1807 -- Poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow lives, Portland, Maine. The most
popular 19th century American poet & first to earn a living solely from
writing verse. His best-known narrative poem, The Song of Hiawatha (1855)
adapted its meter from the Finnish national epic Kalevala.
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/long.htm
1913 -- France: After 25 days of deliberations, the Paris trial of the
Bonnot Gang ends & sentencing follows:
Raymond Callemin, Eugene Dieudonne, Andre Soudy, & Monier, are condemned to
death;
Paul Metge & Edouard Carouy get life without parole (Carouy commits suicide
tomorrow, in his cell).
Their accused accomplices: Jean de Boe: 10 years forced labor; Gauzy: 18
months prison; Kibaltchiche (aka, Victor Serge, editor of "L'Anarchie"): 5
years prison.
Seule Rirette Maitrejean is freed. Louis Rimbault, sentenced to prison,
fakes mental illness & gains his release.
Eugene Dieudonne's death sentence was commuted to life. After several
escapes, & following a campaign for his release headed by Albert London, he
was pardoned in 1925.
See Richard Parry's The Bonnot Gang, (Rebel Press) which punctures the
romanticism of "illegality" & individual armed struggle. He sees the Bonnot
Gang as a temporary coalition of individualist anarchists drawn together by
the anarchist individualist weekly "L'Anarchie" & criminals who donned the
cloak of anarchism in their search for a convenient philosophical excuse
for their actions -- without support of the populace or the rest of the
anarchist movement.
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/3374/mesrine.html
http://www.chez.com/durru/bonnot/bonnot.htm
1917 -- Russia: Abdication of Nicholas II, last non-Marxist Czar.
1923 -- US: Formation in New York of the Mohegan Colony Association, based
on anarchist principles.
�Reformers come to a bad end. Only after their death do people see that
they were right & erect monuments in their memory.�
� Janus Korczak, from King Matt the First (Happy B/day Ralph N.)
1970 -- NY Times (falsely) reports US army has ended illegal domestic
surveillance.
1973 -- US: 300 Oglala Sioux American Indian Movement (A.I.M.) activists
liberate & occupy Wounded Knee, South Dakota, in response to campaign of
terror by tribal & FBI officials. They demand an investigation of Indian
grievances at the site of the last major massacre of Indians by whites (see
29 December).
1975 -- Mayoral candidate Lorenz snatched by June 2 Movement in West
Germany; release of 6 imprisoned guerillas demanded. (Go Bommi!)
1976 -- Canada: The Inuit Tapirisat presents claim to immense area in
Canada's Arctic.
1987 -- The Tower Commission Report, detailing the Iran-Contra Scandal,
finds Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Ronnie Reagan confused &
uninformed. It faults White House Chief of Staff Donald Regan, former
National Security Advisor Robert McFarlane & his successor Admiral John
Poindexter, & CIA Director William Casey. Casey had resigned on 2 February
for health reasons; McFarlane attempted suicide on 9 February; & Regan
resigned 27 February.
�Tomorrow I shall go to the High Court of Eagles for � the first time? Does
anyone in this strange & terrible land go anywhere, without having been
there before in myth or dream? The minister with whom I shall confer will
ask me a simple question. Beyond my campaign to free Neveryon�s slaves,
whom will I align myself with next? Will I take up the cause of the workers
who toil for wages only a step above slavery? Or will I take up the
marginal workless wretches who, without wages at all, live a step below?
Shall I ally myself with those women who find themselves caught up,
laboring without wages, for the male population among both groups? For they
are, all of them�these free men & women�caught in a freedom that, despite
the name it bears, makes movement through society impossible, makes the
quality of life miserable, that allows no chance & little choice in any
aspect of the human not written by the presence or elision of the sign for
production. This is what Lord Krodar will ask me. & I shall answer��
� Samuel R. Delany, Neveryona
