If you need ME to tell you to pay attention to the protests in Wisconsin, you are truly benighted. However, I highly recommend these two articles linked by Susie.

Meanwhile, a recall effort is underway targeting 8 Wisonsin Republicans: they can’t recall Walker til January, but you can bet that’s in the planning stages.

Go get ‘em, boys!

You know, it’s funny. I’ve never understood why the wealthy, who already have so much, are determined to have it all at the expense of everyone else. It’s been a long time since 1917 and even longer since 1789, when the rich (perhaps) learned why it’s important to keep the proles well-fed, employed, and financially secure. It’s not rocket science: well-fed, employed, secure proles don’t rise up en masse and kill rich people.

I suspect that 2011 is going to be a very bad year for the United States, with more desperate people doing something stupid as they watch their lives circle the drain. It’s already happening:

My Testament: Some people (the government sponsored media) will say I was evil, a monster (V)… no… I was just born poor in a country where the Wealthy manipulate, use, abuse, and economically enslave 95% of the population. Rich Republicans, Rich Democrats… same-same… rich… they take turns fleecing us… our few dollars… pyramiding the wealth for themselves. The 95%… the us, in US of A, are the neo slaves of the Global South. Our Masters, the Wealthy, do, as they like to us…

Let’s be honest: there is no one standing up for the poor, for working people, and for the middle class. Not Republicans and not Democrats. In a time when “When money equals political speech those who do not have a majority of the money will never have a majority of the political speech.”. And so, as the Glorious Obama Tax Cut indicates that, yes “Citizens United has codified the absolute political power of a small, super wealthy Oligarchy”, I direct you, again, to the words of Lucy Parsons, who a previous oligarchy deemed “more dangerous than a thousand rioters.”

To Tramps
by Lucy E. Parsons
Alarm, October 4, 1884. Also printed and distributed as a leaflet by the International Working People’s Association.

TO TRAMPS,
The Unemployed, the Disinherited, and Miserable.

A word to the 35,000 now tramping the streets of this great city, with hands in pockets, gazing listlessly about you at the evidence of wealth and pleasure of which you own no part, not sufficient even to purchase yourself a bit of food with which to appease the pangs of hunger now knawing at your vitals. It is with you and the hundreds of thousands of others similarly situated in this great land of plenty, that I wish to have a word.

Have you not worked hard all your life, since you were old enough for your labor to be of use in the production of wealth? Have you not toiled long, hard and laboriously in producing wealth? And in all those years of drudgery do you not know you have produced thousand upon thousands of dollars’ worth of wealth, which you did not then, do not now, and unless you ACT, never will, own any part in? Do you not know that when you were harnessed to a machine and that machine harnessed to steam, and thus you toiled your 10, 12 and 16 hours in the 24, that during this time in all these years you received only enough of your labor product to furnish yourself the bare, coarse necessaries of life, and that when you wished to purchase anything for yourself and family it always had to be of the cheapest quality? If you wanted to go anywhere you had to wait until Sunday, so little did you receive for your unremitting toil that you dare not stop for a moment, as it were? And do you not know that with all your squeezing, pinching and economizing you never were enabled to keep but a few days ahead of the wolves of want? And that at last when the caprice of your employer saw fit to create an artificial famine by limiting production, that the fires in the furnace were extinguished, the iron horse to which you had been harnessed was stilled; the factory door locked up, you turned upon the highway a tramp, with hunger in your stomach and rags upon your back?

The days of tramps are back, by the way.

Yet your employer told you that it was overproduction which made him close up. Who cared for the bitter tears and heart-pangs of your loving wife and helpless children, when you bid them a loving “God bless you” and turned upon the tramper’s road to seek employment elsewhere? I say, who cared for those heartaches and pains? You were only a tramp now, to be execrated and denounced as a “worthless tramp and a vagrant” by that very class who had been engaged all those years in robbing you and yours. Then can you not see that the “good boss” or the “bad boss” cuts no figure whatever? that you are the common prey of both, and that their mission is simply robbery? Can you not see that it is the INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM and not the “boss” which must be changed?

Now, when all these bright summer and autumn days are going by and you have no employment, and consequently can save up nothing, and when the winter’s blast sweeps down from the north and all the earth is wrapped in a shroud of ice, hearken not to the voice of the hyprocrite who will tell you that it was ordained of God that “the poor ye have always”; or to the arrogant robber who will say to you that you “drank up all your wages last summer when you had work, and that is the reason why you have nothing now, and the workhouse or the workyard is too good for you; that you ought to be shot.” And shoot you they will if you present your petitions in too emphatic a manner. So hearken not to them, but list! Next winter when the cold blasts are creeping through the rents in your seedy garments, when the frost is biting your feet through the holes in your worn-out shoes, and when all wretchedness seems to have centered in and upon you, when misery has marked you for her own and life has become a burden and existence a mockery, when you have walked the streets by day and slept upon hard boards by night, and at last determine by your own hand to take your life, – for you would rather go out into utter nothingness than to longer endure an existence which has become such a burden – so, perchance, you determine to dash yourself into the cold embrace of the lake rather than longer suffer thus. But halt, before you commit this last tragic act in the drama of your simple existence. Stop! Is there nothing you can do to insure those whom you are about to orphan, against a like fate? The waves will only dash over you in mockery of your rash act; but stroll you down the avenues of the rich and look through the magnificent plate windows into their voluptuous homes, and here you will discover the very identical robbers who have despoiled you and yours. Then let your tragedy be enacted here! Awaken them from their wanton sport at your expense! Send forth your petition and let them read it by the red glare of destruction. Thus when you cast “one long lingering look behind” you can be assured that you have spoken to these robbers in the only language which they have ever been able to understand, for they have never yet deigned to notice any petition from their slaves that they were not compelled to read by the red glare bursting from the cannon’s mouths, or that was not handed to them upon the point of the sword. You need no organization when you make up your mind to present this kind of petition. In fact, an organization would be a detriment to you; but each of you hungry tramps who read these lines, avail yourselves of those little methods of warfare which Science has placed in the hands of the poor man, and you will become a power in this or any other land.

Learn the use of explosives!

Dedicated to the tramps by Lucy E. Parsons.

Lucy also said, “Let every dirty, lousy tramp arm himself with a revolver or knife on the steps of the palace of the rich and stab or shoot their owners as they come out. Let us kill them without mercy, and let it be a war of extermination and without pity.”

Me, January 25, 2010:

I have a proposal to save the rotting hulk of the United States.

No, no, I don’t mean the country. I mean the S.S. United States, that glorious liner that’s decaying slowly on Pier 82 off Columbus Boulevard, where it’s been dry-docked for over a decade. It was the fastest ocean liner ever built, and although it was never used for military purposes, it was capable of transporting 14,000 troops per trip and traveling up to 10,000 miles non-stop. The ship’s history is Pennsylvania’s history, made of steel from Coatesville, designed by Philadelphia native Francis Gibbs, and included on the Pennsylvania Register of Historic Places. Nothing has been done to restore this national treasure, though and it may be sold for scrap.

Butit looks like the state is determined to shove casinos down our throats, and I say make lemonade from lemons. Sell the ship to Foxwoods and open it as a casino!

While I was only half-joking, that article got a LOT of positive comments. Apparently, someone took it seriously, because the Philadelphia Inquirer reported today, November 22, 2010:

Drawn by repeated distress signals from the Foxwoods Casino project, the preservation group at the helm of a historic ghost ship, the SS United States, is offering to sail upriver with a novel alternative.

The proposal: Move the derelict cruise liner about three-quarters of a mile north from its resting place at Pier 82 in South Philadelphia and place it next to a new 10-story garage with two floors of gaming.

Cut a dock into the 16-acre site and slip the bow in, facing Columbus Avenue. Renovate and refit the 58-year-old vessel – an estimated $150 million to $200 million job – with gaming floors, restaurants, event space, a museum, and, possibly, a boutique hotel.

“We can place the SS United States into the Foxwoods property in a way that showcases a national treasure and makes it a tourist draw,” said Ken Smukler, an adviser to the SS United States Conservancy.
[...]
The conservancy has approached Harrah’s and the local Foxwoods investors about making the ship the centerpiece of the casino plan, according to Smukler. But by Friday, he said, neither the Las Vegas gaming giant nor the locals – Philadelphia Entertainment and Development Partners (PEDP) – had responded.
[...]
However, Mayor Nutter, briefed on the proposal in recent weeks, described it Friday as “certainly one of the most unique, dynamic, and exciting plans for a casino anywhere in the United States of America.”

Although long a critic of using waterfront land for big-box casinos, he noted a prestige factor in “having a casino in one of the largest ocean liners ever built.”

As my buddy Scott joked, I should be getting a 1% finder’s fee, and due credit in the local fishwrapper newspaper.

Now, how to save the equally ironically decrepit SS Olympia: the steel cruiser which helped give birth to the United States as an empire is now, much like the United States, rotting away from years of neglect and misplaced priorities.

I popped off a snotty, sarcastic piece about the SS United State, a once-luxurious ocean liner rotting on the piers in Philly:

The S.S. United States Casino: a unique metaphor for USA in the 21st century: where suckers go to lose all their money chasing after get rich schemes, never realizing that the house always wins.

…and so far reaction is… positive??

Go read the rest.

Celebrating what was is a great way to honor what was.

World Trade Center – 27 July 2001
By Brendan Skwire

Before I really get to the meat of the matter, which is of course the completely over-the-top Fleshtones show this past weekend in New York City at the World Trade Center’s The Greatest Bar on Earth, I think I should give a little background info. This was easily one of the best Fleshtones shows I have ever seen, from the the surreal venue to the surreal audience to the surprise appearance by Gordon Spaeth to the climactic finish.

The Fleshtones were actually the beginning of a really long weekend; the plan was to see the band, stay at a friend’s house (I don’t live in NYC unfortunately), and head up to Maine for a bluegrass festival the next morning. So when I left my Philadelphia apartment, I was carrying a 50-pound frame pack on my back, wearing a gigantic cowboy hat on my head (atop a noggin so small it makes a ping-pong ball look like a hydrocephalic). The GBOE has a dress code: no shorts, tee-shirts, or sneakers, so I was also carrying some formal wear with me, which I changed into as the E train was pulling into its berth at the bottom of the Towers.

In short, I looked like I’d stepped out of the California Gold Rush of 1849; all I needed was a mule.

I don’t know if it’s because of the bombing a few years ago, but you have to go through a series of checkpoints before WTC security allows you up to the restaurant: the guards took one look at me, and started ordering me hither and yon to check my bags. At every turn I was met by an eagle-eyed security guard asking me where I was going, what I was doing. Eventually though, my bags were checked, my admission paid, and I made my way onto the elevators. “Next stop, 76th floor,” where we transferred elevators to travel the final 30 stories to the top of the world.

The Greatest Bar on Earth is way up on the tippy-top floor of the World Trade Center, affording a beautiful view of the East River, and all the bridges that span into Brooklyn. The room itself was beautiful, and eerie; very swanky rounded bars, cool lighting, lots of tables and couches. A warm golden glow permeated the place. The stage was on the northeast corner of the room; a railing separated the crowd from the dais. At stage right and left, rubenesque go-go girls in fur bikinis stood on pedestals, gyrating wildly under strobe lights, as the DJ pumped out garage rock. I bumped into Fleshtones bass player Ken Fox, who seemed a little bemused by the whole thing; the crowd mix could well have led to some tension.

You have to understand, besides the contingent that was actually there to see the Fleshtones, there was also a large percentage of the bar’s regular patrons, the black-clad yuppie crowd, drinking martinis and overpriced beers, oh-so-hip-and-aloof. And then there were the tourist types, a number of who were wearing Hawaiian shirts with cameras dangling from their necks, I don’t know where the hell they came from. Under the flashing strobes, every movement looked like it had been taken from one of those early stop-action cartoons from the 30s; I remember thinking “this could get pretty weird,” and during the first set that impression was reinforced. The Fleshtones were giving as good as they get, opening up with Hitsburg, Solid Gold Sound, Soundcheck 2001, $10.00 More (which was amazing), all of which got the regular fans up, dancing, and singing along, but seemed to go ZIP! right over the yuppies’ NASDAQ-filled heads. I mean for crying out loud, Ken and Keith are spinning around in circles, their arms linked with Ken fretting Keith’s guitar while plucking bass and vice versa, while Zaremba’s tossing the mic stand back-and forth like a Brooklyn James Brown clad in gold lame’, scenes from old go-go videos flashing on a movie screen behind them, and these oblivious squares are just sitting in front of the dance floor like bumps on a pickle, with their backs to the whole thing. I couldn’t understand it, so I started watusi-ing as hard as I could at them. It was an ugly thing, I guess, but necessary…

It wasn’t as if this was some band of shoe-gazers up there; from the opening chords of “Hitsburg”, Zaremba was over the rail and plowing into the audience, followed shortly by Ken and Keith; honestly, I’ve never seen the band work so hard to get their audience going. Endless tours of the tabletops and bars marked the first set, and slowly the frost began to melt.

I think the ice was finally broken when Keith launched into “Communication Breakdown” near the end of Set 1. The yuppies took the bait: hearing something they knew got more than a few of the 30-somethings out on the floor singing along and dancing, and by then they were snared, because the set ended with one of those endless medleys the ‘tones do so well. No matter what you do, you can’t back out of one of those; the feet and hips just take over, the head must surrender. For myself, I can’t even begin to list what songs they did, because between the singing along and dancing, I was way too occupied to take any notes.

During setbreak, a couple of us snuck out to the payphones where we enjoyed a quick joint. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t mention this, but it just added to the overwhelming weirdness permeating the whole event.

“Should we use the bathroom?”

“Nahh, the porter in there will stop us.” [And may I digress? I've never seen one of those porter guys in action before, but this guy practically put the soap on my hands and scrubbed for me as I washed up. I could get used to this place...]

“Hey what about the payphones?” They were hidden behind an enormous red velvet curtain, and hell, the time seemed right. I mean, how many people do you know that can say they smoked up on the top of the World Trade Center? Afterwards, I talked to Keith a little bit, and overheard him remark about the tough crowd to Jesse (I hope I got your name right) from Los Dudes, who in turn told me that 15 years ago, when he had first moved to New York, his friend took him to see the Fleshtones, only to have the show sold out; a year later, unbeknownst to him, Zaremba was the engineer on Jesse’s first album. Go figure… Peter, for his part, was having a great time. “I really like this place,” he said (or something to that effect; I’m paraphrasing here), “You get used to being in dark rock clubs. This is like something out of David Lynch, it’s great.” (Peter, pardon me if it’s not an exact quote, I think I caught the spirit of it pretty well.)

It must have been the booze, because by set 2 the yuppies had joined the rest of us on the floor, and the fun really kicked into gear. Nothing like watching the writhing of a Prada-bag carrying mid-manager…

Set 2 opened with “My New Song” and “Soul City,” a tune I’m not familiar with. But then, good gravy, they pulled out a back-to-the-wall “That’s Your Problem,” right into “My Love Machine,” right into “I’m Not a Sissy Anymore,” and there was no turning back. The crowd was out of control, men and women wiggling and squiggling all over the place, with no regard for spilled drinks or bourgeois propriety. I walked over to the bar to refill my pint, and stood next to a young woman who could not take her eyes off the stage, like a deer caught in the headlights. I saw a May-December couple do the swim out on the floor. Things were getting to critical mass, and quickly.

And how could the crowd NOT have eventually gone nuts for this band? As I’ve written before, the genius of the Fleshtones is their combination of sincerity, with a good bit of tongue in cheek, and that throbbing, stomping, irristable beat. It’s like R&B taken to an almost absurd degree, and not even Jerry Falwell, moral crusader against fun, could have resisted shaking his ass if he was there. But I digress…

Ken did a great song I’ve never heard before, and hope to hear again, “Dreamin’ Bout Work.” Have I mentioned “Let’s Go” yet? I don’t think I’ve heard them do that song since early 1999 at TT’s in Cambridge, and it just about exploded my head.

And then. Then! THEN! Gordon Spaeth of all people shows up on stage, and starts blowing harp on “Goddamn It” and “Whatever It Takes”. The whole band was beaming from ear to ear, especially Bill, and another foray into the crowd went down, with Ken and Keith clambering over cocktail tables and shaky barstools to dance on the bar. I talked to Gordon later on, having never met him before, never mind seen him play live. Gordon admitted he’d never heard either of the songs he was tooting the Hohner on, and was wondering “Did I sound OK up there?” Yeah, he did.. it was perfect.

By this point, the night was getting on, and the boys let us go with 2 of the best performances I’ve seen yet of “How I Feel” and “It’s Alright”, which culminated in Keith and Ken marching through the crowd, returning to the foot of the stage, getting down on their hands and knees, and finally ROLLING AROUND ON THE FLOOR DOING LEG LIFTS, while breaking the song all the way down to the lowest of volumes, just a skeleton really, and then bringing it all the way back up to just about the loudest thing I have ever heard. If you haven’t seen Ken Fox break into an impromptu bass solo while prone, you have not seen ANYTHING my friends. I have to admit, I’m still hoarse.

Perhaps one of the best things about the show was the aftermath; instead of escaping to the relative quiet of “the band room,” the guys just hung out, mingling at the bar, shooting the shit with whoever was hanging around. Ken and Bill were at the bar enjoying some cold ones, while Peter was still on stage with the go-go girls grinning away and shimmying unapologetically. It was then, more than ever before I think, that I realized how truly great, how important, and how vital and visceral the Fleshtones really are. Here was a band who, when faced with a pretty stiff crowd, had them in the palms of their hands within 45 minutes, and then never let them go. In an age of contrived boy-bands, teenage pop-stars, pretend punk-rockers who hide in the bus after their arena shows, and self-indulgent singer-songwriter types, the Fleshtones are the most honest thing out there, and by “thing” I mean as a band, scene, and as people. It’s good to know that someone’s giving their life for rock-n-roll, because rock-n-roll desperately needs it.

Set 1: Hitsburg USA; Solid Gold Sound; Soundcheck 2001; Jack In The Box; $10 More; Dreg; The Vindicators; I Want More; Love’s In The Grave; Tearing Me Apart; Communication Breakdown; Super Rock Medley.

Set 2: My New Song; Soul City; That’s Your Problem; My Love Machine; I’m Not A Sissy Anymore; Dreamin’ Bout Work; Let’s Go!; Friends Of Bazooka Joe; Goddamn It (w/ Gordon Spaeth on harp); Whatever It Takes (w/ Gordon Spaeth on harp); How I Feel; It’s Alright.
� 2001 Brendan Skwire

To Tramps
by Lucy E. Parsons
Alarm, October 4, 1884. Also printed and distributed as a leaflet by the International Working People’s Association.

TO TRAMPS,
The Unemployed, the Disinherited, and Miserable.

A word to the 35,000 now tramping the streets of this great city, with hands in pockets, gazing listlessly about you at the evidence of wealth and pleasure of which you own no part, not sufficient even to purchase yourself a bit of food with which to appease the pangs of hunger now knawing at your vitals. It is with you and the hundreds of thousands of others similarly situated in this great land of plenty, that I wish to have a word.

Have you not worked hard all your life, since you were old enough for your labor to be of use in the production of wealth? Have you not toiled long, hard and laboriously in producing wealth? And in all those years of drudgery do you not know you have produced thousand upon thousands of dollars’ worth of wealth, which you did not then, do not now, and unless you ACT, never will, own any part in? Do you not know that when you were harnessed to a machine and that machine harnessed to steam, and thus you toiled your 10, 12 and 16 hours in the 24, that during this time in all these years you received only enough of your labor product to furnish yourself the bare, coarse necessaries of life, and that when you wished to purchase anything for yourself and family it always had to be of the cheapest quality? If you wanted to go anywhere you had to wait until Sunday, so little did you receive for your unremitting toil that you dare not stop for a moment, as it were? And do you not know that with all your squeezing, pinching and economizing you never were enabled to keep but a few days ahead of the wolves of want? And that at last when the caprice of your employer saw fit to create an artificial famine by limiting production, that the fires in the furnace were extinguished, the iron horse to which you had been harnessed was stilled; the factory door locked up, you turned upon the highway a tramp, with hunger in your stomach and rags upon your back?

Yet your employer told you that it was overproduction which made him close up. Who cared for the bitter tears and heart-pangs of your loving wife and helpless children, when you bid them a loving “God bless you” and turned upon the tramper’s road to seek employment elsewhere? I say, who cared for those heartaches and pains? You were only a tramp now, to be execrated and denounced as a “worthless tramp and a vagrant” by that very class who had been engaged all those years in robbing you and yours. Then can you not see that the “good boss” or the “bad boss” cuts no figure whatever? that you are the common prey of both, and that their mission is simply robbery? Can you not see that it is the INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM and not the “boss” which must be changed?

Now, when all these bright summer and autumn days are going by and you have no employment, and consequently can save up nothing, and when the winter’s blast sweeps down from the north and all the earth is wrapped in a shroud of ice, hearken not to the voice of the hyprocrite who will tell you that it was ordained of God that “the poor ye have always”; or to the arrogant robber who will say to you that you “drank up all your wages last summer when you had work, and that is the reason why you have nothing now, and the workhouse or the workyard is too good for you; that you ought to be shot.” And shoot you they will if you present your petitions in too emphatic a manner. So hearken not to them, but list! Next winter when the cold blasts are creeping through the rents in your seedy garments, when the frost is biting your feet through the holes in your worn-out shoes, and when all wretchedness seems to have centered in and upon you, when misery has marked you for her own and life has become a burden and existence a mockery, when you have walked the streets by day and slept upon hard boards by night, and at last determine by your own hand to take your life, – for you would rather go out into utter nothingness than to longer endure an existence which has become such a burden – so, perchance, you determine to dash yourself into the cold embrace of the lake rather than longer suffer thus. But halt, before you commit this last tragic act in the drama of your simple existence. Stop! Is there nothing you can do to insure those whom you are about to orphan, against a like fate? The waves will only dash over you in mockery of your rash act; but stroll you down the avenues of the rich and look through the magnificent plate windows into their voluptuous homes, and here you will discover the very identical robbers who have despoiled you and yours. Then let your tragedy be enacted here! Awaken them from their wanton sport at your expense! Send forth your petition and let them read it by the red glare of destruction. Thus when you cast “one long lingering look behind” you can be assured that you have spoken to these robbers in the only language which they have ever been able to understand, for they have never yet deigned to notice any petition from their slaves that they were not compelled to read by the red glare bursting from the cannon’s mouths, or that was not handed to them upon the point of the sword. You need no organization when you make up your mind to present this kind of petition. In fact, an organization would be a detriment to you; but each of you hungry tramps who read these lines, avail yourselves of those little methods of warfare which Science has placed in the hands of the poor man, and you will become a power in this or any other land.

Learn the use of explosives!

Dedicated to the tramps by Lucy E. Parsons.

So I say to hell with working people’s false friends in the Democratic Party and I say even less to working people’s enemies in the Republican Party. That’s what I say.

Great stuff from Collateral News, Phawker, and Puddle power.

Since neither newspaper in working-class Philadelphia recognized May Day this year, I will do my bit by quoting Lucy Parsons’ “TO TRAMPS, The Unemployed, the Disinherited, and Miserable” in full.

A word to the 35,000 now tramping the streets of this great city, with hands in pockets, gazing listlessly about you at the evidence of wealth and pleasure of which you own no part, not sufficient even to purchase yourself a bit of food with which to appease the pangs of hunger now knawing at your vitals. It is with you and the hundreds of thousands of others similarly situated in this great land of plenty, that I wish to have a word.

Have you not worked hard all your life, since you were old enough for your labor to be of use in the production of wealth? Have you not toiled long, hard and laboriously in producing wealth? And in all those years of drudgery do you not know you have produced thousand upon thousands of dollars’ worth of wealth, which you did not then, do not now, and unless you ACT, never will, own any part in? Do you not know that when you were harnessed to a machine and that machine harnessed to steam, and thus you toiled your 10, 12 and 16 hours in the 24, that during this time in all these years you received only enough of your labor product to furnish yourself the bare, coarse necessaries of life, and that when you wished to purchase anything for yourself and family it always had to be of the cheapest quality? If you wanted to go anywhere you had to wait until Sunday, so little did you receive for your unremitting toil that you dare not stop for a moment, as it were? And do you not know that with all your squeezing, pinching and economizing you never were enabled to keep but a few days ahead of the wolves of want? And that at last when the caprice of your employer saw fit to create an artificial famine by limiting production, that the fires in the furnace were extinguished, the iron horse to which you had been harnessed was stilled; the factory door locked up, you turned upon the highway a tramp, with hunger in your stomach and rags upon your back?

Yet your employer told you that it was overproduction which made him close up. Who cared for the bitter tears and heart-pangs of your loving wife and helpless children, when you bid them a loving “God bless you” and turned upon the tramper’s road to seek employment elsewhere? I say, who cared for those heartaches and pains? You were only a tramp now, to be execrated and denounced as a “worthless tramp and a vagrant” by that very class who had been engaged all those years in robbing you and yours. Then can you not see that the “good boss” or the “bad boss” cuts no figure whatever? that you are the common prey of both, and that their mission is simply robbery? Can you not see that it is the INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM and not the “boss” which must be changed?

Now, when all these bright summer and autumn days are going by and you have no employment, and consequently can save up nothing, and when the winter’s blast sweeps down from the north and all the earth is wrapped in a shroud of ice, hearken not to the voice of the hyprocrite who will tell you that it was ordained of God that “the poor ye have always”; or to the arrogant robber who will say to you that you “drank up all your wages last summer when you had work, and that is the reason why you have nothing now, and the workhouse or the workyard is too good for you; that you ought to be shot.” And shoot you they will if you present your petitions in too emphatic a manner. So hearken not to them, but list! Next winter when the cold blasts are creeping through the rents in your seedy garments, when the frost is biting your feet through the holes in your worn-out shoes, and when all wretchedness seems to have centered in and upon you, when misery has marked you for her own and life has become a burden and existence a mockery, when you have walked the streets by day and slept upon hard boards by night, and at last determine by your own hand to take your life, – for you would rather go out into utter nothingness than to longer endure an existence which has become such a burden – so, perchance, you determine to dash yourself into the cold embrace of the lake rather than longer suffer thus. But halt, before you commit this last tragic act in the drama of your simple existence. Stop! Is there nothing you can do to insure those whom you are about to orphan, against a like fate? The waves will only dash over you in mockery of your rash act; but stroll you down the avenues of the rich and look through the magnificent plate windows into their voluptuous homes, and here you will discover the very identical robbers who have despoiled you and yours. Then let your tragedy be enacted here! Awaken them from their wanton sport at your expense! Send forth your petition and let them read it by the red glare of destruction. Thus when you cast “one long lingering look behind” you can be assured that you have spoken to these robbers in the only language which they have ever been able to understand, for they have never yet deigned to notice any petition from their slaves that they were not compelled to read by the red glare bursting from the cannon’s mouths, or that was not handed to them upon the point of the sword. You need no organization when you make up your mind to present this kind of petition. In fact, an organization would be a detriment to you; but each of you hungry tramps who read these lines, avail yourselves of those little methods of warfare which Science has placed in the hands of the poor man, and you will become a power in this or any other land.

Learn the use of explosives!

Dedicated to the tramps by Lucy E. Parsons.

There’s a reason they called her “more dangerous than 1000 rioters”.

Poor Ellen Smith how she was found
Shot through the heart lying cold on the ground
Her clothers were all scattered and thrown on the ground
And blood marks the spot where poor Ellen was found

They picked up their rifles and hunted me down
And found me a-loafing in Mount Airy town
They picked up the body and carried it away
And now she is sleeping in some lonesome old grave

I got a letter yesterday and I read it today
The flowers on her grave have all faded away
Some day I’ll go home and say when I go
On poor Ellen’s grave pretty flowers I’ll sow

I’ve been in this prison for twenty long years
Each night I see Ellen through my bitter tears
The warden just told me that soon I’ll be free
To go to her grave near that old willow tree

My days in this prison are ending at last
I’ll never be free from the sins of my past
Poor Ellen Smith how she was found
Shot through the heart lying cold on the ground

Poor Ellen Smith

Poor Ellen Smith is what we call a “true song”: like the crimes detailed in Tom Dooley, Ellen Smith really was murdered, and in today’s New York Times, Dan Barry interviews the family of her alleged killer, Peter De Graff:

One hundred fifteen years ago this month, on open land now occupied by warehouses and office buildings, a bantam of a man mounted the gallows built in his dishonor. He raised his hat and bowed before the 6,000 people gathered to see the floor beneath him drop. He carried a small Bible.

A trial six months earlier had laid out how this ne’er-do-well of 22, Peter DeGraff, had charmed a poor, simple woman named Ellen Smith. How she followed him around town like a puppy after their child was lost at birth. How he avoided her, accused her of being with other men, muttered that he’d like to kill her. How he sent her a note fraught with misspellings one day, sweetly requesting she meet him by a spring close to where people now play tennis, down the hill from the Zinzendorf Hotel, long gone.

How he shot her through the heart, his gun so close that its powder singed the outfit she had chosen for what she thought would be a romantic reconciliation. How she was not yet 20.

DeGraff fled for a while, but eventually returned to town for reasons unknown and was captured. All the while he maintained his innocence, even though his sweet note had been found tucked in the bosom of poor Ellen Smith.

The story goes that deGraff write “Poor Ellen Smith” while in jail awaiting execution, set to the tune of “How Firm a Foundation”. For years it was illegal to sing or perform the song in Winston-Salem’s boundaries.

Wilma Lee and Stoney Cooper

“When Marx wrote those words, by the way, w hadn’t even freed our slaves yet. Who do you think was more pleasing in the eyes of a merciful God back then, Karl Marx or the United States of America?”

–Kurt Vonnegut, Man Without a Country