radiofreederry:

Happy birthday, Emma Goldman! (June 27, 1869)

One of the most vital and influential anarchist thinkers in history, Emma Goldman was a spitfire and gadfly of rare ability. Born in what is now Lithuania to a Jewish family, Goldman grew up in poverty and educated herself, against the wishes of her controlling father. At age 16, Goldman moved with her sister to New York, where she became engaged in the radical social movements of the time, particularly after the Haymarket Square bombing of 1886. Before long, Goldman knew herself to be an anarchist. Arriving in New York City after spending some time upstate, Goldman met Alexander Berkman, who would become a lifelong collaborator and romantic partner. She became a major figure in the American anarchist movement, associating with prominent figures such as Errico Malatesta and Pyotr Kropotkin, while advocating for a social and individual view of anarchism, stressing personal freedom and opposition to the state. She became a boogeyman for the American ruling class, and was constantly harassed, finally being deported under the Anarchist Exclusion Act. She and Berkman were sent to Russia, where the dust was still settling from the October Revolution. Goldman’s hesitance about the Bolshevik state soon turned to hostility, as Lenin’s policies chafed against her anarchist beliefs. The suppression of the Kronstadt rebellion was the last straw, and Goldman and Berkman left Soviet Russia, settling in a number of different countries over the years. Goldman was a strong supporter of the anarcho-communists in the Spanish Civil War, writing a number of articles about the war, She died in 1940, after suffering a major stroke.

“Direct action, having proven effective along economic lines, is equally potent in the environment of the individual. There a hundred forces encroach upon his being, and only persistent resistance to them will finally set him free. Direct action against the authority in the shop, direct action against the authority of the law, direct action against the invasive, meddlesome authority of our moral code, is the logical, consistent method of Anarchism. Will it not lead to a revolution? Indeed, it will. No real social change has ever come about without a revolution. People are either not familiar with their history, or they have not yet learned that revolution is but thought carried into action.”