Preparedness

Before you think about violence…. think!

Some comments to my latest blog said I was wrong for talking about non-violent resistance. My own history includes training to be a USMC officer including how to kill with my bare hands. That training changed me forever. I do not want to kill another human being for any reason including “self defense”.

Hellraisers Journal: The Whereabouts & Doings of Mother Jones, Sent on Mission to Arizona, May 1916


My address is like my shoes.
It travels with me.
I abide where there is a fight against wrong.
-Mother Jones
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Wednesday June 7, 1916
Mother Jones Travels From Chicago to Arizona with Stop in Kansas

Mother Mary Harris Jones, Text- Please Find Her, AZ Repbn, May 16, 1916-1.png

Hellraisers Journal: Elizabeth Gurley Flynn on the “Glory” of War and Thoughts on Breeding for War

Defend your country?
What ground do you own?
-not even enough to stand on, perhaps,
much less enough to bury yourself in!
-Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
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Tuesday May 30, 1916
St. Louis, Missouri - Elizabeth Gurley Flynn Speaks on Preparedness

Robert Minor, Breed Mother Breed, NY Call, Aug 8, 1915.png
From the New York Call of August 8, 1915
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Hellraisers Journal: May Day in New York City! Unionists & Socialist Turn Out by Tens of Thousands!

You ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age.
Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
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Tuesday May 2, 1916
From The New York Times: Thousands March Singing Marseillaise

May Day 1916, NYC Parade, LOC.png

Hellraisers Journal: Elizabeth Gurley Flynn & Sara Bard Field on "Patriotism" from The Masses

Let those who own the country, who are howling for and profiting
by preparedness, fight to defend their property.
-Elizabeth Gurley Flynn

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Friday March 17, 1916
From The Masses: "Do You Believe in Patriotism?" Part I

In the March issue of The Masses, various Socialist writers respond to the question, "Do you believe in Patriotism?" Today Hellraisers features the answers to that question from two prominent Socialist women, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and Sara Bard Field. Tomorrow's edition will feature the responses of John Sloan and Charles Erskine Scott Wood. K. R. Chamberlin also offers an artistic answer to the question:

Artist K. R. Chamberlain on Patriotism

Patriotism by KR Chamberlain, The Masses, Mar 1916.png
PATRIOTISM by K. R. Chamberlain.
The Editor, the Munition Maker and Investor: "Outrage! American Killed in Mexico! War!"
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Hellraisers Journal: "This is not a war of Freedom." It is a war for "rulership of the earth.."


The armies and navies which our strutting militarists plan to create here
are not intended for your defense and mine.
Their purpose..is to protect their commerce abroad and rob the workers here
of the last remaining vestiges of their rights under
the constitution and the laws.
-Frank Bohn

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Monday February 14, 1916
From the International Socialist Review: Frank Bohn on Preparedness

In the February edition of the Review, Comrade Bohn offered some thoughts on the issue of preparedness:

International Socialist Review, Feb, 1916, Preparedness, Frank Bohn,.png

PREPAREDNESS

A Speech Delivered at Carnegie Hall, New York, Jan. 5th, 1916
By FRANK BOHN
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Hellraisers Journal: Mother Jones Speaks: "Thank God I have lived to be a grandmother in agitation."

Thank God I have lived to be a grandmother in agitation!
I hope I will live to be
a great-grand mother in agitation!
-Mother Jones

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Monday January 31, 1916
Indianapolis, Indiana - Mother Jones Addresses Convention of United Mine Workers, Part I

Yesterday Hellraisers reported on the speech delivered by Mother Jones during Saturday's afternoon session of the United Mine Workers Convention, now in session in Indianapolis. Today we are pleased to present part one of her speech; we will offer part two in tomorrow's edition of Hellraisers.

Mother Jones Speaks to United Mine Workers Convention, Part I
January 29, 1916, in Indianapolis, Indiana
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Mother Jones UMWJ, Jan 21, 1915.png

ELEVENTH DAY-AFTERNOON SESSION The convention was called to order at 1:30 p.m., Saturday, January 29th, Secretary Green in the chair......

Secretary Green—.....President White will not be here for a little while and, with your permission, we will pause for just a few minutes in our regular order to hear from Mother Jones. She is planning to leave soon and wants to say something to the boys before she leaves.

Mother Jones—Boys, I have looked over this convention from the platform, and I want to give expression to the feeling that in this gathering are men of the most highly developed brains this country can produce. You have come from the picks, but you are developing, and I want to say to you to keep on.

Now I want to call your attention to a few things. Away back in the old Roman age, two hundred years after the world’s greatest agitator was murdered by the ruling class, there arose in Carthage a tremendous agitation among the oppressed, the exploited, those who had borne the burden for ages. The Romans began to be disturbed and thought they would go down to Carthage and capture those who were responsible for the agitation. They went down. All they captured in those days they retained as slaves or sold into slavery. Among the group that was captured was one youth. The Roman judge asked, “Who are you?” The youth said, “I am a member of the human family.” “Why do you agitate?” asked the judge. “Because I belong to that class that has been crushed, robbed, murdered and maligned in all the ages, and I want to break the chains of my class.”

Hellraisers Journal: From the Appeal to Reason: Socialists from Three Nations Ask to End War

I have no country to fight for;
my country is the earth;
I am a citizen of the world.
Eugene Victor Debs

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Tuesday December 28, 1915
From the Appeal to Reason: Socialist Legislators from Three Nations Seek to End the War

From the Christmas Day edition of the Appeal comes the news that Socialists from the legislative bodies of Great Britain, Germany, and the United States have asked for an end to the war now raging in Europe:

Socialists Ask to End War in Parliament of Three Nations
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Great Britain

Philip Snowden, House of Commons 1906-1924.png

On December 8, 1915, Philip Snowden, Socialist member of House of Commons, called upon the British Prime Minister for a statement as to the possibility of ending the war. This was Asquith's reply made in Parliament:

If proposals of a serious character for a general peace are put forward by the enemy governments either directly or through a neutral power they will be discussed by the allied governments.

Asquith thinks it is a sign of weakness for his country to begin peace negotiations. If that view is taken by all seriously and adhered to nothing but death of all the soldiers at the front could possibly end the war. Somebody must begin. Why not Great Britain?