Some Cool History Zines

We’re happy to present a very incomplete list of cool rad history zines that we distro!

Note that this is not ALL of the zines we carry on our table; some we don’t currently have PDFs of, others aren’t online at this point in time, and we carry a rotating selection of miscellaneous non-history-focused titles when tabling.

A few friendly recommendations for digital zine libraries: Fugitive Distro, 1312 Press, Puget Sound Anarchists, Louise Crowley Library (note most physical zines for sale have a free PDF download), Sprout Distro, A Zine Library

Zines by Historical Seditions

1856: The Battle in Seattle

Anarchists and Rebellion in Walla Walla State Prison

In Search of Freedom and Self Determination: A Tour Through the Anarchist Movements in Graz, Austria, 1918-1938 – Letter-Imposed PrintingDigital Reading

The Centralia IWW

The Dude Smashed the Federal Courthouse, Too!

The Eyes of a Monster

The Kitsap Ferry Riot

We Don’t Forget: 2017 Inauguration Day Reflections from the Salish Sea – Letter-Imposed PrintingDigital Reading

Regional History

Multiple Eras

A People’s History of the University of Washington – Print

Notes on Mutual Aid Vol 1: A Local History of Survival and Struggle – PrintRead

Portland’s Antifascist History – PrintRead

Late 1800s-Early 1900s

The Everett Massacre – Print

The Seattle General Strike – Read

Red Harbor – Print

Who the hell is Jack London? – PrintRead

The Collected Works of Anna Falkoff – PrintRead

The Unstoppable Anarchist Ersilia Cavedagni – PrintRead

Elena Purgatorio; or, A Brief History of the Galleanisti – PrintRead

The Trials of a Noble Experiment – PrintRead

Mid-Late 1900s

Queer Fire: The George Jackson Brigade, Men Against Sexism, & the Gay Struggle Against Prisons – PrintReadListen

N30: The Seattle WTO Protests – A Memoir and Analysis with an Eye to the Future – PrintRead

Sharper Times: Portland Anti-Racist Action & Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice – Print

2000-Occupy Movement

A Shorter History of a Northwest ELF Cell – Read/Print

The Hilltop Boys: A True Story of the Hilltop Crips – PrintRead

You Can’t Shoot us All: Oscar Grant – Print

Against the Police and the World They Maintain: Communiques from the Pacific Northwest – January-March, 2011 – Print

Burning the Bridges they are Building: Anarchist Strategies Against the Police – Puget Sound, 2011 – PrintRead

Standing on the Land to Stand Up Against Pipelines – Print

Love for the Silent Ones: A Collection of Communiques and Reports from Actions in Solidarity with the Northwest Grand Jury Resisters – Print

Bridges Still Burning: An Anarchist Account of Occupy Seattle 2012 – Print

Longview, Occupy, and Beyond: Rank & File and the 89% Unite! – Print

“BLM 1.0”-Present

The Post-Ferguson Struggle Against Police and Fascism in the Pacific Northwest: An Incomplete Glimpse into a Dynamic and Unfolding Context – Print

Towards a More Holistic Violence – PrintRead

Against the Port and its World: Actions Against Fracking in Olympia – Print

Between Storms: Anarchist Reflections Wet’suwet’en Resistance – Print

Heal the People, Heal the Land: Unist’ot’en Camp – Print

 

So-Called North America

Multiple Eras

500 Years of Indigenous Resistance – Print

In Their Own Tongue: Bats’i’ k’op zapatista – PrintRead

Punk: Dangerous Utopia – PrintRead

Late 1800s-Early 1900s

The Stockade Stood Burning: Rebellion and the Convict Lease in Tennessee’s Coalfields, 1891-1895 – Print

Lowry Wars: Attacking Plantation Society in Reconstruction – Print

Slave Patrols and Civil Servants – PrintRead

Sacco & Vanzetti’s Revenge – Print

Johann Most – PrintRead

David Edelstadt, With His Poems for the Haymarket Martyrs – Print

Ross Winn: Digging Up a Tennessee Anarchist – Print

Bury Me Not in a Land of Slaves – PrintRead

Mid-Late 1900s

Queens, Hookers, and Hustlers: Organizing for Survival and Revolt Amongst Gender-Variant Sex Workers, 1950-1970 – PrintRead

STAR – Print

Militant Flamboyance – Print

jane – Print

Black Mask & Up Against the Wall Motherfucker: Flower Power Won’t Stop Fascist Power – The Story of a Small, Underground 1960s Revolutionary Group in New York City – PrintRead

I Will Not Crawl: Black Struggle & Armed Self Defense – Print

Repression Breeds Resistance: The Black Liberation Army and the Radical Legacy of the Black Panther Party – PrintRead

The Trial Statement of Anarchist & New Afrikan Revolutionary: Kuwasi Balagoon – Print

The Dragon and the Hydra: A Historical Study of Organizational Methods – Read/Print

The National Union of the Homeless: A Brief History – Print

The Oka Crisis of 1990 – Print

Political Prehistory of Love and Rage – PrintRead

Claim No Easy Victories: A History and Analysis of Anti-Racist Action – PrintRead

The Baldies & Anti-Racist Action: A History in Anti-Racist Skinhead Organizing – Print

2000-Occupy Movement

“BLM 1.0”-Present

Anarchist Tactics at Standing Rock – PrintRead

No Regrets: Accounts and Reflections from the 2016 National Prison Strike – Print

It’s a Sin to Kill a Mockingbird: Writings on Scout Schultz, Queer Anarchist Killed by Georgia Tech Polics – Print

We’ve Got Your Back J20 Defense – PrintRead

What They Mean When They Say Peace & The Making of “Outside Agitators” – Print

 

Global History

Multiple Eras

The Unquiet Dead: Volume .5 – PrintReadListen — Volume 1 – PrintReadListen — Volume 2 – PrintReadListen — Volume 3 – PrintReadListen — Volume 4 – PrintReadListen — Volume 5 – PrintReadListen — Volume 6 – PrintReadListen — Volume 7 – PrintReadListen — Volume 8 – Not currently online

Yalensky’s Fable Anarchist Black Cross – PrintRead

Anarchic Practices Chilean State – Read

Koukoulofori: Stories, Lessons, and Inspiration from the Greek Anarchist Movement – Print

Mobilisations of Philippine Anarchisms – Print

Can’t Stop Kaos – Print

Against All Tyranny! Essays on Anarchist in Brazil – Print

Late 1800s-Early 1900s

The Devil Rode a Bicycle: Science, Art, and Anarchism – Print

They Leaned on Each Other in Ecstasy – Print

La Band a Bonnot: Robberies and Getaways – Print

Sante Caserio – Print

Anarchists and Anarchism Ottoman Empire – Read/Print

Santos: The Barcelona of Brazil – Print

The Uniqueness of Anarchism in Argentina (1880-1930) – Print

Two Revoutions: The Ghadar Movement and India’s Radical Disapora – Read/Print

Blessed is the Flame – Print

Eternal War on the Hitler Youth – Print

A Jewish Anarchist Refutation of the Hammer and Sickle – PrintRead

Mid-Late 1900s

Memory Loss – Print

The Federacion Anarquista Uruguaya: Crisis, Armed Struggle, and Dictatorship, 1967-85 – PrintRead

“BLM 1.0”-Present

Don’t Try to Break Us – We’ll Explode: The 2017 G20 and the Battle of Haburg: A Full Account and Analysis – Print

Memories from La Zad – Print

Published
Categorized as General

Free Society and The Firebrand Digitized (1895-1904)

The Firebrand & Free Society

The Iconic Anarchist Paper of the Turn of the 20th Century

The Firebrand (1895-1897)

Volume 1 (Portland, January 1895-February 1896)
Volume 2 (Portland, February 1896-January 1897)
Volume 3 (Portland, January 1897-September 1897)

Free Society (1897-1904)

Volume 4 (San Francisco, December 1897-November 1898?)
Volume 5 (San Francisco, November 1898?-November 1899?)
Volume 6 (San Francisco, November 1899?-December 1900)
Volume 7 (Chicago, February 1901-?)
Volume 8 – Missing? Not run?
Volume 9 (Chicago, January 1902-December 1902)
Volume 10 (Chicago, January 1903-December 1903)
Volume 10b (Chicago, January 1904-February 1904)
Volume 11 (New York, ?-November 1904? – Missing)

 

For almost a decade, the newspapers lovingly published by Maria and Abraham Isaak and a varying host of their comrades were vital nodes of anarchism in the English speaking world. When the couple and their friends launched The Firebrand in remote Portland, Oregon in 1895, they had no idea the impact their words would come to have. Over the following years, Firebrand and its successor Free Society would play a vital role in shaping and defining gilded age radicalism, and in pushing out the limits on human freedom and equality. The papers married a biting anarchist political opposition to state and capital with a deep understanding of contemporary free love and women’s right’s advocacy to produce a paper that sometimes ruffled feathers among stodgier anarchist circles.

Any study of turn-of-the-century anarchism in the English language requires a nod towards these papers. For this reason we are thrilled to present a gift in anticipation of May Day: 136 newly scanned issues of The Firebrand and Free Society, more than doubling the total previously available online. We hope this substantial contribution to the digitization of these papers will assist other students of anarchist history.

The Isaak’s launched The Firebrand in Portland, Oregon in 1895 with their friends Henry Addis, Mary Squires, and J.H. Morris in the midst of a depression and the failure of a a local upsurge by the “populist” movement. Addis previously contributed to The Beacon, an anarchist paper in San Francisco. The members of the Firebrand group had grown increasingly disillusioned with by the compromising and the exclusionary nature of Portland’s local reform and radical movements.

Photo of Abraham Isaak, Sr.
1901 photo of Abraham Isaak, Sr.

During its nearly three-year run in Portland, The Firebrand grew from providing biting local commentary to becoming one of the foremost papers in english-speaking anarchist. By its late run, comrades across the continent and even the Atlantic eagerly received and distributed copies. In particular The Firebrand became known for its synthesis of the emerging body of political-economic Anarchist-Communist theory with long-running us-based feminist currents. While this occasionally received side-eyes from sometimes sexist comrades that The Firebrand group gave too much attention to such matters, it would prove to be an enduring contribution to the us-based anarchist movement. Openness towards love and sex also proved to be the paper’s demise when local authorities, eager to suppress it, declared a Walt Whitman poem published on the front page to be “obscenity” liable for prosecution under the Comstock postal censorship law.

Following this prosecution, The Firebrand group split. Some members traveled north, where their strong circle of supporters around Tacoma had founded what became the Home colony. Members of the circle frequented the colony over the years, while some came to live there. The Isaak’s traveled south to San Francisco where with the help of local comrades like Sigismund Danielewicz and Viroquia Daniels they soon revived The Firebrand as Free Society.

Free Society carried the torch onward. Publishing in the years when the US escalated imperial  expansion beyond its original settler-colonial borders, Free Society took on a notably anti-imperialist tone, fervently advocating against war and colonization in The Philippines, Cuba, Puerto Rico and Hawaii. This fervent advocacy may have played a role in the paper’s most infamous association: Leon Czolgosz’s 1901 assassination of President William McKinley. Czolgosz’s brother fought as a grunt in The Philippines and came back traumatized; reading Free Society encouraged Czolgosz to see the broader evil in the war, which he came to blame on the president who oversaw it (see Moon Ho-Jung’s Menace to Empire: Anticolonial Solidarities and the Transpacific Origins of the US Security State). While Free Society‘s publishers kept their distance from Czolgosz before and after the assassination, the connection was hard to shake.

The editors were, though, still white settlers publishing in 1900. While the contributors to The Firebrand and Free Society typically took a strong stance against anti-asian bigotry, against the horrific wave of lynchings of black people, and against us imperialism abroad, they also frequently centered their own perspectives in the matter, or overly simplified conflicts between colonizers abroad. The Firebrand, for instance, once “stood up” for a group of homesteaders seeking to privatize a shoreline for clamming because it was being held in trust by the federal government; yet the very reason for that trust was that the land was still utilized by indigenous people from the area, who the settlers sought to displace. In-common with many turn-of-the-century “anti-imperialist” movements, Free Society covered the war between the british empire and the white settler boars in South Africa, with the Boars generally portrayed as a valient anti-imperialists despite their own society’s ongoing colonial actions.

We hope to provide a more fleshed-out analysis of Free Society and The Firebrand at some point, but in the interests of sharing promptly for the holiday, we suggest some further reading for the interested. Jessica Moran and Alecia Jay Giombolini have published an article and thesis respectively on The Firebrand. Information on Free Society is readily available in many anarchist works covering the turn-of-the twentieth century, but an extensive treatment is offered in Kathy E. Ferguson’s Letterpress Revolution: The Politics of Anarchist Print Culture.

 

The Firebrand

Volume 1 – Portland – January 1895-February 1896
40 of approx. 52 issues (77% complete) – Nos. 2-7, 9, 11, 16, 23, 48 missing

1-1_27-January-1895  –  1-8_17-March-1895  –  1-10_31-March-1895  –  1-12_14-April-1895  –  1-13_21-April-1895  –  1-14_28-April-1895  –  1-15_5-May-1895  –  1-17_25-May-1895  –  1-18_2-June-1895  –  1-19_9-June-1895  –  1-20_23-June-1895   –  1-21_30-June-1895  –  1-22_7-July-1895  –  1-24_21-July-1895  –  1-25_28-July-1895  –  1-27_11-August-1895  –  1-28_18-August-1895  –  1-29_25-August-1895  –  1-30_1-September-1895  –  1-31_8-September-1895  –  1-32_15-September-1895  –  1-33_22-September-1895  –  1-34_29-September-1895  –  1-35_6-October-1895  –  1-36_13-October-1895  –  1-37_20-October-1895  –  1-38_27-October-1895  –  1-39_3-November1895  –  1-40_10-November-1895  –  1-41_17-November-1895  –  1-42_24-November-1895  –  1-43_1-Decemberr-1895  –  1-44_8-December-1895  –  1-45_15-December-1895  –  1-46_22-December-1895  –  1-47_29-December-1895  –  1-49_12-January-1896  –  1-50_19-January-1896  –  1-51_26-January-1896  –  1-52_2-February-1896

Volume 2 – Portland – February 1896-January 1897
43 of approx. 52 issues. (83% complete) – Nos. 1, 9, 17, 20, 25-26, 28-29, 33 missing

2-2_17-February-1896  –  2-3_23-February-1896  –  2-4_1-March-1896  –  2-5_8-March-1896  –  2-6_15-March-1896  –  2-7_22-March-1896  –  2-8_29-March-1896  –  2-10_12-April-1896  –  2-11_19-April-1896  –  2-12_26-April-1896  –  2-13_3-May-1896  –  2-14_10-May-1896  –  2-15_17-May-1896  –  2-16_24-May-1896  –  2-18_7-June-1896  –  2-19_14-June-1896  –  2-21_28-June-1896  –  2-22_5-July-1896  –  2-23_12-July-1896  –  2-24_19-July-1896  –  2-27_9-August-1896  –  2-30_30-August-1896  –  2-31_6-September-1896  –  2-32_13-September-1896  –  2-34_27-September-1896  –  2-35_4-October-1896  –  2-36_11-October-1896  –  2-37_18-October-1896  –  2-38_25-October-1896  –  2-39_1-November-1896  –  2-40_8-November-1896  –  2-41_15-November-1896  –  2-42_22-November-1896  –  2-43_29-November-1896  –  2-44_6-December-1896  –  2-45_13-December-1896  –  2-46_20-December-1896  –  2-47_27-December-1896  –  2-48_3-January-1897  –  2-49_10-January-1897  –  2-50_17-January-1897  –  2-51_24-January-1897  –  2-52_31-January-1897

Volume 3 – Portland – January 1897-September 1897
31 of approx. 34 issues. (91% complete) – Nos. 1-3, 26 missing

3-4_28-February-1897  –  3-5_7-March-1897  –  3-6_15-March-1897  –  3-7_21-March-1897  –  3-8_28-March-1897  –  3-9_4-April-1897  –  3-10_11-April-1897  –  3-11_18-April-1897  –  3-12_25-April-1897  –  3-13_2-May-1897  –  3-14_9-May-1897  –  3-15_16-May-1897  –  3-16_23-May-1897  –  3-17_30-May-1897  –  3-18_6-June-1897  –  3-19_13-June-1897  –  3-20_20-June-1897  –  3-21_27-June-1897  –  3-22_4-July-1897  –  3-23_11-July-1897  –  3-24_18-July-1897  –  3-25-26_25-July-1897  –  3-27_1-August-1897  –  3-28_15-August-1897  –  3-29_22-August-1897  –  3-30_29-August-1897  –  3-31_5-September-1897  –  3-32_12-September-1897  –  3-33_19-September-1897  –  3-34_26-September-1897

Free Society

Volume 4 – San Francisco – December 1897-November 1898?
1 of approx. 52 issues. (2% complete) – Nos. 2-52 missing

4-1_12-December-1897

Volume 5 – San Francisco – November 1898?-November 1899?
8 of approx. 52 issues. (15% complete) – Nos. 1-30, 32-33, 36-38, 42-47, 49-52? missing

5-31_11-June-1899  –  5-34_2-July-1899  –  5-35_9-July-1899  –  5-39_6-August-1899  –  5-40_13-August-1899  –  5-41_20-August-1899  –  5-48_15-October-1899

Volume 6 – San Francisco – November 1899?-December 1900
47 of approx. 58 issues. (81% complete) – Nos. 1-6, 22-23, 27, 34, 41 missing

6-7_31-December-1899  –  6-8_7-January-1900  –  6-9_14-January-1900  –  6-10_21-January-1900  –  6-11_28-January-1900  –  6-12_4-February-1900  –  6-13_11-February-1900  –  6-14_18-February-1900  –  6-15_25-February-1900  –  6-16_4-March-1900  –  6-17_11-March-1900  –  6-18_18-March-1900  –  6-19_25-March-1900  –  6-20_1-April-1900  –  6-21_8-April-1900  –  6-24_29-April-1900  –  6-25_6-May-1900  –  6-26_13-May-1900  –  6-28_27-May-1900  –  6-29_3-June-1900  –  6-30_10-June-1900  –  6-31_17-June-1900  –  6-32_24-June-1900  –  6-33_1-July-1900  –  6-35_15-July-1900  –  6-36_22-July-1900  –  6-37_29-July-1900  –  6-38_5-August-1900  –  6-39_12-August-1900  –  6-40_19-August-1900  –  6-42_2-September-1900  –  6-43_9-September-1900  –  6-44_16-September-1900  –  6-45_23-September-1900  –  6-46_30-September-1900  –  6-47_7-October-1900  –  6-48_14-October-1900  –  6-49_21-October-1900  –  6-50_29-October-1900  –  6-51_4-November-1900  –  6-52_11-November-1900  –  6-53_18-November-1900  –  6-54_25-November-1900  –  6-55_2-December-1900  –  6-56_9-December-1900  –  6-57_16-December-1900  –  6-58_23-December-1900

Volume 7 – Chicago – February 1901-?
9 of approx. 52 issues. (81% complete) – Nos. 1-6, 22-23, 27, 34, 41 missing

7-1_3-February-1901  –  7-2_10-February-1901  –  7-3_17-February-1901  –  7-5_3-March-1901  –  7-8_24-March-1901  –  7-14_5-May-1901  –  7-15_12-May-1901  –  7-31_1-September-1901  –  7-36_10-October-1901

Volume 8?
Volume 9 – Chicago – January 1902-December 1902
52 of approx. 52 issues. (100% complete) – no known issues missing

9-1_5-January-1902  –  9-2_12-January-1902  –  9-3_19-January-1902  –  9-4_26-January-1902  –  9-5_2-February-1902  –  9-6_9-February-1902  –  9-7_16-February-1902  –  9-8_23-February-1902  –  9-9_2-March-1902  –  9-10_9-March-1902  –  9-11_16-March-1902  –  9-12_23-March-1902  –  9-13_30-March-1902  –  9-14_6-April-1902  –  9-15_13-April-1902  –  9-16_20-April-1902  –  9-17_27-April-1902  –  9-18_5-May-1902  –  9-19_11-May-1902  –  9-20_18-May-1902  –  9-21_25-May-1902  –  9-22_1-June-1902 –  9-23_8-June-1902 –  9-24_15-June-1902 –  9-25_22-June-1902  –  9-26_29-June-1902  –  9-27_6-July-1902  –  9-28_13-July-1902  –  9-29_20-July-1902  –  9-30_27-July-1902  –  9-31_3-August-1902  –  9-32_10-August-1902  –  9-33_17-August-1902  –  9-34_24-August-1902  –  9-35_31-August-1902  –  9-36_7-September-1902  –  9-37_14-September-1902  –  9-38_21-September-1902  –  9-39_28-September-1902  –  9-40_5-October-1902  –  9-41_12-October-1902  –  9-42_19-October-1902  –  9-43_26-October-1902  –  9-44_2-November-1902  –  9-45_9-November-1902  –  9-46_16-November-1902  –  9-47_23-November-1902  –  9-48_30-November-1902  –  9-49_7-December-1902  –  9-50_14-December-1902  –  9-51_21-December-1902  –  9-52_28-December-1902

Volume 10 – Chicago – January 1903-December 1903
8 of approx. 52 issues. (15% complete) – 1-19, 21-23, 25-26, 28,32, 34-37, 39-41, 43-51 missing

10-19_10-May-1903  –  10-20_17-May-1903  –  10-24_14-June1903  –  10-27_5-July-1903  –  10-33_16-August-1903  –  10-38_20-September-1903  –  10-42_18-October-1903  –  10-52_27-December-1903

Volume 10b – Chicago – January 1904-February 1904
5 of approx. 8 issues. (63% complete) – nos. 4-6 missing

10b-1_3-January-1904  –  10b-2_10-January-1904  –  10b-3_17-January-1904  –  10b-7_14-February-1904  –  10b-8_21-February-1904

Volume 11? – New York – Issues after February 1904 move to New York until the paper’s closure in November 1904 missing
Published
Categorized as General

The Outside Agitator (206) – (2015) Archived

Nameplate for "The Outside Agitator (206)" magazine, from issue 2 "Black History Month"

The Outside Agitator (206)

A Seattle Black Liberation Newsletter, 2015

Outside-Agitator-206_1_MLK-Day-2015

Outside-Agitator-206_2_March-2015

 

Outside Agitators (206) collective was founded during the first wave of Black Lives Matter protests following Michael Brown’s 2014 murder by the police. Their name referenced an old racist myth that protests for black liberation were driven by usually white “outsiders” rather than folks within the community. The group was loosely organized around four points of unity:

  • We center Black voices to celebrate and affirm Blackness. We believe that any movement to end anti-Black racism must be led by Black people.
  • We believe that everyone has a right to resist their oppressors and what resistance looks like varies for different individuals and different circumstances.
  • We don’t directly speak to corporate media, nor do we need them. We are our own voice.
  • Fuck the police: As an institution fundamentally rooted in white supremacy and anti-Blackness we reject the police presence in our communities, absolutely. It is our responsibility to hold each other accountable and keep each other safe.

OA206 organized several protests around Seattle throughout 2015 including large marches and walkouts at the University of Washington (also recounted in “State of Emergency” of the newsletter issue 2). The group also held various education events. Some controversial members made headlines for interrupting presidential candidate Bernie Sanders during a June campaign stop in Seattle; media reported OA206s involvement though the rest of the collective had apparently not even been informed.

The Outside Agitator (206) was OA206’s newsletter. Two issues were published in 2015, one for Martin Luther King Day (January) and the other in March. While short-lived the newsletter contains valuable content, from poetry and playlists to accounts of gentrification and past struggles with political co-option. Tales of black history sit alongside individuals accounts of police brutality, reportbacks from protests, and passionate appeals to fight for black liberation.

The same friend’s closet that produced our blog’s other recent digitized contributions held a copy of the OA206 newsletter. Finding a wayback archive was difficult until a little digging revealed the URL of their site to be different than that originally printed in the newsletter (outsideagitator206.com vs outsideagitators206.org). On the wayback machine archive of the site we found PDF copies of both issues of the newsletter. The site was also updated with new articles through early 2016, offering commentary on events like the police eviction of the homeless Camp Dearborn, an attempted march by Hammerskin Neo-Nazis, and various protests against gentrification and racist capitalism.

Published
Categorized as General

Intersections (2008-2009) Archived

Nameplate for "Intersections" A Publication of Common Action

Intersections

A Pacific Northwest Anarchist Periodical, 2008-2009

Title _ Vol.-No. _ Months-Year

Intersections-1-1_Oct-Nov-2008 Intersections_1-4_June-Aug-2009 Intersections_1-5_Sept-Nov-2009

This weeks entries to Historical Sedition’s May Day digitization drive is a pair of 2000s and 2010s periodicals from the region that linger in the depths of the deleted but archived internet. The first is Intersections, published by the regional anarchist organization Common Action from 2008-2009 or 2010. After finding a wrinkled old copy in a homie’s closet, we dug through the wayback machine and web archives and found three of the six issues still online. We preserve them here as a mirror while also drawing eyes to the archived pages.

Common Action started as the “Class Action Alliance” in June 2008 before members changed the name to Common Action during their next general assembly in September that year. Initial membership included people from Bellingham, Seattle, Tacoma, Olympia, and Portland; the Portland and Bellingham groups were later less active but a group in Bremerton was established.

Intersections was launched as the organization’s newsletter and agitational organ when the organizations name was changed to Common Action. It discussed campaigns members of the organization were involved in around labor, racial justice, healthcare, and transit, provided reportbacks from regional Anarchist People of Color Gatherings and other events, discussed issues like gentrification, radical parenting, and direct action tactics.

A handful of reportbacks from some of Common Action’s assemblies are available translated into several languages on anarkismo.net; the dissolution of the organization in 2010 was also announced there. Members of the group remained active in anarchist struggles and some are still around today.

Common Action’s site was active from 2008-2010 and is preserved by the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. From these archives issue 4 and issue 5 of Intersections volume 1 were retrievable. Vol, 1 Issue 1 was found archived on the Anarchist Zine Library.

Email us at historicalseditions [at] riseup [dot] net if you have additional copies of Intersections that could be shared for archival purposes.

Published
Categorized as General

Storming Heaven (2013-2015) Digitized/Archived

Nameplate for "Storming Heavaen" A Seattle Anarchist Periodical

Storming Heaven

A Seattle Anarchist Periodical, 2013-2015

Title _ No. _ Month/Season-Year

In the lead-up to May Day, Historical Seditions will be releasing a newly digitized anarchist newspaper every week. While some of these are over a century old, our first entry for this weekly series is less than a decade. Even in the era of information born-digitally, it is all too easy for publications to vanish. Servers go offline with no backups, hosting services go bankrupt or change their terms, and archiving services provide imperfect records.

Storming Heaven existed in a weird period for Anarchism in Seattle. It was something of a spiritual successor to the insurrectionary Anarchist Tides of Flame whose last issue came six months before Storming Heaven’s first. Storming Heaven published after the dissipation of the Occupy Movement as well as the Seattle Grand Jury, while most of its issues were published before the August, 2014 police killing of Mike Brown in Ferguson ignited the first wave of “Black Lives Matter” protests. The paper thus offers insight into anarchist discourse and activity sandwiched between these two movements, while the final issue released a year later offers a roundup of many of the local 2014-2015 Black Lives Matter protests.

Issues 3-6 of Storming Heaven were recovered from the still-live blog and thus are being reposted here for archival purposes. Issues 1 and 2 were however hosted on an old version of pugetsoundanarchists.org and the files do not even appear to be on the Internet Archive. Historical Seditions was able to recover a paper copy of Issue 2 from a friend’s closet, which has been scanned and uploaded here. Anyone with access to Issue 1 is welcome to get in contact at historicalseditions [at] riseup [dot] net

Published
Categorized as General

West Coast Historical Anarchist Media in Print and Online

This post is mirrored as a page here, which will continue to receive updates

Newspapers were first published under the black flag on the Pacific Coast over 130 years ago. Blogs, podcasts, and zine distros carry on that work today.

This incomplete list of digitized anarchist publications from the colonized west of the so-called united states makes accessible that long history of insurgent media. Anarchists seeking inspirations and warnings from the past will hopefully find it useful.

Newspapers and magazines from the late-19th and early 20th century chronicle everyday organizing and insurrectionary moments during an era when the West Coast was a major node in a globe-spanning anti-colonial, anti-capitalist anarchist movement. Papers published in several languages from Los Angeles to San Francisco, Portland to Home, Washington were backbones of local networks, sometimes attracting global attention. The various publications below are available in various formats, from PDFs of individual issues to searchable web tools.

There is a dearth of publications from the 1940s until the 1960s; not unexpected given the lull of anarchistic movements in these decades. The revival came in the form of independent and often diy bulletins and newsletters. The 70s witnessed a small proliferation of publications from clandestine prison papers to anarchist comic books to the birth of zine culture.

With the rise of the internet, Indymedia became an early hub building on connections established at the 1999 WTO in Seattle. A network of frequently anonymous, sometimes submission-driven anarchist blogs proliferated in the years that followed. Some of these blogs are still active today, but many old sites remain live and are valuable resources for the interested. There was also several anarchist magazines and newspapers published in Seattle and Tacoma during the late 2000s and 2010s with digitized copies available for reading.

There are undoubtedly publications missing from this list. Old periodicals become lost to time or collect dust in archives or on microfilm. Vibrant anonymous blogs become dead links, occasionally accessible in limited form on the Wayback Machine. One aim of Historical Seditions is to seek out and preserve these. More digitized historic newspapers will be added to our site in the future, and we are always on the hunt for forgotten URLs and PDFs. If you have leads to expand this list, contact us at historicalseditions [at] riseup [dot] net.

A growing, global list of digitized anarchist publications is available at lidiap.ficedl.info

Digitized by Historical Seditions

The Beacon

Kakumei/The Revolution

Storming Heaven

Many more coming soon!

 

So-Called PNW

The Firebrand – Portland (Or.), 1895-1897

vol. 1, nos. 1, 42
vol. 2, nos. 31-32, 34-45, 47-52
vol. 3, nos. 1-34

Mirror

 

Discontent – Home (Wash.), 1898-1902

vol. 1, nos. 5, 10, 27, 38, 43, 45, 49-50
vol. 2, nos. 2, 5, 7, 10-14, 43, 48-52
vol. 3, nos. 2-12, 14-20, 22-23, 25-28, 30-43, 46-52
vol. 4, nos. 2-4, 6-13, 15-19, 21-23, 25-31

 

Clothed with the Sun – Home (Wash.), 1900-1904

vol. 3, nos. 3, 10

 

The Industrial Worker – Spokane, Seattle, 1909-1931

vol. 1 – vol. 5

 

The Agitator – Home (Wash.), 1910-1912

Complete Set

 

Why? – Tacoma, 1913-1914

Complete Set

Mirror

Mirror

 

The Dawn – Seattle, 1922-?

vol. 1 nos. 1-8

 

The Seattle Group Bulletins – Seattle, 1965-1971

no. 1-60 text only

Original Scans

 

Earth and Fire – Vancouver, 1972

nos. 1, 2

 

Open Road – Vancouver, 1976-1990

Complete Set

Mirror

 

Anarchist Black Dragon – Walla Walla, 1978-1983

nos. 2-6, special issue, 8-11

 

British Columbia’s blackout – Vancouver, 1978-1984?

nos. 1-4, 6, 66, 74-75, 77, 79, 82-85, 91, 109, 117

 

Ecomedia – Vancouver, 1988-1991?

nos. 1-2, 4-6

nos. 12-21, 23-39, 41-51, 54-69, 72-76, 78-81, 83, 85, 87-92, 94-100

 

The Insurgent – Eugene, 1991-Present

2010-present issues

 

NWAC Northwest Anarchist Collective – Seattle, 1992-1993?

nos. 1-2

 

Crimethinc – Olympia and Elsewhere, 1996-Present

Legacy Article Search: crimethinc.com/library

 

Indymedia – Seattle, 1999-2013 Portland, 2000-2020

Seattle Wayback Machine

Portland Wayback Machine

 

Green Anarchy – Eugene, 2000-2008

nos. 5, 7
nos. 6-25

 

Face to Face with the Enemy – Vancouver, 2004-2007?

facetofacewiththeenemy.wordpress.com

 

Rad Dad – Portland, 2005-2013

no. 20

 

Unfinished Business
Portland, 2005

no. 3

 

CrimethInc. Worker Bulletin – Olympia, 2007

no. 47
no. 47/74

 

Wii’nimkiikaa – 2007-2010

wiinimkiikaa.wordpress.com

 

Pink and Black Attack – Olympia, 2008-2010

nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

 

Vancouver Anarchist Online Archive – Vancouver, 2009-2010

vanarchive.wordpress.com

 

Autonomy//253 – Tacoma, 2010-2011

autonomy253.wordpress.com

Magazine Issue 3

 

Lunaria Press – Tacoma, 2010-2011

lunariapress.blogspot.com

 

Unmanageable Outlaws – 2010-2011

amiableoutlaws.wordpress.com

 

Continual War – 2010-2012

2010-2011 continualwar.wordpress.com

2011-2012 continwar.noblogs.org

 

Autonomy Acres – Rural PNW, 2010-2015

autonomyacres.wordpress.com

 

Tides of Flame – Seattle, 2011-2012

Complete Set

 

Puget Sound Anarchists – 2011-Present

PugetSoundAnarchists.org (Current Site, 2014-Present)

Wayback Machine (2011-2013)

 

Warrior Publications – Occupied Coast Salish Territory, Vancouver BC, 2011-Present

warriorpublications.wordpress.com

 

Gray Coast – Pacific Northwest, 2011-2013

greycoast.wordpress.com

 

Portland Occupier – Portland, 2011-Present

portlandoccupier.org

 

BCBlackOut – So-Called British Columbia, 2011-Present

bcblackout.wordpress.com

 

(A) Wild Harbor – Aberdeen, 2012

awildharbor.wordpress.com

 

Storming Heaven – Seattle, 2013-2015

nos. 2-6

 

Warzone Distro – Chicago, Portland, elsewhere – 2013 – Present

warzonedistro.noblogs.org

 

Black and Green Review – Salem, 2015-2018

no. 1

 

The Transmetropolitan Review – Seattle, 2015-2018 (Magazine), 2015-Present (Blog)

nos. 1-6, 7, 8

thetransmetropolitanreview.wordpress.com

 

Wreck – Vancouver, 2015-2016

Complete Set

 

Salish Sea Black Autonomists – Olympia, 2017-2020

blackautonomynetwork.noblogs.org

 

1312press – Seattle, 2018?-Present

Published Zines – 1312press.noblogs.org/1312-published-titles

 

Rose City Counter-Info – Portland, 2020-Present

rosecitycounterinfo.noblogs.org/

 

PNW Youth Liberation Front – 2020-2021

pnwylf.noblogs.org/

youthliberation.noblogs.org/

 

no more city – Vancouver, 2020 – 2022

2020-20201 Issues – nomore.city/archive

 

Rose City Radical Portland, 2021-2022

nos. 1-4 rosecityradical.com/past-issues

The Occupied West

The Beacon – San Francisco, 1889-1891

vol. 1, nos. 12-13, 15-17
vol. 2, nos. 1-2, 6-8, 18

 

Egoism – San Francisco, 1890-1897

vol. 1
vol. 2
vol. 3, nos. 1, 18, 23
vol. 4, nos 1-2

 

Secolo Nuovo – San Francisco, 1894-1906

vol. 7 no. 17

 

Free Society (Sucessor of Portland’s The Firebrand) – San Francisco/Chicago, 1897-1904

vol. 9
vol. 10, no. 20

Mirror

 

Regeneración – Los Angeles and elsewhere, 1900-1901, 1904-1906, 1910-1918

Complete Set

 

La Protesta Umana – San Francisco and Chicago, 1900-1905

1902-1903

 

Kakumei/The Revolution – Berkeley, 1906-1907

no. 1

 

Revolución – Los Angeles, 1907-1908

nos. 1-4, 6-11, 13-17, 19-29

 

Regeneración. Sezione Italiana – Los Angeles, 1911

Complete Set

 

Hindustan Ghadar – San Francisco, 1913-192?

Assorted 1913-1917 issues

 

The Blast – San Francisco, 1916-1917

Complete Set

 

Man! – San Francisco, 1933-1940

vol. 3, no. 7/8

 

Now & After – San Francisco, 1977-1978

no. 1

 

Anarchy Comics – San Francisco, 1978-1987

Complete Set

 

Slingshot – Berkeley, 1988-Present

nos. 58-137

 

Anarchist Labor Bulletin – San Francisco (Calif.), 1989?-1990?

nos. 18-19

 

Willful Disobedience – Los Angeles, 1996-2006

vol. 3, no. 5
vol. 5, nos. 1-2

 

Ignite! – Denver, 2011-2012

Complete Set

 

Black Flag – Los Angeles, 2012-2016

Complete Set

 

Black Seed  – Berkeley, 2014 – Present

nos. 1-6

 

It’s Going Down – Bay Area and Elsewhere, 2015-Present

itsgoingdown.org

2015/Old Legacy Articles via Wayback Machine

Winter-Spring 2016 Print Compilation

Spring 2017 Print Compilation

 

Published
Categorized as General

Kakumei/Revolution (1906) Digitized

Header of Kakumei Newspaper

English header of Kakumei Newspaper, "The Revolution"

Berkeley, California’s Japanese Anarchist Newspaper

Kakumei_1_12-20-1906

The San Francisco Bay Area was a central node in a globe-spanning, empire-challenging anarchist movement in the first years of the 20th century. Perhaps the most prominent Japanese anarchist during these years was journalist Kōtoku Shūsui. When Kōtoku’s set foot in San Francisco in November, 1905, his radical conscience had been developing for years. His 1901 book Imperialism: Monster of the Twentieth Century remains a seminal early condemnation of global imperialism. A couple years later he helped launch the Heimin Shinbun in Tokyo, a socialist anti-war daily newspaper. Kōtoku’s vocal opposition to the Russo-Japanese war in the pages of the Heimin Shinbun led to his imprisonment and the paper’s shuttering.

While incarcerated, Kōtoku struck up a correspondence with San Francisco-based Anarchist Albert Johnson. Upon release Kōtoku entered a short self-exile by crossing the Pacific to California. In California, Kōtoku’s contacts with the Industrial Workers of the World and experiences with grassroots mutual aid in the wake of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake made him a convinced anarchist.

Portrait of Kōtoku Shūsui
Portrait of Kōtoku Shūsui

Kōtoku also struck up a relationship with local Japanese migrants. A former colleague, Shigeki Oka, was involved in the local branch of the Heiminsha, the organization that had published the Heimin Shinbun. Before Kōtoku returned to Japan in June, 1906, he brought many of these new contacts together to form a Social Revolutionary Party. The initial membership counted 52 names, most from the nearby Bay area cities but also including contacts in Chicago, Boston, and New York.

The Social Revolutionary Party’s members soon launched a paper in Berkeley: Kakumei, or Revolution in English. Its first issue has been preserved in the University of California, Berkeley library and is now made available as a digitized copy. The first page of the eight-page paper contained English-language articles directed toward the broader radical movement, while the remainder was written in Japanese.

The English articles offered an introduction to the emerging Japanese Anarchist movement. As a solution the increasingly brutal poverty faced by many under capitalism, Kakumei clearly rejected “the trifiling legislation which the capitalist class may from time to time flink to the workers” as being “about as effective as the tiny stream from a baby’s water-gun thrown in a raging fire.” Instead, Kakumei clearly called for “the overthrow of Mikado, King, President as representing the Capitalist Class as soon as possible, and we do not hesitate as to the means.”1

The paper also spoke to the “ignorance of the white fellow workers as to the actual interests of the working class the world over.” 1907 was a high-point for racist exclusion movements in California. The mayor of San Francisco, Eugene Schmitz, was a Musician’s Union labor leader who was a prominent figure in the Japanese-Korean Exclusion League. That latter body would morph into the Asiatic Exclusion League in 1907, initiating branches in many white settler-colonial cities along the Pacific Rim. Kakumei argued that the economic troubles their “foolish white fellow workers” often blamed on Japanese laborers was in fact the fault of capital. The only solution was the classic motto, “Working Men of All Countries Unite!”2

Though Kakumei was ultimately short-lived, its contributors played a significant role in the trans-pacific anarchist movement of the years to follow. Tetsugoro Takeuchi, who had written an article suggesting the American president might be assassinated, was forced to move to Fresno. There he helped organize thousands of farmworkers into the Japanese Fresno Federation of Labor. Five thousand of them struck in 1908 with the support of Italian and Mexican IWW members. Takeguchi also published Rodo (Labor) as the organ of the Japanese Fresno Federation of Labor. Another founding member of the Social Revolutionary Party was Iwasa Sakutarō, who became a lifelong anarchist-communist until his death in 1967.

Further Reading

The Proletarian: digitized Japanese-English bilingual IWW paper 1909-1910

Stafan Anarkowic, Against the God Emperor: The Anarchist Treason Trials in Japan

Masayo Umezawa Duus, The Japanese Conspiracy: The Oahu Sugar Strike of 1920

Robert Thomas Tierney, Monster of the Twentieth Century: Kōtoku Shūsui and Japan’s First Imperialist Movement

Kenyon Zimmer, Immigrants Against the State: Yiddish and Italian Anarchism in America

1“The Japanese-Socialist Movement in California,” Kakumei, December 20, 1906.

2The President and Japanese Exclusion,” Kakumei, December 20, 1906.

Published
Categorized as General

Six Mini-Zines

We are happy to release six short mini-zines covering forgotten radical history of the so-called Pacific Northwest. Each is available as a PDF for printing, and only use between one and three sheets of paper. Older texts have been sourced for these; future short-form zines will feature original writings.

Cover of "The Kitsap Ferry Riot" zineThe Kitsap Ferry Riot tells the story of the restrictive old Seattle Teen Dance Ordinance and a punk riot that occurred on the ferry from Bremerton as a result. The text is pulled from the defunct website of a documentary about the riot by Chris Loomey, accessible here. (2 sheets letter)

Download The Kitsap Ferry Riot

 

The remainder of these mini-zines were sourced from articles published a decade ago in Tides of Flame, a Seattle Anarchist paper published 2011-2012. The first was a one-off article, the rest are drawn from its recurring ‘Forgotten History’ feature. A complete run of Tides of Flame can be found here.

Cover of "The Eyes of a Monster" ZineThe Eyes of a Monster is the tale of Chris Monfort. Appalled by police brutality in his community, Chris looked the monster in the eye and refused to blink. He launched a one-man war against Seattle Police in 2009, bombing vehicles and killing one SPD officer in an ambush. Chris mysteriously died in Walla Walla State Penitentiary in 2017. (3 sheets letter)

Download The Eyes of a Monster

 

Cover of "1856: The Battle in Seattle" zine1856: The Battle in Seattle is the tale of Chief Leschi, the Nisqually, and other warriors who fought to expel the settler-colonial leviathan in its infancy. (2 sheets letter)

Download 1856: The Battle in Seattle

 

 

Cover of "Anarchists and Rebellion in Walla Walla Prison" zineAnarchists and Rebellion in Walla Walla State Prison is an account of the Anarchist Black Dragon, an imprisoned anarchist collective who published an underground newspaper and helped spur several prisoner uprisings. (1 sheet letter)

Download Anarchists and Rebellion in Walla Walla State Prison

 

Cover of "The Centralia IWW" ZineThe Centralia IWW tells of the lumberjacks and hobos who organized a revolutionary union in this small Washington town. The intense repression they faced culminated in the so-called Centralia Tragedy in 1919. (2 sheets letter)

Download The Centralia IWW

 

Cover of "The Dude Smashed the Federal Courthouse" zineThe Dude Smashed the Federal Courthouse, Too! recalls the nationwide uprising in 1970 over the trial of Black Panther Bobby Seale and the Chicago Seven. The rowdiest solidarity action occurred in Seattle, where the federal courthouse was smashed. One of the most famous arrestees was Jeff Dowd, inspiration for “The Dude” in “The Big Lebowski” (1 sheet letter)

Download The Dude Smashed the Federal Courthouse, Too!

Published
Categorized as General

Two New Zines

Historical Seditions is pleased to release two new zines. Each is available in two formats: a PDF imposed for letter-sized printing and one for digital reading.

In Search of Freedom and Self Determination: A Tour Through the Anarchist Movements in Graz, Austria, 1918–1938 contains a translation of a 2018 article by historian Reinhard Müller. Graz was a major node of anarchism in Central Europe during the interwar years. The city was home to several anarchist cultural and mutual aid organizations, and the central hub of a network of underground vasectomy clinics. With the rise of fascism Graz anarchists continued their struggle through secret affinity groups. Graz’s most famous anarchist writer, Rudolf Großmann aka Pierre Ramus, is relatively well-known in German-speaking anarchist circles, but the lively history of the Graz anarchist movements remains a niche subject this zine hopefully sheds light on.

Download In Search of Freedom: Letter-imposed printing | Digital Reading

 

 

 

 

We Don’t Forget! 2017 Inauguration Day Reflections from the Salish Sea compiles reportbacks and communiques from Seattle and Olympia related to protests surrounding the inauguration of Donald Trump. As hundreds of protesters were being arrested in Washington, D.C., intense protests against rising fascism broke out throughout the rest of the so-called United States. Seattle’s University of Washington was a particularly heated site of confrontation, as alt-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos was scheduled to speak that day. While Milo’s event was significantly disrupted, one antifascist attempting to deescalate a fight was shot by a Trump supporter who would ultimately be acquitted at trial. The events of that day are detailed in this zine, along with parallel protests in Olympia and a followup action memorializing the anniversary of the shooting.

Download We Don’t Forget: Letter-imposed printing | Digital Reading

Published
Categorized as Zines

The Beacon (1890-91) Digitized

The Beacon title, subtitle "Devoted to the Solution of the Social Problem"

San Francisco Anarchist Newspaper

Title _ Vol.-No. _ Month-Day-Year

The years 1886 and 1901 are rather well-known to students of anarchism in so-called North America. The former witnessed a continent-spanning labor upheaval, most famously associated with the May Day mythology of the Chicago Haymarket. The latter saw U.S. president William McKinley assassinated by Michigan-born anarchist Leon Czolgosz. These events brought about severe repression of anarchists. Yet in both cases, anarchism persisted. Despite the separate treatments these events generally receive in histories, threads of continuity spanned that decade-and-a-half.

The decentralized nature of anarchistic movements often fosters historical misunderstanding. Repression and the associated disappearance of a well-known group or periodical has sometimes been taken as shorthand by historians for the ‘death of anarchism’ in some particular time or place. Human continuities with later manifestations are frequently difficult for later observers to track. But stepping beyond confined geography and thinking like the loose network that was and is anarchism clarifies such connections.

One vital bridge connecting the anarchisms of 1886 with those of 1901 is the The Beacon. This newspaper was started by one Sigismund Danielewicz in San Diego in 1889 before moving to San Francisco the next year. It survived only until 1891, taking on Clara Dixon Davidson as a new editor for its final issues. During its short life and frequent disruptions, The Beacon filled a vital vacuum in a militant emerging English-language movement. This blog brings eleven issues of The Beacon to digital life for the first time.

Portraits of Sigismund Danielewicz and Clara Dixon Davidson
‘The Beacon’s editors: Sigismund Danielewicz (left) and Clara Dixon Davidson (right)

A key predecessor of The Beacon was the The Alarm, edited by Albert Parsons in Chicago. That weekly paper helped foster a widespread radical network seeking to tear down existing systems of domination by any means necessary. Bold words favoring newly invented dynamite made the paper especially infamous among the powerful. The Alarm reached beyond Chicago; many subscribers were women and men in small towns and cities who enthusiastically engaged with its ideas.

Albert Parsons was hanged by the state in late 1887, one of several Anarchists scapegoated for the explosive deaths of a number of assaultive Chicago police. Just before his murder, The Alarm was revived by a local collaborator, Dyer D. Lum. While this second Alarm helped bring together the network fostered by the first, it was short-lived and after moving to New York reputedly took a more moderate stance. These same years witnessed a new prominence for ‘philosophical anarchists’ who claimed to appreciate the social ideals of anarchism while rejecting militant (or sometimes any) means of achieving them.

In San Francisco, Sigismund Danielewicz oriented The Beacon towards continuing the spirit of the old Alarm. The Beacon’s second volume made this intention clear by adding the Alarm’s famous subtitle to its own masthead: “The Tools for the Toiler; the Produce for the Producer.” Between poems and short anarchist stories lie compelling calls for the sort of dynamite insurrection that even a few readers complained ought to have died with the Haymarket martyrs.1

The Beacon Masthead listing Sigismund Danielewicz as editor, Clara Dixon Davidson as assistant editor, and with a quote from 'The Alarm'
The Beacon Masthead listing Sigismund Danielewicz as editor, Clara Dixon Davidson as assistant editor, and with a quote from ‘The Alarm’

A handful of available issues remain of his 1889-1891 paper The Beacon.2 During Danielewicz’s tenure as editor, the paper frequently expressed solidarity with anarchistic free love journals facing censorship, but also argued that mere “agitation” might not be enough to free the jailed editors.3 Space was given for advocates of “Passive Resistance” but Danielewicz inserted his rebuttals when he had the space.4 In its later run, frequent contributor Clara Dixon Davidson joined Danielewicz as assistant-editor, holding more of an ‘evolutionary anarchist’ perspective in contrast to Danielewicz’s advocacy of ‘physical force revolution.’ Danielewicz apparently handed her the reigns entirely near the end of the paper’s life.5

The Beacon was always run on a limited budget; on multiple occasions it had to suspend publication until more funds could be found. Danielewicz’s tendency to give away numerous free copies certainly didn’t assist financial matters, even if it helped to spread the paper’s message. In addition to taking the common newspaper side-hustle of offering paid job-printing, small operations located at The Beacon‘s office helped fund the presses. Danielewicz had a long career as a barber, and offered cuts at The Beacon barbership to support the paper, also offering to sharpen hair clippers. The office was also home to a laundry.

Advertisments for The Beacon Job Printing Office, Barbershop, Laundry, and radical literature
Common advertisements placed by The Beacon’s editors for the various hustles supporting the paper.

Old contributors to The Alarm found ample space for their ideas in The Beacon. Dyer D. Lum frequently contributed think-pieces on the nature of anarchism.6 Lucy Parsons spoke up in the pages of The Beacon to defend its radical line.7 Even new Chicago anarchists awoken by the events of Haymarket turned to The Beacon for a time. Voltairine de Cleyre, for instance, published poetry in its pages.8

Lesser known members of The Alarm circle also turned to The Beacon. Dr. Mary Herman Aikin of Grinnell, Iowa was an enthusiastic supporter.9 She thought the The Beacon would better reach “the men who go at night to miserable shelter and wretched food, after long hours of toil” than other Anarchist papers with “fine-spun theories” like Twentieth Century and Denver’s Individualist. The Beacon was “not afraid to declare that it means war to existing social conditions.” Aikin supposedly earlier helped organize a local “group of some ten or eleven persons” in her town affiliated with the Black International. She also ran a medical practice favorable to the poor and apparently performed abortions for women who requested them, illegal in Iowa since 1873. A nearly 70 year old Mary Herman Aikin was indicted for an abortion in 1898 and died in prison four years later.10

Importantly, The Beacon also linked those better-developed networks in the US-Midwest and East with Danielwicz’s own connections on the West Coast. While the ‘Black International’ played a key role in the upheavals of 1885-86, a more ignomious counterpart was forming in the West. San Francisco was home to a ‘Red International,’ the International Workmen’s Association, formed in late-1882 by radicals associated with deeply-racist local labor and socialist movements. Danielewicz served as the Secretary of this body while it spread as far as Seattle, Washington and Topeka, Kansas.

These ‘Red’ and ‘Black’ Internationals enjoyed a messy relationship through the events of ‘Harmarket,’ sometimes discussing a merger, at other times differing wildly on matters of organization and principal. The most common objection by ‘Black’ Internationalists to their Western counterparts was also the issue that drove Danielewicz to leave: the Western IWA’s lead role in a horrific wave of 1885-1886 anti-Chinese pogroms.11

Logo with a glove topped by a mason's toop and a phyrgian cap, with International Workmen's Association [The Red]' below
Logo of the San Francisco-based IWA from their publication ‘Truth’

Those who stuck to this racist line would continue the ‘Red IWA’ for a few more years, parlaying their racist drive into the institutional foundations still utilized by AFL-CIO labor organizations in the Western US. When Danielewicz opposed these actions at a key convention, he virtually stood alone in the organization. Yet when he departed soon afterwards, he held on to a handful of connections in the West, and along with these built a stronger relationship with anarchists further-afield. By the time those comrades had need of an outlet, Danielewicz’s Beacon was ready to oblige.

One key connection was Henry Addis of Portland, Oregon whose first known anarchistic writings appeared in The Beacon. Just a few years later, Addis joined with Mary and Abe Isaak and a handful of others to found The Firebrand.12 Facing state-repression related to oppressive ‘obscenity’ laws, the Firebrand collective dispersed in two directions. Some helped form the Home anarchist colony near Tacoma, Washington, while others launched a new 1896 Anarchist paper in San Francisco: Free Society. Danielewicz himself became a frequent Free Society contributor for some time. Free Society is also well-known for inspiring the 1901 actions of Leon Czolgosz, illustrating the anarchistic through-lines that ran through The Beacon. Free Society would be followed in spirit by Emma Goldman’s famous Mother Earth.

The Beacon also served a local role, giving a platform to a few of San Francisco’s budding anarchist and other radical groups. An ‘Anarchist Club’ met for some time on Sunday afternoons at The Beacon‘s offices. The Beacon‘s editors were also active participants in the local ‘People’s Lyceum,’ a radical discussion circle. Local associations ‘discussing the social question’ were offered free listing in the Paper. The listings also included, among others, groups aligned with Henry George’s ‘Single Tax’ movement, The Socialist Labor Party, and Edward Bellamy’s ‘Nationalist’ state-socialist movement.

'The Beacon' local group advertisements for The People's Lyceum, Pacific Nationalist Club, Single Tax Club, San Francisco Section Socialist Labor Party, Freethought Society, German-American Nationalist Club, and The Anarchist Club
San Francisco radical group listings in ‘The Beacon’

The Beacon was even known overseas, prompting inquiries for copies from ubiquitous anarchist historian and archivist Max Nettlau.13 Danielewicz sent him the copies he had on hand from its San Diego and San Francisco runs. Some of these likely ended up with Nettlau’s papers in the International Institute for Social History in Amsterdam, where they were digitized as the scans now being made available. The two also discussed a Los Angeles paper, The Cactus, run by a Carl Brown. Danielewicz told Nettlau to get in touch with the editor as he had no copies on hand.14

The Beacon was not the sole Anarchist outlet during its print run; many issues carried a listing of radical journals in several languages. A little over half were in the United States, including English, German, Yiddish, and Czech-language periodicals. Some, like Topeka’s Lucifer focused on radical free-love matters. Others, like St. Louis’ Die Parole, were surviving papers affiliated with the Black International since before Haymarket. London was home to several friendly English-language publications as well as a German and Yiddish newspaper. Even further afield were Paris’ La Revolte, Copenhagen’s Arbejderen, and El Perseguido in Buenos Aires.

'The Beacon' Radical Journals listings for: Freedom (Cook Co. Il Chicago), Twentieth Century (New York), Lucifer (Topeka, KS), Egoism (San Francisco), Freethought (San Francisco), The Reasoner (New York), Chicago Liberal (Chicago), Freedom (London), The Anarchist Labor Leaf (London), The Commonwel (London), Freiheit (New York), Der Anarchist (St. Louis), Der Arme Teufel (Detroit), Die Parole (St. Louis), Die Autonomie (London), La Revolte (Paris), Volne Listy (New York), Der Arbeiter Freund (London), Freie Arbeiter Stimme (New York), Nedeln Hlas Lidu (care of Freiheit in New York), Tydni List Hlas Lidu (New York), El Persequido (Buenos Ayres [sic], Argentina), Arbejderen from (Kopenhagen, Denmark)
1891 Listing of Radical Journals in the US, Europe, and Argentina from ‘The Beacon’

Scholarship in recent decades has painted a dynamic new picture of a globespanning, militantly-anti-capitalist and anti-colonial anarchist movement in the first decades of the 20th century.15 The Pacific Coast of North America became a hub for interconnected, interracial radical movements. European immigrants and us-born white radicals worked together with Japanese anarchists, Sikh and Bengali anti-colonial syndicalists, and Indigenous Mexican revolutionaries, all in a context where the mainstream labor movement thrived on the continuing racism of the earlier Red International. The Beacon is thus a key piece in the puzzle sorting out the development of these contrasting radicalisms.

Yet when investigating such connections over the course of a full-generation, it is important to emphasize the fairly milquetoast ‘anti-racism’ actually visible within The Beacon, both hinting at some of the weaknesses in this later coalition but also underselling its strengths. In its surviving issues, The Beacon gave no space to anti-Chinese rhetoric, a welcome contrast to deeply racist local counterparts run by other white socialists like the California Arbeiter-Zeitung edited by Paul Grottkau. But The Beacon in fact had nothing at all to say about Chinese people, positive or negative; it also did not survive long enough to voice an opinion on a renewed wave of Anti-Chinese agitation in 1892.

In a rare editorial discussing race-prejudice, “Wake Up, Ye Abolitionists!”, Danielewicz displays a sort-of anti-racist perspective discussing a case involving black men on the far side of the continent. It recounts the harrowing dilemma faced by a group of black workers from Baltimore recruited by a “Baltimore blood-sucker company” to dig for guano in the Caribbean.16 Righteously infuriated by rough and “poisonous” work conditions, “miserable” food and “shelter unfit for habitation,” the workers marched on the Superintendent demanding changes. The boss’:

Answer was the discharge of the contents of a rifle into one of the poor men’s face. This, of course aroused the feelings of indignance of these human beings and they at once resented the outrage by a general attack upon the official tyrants, one of whom was shot and killed. The balance of the dude-tyrants, fearing the just revenge of the outraged colored men, then fled to Baltimore upon a cruiser which had happened along.

The escaped managers got the government to kidnap the Black men from the stolen Haitian island of Navassa to Baltimore. There they were put on trial three separate times until all of the men were found guilty. To Danielewicz, that ‘triple jeopardy’ made “This is a case that has no equal in the history of what is termed civilization. It puts into the shade even that most dastardly crime this filthy government has every perpetrated, the foul murder of the martyrs Parsons, Spies, Fischer, Engel and Lingg, and the imprisonment of the heroes Fielden, Schwab, and Neebe.”

Portraits of George Singleton Key, Edward Smith (alias 'The Devil'), James Tascar, Henry Jones, Caesar Fisher
Portraits of five of the Navassa Rebels printed in a supportive pamphlet by the Order of Galilean Fisherman, a black mutual-aid organization

Yet even while rhetorically placing the plights of these black men from Baltimore above even that of the already globally-known Haymarket martyrs, Danielewicz was speaking to his mostly white audience of settler “American Anarchists.” He saw the case as illustrating frighteningly that slavery had not been abolished, but that a system of “chattleslavery” had been:

superseded by wageslavery; that the system of slavery is gone, yet the substance remains. Nor is it your colored brother alone who suffers. Your own race, your own color are victims as well. Look around you. Millions of your brothers and sisters; fathers, mothers, husbands, wives, from the gray and aged down to the tender child are wearing out their miserable existence and going down into untimely graves by the inhuman drudgery they are obliged to perform in workshops, factories, and mines…

Rise, then, those of you who still have the manhood and spirit of your noble ancestors, and ‘abolish,’ DESTROY this infernal machine-government – which has cursed the ages and makes slaves of your race.17

Settler radicals in abolitionist, feminist, and working-class circles “appropriating” the struggles faced by Black people in the US as a platform to about-facedly highlight and incite combat against their own oppression was not uncommon then. Frankly, it isn’t today. It was ultimately black mutual-aid organizations that took care of the Navassa rebels, with little apparent help from white radicals.

Given Danielewicz’s own messy background (to be detailed in future writing), this writer personally wishes to push against his posthumous valorization as “anti-racist icon.” White folks too often get credit in that realm. Danielewicz simply came to see the true horror in a demon he had helped to summon in the first place.

The selection of Beacon issues now available digitally makes it easier for researchers to make their own judgements on this and other matters.

 

1“An Amendment,” The Beacon, May 3, 1890. “Dissenting Voices,” The Beacon, May 24, 1890. “Grumblers,” The Beacon, May 31, 1890. Also May 3, 1890, included humorous editorial rebuttal below a submission by ‘Mono’ advocating for “education over dynamite”: ’“What a lot of ignorant, boisterous and unreasoning people! Want to use physical force to solve such a great problem! Peace, peace, peace! Agitation and education, that is the only way to accomplish anything!” said the squire to his companion, and helped himself to another glass of champagne and another slice of roast turkey’

2Vol 1 (1890), no. 12-3, 15-17 and Vol 2 (1891) no. 1-2, 6-8, 18 of The Beacon were available to the writer for digitization. Vol 2 (1891) no. 5, 9, 11, 12, 14, & 19 are available physically and in microfilm at the University of Michigan Labadie Collection and possibly some other libraries.

3“Cheering Voices,” The Beacon, May 24, 1890. “A Protest,” The Beacon, May 24, 1890.

4J. Wm. Lloyd, “Methods — Mental Resistance,” The Beacon, May 31, 1890.

5“Pointers,” Egoism, San Francisco, September, 1891.

6See for instance Dyer D. Lum, “Social Revolution,” “Les Septembriseurs,” The Beacon, May 3, 1890. Dyer D. Lum, “Reflections,” The Beacon, May 17 1890.

7Lucy Parsons, “Thoughts and Things,” The Beacon, January 31, 1891.

8Voltairine de Cleyre, “The Hurricaine.” The Beacon, April 26, 1890.

9“Cheering Voices,” The Beacon, April 26, 1890. “Cheering Voices,” The Beacon, May 3, 1890.

10“Mary Aikin – The First (Only!) Grinnell Woman Imprisoned for Causing an Abortion.” Grinnell Stories. http://grinnellstories.blogspot.com/2018/03/mary-aikinthe-first-grinnell-woman.html accessed January, 2022.

11See Alexander Saxton’s The Indispensable Enemy: Labor and the Anti-Chinese Movement in California, for an older account, more of this story tocome on this blog.

12Digitized issues of The Firebrand are available here: https://firebrandpdx.wordpress.com/firebrand-issues-1895-1897/ See also Alecia Jay Giombolini, “Anarchism on the Willamette: the Firebrand Newspaper and the Origins of a Culturally American Anarchist Movement, 1895-1898.”

13Letter from Sigismund Danielewicz to Max Nettlau. June 8, 1890. Max Nettlau Papers, International Institute for Social History. https://hdl.handle.net/10622/ARCH01001.2231

14Carl Browne seems to have run the Cactus as some sort of quasi-labor reform paper from 1888-90, available in a few California libraries. Later was affiliated with the People’s Party, writing an 1892 manifesto for it, as well as Coxey’s Army, and also published a periodical in Stockton, CA, Labor Knight.

15See for instance Maia Ramnath, Haj to Utopia: How the Ghadar Movement Charted Global Radicalism and Attempted to Overthrow the British Empire; David Struthers, The World in a City: Multiethnic Radicalism in Early Twentieth-Century Los Angeles; Kenyon Zimmer, Immigrants Against the State: Yiddish and Italian Anarchism in America; ed. Christopher J. Castañeda and Montse Feu, Writing Revolution: Hispanic Anarchism in the United States.

16“Wake Up, Ye Abolitionists!” The Beacon. May 17, 1890.

17Ibid.