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Research Day & Innovation Showcase 2015

Research Day 2015 Tom Goyens, PhD

Research Day 2015 Tom Goyens, PhD

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Research Day 2015 Tom Goyens, PhD

welcome everyone to the 2015 edition of the SU Research Day and Innovation
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Showcase this is our third annual edition of this particular event we
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appreciate everyone being here
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special thanks to our Provost dr. Diane Allen who is on her way here from a
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meeting at the system office so she should be here she said probably fifteen
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or twenty minutes so special thanks to dr. Alan and the rest of the exec staff
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in a president dr. Janet L es bakra her support of this event and research and
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scholarship on this campus we really appreciate everything that they do for
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us for a final faculty presentation of the afternoon we have doctor tom goings
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of the history department gotta talk to us about the time of his presentation is
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johan most and his men can prolly said I was wrong but I'm from Mississippi and
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anarchist family in New York 1888 through 1907
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so the anarchists last on the schedule I see what's going on here
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well thank you for coming out and also thank you to the Imperial bomb for the
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invitation alright so I I want to give you something about my own research in
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the field of radical history history of the anarchist movement and so it's sort
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of a specific set here that's what I'm working on
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before that I need to make some sort of comments about anarchism use when I
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usually when I speak about locust history even in an academic setting I
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have to all I have to sort of doing a throat clearing so to speak and that has
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to do with a really deeply rooted misconception I think you probably sort
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of know what I'm talking about here so the misconception goes like this
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the anarchists were crazy bomb throwers who intent on destroying civic society
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and so there were some individuals so I need to acknowledge that there were some
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individuals who commit acts of political violence but it's it is a it's a gross
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misrepresentation to say the least and so i i begin with this because it it it
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it does frame little bit my fields which is is very very active it's very
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exciting there's there's new books with large academic process coming out every
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month its and so I saw a lot of the work is to is to really dig in and so there
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is a picture now of tea anarchist movement in the United States and
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everywhere else that is really quite different then that idea of the
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terrorist right so I I want to sort of begin and this is brief but few elements
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of that new picture that we now have
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so first of all we now know what we don't know yet let me make that clear
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but that's that's that's good that's fine that's you know it's like science
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you want to be pursuing new avenues and but so first of all we really know that
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the anarchist movement in the united state let's say between 1880 1920 first
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of all was much larger than we actually thought so we're talking here maybe tens
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of thousands of adherence and sympathizers now I want to quickly say
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we it's still a small group in a large nation right i mean this is a minority
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group that they were they had a real voice that's that's one thing the other
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part is that in the United States the anarchist movement is is largely a an
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immigrant and working-class story and so they
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rather than also the beach is being sort of a bunch of sort of bomb throwers we
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rediscover we are discovering this does really elaborate movement I almost want
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to say your movement culture and so one of the things that sustains it is these
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newspapers I'm where I'm not talking dozens hundreds and hundreds of
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anarchist newspapers so I wanna not socialist right so they they do
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distinguish themselves from Marxist socialism with which they really
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disagree so these are all anarchist newspaper I think one thing you
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immediately that I just made a small sample but one thing you can see if you
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want to go into this field you better learn another language other than
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English its I mean it's so like Mother Earth is one of the more well-known you
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may know mr goldman familiar so she added to this the paper right above it
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the fry unemployed or statement which was yiddish you this paper had had
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probably four times the circulation of Mother Earth
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I can go on with details like it but I mean it's it's the non-english once had
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circulations of closer 20,000 copies in cities mostly in cities so that's so
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back to the main point here so we know there is this movement that is sort of a
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fabric almost right through the newspapers are global leaders I do
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mostly of the German movements of Freiheit there is a guy in Australia who
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buys distribute sister German and artists in Adelaide
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so larger it is it has it's a community they have they they hold weekly meetings
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about politics mostly in saloons with beer or wine or as you do not see this
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just two examples mess hall is in Chicago this
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the truck saloon is in the Lower East Side in fact that building just Euro so
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black eye to my knowledge the only black anywhere in Manhattan dedicated to an
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anarchist used to schwab so they this was a this was a matter of radicals to
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just discuss at 11 aspect this is another drawing of a jewish anarchist
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meeting this disappeared in Harper's Weekly we have we have very little you
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draw like they're not really photographs but any visual material off this list
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also staged public demonstrations and I i like this photograph because it's an
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actual photograph but also you see how many people there are now not all of
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them are probably anarchist they are they want to go and listen what they
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have to say and that's sort of my point they had a voice in many other voices
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but they had a philosophy anarchist movement as we are learning every month
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with new research day had theater companies they had singing societies
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they even at schools just all fun fundraising events we have
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regular of sources where large events are held in large venues like Cooper
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Union where Lincoln one spoke three to four thousand people would attend so
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this this is not a footnote in American history
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alright the right background with this year so one other element we are
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learning about I guess you could say the relevance of this fairly large movement
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the anarchists were often the first people to to introduce avant-garde ideas
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from Europe to an american audience now granted that american audiences often
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small but they they were often in touch
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probably because of the language so one example of this one is anyone familiar
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with Gerhart Hauptmann he is now known as a great German playwright of sort of
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the historical realist tradition similar to a person familiar so it's well-known
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playwright today
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back then he was sort of but it's a one of his plays DVD book which means do we
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verse was actually banned in Berlin but then once it got allowed to people for
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two weeks after that it appeared in New York not by an American company but by
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German anarchist theatre company and as you can tell you're on most plays a
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starring role in there it's a very political place or that makes sense that
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they would have another example the to saloons the discussions in there with
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owners of beer oftentimes new ideas like for example nature very pretty
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mainstream now you disagree or agree but the minutes
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big-name now those ideas were first discussed in those German anarchist
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saloons and how do we know this research and here is a quote from James honnecker
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maybe not well known but he was an American writer who love to hang out in
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these places marketplace's was more interesting ok so he goes to schwab's he
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hangs out there all the time Ambrose Bierce maybes known he was also there he
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says there were no bombs though there was plenty of beer the discussions in
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German English betrayed a culture not easily duplicated on the west side
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American intellectuals before niches and sterner which was another German
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philosopher names were pronounced an hour lecture rooms they were familiarly
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quoted at Schwab's so there it's just one more sort of I mention of this
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movement that was more than violent rhetoric or violence ok
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this is this is the this is my shield that is really doing interesting work I
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think there is there's and because it was so shunned for so long there is i
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mean there's materials that are just gathering dust all these newspapers are
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only now being alert we gonna look at this stuff and so you construct this
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movement so my sort of modest contribution in this field is to look at
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probably the most notorious anarchist and I used work not aureus from the
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mainstream point of view in dus for a while
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1880 1890 as Johan most was German became John most ok very briefly he is a
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German immigrants who arrived in New York in 1882 but he had to he had had a
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career before in Germany and Austria who was actually a socialist and sort of
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moves toward anarchism he was a member of parliament in Berlin for a while
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expelled from the Socialist Party Germany really and then ends up in new
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york is a brilliant speaker just orator who didn't just like maybe you could
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sort of telephone that drawing one other things about him that sort of are
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relevant in childhood he suffered from a disease that causes some of his bone in
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his joy you to disintegrate and so we had last minute surgery this was back in
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the 1850 source file and he it worked except that his face had to be moved
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slightly this way so that it could heal so he had a D formed face
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and I'm saying this because the press in later in New York made lots of illusions
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do this I argue actually because of his beard as a young man he couldn't wait to
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grow a beard is it would mask is horrible face I argued that is actually
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the origin of that sort of cartoon that you often see here's one example of the
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disheveled beer that anarchists
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I'm sure you picture of that and so this is something he suffered from but the
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press New York Press especially at a field day with this now
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one other thing you need to know most did talk constantly about filing
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insurrection he talked about I never found any
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to my knowledge and the evidence that the actually committed a violent crime
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but we urged workers to arm one tiny was reporters where there's like 12 that's
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crazy what are you talking about the workers and he just said well you have
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the Second Amendment
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you have to second-amendment what're you avoid about you know so it's sort of
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uses that against the behavior too so it is important and that sort of explains
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this cartoon so he was vilified in the press may be justifiably I don't know
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but he's really sort of conspiracy and this capitalist system works we gotta
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take radical measure so eventually sold sort of marked is marked like this is
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what this cartoon is there's a little bit of background here the risk of the
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he was actually 86 he was arrested in an apartment of his I think sort of partner
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girlfriend and he was hiding under a bed and the press had a field day with this
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so these cartoons are like here is this is crazy Generalissimo whose revolution
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and everyone was under the bed it's it's it's constant you see this
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you peruse through the New York papers I'm lost is always there
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forgotten now but ok my recent project is all about his actual common-law wife
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elaina make it she is 27 years younger than here's she's a jewish immigrant
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becomes an anarchist ourselves and I sort of knew vaguely that she had
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written memoirs much later on I'm currently writing a biography of Johann
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most so I'm like what I gotta look at this because they were partners so on
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the left is a one installment of her British memoirs and i got a grant from
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Fulton had a translated wrote an introduction notes and this is his
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memoir and it's it's a pressure so I have a few points quickly about what we
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learn from this and it connects to sort of the bigger picture that merging first
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of all this it it's it's a subjective source why that's a member but this is
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the only source I have about your Hamas as a as a as a human being if you know
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what I mean like if I have lots of political but he's he's a father of two
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children
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he's a he's a spouse domestic life
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and it it it's infallible for the biography there's lots of great
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anecdotes and it another point about the the contribution I think of this memoir
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is the role of women in the anarchist movement and this is a bit of criticism
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allowed here I think because it turns out women were very active but they were
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a bit I would argue pushed to the background by the German anarchist
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movement was pretty well male dominated and that that's that's legitimate
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criticism because anarchist proclaim no authoritarian structures should should
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exist
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making herself was the or becomes the book keeper of the Freiheit you remember
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from that most was the editor of right now he's a very critical figure it was
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the largest German language anarchist newspaper in america and the world
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really interesting case because she consciously transcended this jewish
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movement and became this american speaker J edgar hoover called the most
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dangerous woman in America so she's she's talking to a lot of people about
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this case birth control so she's expands on a lot of different areas he's
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actually later deported from dus
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point about this memoir that sort of confirms contributes to it is it it's
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it's as much a story about an anarchist woman as it is about immigrant life
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there is a lot of interesting details about how these workers are also living
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in this very capitalist fast-paced commercial city and they have to get
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jobs to have to the housing they moved all the time just
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apartments and so you get it it's it's a great source for immigration historians
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and I have to be made quickly
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another for it I didn't talk about them but just the fact that there is family
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right family district this goes back to this charge at amicus majesties lone
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wolf terrorists they they would just not that he had families they had had family
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picnics
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Maria Road I was an Italian anarchist paper US Navy very important figure in
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the Spanish language anarchist movement in America ok just wanted to end with
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this adorable photographs of most and Lincoln's two sons ok first of all their
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names on the left as john junior on the right is Lucifer most poor kid right but
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the I did some research on this john junior grew up to be a dentist lived in
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the Bronx for a long time
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cherished his father's ideals became a member of the N double ACP which was
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they moved to Boston later the son of John junior is Johnny most anyone knows
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who's Johnny most is but he became famous as the sportscaster for the
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Boston Celtics he died in 1993 and he has that forced that always reminds me
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maybe this is how your home may be a great cars and I'm actually in touch
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with his son Jamie most and he's very interested i e-mailed in this picture
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and he told me immediately an email after that I have one of those pens that
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it's a pin can tell but has your face on it so that he became became a real
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estate
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new jersey different path occurs so I i very much want to hear your questions on
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Monday to leave it at thank you
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i was just wondering if the anarchists had succeeded beyond their wildest
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dreams
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how different would that world have looked from the world of the marxists
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exceeding beyond their wildest dreams
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two hours now it's at that that is really one of the key questions I i let
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me sort of answer that may be somewhat securities but one of the things that
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the anarchist almost never get credit for worked up about this know is that
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they really way predicted what could happen if socialism takes state power
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i'm talking 1917 Soviet Union leninism as early as the eighteen seventies a man
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named because Bakunin I am certain you are less familiar with Karl Marx but
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they were rivals and and we have lots of writing and Bakunin describes what could
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happen this fall to find society with no personal freedoms so to be really brief
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I can sort of answer have with the key difference between the two marks thought
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that within the larger labor movement the proletariat should take power as a
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means to achieving the revolution the anarchist said you don't have to its
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dangers the way we the way we act now should should pre figure
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famous race how we would like the perfect society to be so we should not
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be in the business building parties there's no anarchist
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he's recently died a British artist writer put it this way to sort of dirty
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and artists prospectors you might say that anarchism actually exists it is
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real it all the time in small groups where everyone has a thought the parish
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even small groups of people getting together with common interests mutual
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respect it exists in lots of different places it's just buried under his weight
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of authoritarian structures as the anarchist would say so it's it's so what
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would the ultimate world looked like is almost sort of judging the anarchist by
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Marxists standards that makes sense so anarchists back that work talking about
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revolution but they were also just enjoying and living the way they would
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want to live in the here and now in the sixties was just came back to life as
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appreciative politics I don't know if that's a start
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presentation component out today's activities we sure appreciate the energy
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from all four of our great speakers they represented each of the schools and
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outstanding fashion thank you all for attending we look forward to having you
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at next year's event and please join us in the atrium for the showcase component
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of today's activities