---Kris
Back From The Grave
I don't believe in burial. If I die under circumstances that make cryonics
not feasible, please recycle as many of my body parts as possible. Cut
the rest into convenient half-kilo segments and place them, one each and
unpreserved, in safety deposit boxes in as many banks as possible. After
a respectable period of time, you may feel free to burn the banks and dance
in the ruins.
Prior to the Haymarket gathering, I have visited graveyards only to
walk the dog, get high in private, have sex in the great outdoors, or (occasionally)
to sleep. On the last day of the Haymarket gathering, forces that I have
yet to fathom drove me to Waldheim Cemetery to witness and even participate
(perhaps "against" my "Will") in a travesty of ritual of whose irrelevance
and offensiveness I have been cognizant for years. A group of leftists,
liberals, and similar bozos came together to "commemorate" the Haymarket
martyrs by defaming their memory with lies, boring speeches, dull songs,
and a procession featuring an Actual Touching of "Blessed" Monument Itself.
Ritual and ceremony alter consciousness. Whether well done or clumsy,
performed of observed, "believed" in or not, their effect on Mind, "Spirit,"
and even physiology are easily confirmable by both personal perception
and "scientific" observation. Personally, I prefer drugs, but this in no
way makes me immune to ritual. I am human. My consciousness is alterable.
Even "against" my "Will."
I am not using all these quotation marks as a literary device, but
to connote the arbitrariness of the definitions involved. Whenever we (arbitrarily)
impose an objective/subjective dichotomy on our "understanding" of "consciousness,"
we open a very squirmy can of worms. "Just the facts, Ma'am."
In total sobriety, without even Partaking of the Sacred Caffeine, I
set out with a good night's rest behind me and no idea what I was doing.
A couple dozen anarchists and Wobblies arrived before me. Wreaths adorned
the monument. A black flag emblazoned with the anarchist "trademark" had
been placed in the hand of the magnificent bronze statue. To pass the time,
I examined the surrounding grave stones. Emma Goldman is buried here, Lucy
Parsons and Ben Reitman. But also I saw many unknown and often unpronounceable
names with epithets like "he devoted his life to Liberty" and "Mother and
Comrade." My breath quickened and became shallow. My heart beat faster.
My blood pressure. Strangest of all, a tear ran down my cheek.
Like most males of my culture, I was heavily conditioned from an early
age to repress public displays of most emotion, most especially tears.
Like the song (and school, church, parents and state)sez, "boys don't cry."
Though I have ("intellectually") rejected this principle for many years,
I still find it difficult in most circumstances to break the conditioning
without first having my consciousness altered by drugs, ritual, trauma,
etc. That I should cry spontaneously when sober and rested, when I wasn't
even trying to, should have clued me in immediately that some external
Force was effecting my consciousness. It didn't. Without conscious thought,
I reflexively invoked culturally acquired generic male tear suppression
program. In a brief moment of (false?) consciousness, I "rationalized"
this behavior as "suitable" for "this time and place." Though this program
is usually easy to "log in ," and easier to "execute," this time it wasn't
working. This too should have clued me in. It didn't. I "concluded" that
it was no big deal and simply ignored a significant part of my own conscious
awareness from emotion and the inevitable fragmenting of the whole which
ensures is more than self-contradictory and precursive of cognitive dissonance.
It flies in the face of the Logic which the Men of our People so exalt
to the preclusion near all else. Why think with only part of you brain?
Why engage in any inherently self-hobbling behavior, especially "on purpose?"
Like the man (?) said, "Highly illogical!"
O.K. so a couple of tears fell out of my head. Big fucking deal. Ignore
it. It will "go away." It is so easy to ignore your emotions, especially
if any time in your life you bought any of the patriarchy's bullshit about
"how to behave." To reject the dominant paradigm "intellectually" is only
part of developing a truly autonomous consciousness. "Autonomy" that is
not second nature is illusory. Furthermore, it would seem that for all
my supposed "enlightenment" that I too am perfectly capable of behaving
as lame as the next guy.
It so happens that I am privy to certain arcane techniques of mentation
that could (had I had the sense to have had employed them prior to the
commencement of the ritual) have prevented the fragmentation of consciousness
that dictated my subsequent behavior. Even if I had but allowed myself
to heed the persistent clues, I might have proceeded with a oneness of
self that would have grounded my actions in reason and realism. But nooooo.
I acted on impulse.
To make a long story short, some of "Them" wanted to take the black
flag from the statue before ("Their part of) the ceremony began. Some of
"Us" wanted to stop them. I don't know what motivated the erst of these
guys, but I was just plain lame. I don't believe in flags. I don't even
believe in black flags. Even less than in burial do I believe in flags.
In fact, if there is one thing I do believe in the burial of, it's flags.
Yet there I was, squared off with a dozen strangers against two-three hundred
hostile bozos. One of the left-liberal swine stepped up and grabbed the
flag, defiling it with his foul touch. Before he could pull it away, one
of "Us" grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and began to haul him down.
A rather large, polyester-clad stalinist union hack (or so I'm told) grabbed
him by the scruff of his neck and began to haul him off the first guy's
back. Immediately, I jumped on the big guy's back, twisted his arm beyond
disablement, but not quite to pain and threw a carotid choke hold on him.
I didn't clamp down. I didn't have to. I could have snapped his neck like
a chicken bone. He was totally at my mercy, and he knew it. I knew he knew
it. He knew I knew he knew it. That was sufficient. He froze, still clutching
the anarchist's collar. The anarchist, probably thinking he was had, also
froze, still holding the first guy's collar. The first guy, probably thinking
he was about to be dashed to the concrete if he moved, also froze. His
hand was still on the flag. The flag was still in the hand of the statue,
the only one of us that had had the sense to remain still. There we were,
four men and a bronze woman, frozen like characters in some historic tableau
in a waxworks. The entire scenario resembled naught so much as the flurry
of captures that resolves the rising tension of the mid-game in chess.
Bozo takes flag. Anarchist takes bozo. Union hack takes anarchist. I take
hack. Check. Freeze frame.
I looked over this jerk's shoulder at the monster brawl about to erupt,
and for the first time all day achieved some semblance of cognizance. The
key question, of course, was "How man of thee guys are packing?" Even if
only 1 percent were packing (probably a low estimate for Chicago), that
still meant 12 to 18 rounds. One is enough. the "key question" didn't occur
to me until later. My first though was, "Here I am, committing at least
'aggravated assault' and perhaps 'mob action against the state' in front
of two to three hundred hostile witnesses, at least 50 cameras, and a TV
news crew." Then I realized that I must not be "thinking" clearly or else
I would not have gotten into such a position in the first place. I quickly
concluded that if I were not in control of all my faculties, I would very
likely come up hurt or in trouble at the conclusion. Both logic and intuition
told me to pack it in. It is not my True Will to fight for mere symbols.
For real things, yes, I am willing and able to fight. For Freedom, yes;
for Justice, yes; for food, shelter, the necessities of life, yes. Any
time. For flags, no.
I don't know what went on in the others' minds. The upshot was that
we all let go of each other at once and took a couple of steps apart. A
fifth guy (one of "Them") grabbed the mike and said, "OK, let's put it
to a vote. How many people want to see the monument?" About one hand in
four went up. "That settles it," he said, "the flag comes down." He snatched
it down. I walked away dry-eyed and disgusted.
This sordid interlude was the definite low point of the gathering for
me. The best parts were those times when we set aside our many differences
in order to cooperate on those things on which we do agree. No, the vegans
have not taken up beef to humor the omnivores, nor have the pacifists taken
up arms. Far from it. But neither or these issues no any of the myriad
others got in the way of our working together on jail solidarity, support
of Big Mountain, etc. If this type of thinking catches on, the state is
doomed.
I also liked learning some new chants. Chanting definitely alters the
consciousness. My favorites were: "No More Chanting...No More Chanting..."
and "One Two Three Four...Five Six Seven Eight!!!"
Sez it all, huh?
---Lee
A group of 30 to 60 of us attended the memorial gathering at Waldheim
Cemetery on Sunday morning in a low-key action which felt to me like a
perfect way to wind down the weekend. A fair number of the folks who'd
gotten out of jail the day before were part of the contingent. When the
liberal organizers of this gathering arrived, they found the martyrs' monument
decorated with a wreath by Alan from NYC and a black flag with a red A
belonging to the Chicago organizers of our centennial celebration.
The Illinois Labor Historical Society (ILHS), seeing us there in a
fairly large contingent (one should keep in mind here that the organizers
of the anarchist gathering had approached them in advanced to try to get
a speaker on their program and that this particular participation was the
result of their refusal to even talk to us), approached us with a proposal
that we'd be given the mike for five minutes in return for our removing
the flag which we'd installed in the arms of the lady on the monument.
They could get no consensus from the group to agree to these terms, but
when they offered the mike, Steve took advantage of it and made a short,
impromptu address. The ILHS dude then tied to take the flag down, and tussled
with Fred, who told him that "we never agreed to that." We then wound up
reinstalling the flag where it met their verbalized concerns (that the
flag impaired the sight of the monument) while not decreasing the flag's
visibility. There was another slight tussle when the wind caused one of
our flags (there were by then several black and red & black flags around
the monument) to fall and some RCP type tried to make off with it. He gave
it back, though, with neither blows being exchanged nor voices being raised.
At appropriate junctures, chants were raised to the end of correcting some
of the distortions of history coming from the speakers. Various of our
group wandered around handing out copies of Emancipation and another handout
which'd been put together Saturday afternoon. a couple speakers actually
made stilted and strained references to the anarchist beliefs of the martyrs,
which I'm personally satisfied that they wouldn't have made had they not
felt the pressure from us. After the ILHS's program ended, there was some
picture-taking and we sort of filtered off to do whatever we were committed
to do for the afternoon. Alan's wreath wound up on Emma Goldman's grave.
---Pat
The next morning I went to Waldheim Cemetery. I'd been there before
and one thing I knew I wanted to do again was dance on the Stalinist, Leninist,
Trotskyist, Marxist, Working-Class Heroes graves. Hell, I wasn't unfair:
I even danced on Voltairine de Cleyre's grave and the memorial (I have
no respect for monuments per se.)
Anyway, our presence annoyed the liberals who wanted to proclaim the
martyrs heroes for reform (Puke, gag!) I mingled amongst the liberals,
heckling their display. They got angry and said, "If you don't like it,
why don't you go home and leave us alone!" Then they were real upset when
some people danced, spit, and even pissed on Stalinist row. (For those
who never were there, there are some terribly offensive folks buried in
a couple of rows, right next to the memorial.) This was one confrontation.
Anyway, I had to get out of there because tons of FBI guys were taking
my picture. I had tried to fly my present--an anar-kite (a big kite with
a circle A on it_--but it didn't work. Typical, huh? then the liberals
had a moment of silence and a procession to touch the monument. We immediately
broke into a false faith-healing. That goes down as the most fun I had
in Chicago. it was rather funny and so appropriate. It was like, "Touch
the monument and be absolved from your bourgeois decadent lifestyle." Then
the liberals took family photos in front of the monument.
---Chartreuse Colada
The gathering at Waldheim Cemetery restored my energy and renewed my class hatred. It was a shame that we ruined the Illinois Historical Society's celebration for dead anarchists by showing that there's some living anarchists. The little disturbance with them renewed my faith in Stalinist police behavior. I could picture Louis Lingg rising from his grave to spit in the face of the Stalinist speakers. On ironic thing that actually happened was Utah Phillips, an invited guest of theirs, sang an anti-state song. Long Live The People, Death To All States!
---Wild Wayne
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Updated: Nov 98