On 10/3/20 1:25 PM, Mark Lause wrote:
I think the strategic criticisms by other militant abolitionists made
of John Brown's plan to raid the U.S. Arsenal at Harpers Ferry was
well informed and Brown would have been well-advised to heed them, but
he was not mad.
The more militant you were, the madder you were considered.
Rediker is to be hailed for rescuing Lay from obscurity. This was a
freedom-fighter who lived a life that was strikingly in the spirit of
contemporary radicalism even though he was born 335 years ago. Not only
was he against slavery, he was also against cruelty to animals. A strict
vegan, he shunned ostentation in keeping with
his<https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0807035920/counterpunchmaga>Quaker
faith even as the bourgeois members of the faith were indistinguishable
from other Protestant elites. Constantly being expelled from one Quaker
congregation after another, he refused to keep his mouth shut about
slavery. He saw his mission as one of comforting the afflicted and
afflicting the comfortable—to paraphrase how Finley Peter Dunne
described the role of newspapers. Finally, anticipating the kind of
guerilla theater Abbie Hoffman pulled off when he threw dollar bills
into the trading floor of the NY Stock Exchange, Lay often adopted
tactics that relied more on the daring deed than the spoken word.
He used to position himself in front of Quaker churches on a Sunday
morning in the dead of winter and place his bare right leg on the snow.
As the well-dressed and comfortable parishioners strode past him, they
were taken aback by the sight. When asked whether he was risking
frostbite, he’d reply, “Ah, you pretend compassion for me but you do not
feel for the poor slaves in your fields, who go all winter half clad.”
https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/12/29/the-amazing-benjamin-lay-friend-of-animals-enemy-of-slavers/
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