When Emma Goldman returned to the U.S. in 1934 for a lecture tour, one of the first persons to greet her was Jack. He had been an active anarchist in New York City since the mid-1920s and had corresponded with her while she was in Europe. In 1934 Jack helped arrange several events in New York City at which she spoke.
In May 1986 Jack was videotaped at the Anarchist Switchboard in New York City. He talked about Emma's political philosophy, her oratorical ability, her fights with the Stalinists, her interest in the arts, her personal appearance and habits, etc. One of his amusing anecdotes in the videotape tells about her 1934 talk at Cooper Union. The Stalinists scattered themselves throughout the hall to break up the meeting. But her wit and skill in repartee was such that they could not even begin their disruption. The audience was 100% with her. When a Stalinist would jump up, the people in the vicinity would shout or push him down. They wanted to hear Emma.
This videotape was made before a live audience, which included Judith Malina of the Living Theater, who can be seen asking Jack about Emma's attitude to nonviolence. Among the questioners was a Leninist from one of the minor Communist parties. He attacked Emma's rejection of Lenin's policy. (This issue was discussed by Emma in full in the book "My Disillusionment in Russia.") Jack defended Emma by giving a detailed description of how the Revolution came to his hometown in Russian Bessarabia. The Bolsheviks only appeared there at a very late date, after the people themselves had taken over the local government and had driven the Czarist officials out. The last part of the videotape is a graphic story of how the Revolution was actually experienced in this tiny part of Russia, far from Moscow or Saint Petersburg.
Incidentally, Jack died in New York City in 1998. A special forum was held by the Libertarian Book Club in his memory.
At the time of the executions, people around the world were roused by the clear injustice of the case. On August 22, the last night alive for Sacco and Vanzetti, huge crowds of mourners held vigils for them in many cities - in Boston, London, Paris, Rome and Moscow. In New York, over 100,000 turned out in Union Square. 'The case of the century' should not be forgotten today when prosecutors and law enforcement officials orchestrate new symphonies of fraud against the innocent. This goes far beyond a few prisoners like Leonard Peltier and Mumia Abu-Jamal, whose cases have become international scandals. Even the famed FBI lab, supposedly the state of the art in objective scientific criminology, is now mired in scandal for tainting evidence against defendants. In New York State, police officers have been convicted of faking evidence to get convictions, while the government's own Mollen Commission has confirmed that NYPD officers routinely commit perjury with the implicit cooperation of the prosectors.
And yet U.S. authorities, even in the face of their proven and continuing record of framing the innocent and silencing dissident voices through such persecutory prosecutions, continue loudly to trumpet their 'right' to impose the death penalty. International human rights standards are sadly low, but the U.S. does not even meet them. On the contrary, its continuing routine use of capital punishment puts it in a class with some of the world's most notoriously abusive governments. Only the rulers of China and Iran rival the U.S. in the number of people executed (although even they do not imprison as great a proportion of their countries' populations as 'the home of the free' incarcerates.) And the 1995 hanging of Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other Ogonis on false charges by the Nigerian military junta (partly at the behest of Shell Oil) after they protested the rape of the environment in Ogoniland by the oil industry has an American precedent in the 1927 silencing of Sacco and Vanzetti for their political activity. Meanwhile, here in New York State, the Dark Ages of state-sponsored murder are about to resume for the first time since 1963. And so we will assemble to remember Sacco and Vanzetti not because of what happened in the past, but because of what is happening in the present.
-From a flyer given out at a vigil marking the 70 years anniversary of the execution of Sacco & Vanzetti held in 1996 by the Libertarian Book Club/Anarchist Forum of New York.
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