February 11, 1916: Emma Goldman Is Arrested for Distributing Information About Birth Control

[niyad]

February 11, 1916: Emma Goldman Is Arrested for Distributing Information About Birth Control


Emma Goldman in a mugshot from 1901, when she was implicated in the assassination of President McKinley. Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

On this date in 1916 Emma Goldman was arrested for distributing information related to what her compatriot, Margaret Sanger, had called in the title of a pamphlet Family Limitation. She was imprisoned for two weeks. Less than a year earlier, The Nation had profiled her in an ongoing series called “Notes from the Capital” (June 28, 1917). Goldman would later be deported to Russia on the charge of inciting people to avoid the draft for the World War, but she quickly grew disillusioned with the Bolshevik regime. Later, in the early 1930s, Goldman became a Nation contributor herself.

Recent events in Petrograd and Kronstadt must have brought rare comfort to the soul of Emma Goldman, prophetess of anarchy—the real article, warranted one hundred per cent, pure, name stamped on every package…. In the United States, whither she came with relatives as a young woman, she first emerged from obscurity in 1893, when she was arrested on a charge of inciting to riot by a speech made at a gathering of habitual miscontents in Union Square, New York….

The trial served to bring out in a most illuminating way her vagaries on various subjects, including the facts that she was an atheist and a disbeliever in all government and law, divine or human; that her pet hobby was that the rich are the oppressors of the poor and the ultimate cause of all the suffering and crime in the world, against which the poor are justified in revolting…and that her mission in life was to make the poor understand that the well-to-do are accountable for their poverty, and thus to promote the social revolution….

Most newspaper readers are so accustomed to thinking of Emma Goldman as simply a human firebrand that it is hard to make them realize that by calling she is a dress-maker and a trained nurse. She is a small, wiry woman, about fifty years old, who might be passed anywhere in a crowd without notice. Her sharp black eyes, intense expression, and rather coarse mouth have nothing distinctive about them at the first glance, though they become more significant with familiarity, and her eyeglasses, framed in part by sharply marked brows, give her an air of active mentality which is lacking in some others of her general type. Her face is too symmetrical to be classed as that of a natural “crank,” but you have only to talk with her for five minutes in order to discover how strong an appeal the theatrical side of social chaos makes to her. Smiles she reserves mostly for sneering purposes.


http://www.thenation.com/blog/197217/february-11-1916-emma-goldman-arrested-distributing-information-about-birth-control

[still_one]

1. and unfortunately it seems the way things are going we will be in 1916 sooner than we think

[niyad]

3. last month, I think.

[sinkingfeeling]

2. At the rate the GOP is going, somebody might be arrested on Feb. 11, 2016 for handing

out information on birth control.

[niyad]

4. many people don't seem to realize that it isn't just abortions, but birth control itself

that these woman-hating pro-forced birthers are after.

Days of the Theocracy
(Kristin Lems)
July 15, 2007
words/ music Kristin Lems c 2007 Kleine Ding Music (BMI)

MP3 play whole song, hi-fi (broadband)

Written and recorded in 1979 and reissued on the double CD Equality Road in 2005.

Words and music by Kristin Lems

© 1979, 2005, 2015 Kleine Ding Music (BMI)

First they fight abortion, birth control is next,

Then comes sex if you’re not married, finally, out goes sex!

Put the prayers back in the schools, install "parochiaid,"

Allow for corporal punishment, and then you got it made!

Chorus: We’re going back, back to the good ole days

When men were really men and women knew their place

Back, back a couple of centuries

And welcome back the days of the theocracy!

2. The family is so holy, there must be no divorce

And if a wife is not content, she must adjust, of course

And if he’s forced to beat her, it’s all for her own good

She must know what her limits are, as any woman should.,

(chorus)

3. The next to go is daycare,

it’s all a commie plot!

What could be more fulfilling than a child, wanted or not?

A woman’s world is housework, God wanted it that way

A salaried job degrades her since she never works for pay

(chorus)

4. They teach us women’s lot is "love honor and obey"

And while their crusty notions seem like jokes to us today,

They’re sitting in the Capitol, they’re voting on our lives

If we don’t stop them soon, our freedom will not long survive!

Alt chorus:

No going back, back to the bad ole days...

When men were really masters and women were their slaves

let's go ahead, ahead for future centuries,

And build a world that’s based on true democracy

And build a world that’s based on true equality!

Ah – person!

[libodem]

5. She is a true hero

In her honor.

[niyad]

6. she is indeed. thank you!

[libodem]

7. .