and stabbed Frick in the legs 4 times while struggling with Frick's bodyguard.
By the grace of good luck Frick was not killed and two lives were spared that day.
Here is Alex's version of the events in his own words.
Are you are tired of paying your masters to bomb children in far away places?
Perhaps it is time you pushed back on that.
A simple way that anybody can do that is to hoard your coins.
The fed buys coins at face value from the mint.
A dollar of change in your pocket is a dollar of value out of the banksters' pockets.
Stop playing in their shell game that allows them to play in the amusement parks from hell and shop in the human grocery stores.
Billy Jack, the movie.
The Trial of Billy Jack.
Billy Jack goes to Washington.
