Helen Keller

Helen Keller was born in Tuscumbia, Alabama on 27th June, 1880. Her father, Arthur H. Keller, was the editor for the North Alabamian, and had fought in the Confederate Army during the American Civil War. At 19 months she suffered "an acute congestion of the stomach and brain (probably scarlet fever) which left her deaf and blind.

She later wrote in The Story of My Life: "In the dreary month of February, came the illness which closed my eyes and ears and plunged me into the unconsciousness of a new born baby. They called it acute congestion of the stomach and brain. The doctor thought I could not live. Early one morning, however, the fever left me as suddenly and mysteriously as it had come. There was great rejoicing in the family that morning, but no one not even the doctor, knew that I should never see or hear again." As a child she was taken to see Alexander G. Bell. He suggested that the family should contact the Perkins Institute for the Blind in Boston. In 1886 the Perkins Institute provided Keller with the teacher, Anne Sullivan.

Whereas Anne Sullivan taught her how to communicate, her husband converted her to revolutionary socialism. This included her joining the Industrial Workers of the World. Keller wrote later: "Surely the demands of the IWW are just. It is right that the creators of wealth should own what they create. When shall we learn that we are related one to the other; that we are members of one body; that injury to one is injury to all? Until the spirit of love for our fellow-workers, regardless of race, color, creed or sex, shall fill the world, until the great mass of the people shall be filled with a sense of responsibility for each other’s welfare, social justice cannot be attained, and there can never be lasting peace upon earth."

Newspapers that had previously praised Keller's courage and intelligence now drew attentions to her disabilities. The editor of the Brooklyn Eagle wrote that her "mistakes sprung out of the manifest limitations of her development." Keller was furious and wrote a letter of complaint to the newspaper. "At that time the compliments he paid me were so generous that I blush to remember them. But now that I have come out for socialism he reminds me and the public that I am blind and deaf and especially liable to error.... Socially blind and deaf, it defends an intolerable system, a system that is the cause of much of the physical blindness and deafness which we are trying to prevent."

She later wrote "I had once believed that we are all masters of our fate - that we could mould our lives into any form we pleased. I had overcome deafness and blindness sufficiently to be happy, and I supposed that anyone could come out victorious if he threw himself valiantly into life's struggle. But as I went more and more about the country I learned that I had spoken with assurance on a subject I knew little about. I forgot that I owed my success partly to the advantages of my birth and environment. Now, however, I learned that the power to rise in the world is not within the reach of everyone."

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAkeller.htm

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAiww.htm

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Charlotte Perkins Gilman was greatly influenced by the work of Edward Bellamy and became a socialist. She joined the Socialist Labor Party and in 1896 she was a delegate to the International Socialist Congress in London. While in England she met leading socialists such as Keir Hardie, Sidney Webb, Beatrice Webb and George Bernard Shaw. As her biographer, Mari Jo Buhle, has pointed out: "As her reputation spread and she became known for her discussion of women's topics as well, she devoted most of her time to the national lecture circuit."

In 1898 Charlotte published Women and Economics where she advocated equal work for women. In the book she criticized men for desiring weak and feeble wives and urged the economic independence of women. This was followed by other books on social issues such as Concerning Children (1900), The Home (1903) and Human Work (1904).

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAperkinsC.htm

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAbellamy.htm

John Spargo

John Spargo was a minor socialist figure at the beginning of the 20th century. Yet, he has a very detailed page at Wikipedia. The page includes 31 references. Nearly all of them refer to Markuu Ruotsila's book, John Spargo and American Socialism (2006). In fact, the page is no more than a detailed promotion of Ruotsila's book. Ruotsila is a NeoCon who has been attracted to Spargo as he was a Marxist who moved sharply to the right during the First World War. Nothing he says about Spargo is untrue but it just shows you the subtle use of Wikipedia as propaganda.

http://stupidest.wordpress.com/2009/01/18/the-wacky-world-of-markku-ruotsila-finnish-neocon/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Spargo

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAspargo.htm

Vincent Saint John

There is very little on Vincent Saint John on the web. In 1905 representatives of 43 groups who opposed the policies of American Federation of Labour, formed the radical labour organisation, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). At first its main leaders were Vincent Saint John, William Haywood, Daniel De Leon and Eugene V. Debs.

In 1908 the Wobblies, as they became known, split into two factions. The group headed by Eugene V. Debs and Daniel De Leon advocated political action through the Socialist Party and the trade union movement, to attain its goals. The other faction led by Saint John and William Haywood, believed that general strikes, boycotts and even sabotage to achieve its objectives.

As James Cannon pointed out: "At the second convention of the IWW in 1906, St. John headed the revolutionary syndicalist group, which combined with the SLP elements to oust Sherman, a conservative, as president and establish a new administration in the organization with a revolutionary policy. He became the general organizer under the new administration, breaking with the WFM on the withdrawal of the latter body and giving his whole allegiance to the IWW." Vincent Saint John now became General Secretary of the Industrial Workers of the World.

During the First World War Saint John campaigned against American intervention in the conflict. After the USA declared war on the Central Powers in 1917, several party members were arrested for violating the Espionage Act. As Howard Zinn pointed out: "In early September 1917, Department of Justice agents made simultaneous raids on forty-eight IWW meeting halls across the country, seizing correspondence and literature that would become courtroom evidence.

Vincent Saint John was one of those who and were arrested. He was found guilty he was sent to Leavenworth Prison. He was eventually freed on the orders of President Warren G. Harding in 1923.

Vincent St. John died in 1929 and is buried in Oakland, California.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAjohnV.htm

Murray Bookchin and Social Ecology

Murray Bookchin became a pioneer of the ecology movement and in 1971 he co-founded, the Institute for Social Ecology at Goddard College in Vermont. Bookchin later argued: "Social ecology is based on the conviction that nearly all of our present ecological problems originate in deep-seated social problems. It follows, from this view, that these ecological problems cannot be understood, let alone solved, without a careful understanding of our existing society and the irrationalities that dominate it."

Bookchin published a series of books on social ecology including Post-Scarcity Anarchism (1971), The Limits of the City (1973) and Toward an Ecological Society (1980). In The Ecology of Freedom: The Emergence and Dissolution of Hierarchy (1982), Bookchin argues that "If we do not do the impossible, we shall be faced with the unthinkable."

As a Marxist, Bookchin argued that capitalism had to be overthrown: "The notion that man must dominate nature emerges directly from the domination of man by man… But it was not until organic community relation… dissolved into market relationships that the planet itself was reduced to a resource for exploitation. This centuries-long tendency finds its most exacerbating development in modern capitalism. Owing to its inherently competitive nature, bourgeois society not only pits humans against each other, it also pits the mass of humanity against the natural world. Just as men are converted into commodities, so every aspect of nature is converted into a commodity, a resource to be manufactured and merchandised wantonly.… The plundering of the human spirit by the market place is paralleled by the plundering of the earth by capital."

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAbookchin.htm

John Abt

During his interrogation by the Dallas Police in November 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald requested the services of John Abt. He is recorded as saying: "I want that attorney in New York, Mr. Abt. I don't know him personally but I know about a case that he handled some years ago, where he represented the people who had violated the Smith Act... I don't know him personally, but that is the attorney I want... If I can't get him, then I may get the American Civil Liberties Union to send me an attorney." However, Abt was on holiday in Connecticut and later told reporters that he had received no request either from Oswald or from anyone on his behalf to represent him, before he was shot dead by Jack Ruby.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAabtJ.htm

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKoswald.htm

Wikipedia and the JFK Assassination

Interesting article by J. P. Mroz on Wikipedia and the assassination of JFK. It includes the following:

Here, the reader should note that, earlier this spring, I had been in touch with Jim DiEugenio about my research into Wikipedia and the events surrounding the removal of the Fetzer/Marrs external link from the Wikipedia LHO entry. Key in my correspondence to Jim was the above Gamaliel/Fernandez quote about "conspiracy theorists['] issue[s] ... overwhelm[ing] the text." My comment to Jim was: So, in other words, all contributions contrary to the Krazy-Kid-Oswald Theory are dispatched & disposed within the Wiki black hole titled: John F. Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories so as not to "overwhelm the text!" And things like the backyard photos being genuine, that Oswald ordered the rifle, that he manufacatured a package to carry it to work, and that in the face of the legendary path of CE 399/the Magic Bullet, these are all not theories, but facts? To Gamaliel, that is the case. Therefore, The New York Times, Waren Report, Reclaiming History, and John McAdams' web site are credible troves of "fact"; Probe Magazine is not.

http://www.ctka.net/2010/wiki.html