in kansdus

A Look at KansasAnarchist History When writing about her visit here to lecture at the University assistanteditor in 1883. While associatedwith GH Walser and of Kansas in 1911, Emma Goldman made the following Liberal University in Liberal, MO, Walker developed a plan for comments:"The Stateof Kansas,like Massachusetts,lives on past an anarchistic economic arrangementto free them from the "ranks glory. F{ad it not given John Brown to the causeof the slaves? of capital's dependents,"which, however, never came to fruition" Had not the rebel voice of Moses Harman soundedthere? Had it He also contributed to , an anarchistjournal published in not been the stronghold of free thought? Whatever its historic Boston. Walker had an even more libertarian reputation than claim to progress,Kansas now gaveno sign of it. The Church and Harman, having been described by the editor of the Atchison Prohibition had evidently performed the last rites at the interment Globe, as "a fellow so intensely liberal that he opposesthe law of liberalism." Anarchists and anarchistperiodicals had been an againstindecent exposure." important part of this radicai past, with Harman and his paper In August, 1883, as Harman became more interestedin sex, Lucifer perhapsbeing the best known among them. labor, and property issues, the Liberal evolved into Lucifer, the Light-Bearer, a title describedby as "Quite the Lucifer, the Light-Bear er best name we know of, after Liberty!" As time went on, Lucifer In 1879, Moses Harman moved to Valley Falls from became increasingly anarchistic in outlook, describing itself in 'weekly missouri. An abolitionist and freethinker, he began a 1885 as a Anarchist-FreethoughtJournal." In 1887,the journal cailed the Valley Falls Liberal in August, 1880, and editor of the anarchistKansas City Sun, writing in Liberty, said servedas the secretaryof the local Liberal League in Valley Falls that "Liberty attacks the State, the Truth Seeker attacks the dunng the early 1880s. At this time the freethought movement Church, the Word attacks Madam Grundy, but Lucifer is not included a number of anarchists. The l89l annualmeeting of the content, in its own way, without attacking all three." During this Kansas Liberal League in Ottawa, which was denouncedby the time Harman's children also joined the staff of the paper, George Topeka State Journal as a "" gathering, was attendedby as copublisher and Lillian as compositor. , and its 1894 annual meeting in Topeka In 1886, as an expressionof their view that governmenthad demanded that Grover Cleveland no business regulating the sex lives "take off your crown, vacate your of individuals, Walker and Lillian throne, lay down your sceptre and take Harman publicly entered into a yourself away from the sight of human "common-sense arrangement", an eyesforever." Flarman and his paper, "autonomistic" non state-sanctioned from the beginning, were also marriage governed by a "wholly concerned about many other issues private contract" between the parties. besides freethought. In a prospectus The "newlyweds" were arrestedthe published in 1880, the Liberal, in day after their wedding at the Lucifer addition to endorsing the platform of office and held that night under the National Liberal League, pledged guard aI Cataract House in Valley to "champion the rights of the poor, Falls. They were transferred to laboring man as against monopolists county jail at Oskaloosathe next day, of every class." but Lillian was later allowed to Harman changed the paper's return under guard to Valley Falls, name to the Kansas Liberal in 1881, since the jail had no facilities for a and moved it to Lawrence for six woman. Harman and Walker were months in 1882, during which time it later brought to Shawnee County jail served as the organ of the Kansas in Topeka in October to await trial, Liberal Union. Because of clashes and their case was heard in district with his associates there over court in Oskaloosa. Found guilty of prohibition (which he opposed) he living together as husband and wife resumed control of the paper and without license and legal marriage, moved it back to Valley Falls. The "Wait! Wait! Listento me!...Wedon't HAVE to be they were imprisoned in adjacent just sheep!" paper now began carrying more cells in the Oskaloosajail. Moses advertisingoffering anarchist, sex radical, and freethought books Hull, publisher of the Des Moines New Thought, wrote that they and periodicalsfor sale" In 1882,Edwin Cox Walker, an iowa had been jailed "for being anarchists,agnostics, atheists and freethinker, began writing for the Kansas Liberal, and became everythingbad that beginswith an A." While their partners in Lucifer were still in jail, Moses and Valley Falls. This paperwas suspendedin 1891,and its George Harman also ran afoul of the law. In keeping with their subscriptionswere transferred to Liberty, for which Walkerwrote policy of not editing letters submitted for publication, the andacted as canvasser and traveling salesperson. Harmans had published sexually explicit material in their paper. With the departure of Early in i887, they were arrested on obscenity charges and l.illian and Walker, Moses indicted by u federal grand jury in Topeka on 270 counts of was forced to seek out new obscenity. In 1890, after continuing to publish letters about sex blood to assist him with during the trial, Moses Harman was found guilty on 4 counts and putting ouI Lucifer. Clarence sentencedto five years in the kansas penitentiary and fined S300. Lee Swartz, who had He served 4 months and then was released on a technicality. formerly edited Voice of the While free, he was tried for having printed another sex letter and People an anarchistjournal in was sentencedto a year, but served only eight months before Kingman, edited Lucifer being releasedon a proceduralpoint. He was then resentencedto during part of Moses' first one year at hard labor for his original conviction, returned to imprisonment in 1890. After prison to serve out his time, and left prison in April 1896. his stint at Lucifer, he, too, Having moved Lucifer to Topeka in 1890 in order to more easily ran into problems with the fight his legal battles from there, he moved to in 1896 government in kansas for daring to believe in freedom of the after his release from prison. Govemment harassmentof Harman press. In 1891, he distributed the irreverent reform-minded and his paper due to his free editorial policy continued there, and Kansas City, MO, Sunday Sun in Topeka, and was arrestedunder he was sentencedto a year of hard labor for obscenity in 1906, ar a kansaslaw against sensationalliterature. His bond was set at the age of 75. He broke rocks in Joliet eight and a half hours a $4000, and later lowered to $2000, but he spent 36 days in jail day in the illinois winter, which ruined his health and resultedin before raising this amount. Fortunately for him, the prosecutor his transfer to the federal prison in Leavenworth. There he was did not show up in court and charges against him were dropped. hospitalized for bronchitis and spent much of the remainder of his Years later, Swartz produced What is Mutualism, an edited sentencein the hospital. In 1908 he move to Los Angeles,where collection of Benjamin Tucker's writings, and wrote an article on he diedin 1910. " " in the New Encyclopedio of Social While Harman had been tied up fighting censorship in the Rrfor*. courts, many changes had taken place in the Lucifer office. In Anarchist Lois Nichols Waisbrooker edited Lucifer for 1888"Walker and Lillian Harman had resignedfrom Lucifer over severalmonths in 1891-1892. One of the issuesshe edited was differenceswith Moses about his free languagepolicy, and started barred from the mails for reprinting a section of a book mailed by their own anarchist newspaper called Fair Play, also published in the USDA. While printing the word penis was the cause for Moses Harman's imprisonment, this official government publication used the word freely, and Waisbrooker wished to point out this double standard. The issue also contained three ads judged obsceneby the post office. She put out subsequentissues of Lucifer with a front page streamer which stated that the pap€r was now "Published under Government Censorship." Waisbrooker also published and edited her own journal Foundation Principles from several places, including Topeka dunng the eighties and nineties, and was arrestedin Topeka in 1894 for publishing obscenity. The court caselasted months and her poor health led her to stop publishing Foundation Principles. She finally received an arrestof judgement in 1896. Waisbrooker later lived in the anarchist community, Home, in washington state. Other Area Anarchists The circle of people involved with Lucifer were not the only anarchy in kansas anarchists in the area at this time. Eight people in Salina is an occasionalpublication of the Bad Press, respondedwith donations to an appeal to readers of Liberty tn an anti-governmentanarchist project, 1882 to fund the Society of the Red Cross of the Will of the People(the so-callednihilists) in russia. In 1884 and 1885,the is Peacott. and edited by Joe anarchistMiners' Journal was published in Scammonville, and Individual issuesare availablefor postage/SAsE. edited by John Mclaughlin, who started the Radical Democrat rn You can reach Bad Pressat: 1885 in the sametown. Albert Parsonstoured kansasin 1885 as a PO Box 3682 labor organizer, speaking in Ottawa to around 3000 people on KansasCity, KS 66103-0682 July 4. He also spoke in Topeka, and addressed miners in Scammonville, Weir City and Pittsburg. And in 1886, John email: bbrigade@world. std.com Shrum, the secretary of the Scammonville Group, IWPA, the website: world. std.com/-bbrigade international anarchistorganization, lived in Columbus. 1923. Another antiwar anarchist imprisoned at this time was Nobody kccpt hlr campalgn promlrcs. Louis G Raymond, who spent five or six years in Leavenworth ]bbotly dcrcwet to llvc off your tuGs. and was deported to Spain after his release. During their your Nobody can leglelatG lrecdom. imprisonment these prisoners were aided by a committee called NOBODYIS THE the Ladies' Tea Club organized by anarchist Bessie Zoglin in PERFECTCANDIDATEI Kansas City, MO, who, with her husband Isaac, also arranged It you think that Nobocly lectures in KC by Emma Goldman, Saul Yanofsky, Rudolph representsyour interests, Rocker, and other anarchists. Members of the club visited VOTE"FOR prisoners and gave them food and clothing. According to Zoglin, NOBODY Elbert Preshner and another anarchist working as orderlies in Leavenworth prison hospital said that Ricardo was being slowly poisoned and they poured out the poison and were replaced. It you think Nobody shouldrun your life, Poison was reportedly found at autopsy. VOTE FOR AnarchistPublishing in Kansas NOBODY in the Twentieth CenturY Although there has been little anarchist activity in kansas lf you think, since this time, anarchist literature has continued to appear VOTEFOR intermittently. In 1919, Emanuel Haldeman-Julius began a NOBODY publishing project in Girard, called the Little Blue Book Company" Until his death in 1951, in addition to various atheist, freethought, and other oppositional literature, Haldeman-Julius In the 1880s, Charles T Fowler edited the Kansas City Sun, published works by anarchist writers, including Percy Bysshe an anarchist and labor paper in Kansas City, MO. He had been an Shelly, Victor Yarros, Henry David Thoreau, Peter Kropotkin, associateof Josiah Warren, Benjamin Tucker, and Sidney Morse OscarWilde, andLeo Tolstoy. in Boston before moving to the Midwest. He wrote a number of In Lawrence, the of Evolutionary Anarchists, anarchist pamphlets, including Cooperation: Its Laws and a number of years ago, published a journal called Meander Principles, Corporations, and Homes, which showed Quarterly, as well as anarchist pamphlets, includrng Consent or how people could organize their lives without government Coercion? The group has since renamed itself the Voluntary intervention. He also contributed to both Liberty andLucifer, in Cooperation Movement and the local Lawrence group is called which journal he defended the Haymarket anarchists. Fowler died the Ricardo Flores Magon Club. One of its members has also in Westport,MO in 1889. published a new edition of Augustin Souchy's book, With the Anarchists were notorious enough in kansas in this era that Peasantsof Aragon. when a railway express package addressedto Winfield exploded The Bad Press, which is a continuation of the Boston in Coffeyville in 1888, injuring two people, the Courier tn Anarchist Drinking Brigade's publishing project. relocated to Winfield claimed this showed that "Evidences of Anarchism in KansasCity in 1999 and has published severalbroadsides here, in Kansasare Increasing." In 1889, GasparC Clemens,an attorney addition to this newsletter. Anarchists believe it is important that in Topeka advocated anarchy in the Kansas Democrat He had the libertarian idea (and anarchisthistorY) be kept alive, even in earlier defended Walker and Harman when they were arrestedfor times and placeswhere there is little anti-stateactivity. After all, their outlaw marriage and wrote a pamphlet protesting the it is only when people are exposed to anarchist ideas that we can treatment of the anarchists in Chicago. He had also spoken on ever hope for libertarian changein individuals and society. their behalf and againstpolice violence in Topeka, calling for the abolition of the police court and jail. In 1893, The Advocate, a (For more information on the people discussedin this article, populist journal printed his essay, "Anarchism as Anarchists check out the SexRadicals by Hal Sears,Fred Whitehead'sarticle Understand It," and allowed him to respond to his critics in the "The Kansas Response"in Haymarket Scrapbook, and Liberty, samejournal two weeks later. And, demonstratingthe influence which is availableon microfiche.) of anarchist ideas in the region, the editor of the Jffirsonian> a populist paper in Lawrence and Topeka, wrote in 1891 that " A good government is a contradiction in terms, equivalent to good evil." While the anarchist movement in kansas petered out around the tum of the century, a number of anarchistswere imprisoned in I-eavenworth during the first world war. Mexican anarchists Ricardo and Enrique Flores Magon, publishersof Regeneracion, were arrested in l9l8 in california. Ricardo was transferredto LeavenworthPenitentiary in 1919, and was found dead in his cell in November, 1922, possibly having been murdered. Enrique was also at Leavenworth for a time. Their associateLibrado Rivera, who was also arrested in california was transferred to Leavenworth in 1920, then released and deported to mexico in Why I Am An Anarchist Peoplebecome anarchistsfor various reasons. Oru experiencesbecoming independentof capitalist employers. And the govemment living in authoritarian society, the experiencesof our friends and which enables this systematic dispossessionof working people loved ones, the things we read, the things we see and hear, our through interest, rent, and profit supports itself with tax money it temperament,and our views about humannature (or the lack thereof) stealsdirectly from working people. all contribute to ow ideas about the state, individuals and society. With police action and imprisonment as an ever-presentthreat Those of us who become anarchistsall agree on one point: that for those who dare to disobey, the state tries in myriad ways to peopleare fully capableof figrring out how to live their lives without control the daily lives of its subjects" It attemptsto force all young governmentand other coercive institutions. But, becausewe have all people into its indoctrination factories, where they are crowded arrived at our libertarian viewpoint in different ways, we often have together in same age herds, sometimesforced to all dress alike, different priorities in our activities promoting social change,and are expected to respect the authority of self-appointed experts, more or less outragedby different displaysof power on the part of the intimidated or brutalized by violent peers, and frequently not even state. The following are some of the things about govemmentthat taught to read or write. People who attempt to rescuetheir children most disgustme and for which I seeno solution short of abolition of from this system are treated with suspicion and forced to surrender govemment. the privacy of their homes to the inspection of bureaucratswho Armed government thugs are empoweredto harassand abuse believethey know betterhow to take careof their children. peaceable,non-invasive people" Police claim that they are there to The state prevents people from freely purchasing medicines, "serve and protect us," and in many places people are preventedby forcing them to get a note from a government-approved health the state from owning firearms, rendering them unable to protect provider before they can treat their own illnesses, and criminalizes themselves. However, the police have demonstratedtheir peoplewho dare to give health advice or care without first obtaining unwillingness or inability to protect anyone but themselvesand the a license from the government. The state even presumesto dictate officials who employ them. Instead, the police spend their time who may cut your hair or trim your nails; what you can and cannot victimizing people engagedin peacefulactivities like driving without seeand hear on television,what kind of home you are allowed to live a goverrment permit (license and registration);buying, using, or in, if, when, and where you may travel outside of the country; and selling drugs not approvedof by the state;trading sex for money; or how late you can have a drink at a bar. Nothing is too important or even keeping a messy backyard. But beyond enforcing unjust laws, too peffy for the governmentto concern itself with. these bullies also harass, arrest, and attack people with no Besidesinterfering constantly in the lives of those who live in provocation,because they appear"suspicious," or "look guilty," are the territory it controls, the government also maintains an driving on a road where the international force for terrorizing people in other police have decidedto set up a countries" When the governmentsof other nations do checkpoint, are carrying "too something of which the united states government much" cash, or are simply disapproves,and threats of force are not adequateto driving while black, sometimes change the situation, the military is dispatchedto resulting in the death of murder civilians, poison the land, destroy essential someone who has done utilities and otherwise immiserate the subjects of the nothing illegal, simply because government in question" If such attacks are not they did not obey police or adequateto obtain abject surrender, trade sanctions, made a move which poiice enforced by the military, are then implemented,in consideredthreatening. When order to frrther torment the populace. And this is often peopleresist police attacksand in retaliation for actions on the part of a foreign harassment,they can be shot govemmentwhich would be ignored if canied out by a and killed with impunity. and nation which is friendly to the united states sometimes have even been govemmentor its corporatesupporters. incinerated in their dwellings" That is what government does. That is its Those who survive their essential nature. But although this is standard encounterswith the police and procedurefor all the statesof the world, such a system end up in prison are routinely of organized force and theft is not the only way for brutalized and demeaned bv human societyto be organized. Getting rid of the state their keepers,who then fail to protect them from berng raped,beaten would allow working people to stand up to corporatepredators and and sometimeskilled by their fellow inmates. refuse to surrenderany part of their product to the owners. Renters Govemment uses its laws and police to protect the unjustly and tenants could lay claim to the land and properff they use and acquiredwealth of its corporateallies and supporters. It protects occupy, and stop paying rent. People could produce and circulate titles to land which allow some to own property they neither use nor whatevermeans of exchangethey wish, greatly increasingavailable occupy, the possessorsof which are then able to extract rent from credit and allowing people to earn their living independentlyif they those who need land on which to live and/or work. The state also so choose. And peoplewould no longer be taxed to supportthose protects the property rights of owners of factories and other who dominateand rob them. busrnesses,where the workers produce the wealth and those who Without a state, people would be able to figure out ways to employ them steal a portion of the product of their labor. interact, trade, and leam cooperatively and peacefully. Persuasion Governmentand its associatedbanks monopolize the money supply, would generallyreplace force as a meansof settling disputesand the thus denying credit to those who don't already possesssome wealth, only limit on one's freedom would be the equal freedom of others. facilitating extortionate interest, and preventing most people from This is anarchy. And that is why I am an anarchist.