Anarchism has a feminist core. Not added later, not bolted on — there from the beginning. This episode is about three women who built the tradition and were largely written out of its history.
Emma Goldman: deported from the United States in 1919 after decades of organising, lecturing, and writing, arriving in the Soviet Union expecting a revolution and finding a state. Voltairine de Cleyre: the woman Emma Goldman called the most gifted anarchist America had ever produced, largely unknown today, who coined the term "anarchism without adjectives" and was shot by a former student and declined to press charges. Lucy Parsons: born into slavery around 1851, who helped lead 80,000 workers in the Chicago general strike of 1886, co-founded the Industrial Workers of the World, and whose papers were seized by the Chicago Police Department the day she died.
Three women. Three different forms of punishment for the same crime. The punishment is not an accident — it is the argument.
Topics: Emma Goldman, Voltairine de Cleyre, Lucy Parsons, anarcha-feminism, anarchism without adjectives, Haymarket, IWW, women in anarchism, radical history, deported.
Further reading:
— Emma Goldman, Anarchism and Other Essays (1911)
— Paul Avrich, An American Anarchist: The Life of Voltairine de Cleyre (1978)
— Eugenia C. DeLamotte, ed., Exquisite Rebel: The Essays of Voltairine de Cleyre (2005)
— Carolyn Ashbaugh, Lucy Parsons: An American Revolutionary (1976)
— Emma Goldman, Living My Life (1931)
Tags: anarchism, feminist history, Emma Goldman, Voltairine de Cleyre, Lucy Parsons, anarcha-feminism, radical women, IWW, Haymarket, women's history, political history, anarchist podcast
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