Deportation, its meaning and menace: Last message to the people of America by Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman — John Shaqi
Deportation, its meaning and menace: Last message to the people of America by Alexander Berkman and Emma GoldmanGoldman, Emma
History
Deportation, its meaning and menace: Last message to the people of America by Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman
Goldman, Emma
Anarchism; Deportation
Alexander Berkman spent in American prisons more years than I like to
remember. He did it deliberately. He did it for the welfare of men, and
the American portion of mankind. He never hesitated to offer his life
for his brother. I recall a picture; it is in Russia. We were gathered
in Moscow. It looked as though the Revolution were going to its death.
Everywhere the Soviet armies were retreating, the masses were sinking
into despair, the German working class was not rising in rebellion as we
had hoped, the Austrians likewise; the White Terror was raising its head
throughout Russia. A pallid girl, a Russian-American immigrant returned
to her native country, held in her hand the bulletin of the day’s news.
“A hundred Alexander Berkmans distributed throughout Europe at this
time, and the history of Europe would be different!” she exclaimed.
Berkman wrote a book, “Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist,” which is one of
America’s vital literary products. It won for him the admiration of such
intellectuals here as had the courage to admire.
The “intellectuals” for the most part did not bid Emma Goldman and
Alexander Berkman good-bye. Most of those who dared to visit the
passengers of the “Red Ark” in their Ellis Island prison were young men
and women of the working class. That is as it should be. It is in the
working class where Goldman and Berkman’s brave work will find the
growth that will count. American plutocracy knew this. That is why
American plutocracy deported Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman.
This pamphlet is the “good-bye message” of Alexander Berkman and Emma
Goldman; and I think it is in spirit the message of all the passengers
of the “Red Ark.” As such it appears first in this form and will appear
later in history. Read it and keep it for the future.
ROBERT MINOR.
DEPORTATION—_Its Meaning and Menace_
The war is over, but peace there is not. On a score of fronts human
slaughter is going on as before; men, women, and children are dying by
the hundred thousands because of the blockade of Russia; the “small
nations” are still under the iron heel of the foreign oppressor;
Ireland, India, Egypt, Persia, Korea, and numerous other peoples, are
being decimated and exploited even more ruthlessly than before the
advent of the Great Prophet of World Democracy; “self-determination” has
become a by-word, nay, a crime, and world-wide imperialism has gotten a
strangle hold upon humanity.
What, then, has the Great War accomplished? To what purpose the
sacrifice of millions of human lives, the unnamable loss in blood and
treasure? What, especially, has happened in these United States?
Fresh in mind are still the wonderful promises made in behalf of the
War. It was to be the _last_ war, a holy crusade of liberty against
tyranny, a war upon all wars that was to sweep the earth clear of
oppression and misery, and make the world safe for true democracy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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