The Dollop with Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds - 463 - Lucy Parsons

Episode Date: January 5, 2021

Comedians Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds examine anarchist Lucy Parsons.SourcesTour DatesRedbubble Merch

When you're staying at an Airbnb you might be like me wondering could my place be an Airbnb and if it could what could it earn? You could be sitting on an Airbnb and not even know it. That in-law sweet guest house where your parents stay only part-time Airbnb it and make some money the rest of the year whether you could use a little extra money to cover some bills or for something a little more fun. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at airbnb.ca slash host. You're listening to the dollop on the All Things Comedy Network. This is a

bilingual American History podcast. Each week I read a story from American history to my friend. Gareth Reynolds who has no idea what the topic is going to be about. When I say we are a bilingual American History podcast, well we are. We do this in conjunction with a couple of gentlemen in Mexico, very funny stamped comedians. So we're explaining to the masses of our southern friends exactly why America is as absolutely batshit crazy as it is. Why we need the wall to keep us running away. Why Mexico needs the wall to keep Americans out. How long until Mexico finishes the wall? I I can't believe that

that we're building it to keep ourselves out at a future time like that's how crazy we are that we're like we're just gonna build this wall to keep the Mexicans out. You're like nobody that's gonna fucking reverse. Yeah a hundred percent you'll eventually be like how did you sneak under? Explain to us how you stuck around this thing please hurry. No it's so good. We're so good. It's been a good it's been a good couple of months, a couple of weeks. Everything's sort of coming together and all I see is rainbows and just exploding glitter and clouds and unicorns that's all I'm seeing. It's nice when you're scraping the

bottom of the barrel and then you finish scraping and you see underneath it another barrel. Yes. And you're like no. Lower to scrape. There's a new bottom. All right. Well very quickly why don't we just say this then because I think a lot of people have I'm sure to both of us you're not on Twitter anymore and my Twitter is now where people go to find out what's going on with your Twitter by the way. Hilarious. I'm gone. It's fun. It's like a secondary landing area. A lot of people reach out and say you know that the show and doing the show really helps people and you know just laugh and stuff like that and on a whole

we probably don't reply to all that but we obviously very much appreciate that and you know it's a two-way street we appreciate you listening and I think we all know yeah how exciting a time it is so. It's a very exciting time and called it quote is jam-packed. Jam-packed? I'm the fucking hippo guy. Dave, okay. My name's Gary. My name's Gary. Wait. Is it for fun? And this is not gonna come to Tigglypock. Okay. This is like Adam. I know five-part coefficient. My room's a flame. Now hit him with a puppy. You both present sick arguments. No, sleep down, hippo. That's like a hippo. Action, partner. Hi, Gary. No. I sleep down, my friend. No. No. Ronda. Ronda in the car.

1851, the year of our Lord Jesus Christ. Lucia Carter was born in Virginia in 1851. She was born a slave. Her mother was a slave owned by a white guy named Toliver. Okay. What his first name is. The slave owners deserve to be mentioned by name. Only to like be dicks to their lineage. Yeah. So this piece of shit. It sounds like he was Lucia's father, but we don't know for sure. But that's what it sounds like. Okay. Right there, you know. In 1863, during the Civil War, Toliver moved to Waco, Texas, and he brought Lucia and his other slaves with him. And one of the reasons it seems like is because there was the idea that you would have more freedom with your

slaves or be able to keep your slaves after the war in that area for some reason. Like there was some sort of rumor. So not much is known about Lucia in Texas, because oddly people did not write about young, young slave girls. Right. She grew up, she became a seamstress. She cooked for white families. And then she came involved with an older dude who was the next slave, Oliver Gabbang. She's about 18, probably the time, maybe 19. And she got pregnant. But the baby died during childbirth. Gabbang said he really took care of her and then he paid for her school tuition and bought her textbooks. Now, she then met a guy named Albert Parsons, who I believe is from episode 454, correct? Something like that, sure.

So this is sort of the second part to the Albert Parsons episode, which I alluded to I would get to. He started, quote, attracting her attention and drawing her away from gathering. Soon, Albert and Lucia are in love and they take off for Chicago. Right. Okay. This is the first time where I feel like I can jump in with some lightness. All right. Hey, I'm here too. I also exist on this show. On the trip to Chicago, she changed her name. She decided to change her name to Lucy Parsons. So that's how she would now be known. Okay. As we know from the previous Albert Parsons episode, he was an activist. She was getting

involved in activism. He had been an activist in Texas with particularly black workers, which was made it hard for him being a white guy. He was sort of chased out of town. So Albert led the way at first on the activist front. So Texas wasn't always so open-minded is what you're saying? Yes. Yes. It wasn't always. It used to be a very different place. Different place than, okay.

She over time became an anarchist and I'm starting to skip forward a little bit if you want to hear sort of what she was doing. I'm more focused on Albert in these early Chicago days because of the stories more about him. She's sort of in the background. She's writing. She's definitely becoming radicalized all the time. She opens up a seamstress shop and then she has to take care of the family and be the breadwinner because Albert's organizing God and blacklisted from a lot of jobs. So she's also being an activist while she's taking, you know, being the breadwinner for the family. She did not tell people she was black, but she said she was American, Indian, and Spanish.

So she spoke really well. She was a very good orator, which at the time, that's money. She really leave, she also, as we explained in the Albert Parsons episode, she really dug dynamite. She used a lot of talk about dynamite. She wrote a lot about dynamite as dynamite a way for revolutionary change. That would be a tool. It's a two-pronged thing. One thing it is, it is a weapon of choice. The other thing is it's fucking scares the people on the other side that you're just out and out saying, I'm going to blow shit up. Yeah. Yeah. I have dynamite. That's a bold, that's an opener. That's how you open a negotiation.

All right. We're here to talk numbers. I have dynamite. All right. Well, why don't you, you want to, how do you want to, what do you need? What do you want? Let's go from there. After the Haymarket bombing, which was anarchists in the Haymarket Square, obviously a lot of labor issues going on at the time, a lot of talk of dynamite and what not have been going on for a while, and someone threw a bomb at cops, the anarchists are blamed, Albert Parsons is blamed, Sevallura arrested. There's a trial. They're convicted. It's a sham of a trial. You know, it's actually through the bomb. It's just all garbage. It's, it's really just a shit trial. Okay. So then the focus, you know, she was not charged. And the focus was

put on Lucy now, because she's sort of the, the main loudmouth or anarchist post trial. And the papers really tried to build her up as an anarchist at the same time as taking her down, right? Okay. Does that make sense? Yes. So the main, our anarchist while being like, she's a piece of shit. That's what they do.

The club Democrat did a expose on her and went to Waco and found people from her past and did old thing. She, she quote, has achieved a kind of fame that has gone throughout the world. All her utterances and especially her speeches at the anarchist gatherings are wired throughout the country. The writer had gone to Waco and described her as a quote, pretty mulatto that Albert Parsons stole away. So they're trying to take her down for being black, right? Yeah. So is that an outing? I mean, she's been saying, yeah, right?

Yes. It's an outing. And, you know, they're trying to take Albert down also because, you know, he, he's in love with the black woman. They're also, like I said, in that quote, they're building her up and saying she has all this power now. She everyone's listening to her, which isn't really true. She's getting there, but they're saying she's fighting it powerful. Yeah. Right. Right. But she is definitely growing in power and she's increasing in power because of the Haymarket trial and bombing. The article is picked up by the New York Times and other papers, even a London paper. So this article is printed around the world. Albert tries to cover for her and doesn't interview with

the tribune and says quote, he found Lucy up here and beautiful and talented young orphan girl in the wilds of Texas. And he married her and that she ever has been noble, pure and true. She is Indian and Spanish and has no African blood in her veins. Now, the reason that they're doing this, obviously America's super racist, but also the labor situation is extremely divided. It's divided purposely by the owners divided by ethnicities, but also black people are just not allowed into the labor movement. Right. So if she is black, it's a concern that she won't be listed. She can't. Right. It's also, I mean, and I, it's just like, I mean, we've talked about it before, but it is amazing like the specificity

of the racism in this country. Like how... Well, it's a construct of, it's really pushed by the capitalist system. It's really... Yeah. To keep the workers divided. Right. But it's also very... It's so clearly capitalist. Like it's divided so... Like it's all... And whatever. It's just, it's always very crazy how nuanced we do our racism in this country. Yeah. And people will say, oh, come on, it's not capitalism. No, it's literally owners bring in scabs who are black because they want them to fight or hopefully scabs that are black that don't even speak English. Like that's like the ultimate. So now you have... They can't communicate and they're fighting. Like it's literally how they work things. It's dynamite. Yeah.

It's dynamite. Different version. Yeah. So basically what this gave was her enemies, their capitalists and the industrialists will always say she's black, right? Right. And she would tell everyone she's Native American and Spanish. So there's not many Mexicans living in Chicago at the time. So that really helped her pull it off. They just... They don't know. They're like, oh, that's what a Mexican looks like. I mean... That's what she told us. Of course that's what she is. Yeah. Well, a guy come from Sweden, you know, a lot of these whites are immigrants. So they're coming from Sweden and they haven't seen a Mexican guy so they're like, sure, she's

Mexican. So whatever. Absolutely. But articles on Lucy are steady for four months after the Haymarket bombing and trials. There's tons of gossip about Albert and Lucy and the background... Sorry, not trials, but after the bombing. Tons of gossip about her and Albert, their backgrounds, blah, blah, blah. Kent City Star wrote, she was passing, quote, as a dusky descendant of the extinct race of powerful Aztecs with the facts of her life, that this notorious woman is probably a straight case of an illegitimate mulatto.

Ugh. It's beautiful. It's good. It's just great. I finished my article. Like I just can't imagine being like, I did it. There we are. Yeah, it's really... So Lucy does interviews. She's trying to create an opposing narrative. Lucy was upping her profile also to raise money for the appeals of the Haymarket 7. So 7 had been convicted. The appeal to the Illinois Supreme Court would cost $12,500,

which is about $345,000 today. So a lot of fucking money. Mm-hmm. It's good to see that lawyers have never changed. Yeah. Lucy wanted to convince people Albert and the others were innocent, but she also at the same time wasn't going to hold back being Lucy. She was going to go with her fiery rhetoric. Right. Union leaders try to figure out a way that they're going to approach things with their next steps and they don't all appreciate her fiery speeches. So a lot of the union leaders

like take it down a fucking notch. There was just a bombing, but nobody knows who did the bombing and these guys are innocent. So whatever. Now, many people believe the Haymarket 7... So the... Right. So I... Okay. I get it. You get it? It's a tough... Like that's what they do. They put you at a tough spot. Yeah. So many people are starting to believe the Haymarket 7 are wrongly convicted. The more

that comes out about the trial, the more bullshit it seems. And they also are feeling betrayed by the Democratic Party, who they feel are not standing up for workers, if you can believe that. In late 1886, white workers of immigrant backgrounds formed a new party, the United Labour Party, the ULP. It's an attempt to bridge the differences between anarchists and socialists, radical and conservative trade unionists, and then just racial differences. So it's the third party for white working men. Sorry. It was a third party for white working men. Okay.

Now, she was hostile too, but at the same time, work with the ULP. So she's always... She's hostile. Right. Yeah. That does seem like a very precarious situation, because, like, I mean, again, you probably need to fight... We need to wage two battles. The one that's right in front of you, and then the one where you're like, I will, you know... Well, she never fights for black people. Right. Well, yeah. I mean, is that partially because that would make her seem black?

Yes. Then it puts her in a bad situation. So that's all fucked. And that's all what they knew what they were doing when they did that. Right, right, right. So her fiery speeches are inspiring workers in the post-bombing, anti-labor time. Like, people are mad at laborers because they hate market bombing, but she's still firing them up and saying fight on. She's trying to raise money everywhere. She even tried to get put in a freak show as an anarchist to sell books and pamphlets. And behind this curtain, you will see something so gruesome, so disgusting. So absolutely

abhorrent. It will make your stomach turn. Why, if you don't have a paper bag sitting next to you, you might want to borrow one because there's no doubt you'll be keeping your supper down. When you see behind, behold, in the cage, an anarchist, look at her. She believes in nothing. Does she have two noses or something? What? Huh? No, she's got one nose. She's got one nose. One nose. But Lord knows she would go for a system where they would say however many noses... What?

Does she have, like, a hairy body under the clothes, like, just all over her? Fine body. Normal body. Normal body. Normal nose. Three feet? Three feet? Normal person. I should point out that this person, the part that scares us about her is not the physical appearance, but the character. Look at it. Oh, she just believes in nothing. Oh, look away. Put on your special glasses. Put on your novelty glasses. This is boring. This is boring. I was thinking, like, I'd get to see a two-headed person or

a tiny, tiny person. Like, someone looks like a foot and a half. What about a foot and a half communist? Like, a really tiny commie. Really small one. We have been trying to acquire the tiny commie. He is in high demand, so instead, we've got this anarchist. But watch what she does with her wrist. Look. It bends back just a little further than the most wrist. Do you actually know? Fit in a box, Karl Marx? Do you know him? Because I would like to see him. Look, it doesn't matter whether if we know him or don't know him. It is irrelevant. What

you have here is an anarchist. Ooh. Can she put, like, a nail through her tongue? No. She's not. She has a normal tongue. She needs that tongue to speak truth to power. Have you? I would just like to see, I don't know, her hair on fire or like a... We're not going to light her on fire. Look, this is a very simple exhibit in the show. Hey, kid, do you want to go? What?

Yeah. We've got it. We've got Wolf Boy just coming up in a little bit. I don't. I guess I don't trust anymore. Or actually, maybe a little further down, we've got the nihilist. Ooh. Vastly different than the anarchist or the socialist. Hey, they got Karl Marx in a box down the street. Oh, we are. Well, we will see you later. Bye. Goodbye. They got the title. It's going to be great.

You blew the show tonight. Ah, no, Mike. He, Tribune, was aware she was gaining an importance as a speaker and wrote, quote, if Miss Parsons thinks she is another Joan of Arc, she should make an effort to un-deceive herself. She is only a very ordinary Blatherkite. My God. It's, I should, shouldn't we just call every paper brunch thoughts? But I also think Blatherkite should come back as a... Blatherkite's good. Shouldn't that what the podcasters are called?

That's a good name for a podcast. Yeah. I mean, it's just the, those who can't, bitch. So, paper's all of the country you're attacking her. She's called one of the most notorious women in America. In New York, she has a hard time finding a venue to speak. Owners refuse to rent to her, but she finally finds one and then cops block the door when she's trying to go in. And then that starts happening in a lot of towns. Right. She's always undercover cops listening in the room. In Cleveland, the hall owner barred

her from speaking, so she had to speak standing on a chair in the street in front of the venue. So she always went after industrialists, obviously. She called Meatpacker Philip Armour, quote, a slaughterer of children as well as hogs. John Bonfield was chief of sewer rats. I just want to point out that our hot dogs do not have kids in them. For anyone, our hot dogs are made from pork for kids. These are not, we would never put a child in a hot dog. Okay. There's a lot of stuff in a hot dog, but I assure you, children is not one of them. Okay. What if a kid falls in with the hogs?

We don't do anything. Okay. We let nature take its course. So Chicago cops are called, quote, the scum of the sewers and gutters, and as bloodhounds, worse than those trained in Russia for blood work. She called churches that allied with capitalist dumb as oysters. That one, I mean, it's true, but it's not. What is the IQ of an oyster? At the same time, she's writing in papers and she's working as an editor on leftist papers. Okay. Reporters would always begin stories about her with a very long physical

description. And I think there's two reasons. I think number one, the reason is, I think back at the time is no photos. So they do use descriptions, but as we learned even talking about Diane Feinstein, when she was rising up, they really liked to just talk about how the woman looks. Right. And then on top of that. It's important. It's, it's also important to get it out of the way early. Yes.

Yeah. Make it the first thing. I know what everyone's wondering about this anarchist. What does she look like? And they also want to paint her as black, obviously. So here's an example. Quote, she has a handsome oval face with arched eyebrows, a large, full, but well-shaped mouth, showing a set of white teeth, even teeth while speaking and a softly routed chin. The, the mahogany hue of her face with its covering of crinkly black hair and the large nostrils conveyed the impression that some of her ancestors were of African birth. She has a symmetrical

figure and is of about the medium height. She was dressed in black. Oh my God. Do you have any picture of what she looks like off of that? Yeah, yeah, we have pictures. I could, no, but I mean, like in your head, if you hear that description, I can like picture like two things kind of. Yeah, it's not. Yeah. It's just like what someone says to like a police sketch artist. Yeah, it's bad. So in time, her skin would be described many ways in articles.

I'm sure artfully and delicately. Dark brown like neither black or yellow, just, just between. Uh, the it's amazing. This is like, it's like race foodies. It's bad. But mostly shades of copper. They would call her dull copper, the color of a newborn penny, a copper tint or coppery is so fucked. Her hair was described as fluffy or kinky and unmanageable. Others wrote she couldn't be black because she spoke so well and had self-restraint. Oh, at least we have the heroes, Dave. At least we have the heroes in the story.

It's just full on, you know, just delightful racism, right? Just people are like, no, allow me as a white to describe what I think. In Orange, New Jersey, the venue owner locked the door before she spoke. So she had someone break the door hinges and then she went in and went right past the owner to the window, open it up and yell to the crowd to come inside. The owner, the owner that handed a musket to a 15 year old boy and told him to keep the crowd back and he ran to the cops. But then Lucy showed the cops the rental receipt and so they stayed out of it.

Oh, can I, don't you wish that, like, whatever, I'm not even going to say it. The Omaha Republican wrote that she was hurting Albert's cause, quote, the incoherent lunacy to which she gives event to discuss people. She should be muzzled. The police chiefs and editors thought her speeches were always to incite violence, but she still made money for the Haymarket 7. She was now making $750 a week on tour. Wow. In 1897, a lot of people in the labor cause were agreeing that she hurt the cause. Chicago cops were surveying her everywhere she went, but they would let her speak because they

thought that she would burn herself out or labor leaders would reject her. And if they got in, then people would come to her side. Right. Reporters are following her everywhere. They're going to all her speeches, sometimes in disguises. One went to an anarchist meeting. I'm a plumber. I hope she speaks to pipe rights. That's what I'm here for. One went to an anarchist meeting and was to disguise, and then a cop saw him and thought he looked menacing. So the cop went over to him and the reporter ran. And as he was running

out, his fake beard fell off. Excuse me, sir. You seem a little weird. Where's it going? Where's it going? Oh my God. He got so scared his beard fell off. His face is coming apart. This man is the invisible man. So how does it work? I've got freaked out. So my beard fell off. So the Haymarket families would go to the jail all the time and they would hang out in the

cells next door to the seven. Also reporters, celebrities would go, even curious people would just stop by during visit hours to see what the seven look like. Oh, they all look pretty skinny. Yeah. You guys aren't that scary. Go away. Like, I mean, you are a human zoo at that point. Lucy stopped the speaking tour in March 1887. The appeal happened and it was rejected in September and the executions were set for November 11th. Lucy was then arrested for the very first time a couple weeks after that decision for

being an agitator in Chicago on September 23rd. The judge let her go because he knew quote the depth of your sorrow. For the execution, wagon loads of guns, bullets, they're just bringing in all kinds of stuff because the jail is... Come on, boys. We've got to make sure they're dead. Now, the jail is worried that the anarchists and socialists are going to attack the jail and free them. The wives had a final meeting with their husbands the day before. Lucy went to the jail, but they did not allow her in. All the other wives were allowed in.

She threw up her hands and fell to the floor at a dead faint. That night, one of the prisoners, Louis Ling, bit off the top of a dynamite cap in his cell and blew off part of his face. So someone, as one of the wives had smuggled that in, he died six hours later. Others took deals, two of them, two others took deals and got life instead. That's a crazy way to go. Yeah, it's not a great way to go. There's got to be better ways. But they were really into bombs.

Was the light you put out there before you bit the dynamite head off? Well, what else are you going to do? You want to blow yourself up, right? It's got to be small. Yeah. I mean, I'd just like it would be weird if you blew half your face off and then they're like, all right, let's talk concessions. Let's compromise. And you're like, no, yeah. So now there's four that are going to be hung. The morning of the executions, armed soldiers everywhere in Chicago, they got the perimeter set up around the execution place, two blocks away.

They bring in two Gatling guns and four Howitzers that are on standby. Lucy comes again. She comes with the kids to the jail so they can say goodbye to Albert, but they're not allowed past the perimeter. She tries to crawl into her rope. Finally, they arrest her. They take Lucy to a police station far away, the strip searcher, and they put her in a jail. And that's where she and the kids were when Albert was hung. Lucy spent the night wailing and holding Albert's picture surrounded by friends in her apartment. But two days later, she's back at the office editing Albert's coming book, Anarchism. It

is published on December 10th. Now they understood Albert and her understood he was going to be a martyr. So this book is being released a month later for a reason. The deaths of the Haymarket four martyrs indeed only inspired leftists. Eugene Debs, Emma Goldman, who was 18 at the time, quote, the most decisive influence in my existence. So all these names we know now are people who are inspired by this. Leftists knew their face, the dead's faces in Latin America. Their pictures are hung on walls in labor halls all over Europe, like their martyrs.

Lucy called herself an anarchist communist now. She believed trade unions and other self-governing groups should take the place of essential government. No state, no money, no private property, workers own the means of production. The United Labor Party collapsed. The nights of labor have been ground down to be totally insignificant. So the American Federation of Labor, the AFL, rises up. Chicago is growing very quickly. You know, it's an industrialization happening. Tons of more factories, immigrants are pouring in. So owners, of course, hire scabs. The middle class, clergy, sociologists and political scientists want to keep capitalism, but make it better for the poor. So they just

kind of want to, you know, find the rough edges, find, make the rough edges of capitalism nice. Sure, sure. Lucy is really the only loud voice calling for a revolution now. The only one still using the language of violence. She's very against the compromised social reformers want to stand out from the increasing number of people preaching economic inequality. She starts going to farms where she's not invited and just walking up and speaking. That's great.

So the social reformers, socialist stuff, they're having meetings talking and then she rolls in. And the reason she can do it is because the workers fucking love her. She's that popular. Yeah. You know, they're talking about inequality and stuff. And then she comes up and she's like, let's fucking flip some shit over. Yeah. I mean, it really speaks to like if someone has a message, it's just like, you know, that is it's so it's like rarefied air now. But I mean, that is, yeah, that's And, and what's more problematic fighting her or allowing her to speak? Well, in this

case, they all realized that they wanted everybody on their side instead of dividing. So they let her speak. On June 20th, 1888, Lucy was driving a buggy with banners all over it that had Albert's last words on them. So it's just, she's cruising. What were his last words again? Hey, can I have a hot dog? Right. Something's not agreeing with me. And she's handing out ads for the book Anarchism. A cop stops her, asks us what she's doing. She screams, quote, you blue quote. She screams, quote, you blue coated murderer, the souls of my husband and his companions will creep from their graves to haunt you and your children's

children. She was then arrested and put in jail for two days. Still worth it, right? Yeah. She traveled to London and she gave speeches. She also wrote an article about the voyage over. It's just a straight up travel article. It's one of the very, very rare articles in which she admits that she enjoyed herself somewhere. So yeah, so people reading it were like, this is terrible. This is not what I, this is not what I like reading from her. She's talking about the pillow, the pillow. That's a positive nightmare.

She took in porters in her house. Bavarian immigrant, Martin Robert Letcher was 28 was one. He was married with two kids. He had named his second daughter after Lucy. That's how much he liked Lucy, Lulu Lucy. A trimming wrote, he was good looking, quote, he has a finely shaped head, expressive brown eyes, a small black moustache and wears rimless glasses. Okay. I mean, it does make me feel a little better about her. I mean, her description is still far too much, far as the color of her skin, but it is like Jesus Christ, who gives a fuck about the rims of this guy's glasses.

But they have to pay. They rimmed glasses. I know, but do they? Like, I don't know what he looks like. They want to pick a picture, they want to pick a picture in someone's head, but now notice the difference between how the long description of her and him. It's the color of a cloud. It's the color of a cloud, but also with a little bit of brightness in it. So the summer of 19, so imagine if sunlight hit a pancake. That's the color of this man. How do I describe this white man's color?

In the summer of 1988, Lacher leaves his family and moves in with Lucy. And then they just start going out in public together. Now they're an item? Yeah. Okay. So he left his family first. And they are porking? They're porking.

All right. Chicago police chief Hubbard. Let's take a second to just, let's all picture it for a little while. Come on, Dave, let's savor the flavor. Chicago police chief Hubbard announced Lucy was banned from any quote, violent anarchist harang. So he further explained, she simply can't speak in Chicago. So he's barring her from speaking, which I don't know if anybody knows anything about

the first amendment, but that's actually. It's legal. It's okay. Days later, a judge rules against the judge. What I'm trying to say is we are removing her first amendment right. Thank you. I'm sorry, I got caught up in all that legalese jargon for a second. What we're doing is stripping this person of her actual rights.

Okay. First amendment rights. They're good, right? Until you say something I don't like. And then I gotta say fuck them. First amendment right allowed, you know, it's the old fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me sort of thing. That's what the freedom of speech.

All right. Back to work. Even though a judge ruled they can't do that, cops still blocked Lucy from venues. And then they would arrest her for disorderly conduct when she protested. Okay. Great. So, right. So she has no course of action.

No. In October, we're actually taking away the judges right to speak, because what's the punishment for that? Like they can just keep putting her in jail. The judge keeps saying it's fine, but she still spent a day in jail. And then, and then unless you're going to put the cops in jail, they're going to keep doing it and they're not going to put the cops in jail. So.

Well, which is also what I mean, right? I mean, that is a lot of times the tactic is to just be adjudge, agitate the shit out of you, you know, follow you, all that shit in October, 1890, her eight year old daughter died of lymphedema. The charity group that was set up to give the hay market, the charity group that was set up to give the hay market a martyred widows funds called Pioneer Aid, then started having issues with Lucy after this because of Latchard. So they have a meeting to discuss cutting off her money in which Lucy got so mad she

grabbed a book and tried to hit the main woman in the head who was leading the attack. Wow. Like the only question I have is how many pages? That's right. They didn't cut off her funds in September, the group charged Lucy with raising money for herself through renting and lectures and not telling them. Some of them back Lucy in a meeting, the tribune called it quote, a row of the reds. Lucy started bringing her son to events now to get sympathy, to be able to sell more books

and pamphlets and stuff. She said it was for dramatic effect. It's great though. I mean, may as well. That's the only reason I've, that's the closest I've ever come to thinking of having a child right now. Then Albert, it always makes me laugh when people are like, don't use kids for political things.

You're like, what, they're starving and they can't get stuff like why, why wouldn't you know? No, no, no. Just for advertising. Then Albert Jr. ran away in April, 1891. So he just, I'm sick of being a sympathy prompt. He says he's going to school.

It doesn't come back. I think he's older. He's like a 12 or something. I'm going to, I'm going away and I'm not coming back. And he's gone for six weeks. Okay. Wow. Shit.

They eventually find him in Waukesha, Wisconsin. Hell yeah. Waukesha. There's no explanation, but he clearly must have stayed with someone. That's where Albert went when he was on the run. So he must have, he had a connection. So then things fall apart with Latcher. Lucy has him arrested for malicious trespass.

They had argued and then he punched her and then she hit him with a flat iron. Well, yeah, don't punch her dumbass. Don't fuck with an anarchist. Yeah. Seriously. That's, that should be the slogan, punch us. We hit you with a flat iron. All right.

Listen, we're willing to negotiate. Another time she locked him out and he used an axe to take down the door and then he destroyed the furniture. So that's a, that's a temper. So that's prior. That's preshining too. Just before it was an iconic thing to do to put an axe through a door and pop your head in.

He has Johnny. So it goes to court and now, uh, and lecture tells the judge that everything was fine until two weeks ago and to prove how much they were in love. He showed a pin that Lucy had given him, which was a tiny gallows in noose. You see in our culture, this has great, great meaning. This is essentially a wedding ring. Okay. Like nothing turns my crank more than seeing these items.

And she knew that and that's why she gave it to me. I'm getting a little riled up. Just looking at it. No. Uh, he said he just lost his job and Lucy wanted someone who could pay rent and then Lucy yelled at him, quote, if you say that again, I'll kill you. Wait. She said that in the court.

Yeah. Oh my God. It's, uh, abject, I'm objection and I'm the judge. In the end, uh, a lot, she was fine, uh, $25. Okay. Now, look, she's a propagandist, which all movements need her and, uh, others influence led to change newspapers and reformers began using the term slavery to describe women working for pennies a day.

So that's the kind of change that, that you can make, which is big change because that makes people think of things different getting in the heads of everyone for Lucy. That's a victory. Uh, and she still talked about dynamite and she told the reporter that workers should quote rise and overthrow aristocracy by means of dynamite. That's amazing. What an amazing thing to be able to publicly say. Oh yeah.

You know, it's again, I would say that they should go to the negotiating table with a lot of dynamite. All right. Well, we're going to go print that Lucy. Have a good day. Thank you so much. Uh, now on tours, they, the other cities had taken note and they, and she was now being locked out of venues by police and then arrested for rioting or disorder.

But what that would do is then the payers would write about it and then that would lead to protests against what the cops did. Yes. It's worse. It's just giving her more attention and then she's speaking outside in front of a crowd. It's not doing any, it's not doing anything. Right. Uh, but there's more cops and more cops.

They had a pioneer aid fundraiser and 100 cops came. So they're just, just to fucking watch and try to intimidate and social leaders, however, are now dreading, uh, her taking over meetings. She would just stroll in uninvited, go up to the stage and workers would go crazy. They see her as a saint, not all, but enough. Police leaders like Tommy Morgan had to watch as she shouted, quote, before we can have peace in a society like ours, rivers of blood will have to run. How am I going to follow that?

What the hell am I going to say? I would say, I, my whole thing is that the pen is mightier than the, so what does she's talking about? Fucking blood. I was going to talk about the petition, but that seems really like that. I, like she's the closer, but she's going in front of us. I mean, my, this is basically, this is, was I was going to end on something like this, but not even, I was going to say, you know, they need to bleed a little bit.

Jesus Christ. Oh my God. She's got props. This is over. I'm done. I don't want to be on the lineup. Take me off. Take me off.

She would also preach that voting was absolutely bullshit and they would see capitalist heads on spikes. We need to freeze certain humans and preserve them for future as well. Like if we could thaw her right now and be like, 40 years, we take her out of thaw and we let her. Like just every generation gets her for five years and then you re-freezer, which would be great for her. I'm sure she'd be like, what a life.

Thank you so much. All right. And everyone who loves a debt again, morning, and again, people like this are important because if they're not scared of you, they're going to, they're going to, there's no leverage. I mean, you have nothing already. The only thing you have that they don't have is fear. Yeah, the mayor and the chief of police in Chicago banned the red flag from workers' meetings and parades and said the American flag had to be flown.

So again, this is all coming off of the anti-labor wave because of the hay market, you know, affair. But at the same time, there's more workers who are getting fired up. So at a meeting, chief Hubbard burst in with his cops and demanded an American flag be flown and the entire crowd hissed. Lucy then yelled, quote, hang the murders of my husband and a big row followed. And there were tons of arrests. Oh my God.

I mean, it's great. I love it when like one side is able to rehearse what they're going to say and that is just completely undercut by the ad lib. Yeah. The Academy crash of 1893 hit, you know, hundreds of banks closed, thousands of businesses. Lucy's rhetoric, like you just said, made for the times. The Chicago Tribune called for cops to restrain her as they would, quote, an enraged Tigris. More goodness.

A monument to the Haymarket martyrs was put up and the next day, the governor pardoned the Haymarket man in prison. So the three guys that are, oh, there were three. Okay. One was convicted separately and then two or two were the guys who, who, I don't know what they, they like, didn't they take a plea deal kind of you took like a plea deal sort of like something and then, right. So they get out, but they won't have anything to do with Lucy.

They now completely reject anarchism. So her old sort of crew is becoming distant. Some moved away, some died, some are changing and are about voting. Socialist leaders are actually getting positions in government. So people like, oh, these guys are doing a thing and the anarchists are still just yelling. New leftist leaders are rising. Honorary Jack Jackson was known as the father of labor slugging for organizing workers to force other workers to join strikes.

Wow. Okay. That's the best name. The father of labor slugging. It's really, it's really, I just love it. Yeah. Yeah. That's really your name eventually.

They should earn it Dave. That should be a comic book character in a Marvel movie. Oh, that's way better. And a skinny guy plays it a regular human Eugene Debs founded the American Railway Union. Emma Goldman was becoming known as she advocated for sexual freedom, but Lucy did not like the new trend in anarchism, which was radical sexual freedom for men and women. And she started writing articles against it and that distanced herself from the new anarchists. Right.

Right. Right. Right. In September, September 1896, she published a piece called Objections to Variety. She ridiculed free sex as wishful thinking, said she was concerned about how it corrupt younger people. It was called Varietism. This is an error, correct?

Right. I mean, to me, it would seem like I get the idea of like, you know, being very specific in your movement. But in retrospect, this would be, she would have more wind in her sails if she were to be like, I agree with this and on top, right? No. Yes and no. I don't know because it's a very interesting thing.

Like I agree with the sexual freedom part. But then, you know, if you have these older workers, read the, you know, are you reading the room? Is she reading the room? Is Emma Goldman reading the room? We know Emma Goldman is against unions. So she's not reading that room. So I think it's a very complicated thing.

Right. If I was her, I would not have been outspoken if I had these feelings. Like that's why they zip it. Just zip it and keep doing your labor stuff and your dynamite stuff, but just zip it on that. Don't make them your enemy, basically. Right. Yeah, you don't need more enemies.

That's right. It's called varietism. She said, if varietism had anything to do with anarchism, quote, then I am not an anarchist. And then in the same paper she wrote that in, all the other writers in the next issue then made fun of her. So it's not a great, it's not a great thing, doesn't work out well. Goldman's rise bothered Lucy. Emma would stop in Chicago on tours, she did not believe in labor unions.

She said the cancer of trade unionism and she said the leaders are corrupt. The press would always lump them together though, because they're the two leading female anarchists. So anytime they write an article, they'd always bring up the other one. And Emma had no problem talking shit about Lucy, quote, the success of the meeting was unfortunately weakened by Lucy Parsons who instead of condemning the unjustified vile arrests of the three comrades in Portland and the ever increasing censorship by Comstock and associates took a stand against the editor of the firebrand because he tolerated articles about free love.

So it's a different kind of anarchism. It's social anarchism. But again, she is undermining a fight that just who gives a shit? Like just stay out of it. You don't believe me. Stay out of it, because it's only going to harm you to attack them about that. So Emma saw Lucy as a hypocrite because she's living the free love life, right? She's living with this dude.

There's all these rumors that she's banging her borders. Banging her borders? The people are boarding in her house like she's, everyone's like, gosh, she's fucking these guys. Right. But then she's writing about normy respectability. She invented Tinder. Eugene Debs forms the Social Democracy of America, the SDA.

Lucy was invited to serve on the board of directors. It goes on for a little while, but then there's a strike in Pennsylvania, and then it turns to violence. 19 strikers are killed by cops. And then the chapter there puts out a statement saying workers should kill millionaires and burn their homes. And then authorities are like, that's fucking terrible. What is Debs, the SDA doing?

What are they doing with Lucy Parsons? This is clearly her work and the anarchists. And so he has to distance himself, doesn't want to be associated with Lucy, who the press is calling the anarchist negris now, and calling her her followers bloodthirsty, which is amazing because the cops just fucking killed, actually killed people. But Dave, Dave, that's, Dave, that's hired, paid, tech care, paid bloodthirst. Vastly different. Vastly different.

The difference here is that the police killed human beings, and the response was, well, we should kill the people behind the police. And then everyone's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You have any idea how violent you sound? So then Lucy denounces Debs and she says he has a big heart and a smaller brain. So she's out of the SDA. Okay. But again, she's an anarchist.

She doesn't really last long in these groups because she's an anarchist. Just about to say, I mean, is anyone more of an anarchist in their heart that the person is like, and fuck you? Yeah. Yeah. So she receded out of the public eye for a bit. She sort of just kind of stayed in her home. She would write columns weekly.

She tended garden. She sold chicken. She sold eggs. Money was coming from Pioneer Aid. She taught an anarchist Sunday school. Amazing. I just, can that not, can that, can we just do that? Can we do that again?

I mean, how, how do you even, you can just fucking set it up. Why don't we have a socialist school? Why don't we have a socialist private elementary school? After my Sunday sermon, we will all go gather next door where Lucy will literally undercut everything that I have state. Okay. Well, but it would be fascinating to, to have children raised believing in local community, local groups, and yeah, that the federal government, it would be interesting to see

how that would change. Well, I mean, look, I mean, the trick, can you fucking imagine what our society would look like if there was a way that you were permitted to teach the reality of government in school? I mean, how? It would be 100% different society. Yeah. I mean, your society would just be, obviously there's the reasons you can't is because

that they will not pay for that. But you know, that reality dose, it's as opposed to the indoctrination you get now, I mean, with that country look like, I mean, look, there's a reason, there's a reason they don't teach you about Eugene Debs and Emma Goldman and Lucy Parsons, but they do teach you about the vile racists and that there's a reason for that. Yeah. Yeah. These are ideas they don't want going into your head.

Yeah. The other ones, no, they're okay with. So she becomes a peddler in her neighborhood. She's selling soap, tea and coffee and spices around the neighborhood. Just soap, huh? That's right. Interesting brand name. Well, the soap doesn't believe in body odor.

I like that. It believes it's going to take truth to your body. Interesting. Fight the smells. Take the system down. Really? You mean the stinks in my body? That's right.

Take B.O. out and start from new scratch, whole new system for you. My God, you sell a good hunk of soap, my dear. I'll take two. So then in August, 1896, she leaves the stove on and her house burns down, which I feel like happened constantly. Back then. Yeah. My house burned down once.

It's just a thing. Yeah. Yeah. That's true. It is true. My house burned down. So she's also during this time sort of become increasingly anti-imperialist. So her writings are more anti-imperialist.

The few speeches she gives, very anti-imperialist. There's the Cuban invasion. There's other things happening that she's very opposed to. And Albert, who's now 21, goes to her and says that he's going to enlist to fight in the war in the Philippines. Wait, who says that? Albert, her son, Albert, Jr. Right.

Sorry. A little Elb. Right. So he and Lucy get into a fight, a physical fight. Okay. Look out for that iron boy. And she takes him to court and said he tried to stab her and that he was mentally unsound. Wow.

Okay. So she is really trying to keep him. Well, that's a dangerous thing to do at this time to call someone mentally unsound. So in court, a lot of his friends speak for him and says he's not mentally unsound, but the judge declares him insane and sends him to an asylum where he spends the rest of his life. Jesus Christ. I can't say for sure, but I don't know how much her son going to fight for an American

imperialist war is going to hurt her cause. So who knows? Right. So Lucy is now 49 years old. Anarchists are committing political violence around the world. King Umberto of Italy is killed by an anarchist in July 1900. US papers report that he had been influenced by Lucy. On September 6th, an anarchist attacked President McKinley and he died nine days later.

Wow. Lucy comes out and condemns the assassination, calling the assassin a lunatic. I mean, she has to kind of write. We'll hear the quote, quote, no person of sound intellect would assail the head of this Republic. And then she went on because he would quickly be replaced by a successor. Nice, very fine line to walk there. When you know your ideology and it's in your bones, you can speak to your point better than fucking anybody.

You just can. That is amazing though. Quote McKinley should not have been killed while she's finally coming around because he'll just be replaced with someone else who should be killed. Sweet God. She needs to stop halfway through her thoughts. She finished the quote, the trust and those person who control the necessities of life are the ones against whom the energies of all classes must be focused.

She sees saying the president doesn't matter. Kill the rich guys, the system, kill the system. What a eulogy Emma Goldman also came out and said the assassin had the quote, beautiful soul of a child and the energy of a giant. I mean, out of those two. It's no choice. So, so I'm dealing with a baby giant killer. So anarchists are now rounded up all over.

Alan Pinkerton suggests that they should be sent to an anarchy colony on an island in the Philippines. But yeah, the fucking honestly do that. Yeah, get a focus, make a fucking anarchist island. Enjoy the invasion. You fucking idiot. Are you kidding me? All right.

Well, we just left about there with a bunch of pens and paper. We won't be hearing from them again. You idiot. They're aquatic. They have gills now because of McKinley and the Italian thing and just other bombings that are happening. All of the country people are getting really, really concerned about anarchists. But after this McKinley thing, there's no violence that follows.

There is a lot of labor violence in Chicago in 1905. The industrial workers of the world is founded in Chicago on July 27, 1905. It's socialists, mostly socialists, but also anarchists, other radicals, trying to bring everybody together. Okay. They're called the Wobblies. One big union to inspire masses to destroy capitalism. Eugene Debs is a founder, like, so it's mostly socialists, like I said.

Lucy was one of 12 women, women founders, another was Mother Jones. Lucy came on as a speaker and editor of the paper, which she loved. She controlled the content. She wrote tons of articles. She followed a lot of the unrest that was happening in Russia. She cheered it on. But she soon became disillusioned with the inaction of the Wobblies. She wrote it was, quote, floundering around like a ship lost at sea without a rudder.

So again, she doesn't like being part of a group. So she starts agitating on behalf of labor leaders whose persecution or death made the Haymarket's legacy meaningful. So it's like anybody who is a martyr or persecuted, she's trying to tie it in that this is a longer battle and that other men have done this. Sacrifice for this, right. The union miners in Idaho were accused of killing the governor of Idaho with a bomb. Their defense became a cause, a celebra of white laboring classes.

And then they're acquitted in the trial. The Pinkerton's had been involved. It came out in the trial. And Lucy said that although, quote, the Pinkerton plague is still at large in society, the acquittal is a new era. Now the Pinkerton plague is still at large in a society we're going to have to put out as a t-shirt. Yeah, right.

Seriously. Because it is. They are literally, not even just the system of beliefs, but the actual Pinkerton's exist in Amazon. They are working strongly against the environmental movement. Quote for the first, this is what Lucy said, quote, for the first time in American history, the working class was united and stood together shoulder to shoulder. So she saw the trial of the Idaho three guys as something that brought everybody together

and now they were all a unit moving forward. She comes more and more into keeping the memory of the Haymarket bombing alive. And then the economy knows dies in 1907, as I don't know this about America, but that happens pretty regularly. Unemployment spikes, Goldman and her crew are dominating the stages though, and Lucy's kind of off to the side. But then at one meeting, the unemployed just started chanting for her to speak. A reporter said she, quote, offered to lead an army to City Hall next Thursday afternoon.

So the workers still love her and they love how she speaks and she's inspiring and she's what they want to hear. So a march plan on Bloody Sunday, but George Shippey, who is now the chief police, wants to stop the march. He's not worried about the socialists. He's worried about the anarchists. He said they sounded exactly like they did before Haymarket, quote, never in the history of Chicago have anarchists and other enemies of the law and order been more dangerous than

at the present. He told everyone his red squad had 10 veterans who had been at Haymarket. On March 2nd, 20 year old Russian immigrant, Lazarus Averbuck, was furious when Shippey wouldn't allow Goldman to speak at a hall. So Averbuck went to Shippey's home and stabbed Shippey and shot his son. Oh my God. Shippey then managed to kill Averbuck. Reporters immediately went to Lucy for a quote.

Yeah, I'm sure. I can't Dave. I can't wait steadily. The anarchist spirit is growing and then she says, she says, we have 40 groups and you university of Chicago professors are joining. So she's and then none of that's true. There aren't 40 fucking groups. There's not that many.

It's like improv and she's just, yes, Andy, yes, and we're going to do it again. Yes. She is. She is using the moment to fucking scare the shit out of them. Right. Right. Where you, where you would, I think in our frame of thinking today, this would be a time for you to condemn this while, but it's hard.

If you're an anarchist, you're like, no, no, this is the model. Have any quotes? It's a shame. The man lived. Next. And it's just funny that they don't realize what her deal is. They still don't get it. But also it sells papers.

Right. Like it's a whole, the thing just feeds on it. Oh yeah. Why don't you, she's essentially using the way the media is constructed against itself. Right. Right. Like in our, for in our perspective, it would be the good Trump. Yeah.

And again, it works so well that reporters just start reporting that her boarding house is an Anarchy school, even though she never said that. Which is like good, right? Yes. Yes. Let them gossip in that direction for once. The more large and dangerous they think you are, the more power you have. She has an Anarchy robot.

When her and six other anarchists get together, they form into Anar bot. One enormous robot capable of more Anarchy than we can possibly fathom. I've seen them unite in the hills. They do it. They've got a Samurai sword. So obviously all this is a big deal. President Roosevelt delivers a special message to Congress declaring that the country must be free and quote, it must be safe.

If the anarchist cares nothing for human life, then the government should not particularly care about his. So he calls to outlaw and deport anarchists. Wow. Two anarchists blow up the Los Angeles Times building in October 1910. Oh, you didn't hear about that in history books? No. On the East Coast, Italian immigrant anarchists Luigi Galliani call for open insurrection.

The new head of the IWW, Vincent St. John, tries to distance himself and calls Lucy and her kind anarchist freaks. So did you say freaks? I could put her neck to no nevermind. I won't do it again. Nevermind. So she goes to help labor campaigns out West, the all the IWW labor campaigns, which we've we covered, you know, a couple times where speakers stand on cell boxes in the street

and they're trying to get workers arrested to just pack the jails over the next few years. She would travel back and forth at one point in a New York police crackdown. She tried to find a way around speaking bands by saying she was the apostle of a new religion. Hey, listen, by the I mean, religion loopholes, yeah, yeah. That should work. Right. If you want to give your your big religions the free freedom to say whatever they want, then why not use it?

Much of anarchy. Some members of the IWW did want more. They wanted to cultivate radical factions within craft unions. The craft unions are a little more timid, a little more conservative. So they want to craft radical people within the craft unions to push towards direct action and revolution and away from timid policies. Right. So it's kind of like putting moles inside of a union is kind of a way to, you know, just

unsettle things and drive that union to the left. Right. Well, meanwhile, though, you have like cops in the unions who are like, I'm not so sure the left is the right if I may just counter counterpoint also a legitimate union member here on the merits of my belief system. I'm not so sure now's the time to push it. I mean, I really think incrementalism is the drug we're all addicted to. Am I right?

Come on. Who's with me? Less is more. Less is more. Come on. Less is more. Now imagine hearing this story so far and and then and then just think about the fact that the cops unions are part of the AFL CIO cops are the ones who crack the skulls of

AFL CIO teamsters and whatever else. Right. They shouldn't be in that fucking union. So yeah, whatever. So the syndicate. So out of this idea of putting these people into unions to drive them left, the syndicates League of America, North America, the SLNA is created to make that happen. Workers were to understand their power and transform traditional craft unions into agents

of anti-capitalist theory and action. Our patration is to be rejected, sabotage is to be promoted. Workers were to realize they were brothers and that the only way to better their condition was by open warfare with their masters and so that, that is the thing that they make. And then of course it falls into internal fighting. Lucy, Lucy speaks in Cleveland and tells the crowd to disrupt production at its source quote, if this cannot be done by peaceful methods, use force, tear machines apart, openly destroy property and force capitalists to listen to the demands of their employees.

She ended with quote, an anarchist is a man with a bomb in each hand and a knife between his teeth. That is quite an image. What if he has to pee? We don't pee. Jeff, we got to say, just please, please stop asking questions. You keep asking quite like that's a super cool image that she just made. It's a badass image.

I love it. I'm just curious if the guy's got to take a whiz. What does he do? Can I ask you a question? Drop the knife? Put a bomb down? Can I ask you a question? Do you have to pee right now?

Do you have to pee? No, but I'm one of those guys who once it's time to go and once we're on the road, it just, I start thinking about it and then I have to go and then it just compounds itself and I keep thinking about how much I have to go. So I'm just saying if I'm the guy with the two bombs in each hand, I love the image, two bombs in each hand and a knife, let's say I got to take a one. Where am I going to make wet? How am I going to make, what am I just going to pee in my pants?

I don't think anyone's going to take a man with two bombs and knife and a pants load of piss that seriously. Maybe what we do is this and I'm, shoot me down if I'm wrong. Let's have the guy's dick out. That way nobody like me is hung up on the bathroom stuff. All in favor. Aye. All right, you were literally the only eye that was, no, I know.

Yeah. I thought I heard one guy whisper. Should we do another? Ah, no, it's just me. Okay. All right. So I guess I'm the only one hung up on that. So the guy, you know what?

He'll hold it. He'll hold it. He will hold it. He will be a man. Worst case, he'll tuck his penis in between his legs and I'm not saying it's only men. I just don't know how the vagina piece. Go ahead. You had a question.

And every single time someone brings up something that we should do, you always sort of work with the idea and tell, we have our dicks out. I drink so much water that it's hard for me to understand how one would go to the bathroom. And I hope that that's coming across. I love the idea. Yeah. I'm not a big dick guy. I'm just saying, how's he go?

I'll back off. So I love it. Two knives in each bomb and a mouth in a hand. I love it. Let's move. So Lucy then spent a year on the West Coast with striking workers going up and down the coast. At this point, she's traveling with a guy named George Markstahl, who is a nomad worker,

son of German immigrants. So they're together. They're a couple. Okay. We don't know when they started. We just know that they got arrested together in LA. Like that's how you know she's with someone. Dave, that can be quite hypnotic, quite sensual in a rest.

Now anarchism has changed so much that now it has a lot of poets and writers. So it's gone through that sexual revolution thing and now it's going to serve a Bohemian thing, going against moral codes. They freak people out about sexual taboos instead of wage slavery. So it's this big shift. Actually, there's now being hosted by artists when she goes on tours instead of workers. The middle class and professors are becoming interested. So it's kind of like reaching this different sort of class of people also.

Right. The class is above the previous class? Yeah. These are more, these are wealthier, better off, intellectuals. And they're embracing it less for the union stuff and more for the social taboo going against that. So she's about 64 years old now. She joined the Wobblies in 1917.

Now the Wobblies, sorry, the U.S. joined World War I in 1917. Okay. So the war's been going on for a little bit, the U.S. decides to join. Everyone's pretty, everyone pretty understands where they stand on whether or not they want the U.S. part of the war. Laborers don't see the point. Right. No, I'm not all of them, but you know, these laborers we're talking about.

The Wobblies start going after industries that are needed for the war effort. So they're targeting the industries that are most needed because that's when workers can get the most. Totally. Right. Right. Lumber, copper, oil, things like that. They pushed workers to walk off and stop the process.

They're literally using labor to shut down war. Yeah. The threat of shutting down war, which I mean honestly, and this is like 100 years ago, but I mean, if you could find a way to do that today, oh my God. Yeah. And they're having good results. There's 150,000 Wobblies at this point. They're denouncing the war.

People are attracted to that. Governors, mayors, and sheriffs then come at them fucking hard and fast. Halls are raided. Members are arrested in mass. There's mass trials. Wobblies and supporters are just put in prison. Lucy says nothing. The Espionage Act is passed, then the Sedition Act, which silence and punish dissenters.

166 Wobblies are charged with 10,000 counts in Chicago, 101 convicted. Anna Goldman and Alexander Bergman are convicted of obstructing the draft, and then they are deported to Russia. Jesus. Lucy still doesn't write much. Bombs are sent to judges and politicians. There's a general strike in Seattle. So this is revolutionary stuff that's happening.

In that month, Lucy announces she's going to go on a speaking tour to explain the Mexican Revolution from the other side. I don't know what's going on here. I couldn't find why that was, but it's a very strange and glaring shift. The silence into the speaking tour. Yeah. And then talking about the Mexican Revolution at a time when you're talking about... The Seattle general strike is a huge moment in American history.

It's just what she always wanted. Chicago police arrest George for threatening to kill President Wood or Wilson because someone said they heard him talking about it on a streetcar. Where you talk about it? Sure, obviously. Can I use the loud speaker thing for a second? I am going to kill him. He will perish and also we're at Main Street, Main Street and Clark.

Sorry. Who are you talking about? Who are you going to kill? The president of the United States, Truman. All right. Next stop. What's the next one? Third Street.

Anyone is the third street? We've got shops and carnival games. Oh. That's us. Yes. No. I'm excited about the carnival. Oh, you'll love it.

You'll have fun. And don't worry. Don't worry that lifestyle will be preserved when I get what I want, which is Truman's head in my hands without his body. All right. I get off here too. Thanks, everybody. Albert Junior died of tuberculosis in the asylum.

Okay. He had been there for 23 years. He was constantly beaten by guards and inmates, most probably because of Lucy's activities. Right. Hey, tell your mom to stop standing up for us. So now Lucy's not lived both of her kids and her husband. Her eyesight is starting to go bad. In the 20s, now, part of me, I didn't say this, part of me, one of the reasons she may

have backed off with all that stuff going on is she's just getting older, man. Yeah. I don't know how much fight, I don't know how much, how long people can keep up that. Right. I mean, we know from the revolutionaries in American history, you know, the Fred Hamptons and certainly all of the many, many, many, many people who have now been killed who were leaders at Ferguson. The lifespan is probably, is usually pretty short.

Look at Abby Hoffman. The time that you can do it is exhausting to your, to your being. Mental. Yeah. Yeah. So in the 20s, she's often found in a park that was called Bug House Square in Chicago. It's full of artists, runaways, drifters. She was just this frail old woman who had an amazing speaking voice who had come out

to the park and speak and then passed the hat for money. Sometimes old guys from the old days would recognize her and give her a buck and, you know, she also sold booklets and pamphlets from a tattered shopping bag. And then in 1925, she joined a new group, the ILD, they're communists. If she was ever in the papers at this point, it was now in the back pages like nostalgic features. There's just a dwindling number of anarchists. Just anarchists are just fading and going away and wobblies too, right?

The wobblies have been crushed. They had a, after what? Why? Well, it hasn't worked, but then the other ways socialism and communism are seen as being more effective. The new, okay. And remember, they've been specifically during the war, like that was brutality that the American government visited upon them.

It was brutality. Right. It was political persecutions and it did what it was supposed to do. Like the wobblies are pretty much done. They had a fracture and, I mean, it's still around. And I actually will talk about that at the end because I think we should all join the wobblies again. In the twenties, the people of Chicago found other groups.

They became fans. This is the other part. They became fans of movie actors, radio and nightclub singers and sports teams. They listened to political debates, comedy and music on the radio. The masses became consumers no longer worker revolutionaries. People worked to feed their kids, but also now to buy radios, phonographs, telephones and tickets to events. Consumer communities created the social bonds that used to be union halls and worker collectives

and they now competed with the workers. Feels good. Feels good. There were Chicago anarchists and there still were some around, but they saw Lucy as a dupe because she was associated with the communist ILD. Frank Beck and Ben Reitman, who I don't know what episode that was, but that was a while ago, they had something they called the Fellowship of the Reconciliation Tour. Really well-off white people would come and pay money on this tour to talk to sexologists,

black activists, labor radicals, tour was all day and it cost 50 cents and they'd get to meet these people from the past and get a bunch of short lectures all day long. Lucy spoke to groups about Haymarket, the wobbly xanarchism. She made a little money, she's still in front of people, but it's almost like, so the left has now become Kyle Cease's comedy camp. It's an interesting thing that you go to visit the past. It's nostalgic and you get to talk to experts and it's a seminar. It's a seminar, but sideshow of what isn't, what didn't come to be, a look back, a retrospect.

She joined the IALD Executive Committee in 1927. Also Anna were up in Sinclair and Clarence Darrow. In November, she was the guest of honor at the annual IALD meeting, there were 286 delegates from 30 countries. She spoke after a communist march and she said she thought the communists would, quote, go on and on and will not pass away like the other organizations because I think they have the sustainability. She didn't realize that the communists would next be crushed the way the wobblies and anarchists

were by the United States government. Even in a roided up fashion. Because if someone has different ideas that are bad and evil, then certainly that's why you crush them. It's not because those ideas are good and possibly threatening. It's also amazing how quickly they can label ideas bad and get everybody to believe it. When the depression came, Lucy was very disappointed that Chicago workers enthusiastically supported the Democratic Party and FDR's initiatives which were designed to smooth the rough edges

of industrial capitalism. She knew the Democrats had never delivered for the working class and thought the new deal would be both inadequate to crush capitalism and at the same time would destroy radical possibilities. But even Communist Party leaders expressed general support for new deal initiatives. In April 1934, Lucy was made an honorary chair of the Chicago May Day Parade. At it she blamed herself and her comrades for, quote, showing the shortcomings of others but totally unable to achieve tangible gains.

Anarchism is a dead issue in American life today. On March 7th, 1942, her wood stove caught fire and, again, firefighters found her corpse in the kitchen. George Maskell had come home from shopping and saw the fire, tried to rush in to save her, but he also died. So for the next 75 years, anarchist, socialist, communist, liberal farmers would all claim Lucy Parsons was one of them. But she's an anarchist.

She joined the communists at the end just because there was nothing else. Yeah, because she was tired. She's an anarchist and she's, people who will scare people while you can do other things are super, super important. Yeah. All the sources were from this book, Goddess of Anarchy by Jacqueline Jones. It's a very, very good book about Lucy Parsons and, obviously, a lot of it includes Albert. It's where both episodes came from.

And boy, howdy did they. All right. Well, we tried. Have a good one. Bye.