'Emma Goldman was deemed controversial in her own lifetime, with Teddy Rossevelt calling her a "madwoman.. mental.... as well as a moral pervert." In her life she was certainly not one who bowed down to convention or compromise. Her ideas were all about the right to stay alive in ones senses, to live in a world that celebrated this. She certainly lived her life with a fierce intensity, with her unthwarted desire for freedom and all it's possibilities. Her creed was one of individualism and essentially libertarianism and spent her life consumed by its spirit of revolt. A Russian Jewish immigrant at the age of 17, she moved by her own efforts from seamstress in a clothing factory to become an internationally known radical lecturer, writer and friend of the oppressed. She was many things I guess, a feminist, a writer of vision, incredible public speaker but was first and foremost an anarchist. Her writing and ideas covered a variety of issues, including athiesm, freedom of speech, capitalism, free love and women's suffrage. From the 1890s and for years thereafter, America reverberated with the sound of her name.
She was jailed for inciting riots, advocating birth control, and is their at nearly every turn point in America's 20th Century history.Some have argued that it was her passion that was her undoin, her unwavering commitment to her ideals..... but it was because she loved the world and had so much thirst for it that she gave back 100 percent. Oh there a Welsh connection too, because in June 1925 she married a coal miner from Carmarthenshire named James Cotton in order to obtain British citizenship, In Wales too, she found people who shared her vision and her calls for social justice. Many years after her death she remains an iconic figure to many. Her most fundamental message was the paradoxical command to be yourself and be your own commander-in-chief. The possibilities and expectations of her words still commanding hope.
If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution'.
The above quote was widely attributed to Emma Goldman, but was the invention of anarchist printer Jack Frager for a small batch of Goldman T.shirts he printed in 1973. However in her memoirs,from the early 1950;s. 'Living My Life Goldman remembers being censured for dancing and states:-
"At the dances I was one of the most untiring and gayest. One evening a cousin of Sasha, a young boy, took me aside. With a grave face, as if he was about to announce the death of a dear comrade, he whispered to me that it did not behoove an agitator to dance. Certainly not with such reckless abandon, anyway. It was undignified for one who was on the way to become a force in the anarchist movement. My frivolity would only hurt the cause.
I grew furious at the impudent interference of the boy. I told him to mind his own business. I was tired of having the Cause constantly thrown into my face. I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from convention and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy. I insisted that our Cause could not expect me to become a nun and that the movement would not be turned into a cloister. If it meant, that I did not want it.
'I want freedom, the right to self-expression, everybody's right to beautiful, radiant things.' Anarchism meant that to me, and I would live it in spite of the whole world - prisons, persecutions, everything. Yes, even in spite of the condemnation of my own closest comrades I would live my beautiful ideal."
Emma Goldman 1911, from p56 of her autobiography,
Living My life
The story has since been passed around and condensed in the folk process as simply
the slogan 'If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your
revolution'. And although, one the one hand, a fake quote, it''s since had a lot of positive results–it’s been a rallying cry for feminists, a rallying cry for anarchists, an inspiration to many. me included, and I don't feel undermines Emma Goldman's rich legacy or her charisma, and actually makes more people aware of her actions and deeds.
Remembered as a passionate political activist.writer and thinker during the beginning of
the 20th century and known for her free-thinking and rebellious
anarchist and communist beliefs. Her writings include discussions on
free love, marriage, free speech, atheism, prisons, homosexuality, and
capitalism, among other topics.
Goldman continues to command respect for her outstanding contribution to the history of radical working class struggle. As she once declared, “Everyone is an anarchist who loves liberty and hates oppression;” amen to that.
Earlier post here
ANARCHISM: WHAT IT REALLY STANDS FOR:-
http://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/emma-goldman-2761869-14540-anarchism.html
