Red Emma’s

Sam Dolgoff, a house painter by trade, was at the center of American anarchism for seventy years. His political voyage began in the 1920s when he joined the Industrial Workers of the World. He rode the rails as an itinerant laborer, bedding down in hobo camps and mounting soapboxes in cities across the United States. Self-educated, he translated, edited, and wrote some of the most important books and journals of twentieth-century anti-authoritarian politics, including the most widely read collection of Mikhail Bakunin's writings in English. Yet the movement changed in important ways during Sam’s long tenure, as anarchists engaged with events and social forces such as the rise of the welfare state, atomic warfare, the black freedom struggle, and a succession of youth countercultures. Historian Andrew Cornell explains how anarchism evolved from the creed of poor immigrants militantly opposed to capitalism early in the twentieth century to one that today sees resurgent appeal among middle-class youth and foregrounds activism around ecology, feminism, and opposition to cultural alienation, while Dolgoff's son, Anatole, conjures images of a lost New York City—the Lower East Side, the strong immigrant and working-class neighborhoods, the blurred lines dividing proletarian and intellectual culture, the union halls and social clubs, the brutal cops and bosses, and the solidarity that kept them at bay.Don't miss this lovely event bringing together first-hand recollections and archival research!