If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.
I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from convention and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy. I insisted that our Cause could not expect me to become a nun and that the movement would not be turned into a cloister. If it meant that, I did not want it. “I want freedom, the right to self-expression, everybody’s right to beautiful, radiant things.” Anarchism meant that to me, and I would live it in spite of the whole world — prisons, persecution, everything. Yes, even in spite of the condemnation of my own closest comrades I would live my beautiful ideal. Emma Goldman
I’ve been reading about Emma Goldman (1869-1940). Her life provides an example of someone unable to refrain from engaging unable to ignore injustice and violence and just go on with her life. She paid a price for that passion and, I hope, sometimes saw change as a result of her organizing and inspiring large crowds to action.
From her early years, the seeds of her insistent spirit appeared as she didn’t accept her domineering father’s rule or his demand that she marry at age 15. Against his wishes, she immigrated to the U.S. from what is now Lithuania in 1885.
She was a feminist and anarchist and powerful speaker, perhaps most remembered for her support of birth control for women and free love, was a lifelong activist for many issues of social and economic justice. She was sent to prison many times for actions such as advising the unemployed to take bread if their pleas for food were not answered, for giving information in a lecture on birth control, and for opposing military conscription.
She was eventually deported along with 248 others during a red scare after WWI. She emigrated to Russia and then to Europe, where she travelled and lectured in many countries, eventually allowed to return to U.S. in the 30’s where she was in demand though still controversial (of course).
Emma Goldman was only a few years older than my grandmother who also immigrated from Lithuania to U.S. It is a revelation for me to realize that someone of my grandmother’s background stoop up that way. I am reading what I can to find out what it was that sparked her brazen activism.