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DATES IN HISTORY (JANUARY): JANUARY 1ST 1948 - Fidel Castro led Cuban revolutionaries to victory over Fulgencio Batista Fulgencio Batista resigned as President of rebellion-torn Cuba yesterday and fled to exile in the Dominican Republic. The rebel leader, Fidel Castro, and his forces had entered Santiago de Cuba late yesterday and had taken over the Moncado army post without firing a shot. About 5,000 soldiers there surrendered. As the news of the fall of the Government spread the black and red flag of the 26th of July Movement appeared everywhere. The public poured into the streets; cars raced through the streets with horns blowing. The Cuban Revolution was truly underway. 
JANUARY 14th
1921 - Murray Bookchin was born in New York City.
Bookchin's careet began in 1930's communist groups, and in anti-Franco prostests during the Spanish Civil War period. He later became involved in the alternative movement of the sixties, publishing an anti-Toxics book pseudonymously (Our Synthetic Society, under the name Lewis Herber); working in the Alternative University in NY; and writing a series of highly influential essays, later published as Post-Scarcity Anarchism.
In 1974, he co-founded, and became director of, the Institute for Social Ecology in Plainfield, Vermont. This institution has gone on to gain an international reputation for its courses in Social Ecology.
Bookchin's anarchism has been remarkable for it's success in joining traditional decentralist, nonhierarchical, and populist traditions with the, in the sixties, "new" ideas contained under the rubric of "ecology". Despite the pressures of the post-Sixties "green movement", Bookchin has successfully maintained a leftist-libertarian position in his anarchism, making him the most important synthesist of left-anarchist ideals. His reputation and influence were tarnished in the short-term by a vitriolic dispute with Dave Foreman's Earth First! However, Earth First! seems to have moved on since then, leaving them closer to Bookchin that they were then.
A writer and thinker of Bookchin's stature will, we believe, have a long shelf-life and will influence future generations - should this not transpire, it will be to the detriment of all life within Man's sphere of dire influence. His work is among the very little that appropriately addresses both the ecological problems that Man creates and our potentially positive role in transcending our historically determined destructiveness, replacing it with a society held in an ecologically sustainable balance with the natural world and also between human communites.
JANUARY 15th 1809 - Pierre-Joseph Proudhon was born in Besançon, France. JANUARY 19th 1865 - Pierre-Joseph Proudhon died in Passy, France. JANUARY 29th 1737 - Thomas Paine was born at Thetford, UK. Paine extended the general concern about unchecked political power into the realm of accumulated wealth, and saw political action to check such accumulations as essential to the survival of the republicanism of his day. He laid out some particularly far-reaching proposals of his RIGHTS OF MAN, PART SECOND and AGRARIAN JUSTICE. E.P. Thompson called the former "a foundation text of the English working class" and it was certainly so in America, as well. It can be read or downloaded at EconPapers - AGRARIAN JUSTICE is at Ideas.Repec.org. |
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DATES IN HISTORY (FEBRUARY): FEBRUARY 1ST 1905 - Gifford Pinchot takes control of US forest reserves. The Transfer Act centralized control of forest reserves in the Agriculture Department's Bureau of Forestry. This was run by conservationist Gifford Pinchot, who is credited as having coined the term 'conservation'. After this forest reserves rapidly expanded, and were soon designated National Forests, inaugurating the beginning of US President Theodore Roosevelt's conservation programs. FEBRUARY 8TH 1912 - IWW's free speech campaign, San Diego. Restrictions on free speech in San Diego provoked an IWW-led civil disobedience campaign. The response by the municipal government and local vigilantes is brutal. One example is that of Ben Reitman, who had accompanied Emma Goldman to San Deigo in May to support the IWW, and was abducted and tortured by vigilantes with the blessijng of the authoritoes in the form of the mayor. By October, the IWW campaign collapsed in the face of the mass arrests and anti-union mob action. FEBRUARY 8TH 1921 - Kropotkin Dies, in Dmitrov, Moscow. Buried in Novodevichy Convent, Moscow. FEBRUARY 21ST 1965 - Malcolm X assassinated. Former Black Muslim leader Malcolm X, 39, was shot to death in New York by assassins identified as Black Muslims. The authorities are strongly suspected of having a role in this. |
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DATES IN HISTORY (MARCH): MARCH 1ST 1906 - Emma Goldman's anarchist newspaper Mother Earth begins publication. MARCH 3RD 1905 - The US Forest Service is established. MARCH 16TH 
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DATES IN HISTORY (APRIL): APRIL 4TH 1968 - Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr assassinated in Memphis. Baptist minister, Martin Luther King, Jr., emerged as the leader of the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955, after which he became a powerful spokesperson for nonviolent protest in the afro-american Civil Rights Movement. On April 3, King arrived in Memphis to give a speech in support of thirteen hundred African-American sanitation workers, who were on strike. He said:
1945 - Daniel Cohn-Bendit, spokesperson and leader of the May-Revolution in Paris during the Sixties, born April 4, 1945 in Montaubanin, France
From the Dany The Red website, www.cohn-bendit.de:
APRIL 5TH
1974 - At 110 stories, the [then] world's tallest building - The World Trade Center - opens in New York City.
Specifically designed with a view to surviving a direct hit by an airline, the Twin Towers failed to do just that. American hubris and confidence took a huge knock that day. On September 11th, 2001, the World Trade Center was destroyed in a terrorist incident purportedly the responsibility of an obscure Saudi group led by Osama bin Laden. In the popular press, his organization picked up a moniker belonging to a small funding-raising part of the bin Laden organization, al Quaeda. Translated as the "foundation" or "base", the US authorities were about to have some semantic fun. The US public's shock at 9/11 led to the authorites being able to sell a new Domino Theory to them, this one based on terrorist-led Islamic jihad.
The fact that the event also stopped a serious investigation into election-rigging, that may well have led to the impeachment of Bush, Jr; the fact that many commentators believe that the terror activities planned for the US were well known in advance, but the authorities - through either incompetance or malice - let them go ahead; the fact that the twentieth-century is inevitably due to be the Resource War Century... is neither here nor there. The fact that al Quaeda member were present in Taliban-held Afghanistan on sufferance [they came over from the state-sponsored terrorist camps in Pakistan, and the Taliban regime had no little dependence on theat border being open to them, so could not rock the boat] and that the lucrative opium markets were being stopped up by the Taliban's extreme antipathy to drugs [unpopular in the land of free trade], is neither here nor there. The fact that Iraq has little to do with al Quaeda [who have yet to be adequately proved to be responsible for 9/11], is neither here nor there.
The fact that oil outputs are reducing globally, except, apparently, in Iraq and the Saudi peninsular is perhaps to the point...
APRIL 10TH
1919 - Emiliano Zapata assassinated.
Emiliano Zapata was the elected chief of the Morelos villagers, leading a guerilla campaign for nine years, against the Mexican dicatorship. The peasants fought for land reform, as the politicians of Mexico City reneged on their promises after the 1910 revolution. Mexicans countrywide rallied to their cause, and eventually achieved widespread agrarian reform.
Zapata, in the throes of negotiating with Mexican officers over the possibility of their defection to his his cause, was ambushed and killed on April 10th, 1919.
Those responsible are aware that in many ways they are creating a martyr, but their personal ambition, and embarrassment at having Zapata showing a high profile, riding around the countryside, leads them to murder. The movement continues anyway, and achieves many of it's aims. Today Zapata is an emblem of revolution amongst the modern Morelos peasants, those from the Chiapas - indeed, their leader, Subcommandante Marcos, is to a considerable degree modelled on Zapata, and their movement is known as the Zapatistas.
APRIL 12TH 1961 - Yuri Gagarin becomes the first human to orbit the Earth, aboard Soviet vehicle, Vostok I. 1987 - US oil company, Texaco, files for bankruptcy. 1989 - Abbie Hoffman, sixties yippie peace activist and author of Steal This Book, dies aged 52. APRIL 22TH 1989 - Huey Newton, US black power activist, shot dead. Born 17 February 1942, in Monroe, Louisiana, Huey Newton was co-founder [with Bobby Seale] of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense (later shortened to Black Panther Party) in Oakland, California, in October of 1966. They advocated black self-defense and a level playing field for blacks in the United States. Inspired by Malcolm X, the Black Panther Party took a militant stand against police brutality in their communities. At the same time, they ran community programs, supplying, for example, free health care and free food for children. In August of that year he was found shot dead on a street in Oakland.
APRIL 24TH 1915 - Armenian Martyrs Day On April 24, 1915 the Turkish government systematically put into action a diabolical, atrocious plan of extermination of all the Armenians living in Turkey and the Turkish dominated Armenian provinces. 1.5 million Armenian men, women and children perished by massacre, famine, and in attempts to escape the persecution by marching through the desert. Those who escaped took refuge in Europe, in the Tsarist Russian zone of occupied Armenia, in the friendly Arab lands, the United States and the Latin American countries. 1980 - US covert mission to free 52 Americans, held hostage in Tehran, fails. On November 4, 1979, Iranian militants stormed the United States Embassy in Tehran and took approximately seventy Americans captive. 24th April, 1980, eight RH-53D Sea Stallion helicopters were sent to liberate the hostages succumb to desert storms. The mission was aborted at a desert refueling site. Subsequently, one of the helicopters collided with a C-130 Hercules aircraft resulting in the loss of eight lives. Lessons relating to the reliability of US military equipment in desert conditions apparently were not learnt - see early stages of Gulf War II. Will Iranian hostage crisis count as yet more "unfinished business" in the region? President Carter set the ground for the hostages eventual release, but Republican, Ronald Reagan, is inaugurated just in time to reap the credit. APRIL 25TH 1945 - The United Nations is founded in San Francisco. 1954 - The first solar battery is announced, by Bell Labs, NY. "It could convert only six percent of the sunlight into useful energy; people wondered what it was good for. Today, the solar cells we use to power calculators, highway emergency phones, and satellites can convert over 25 percent of the sunlight that hits them into useful energy." AT&T Labs-Research. By 1999 solar cells were capable of producing 32.2% of sunlight into useful energy. The alternative technology revolution, however, is still stuck on the starting blocks, despite such technologies offering the only viable long-term energy sources. 
APRIL 26TH
1937 - Guernica Bombed.
The Spanish civil war - german bombers, under Franco's command, destroy the Basque town on market day.
1986 - The world's worst [domestic] nuclear accident, Chernobyl, Ukraine.
Only thirty-one die of the immediate effects as the Chernobyl No.4 nuclear reactor undegoes meltdown, irradiating much of the Ukraine and broad swathes of Russia and Europe.
West German nuclear scientist, Rudolf Schulten, said "The reactor itself is a very old-fashioned type, and the safety philosophy of this reactor would never be accepted today by any country in the Western World".
Only after violent protests from Sweden and some Western countries did the Soviet Union admit that the disaster had occurred. However, such limited information was released, that rumor was the only source of data at first - some said that more than 2,000 people died and were bulldozed into mass graves.
The Soviet cover-up was no surprise, given their extreme culture of blame. Disasters were never admitted to anyone. For example, in 1957, when a nuclear-waste plant exploded and spewed contaminants over hundreds of square miles in the southern Ural Mountains, leaving "hundreds of people" dead, and the area a radioactive wasteland for years afterwards, was only admitted in the 1970's.
APRIL 28TH 1967 - Muhammad Ali refuses to accept the draft. With the Viet Nam war in full flight, the celebrity heavyweight champion, Muhammad Ali, refuses induction to the US Army and conscription to Viet Nam. He is stripped of his title and jailed for five years for draft evasion. The U. S. Supreme Court overturned his conviction on June 29, 1971. SOURCE: OnMyBirthday, Various |
See everybody's talking about the revolution has come, the revolution has come, the revolution has come. Look: the revolution has been here, the revolution has been going on, because the new has always been in struggle with the old and the new is always going to win.
And the Black Panther Party for Self Defense, we're the vanguard of the revolution, we're like the tip of the spear, we make the first impact but the real damage is done by the people cause they're the ones that make the revolution - they're like the butt of the spear, they make the real penetration. See, without the butt penetration the spear is no more dangerous than a toothpick.
And people say, well Huey you're so violent. Why are you so violent Huey? You engage people in such violent rhetoric. You sit up talking about spears and penetration and stabbing people with toothpicks. And I say, well hey, existence is violent; I exist, therefore I am violent in that way.
And I think it's hypocritical to try to pretend otherwise. I think it's hypocritical, I think it's hypocritical, I think it's hypocritical, just like it's hypocritical when these vegetarians try to tell you they're not harming anything. A carrot screams also.
So we reject violence but we make a distinction between the violence of the oppressor and the self-defense of the people. We think that the people. We think that the people have a right and an obligation to defend themselves by any means necessary, just like Malcolm X said.
And you know something? Sometimes if you want to get rid of the gun, you have to pick the gun up.
...I do not expect the white media to create positive black male images. Positive black male images are created through revolution, and I thank you for saying that I have scared you - I take it as a compliment, cause anytime that a black man in America stands up against the slave mentality he's going to scare some white people and some black folks too.
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DATES IN HISTORY (MAY): MAY 1ST 1948 - Democratic Peoples' Republic of Korea [Nth Korea] Established. Sorely misnamed, in standard Left-Fascist style. MAY 3RD 1971 - Mayday Tribe, Washington DC. On May 3, 1971, anti-war protesters calling themselves the Mayday Tribe began four days of demonstrations in Washington, D.C., aimed at shutting down the nation's capital.
MAY 4TH 1926 - General Strike in Britain. MAY 5TH 1818 - Karl Marx born. MAY 11TH 1933 - Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam, born. MAY 11TH 1910 - Glacier National Park established. MAY 14TH 1940 - Emma Goldman dies, in Toronto, Canada MAY 15TH 1911 - Standard Oil Company dissolved in Anti-Trust suit. The US Supreme Court ordered that Standard Oil Company be dissolved, ruling it to be in violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. The company was accused of causing unreasonable restraint of inter-State commerce. This was seen by many as a justified on assualt on Rokefeller's growing monopolistic control on trade. Dissenting, Justice Harlan criticized the court for taking this position, declaring it to be a menace to the institutions of the country. He said it constituted an unjustified amendment to the Constitution by judicial interpretation. MAY 16TH 1966 - US Student Nonviolent Coodinating Committee names Stokely Carmichael chairman. MAY 20TH 1956 - H-Bomb test on Pacific island of Bikini Atoll. MAY 26TH 1938 - The House Un-American Activities committee begins work. MAY 17TH 1954 - US Supreme Court rules racially segregated public schools inherently unequal. In 1896 the Supreme Court had laid down a 'separate but equal' doctrine. However, in the case of Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka, Chief Justice Warren overturned this judgement, ruling that "In the field of public education, the doctrine of 'separate but equal' has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." "Does segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race, even though physical facilities and other 'tangible' factors may be equal, deprive the children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities?" he asked. And answered, "We believe that it does." In another controversial but long overdue opinion, Chief Justice Warren judged that racial segregation constituted "an arbitrary deprivation of their liberty in violation of the due process clause". This refers to the Fifth Amendment, which says that no person shall be "deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law." The principle state this ruling was placed on was the District of Columbia, were schools had been segregated since the Civil War. However, in 1954 seventeen states had mandatory segregation - Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia - and a further four had permissive statutes - Kansas, New Mexico, Arizona and Wyoming - so that Warren's ruling had wide and far-reaching consequences. Chief Justice Warren wrote:
MAY 25TH 1925 - John T. Scopes indicted in Tennessee for teaching evolutionary theory. Dayton, Tennessee, high school teacher John T. Scopes was indicted for having taught the theory of evolution to students attending his science classes. This was in violation of a law passed by the Tennessee Legislature, which proscibed teaching theories that denied the story of Divine creation of man as taught in the Bible and that man descended from a lower order of animals. A date for the trial was fixed for July 10th. Judge John T. Raulston, who read in court the story of creation, in Genesis, from the King James version of the Bible, said that it was not within the jury's province to questio the legislation, but merely to determine of the statute had indeed been violated. "The school room is not only a place to develop the power of thought, but also a place to develop discipline, power of restraint and character. If a teacher openly and flagrantly violates the law of the land in the exercise of his profession, this example cannot be wholesome upon the undeveloped mind and naturally tends to cerate and breed a spirit of disregard for good order and a want of respect for necessary discipline and restraint in our body politic," said Raulston. 
- Mikhail Bakunin, God & the State |
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DATES IN HISTORY (JUNE): JUNE 4TH 1989 - Tiananmen Square massacre. Beijing students were protesting over several days, culminating in the occupation of Tiananmen Square on June 3rd. They were demonstrating for democracy. On the 4th, the Chinese government ordered the army to turn their weapons on students in the square, killing hundreds. This bloody suppression drove the nascent pro-democracy movement underground. Although there has been much change in China in the intervening decade, the issues - corruption, unemployment, lack of freedom - are still there. However, since the massacre public displays of dissent have become rare and Tiananmen Square remains under constant surveillance. JUNE 11TH 1906 - Yosemite Valley National Park is established. JUNE 13TH 1966 - Miranda rights established. Citing the Fifth Amendment, which says that no person "shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself", the Supreme Court issued its landmark Miranda vs. Arizona decision, ruling that criminal suspects must be informed of their constitutional rights prior to questioning by police. Te ruling came out of legal appeals by four prisoners who had only confessed to a crime after having been interrogated by police - Ernesto A. Miranda, convicted of rape; Michael Vignera, convicted of robbery; Roy Allen Stewart, convicted of murder, and Carl Calvin Westover, convicted of Federal charges of robbery. Chief Justice Warren praised police "when their services are honorably performed," but added that when they abandon fair methods "they can become as great a menace to society as any criminal we have". He declared that the Fifth Amendment's privilege against self-incrimination must come into play as soon as a person is within police custody. As a consequence, Warren ruled that the prosecution in a trial could not use confessions made in custody unless if could be proved that certain specified safeguards had not been followed. Thus, a "police caution" was established, requiring that suspects must be clearly appraised of their right to remain silent, that anything they might say could be held against them, and that they have the right to have a lawyer present during interrogation. Dissenting opinion opined that this merely aided criminals in evading gaol, allowing them to go straight back out and re-offend. However, Warren denied the likelihood that this would make law enforcement impossible, citing the previous experience of the United Kingdom police force, and that of the FBI, both of which had observed similar procedures with no ill effect. JUNE 19TH 1953 - Julius and Ethel Rosenberg murdered for spying. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were arrested in the summer of 1950, charged with conspiracy to commit espionage. In March 1951 a jury found them guilty. On April 5, Federal Judge Irving Kaufman sentenced the Rosenbergs to death. Their co-defendant, Morton Sobell, was sentenced to a 30-year prison term. Kaufman set the execution date for the week of June 21, 1951. On June 17th 1951, Justice Douglas granted a stay, basing his decision on the fact that "one of the requisites for imposing the death penalty under the 1946 Atomic Energy Act is that it can only be imposed if the jury recommends it," which the jury had not done. The stay was not upheld, and the Rosenberg's were executed on the evening of the 19th. There were no objective witnesses against them - other members of the alleged conspiracy (David Greenglass - brother of Ethel - and his wife, Ruth) testified that the Rosenbergs were co-conspirators. Ruth is on record as having claimed that Ethel Rosenberg had helped steal what the prosecution called "the most important scientific secret ever known to mankind". In return for her husband’s cooperation in framing the Rosenbergs, Ruth Greenglass was never even indicted. David Greenglass was given 15 years. In a statement justifying his decision to impose the death sentence on the Rosenbergs, Kaufman said, "I consider your crime worse than murder. I believe your conduct in putting into the hands of the Russians the A-bomb years before our best scientists predicted Russia would perfect the bomb has already caused, in my opinion, the Communist aggression in Korea, with the resultant casualties exceeding 50,000 and who knows but that millions more of innocent people may pay the price of your treason." The nuclear science community, which has since had access to the Greenglass "plans", is on record as having no reason to believe that any of this was true since the sketches were nonsense. Thank you Senator Joe McCarthy, you prick. JUNE 27TH 1869 - Emma Goldman born in Kovno, Lithuania. JUNE 27TH to JULY 8TH 1905 - Wobblies established. The radical IWW (International Workers of the World) syndicalist labor union was established at a Chicago convention, with Eugene Debs, Big Bill Haywood, and Mother Jones present. JUNE 29TH 1905 - Grand Canyon Game Preserve is created . |
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DATES IN HISTORY (JULY):
JULY 1ST
1876 - Mikhail Bakunin born, Berne, Switzerland.
"The liberty of man consists solely in this: that he obeys natural laws because he has himself recognized them as such, & not because they have been externally imposed upon him by any extrinsic will whatever, divine or human, collective or individual."
- Mikhail Bakunin, God & the State JULY 4TH 1910 - Jack Johnson beats "Great White Hope". Black fighter Jack Johnson beats "great white hope", Jim Jeffries, in Reno and retains the heavyweight boxing title - widespread race riots follow. JULY 16TH 1918 - Tzar Nicholas II Executed in Ural Soviet. Nicholas Romanoff, ex-Czar of Russia, was shot - the west received the following wireless announcement:
JULY 22ND 1932 - National Security Council and CIA established. President Truman legislates secret government for Amerika, in creating a unified armed services. Behind this stands a War Council, to advice the then newly created post of secretary of Defense (a post taken up by former Secretary of the Navy, James Forrestal); Joint Chief of Staff; and a munitions board. The main responsibilities of the three armed services were to coordinate the striking power of the nation; to promote efficiency, and to integrate domestic, foreign and military policies. All land, combat and service forces (and some aviation and water transport) were brought under the new Dept of the Army; the Naval Aviation Service and combat and service units, including the Marine Corps were brought under the Dept of the Navy; and the Army Air Force, Air Corps. USA, and the General Air Force (or Air Force Combat Command) were brought under the Air Force department. More concerning for the future of the nation and for the freedom's of it's peoples, provision was also made for the creation of the National Security Council (made up of the heads of the new national military establishment). Presdied over by the President, the NSC was created to "assess, appraise and recommend problems entering into American military power". Provision was also made to create, under the NSC, a Central Intelligence Agency, the CIA. |
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DATES IN HISTORY (AUGUST): 
AUGUST 6TH 1945 - first use of a nuke in warfare. World War 2 - the United States drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, killing an estimated 140,000 people. AUGUST 9TH 1945 - second use of a nuke in warfare. World War 2 - the United States drop an atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan, killing an estimated 74,000 people. AUGUST 23RD 1927 - Anarchists Sacco & Venzetti Executed. On Aug. 23, 1927, Italian-born anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were executed in Boston for the murders of two men during a 1920 robbery. They were vindicated in 1977 by Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis. As it turns out, Sacco and Venzetti were almost certainly innocent, and were quite definitely denied justice. Ultimately, their anarchism and their nationality seem to be the sole reasons for their persecution. AUGUST 23RD 1963 - Martin Luther King delivers his famous speech, 'I Have A Dream'. The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom attracts more than two hundred thousand demonstrators to the Lincoln Memorial. Organized by A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin, the march is supported by all major civil rights organizations as well as by many labor and religious groups. After the march, King and other civil rights leaders meet with President John F. Kennedy and Vice-President Lyndon B. Johnson in the White House. See the speech on Blue |
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DATES IN HISTORY (NOVEMBER):
NOVEMBER 10TH
1910 - Anarchist's versus anti-porn crusader.
A lecture by anti-porn crusader and arch-prude Anthony Comstock was heckled by
Emma Goldman and other anarchists. The wind is taken from Comstock's sails when
Goldman asks if children should be allowed to visit art museums.
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DATES IN HISTORY (DECEMBER): DECEMBER 6TH 1906 - "Roosevelt Corollary" to the Monroe Doctrine. In his annual message to the new 59th Congress, Roosevelt stated the "Roosevelt Corollary" to the Monroe Doctrine: the US openly claims the right to intervene in Latin America. This led to rapid expansion of US regional influence, and much later was still referred to as a precedent by Reaganite policy wonks. DECEMBER 7TH 1928 - Noam Avram Chomsky was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. DECEMBER 9TH 1842 - Kropotkin born, Moscow, Russia. 
DECEMBER 14TH
1853 - Italian Anarchist Errico Malatesta Born, Santa Maria Capus Vetera, Italy.
Malatesta was active in the anarchist movement as an agitator and as a propagandist for nearly 60 years. He was editor of several anarchist papers, including the Italian daily, Umanita Nova (from 1920-22). He was also a prolific writer and agitator. Nearly half his life was spent in exile and more than ten years in prison. The last six years of his life were spent under house arrest.
He believed in the importance of propaganda in spreading ideas and pushing people to think and act for themselves. He was an indefatigable propagandist of the written and spoken word. He objected to Kropotkin's theory of a spontaneous revolution, but also realised that propaganda did have limits, viewing direct action as vital in preparing for revolution. He was an also a determined Internationalist.
Malatesta wanted to work with all anarchists - both those that believed in organisation, as well as those that did not. This anarchist distrust of organisation and hierarchy, combined with the varied viewpoints of the differing anarchist groups involved, doomed much of his work to failure through rapid and inevitable splits as real differences came to a head.
This certainly appears to have been the case in Italy, where in the period 1913-14 and 1919-22 the main thing keeping the various anarchist factions together was Malatesta himself. Despite splits and defections to bourgeois parties, Malatesta over and again re-started the movement, as the driving force and main guru. Although antagonistic towards platformism, he was a great organiser, able to inspire and lead whole movements.
Malatesta led an inspiring life, dedicated to the cause and giving his life to it. He lived through both exhilarating and terrifying times; the Paris Commune, the First International, World War I and the rise of fascism.
Malatesta died in July 1932.
DECEMBER 26TH 1908 - Jack Johnson becomes the first black man to win the world's heavyweight title. 
Racist white American society was outraged, having tried unsuccessfully to keep blacks out of the game, when Johnson defeated champion Tommy Burns in Australia.
The sport now caste around for "Great White Hope", to reclaim the crown, settling art last, in 1909, on middleweight champion Stanley Ketchel. Ketchell knocked Johnson down in the twelfth round. Johnson's response was to rise and knock out Ketchel out with one punch.
In 1910 Johnson faced former champion James J. Jeffries. Jeffries had not fought for six years, and trained hard for the fight. By the fifteenth, when Johnson went for the knockout, after dominating the fight. Across the country blacks burst into celebration, leading to race riots in which a number of people died.
A romeo and extrovert lover, with enemies to the dozen, Johnson was convicted of transporting a minor across state lines for immoral purposes (the teenaged white woman was Johnson's wife). To avoid prison, he fled America, eventually landing up in Europe> Here, in Paris, he defended his title two more times.
In 1920, Johnson surrendered to the feds, serving eight months in Leavenworth Prison, Kansas. Later, he fought only occasionally, and then retired, in 1928, aged 50. Jack Johnson had, despite his personal setbacks, achieved a significant victory for all of black America.
He died in a car accident in 1946.
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