"Living My Life" by Emma Goldman

I must admit my own lack of familiarity with the name Emma Goldman.  Prior to receiving her autobiography LIVING MY LIFE, I would have surmised a thousand women over the last few centuries holding those two common names as they own.  Today, with this telling of a life, I report to you on one.

Emma Goldman was an immigrant from Russia who landed on America's shores in the late 1880s.  She embraced a radical political philosophy known as anarchism from her exposure to Johann Most, an immigrant fro Germany who became a fiery anarchist lecturer and publisher in the U.S., and the execution of five anarchists in Chicago who addressed a mass gathering of labor, striking for an eight-hour workday.

She steadfastly believed in the innocence of these men, condemning the government for unjust acts in depriving them of their liberty simply on the basis of ideas which the plutocracy did not like.

The zeal with which she turned anarchism into her own “beautiful ideal” - the State was the enemy of the people (the laborers whose inherent freedoms the government encroached upon), also made her famous through a highly-successful lecture series that took her from coast to coast.

The same passion for revolution by the people she saw as being oppressed landed her in government prisons on different occasions.

She was technically – though never charged as such – an accessory to the shooting of The Carnegie Company chairman, Henry Clay Frick, done by her fellow anarchist Alexander “Sasha” Berkman.  (Frick’s enmity towards his workers was so repugnant an issue, he reportedly said he would rather see them dead than give into any demands they might make).  She was implied as the inspiration behind the shooting of President William McKinley by Leon Czolgosz – though never arrested.  She did actual prison time for propelling men towards avoiding the newly-instituted government draft – though she never advocated any actual breaking of the law.

Nothing of what I read within these 500+ abridged pages appeared to ever broach the concept.

LIVING MY LIFE was, and is, an amazing jaunt through the history of that time period, told through the eyes of a woman who lived its events.  I came to realize through this journey just how little I actually knew of what took place during those years.

President McKinley shot – and killed!  Somehow I missed hearing about that one in history class.  The draft instituted for World War I.  Didn't know it.  Anti-War protests against American involvement in the war.  Naively, I assumed such protests started in the current age with when the Vietnam War started turning ugly.

What about 'anarchism' itself?  I knew of 'anarchy'.  News reports bandied about the word to describe chaos from the breakdown of a government that can no longer control its people.  

Anarchism, from my interpretation of Emma Goldman's life, centered on the people’s standing up to a government they feel oppressing them, i.e. depriving them of their natural liberties by making the people subservient to the state, rather than the state existing to serve the needs of the people.

This is my own interpretation, of course, wrong or right as it maybe, based upon the absence of any armed resistance in any of EG’s activities.  On the contrary, she fought her battles with words and ideas, rather than the virulence of violent ideological threats.

She was a woman misunderstood for her time.  Her compassion for the people – that is read through every page of this remarkable treatise on her life -  never seeped into the press.  “Red Emma” - as the newspapers like to call her – sought the overthrow of the government.  “Emma Goldman”, on the other hand, sought the rights of the impoverished workers who had no more rights, back in those days, than we see of people in third world countries today. 

The contrast is striking.  Even her pictures reveal this.  The woman was one overflowing with the passion for beauty.  She was the woman who fought for a revolution she could dance to, a joyful rebellion that would deliver to the people their inherent right to freely express.  The woman depicted in pictures is a dour faced radical seeking the destruction of all within her path.  

Granted, EG was a veritable tiger.  She could tear into any opponent, never back down when cornered, and defend ardently her passionately-held beliefs.  But then, once she tore you to pieces in the powerful elegance she must have shown, she would tend your wounds and nurse you back to health - like the actual nurse she became and the woman she most certainly was.

Though many of her beliefs expressed here, I personally do not share (half of what she believed in, I would fight against with my own passionate, idealistic zeal for the truth), this was clearly a woman with an honest heart and an open mind.  She was not the cold ideologue of our current era.  This was a woman who carried on levels of introspection that gave her the freedom to moderate her views – as she did after seeing what the Bolsheviks did to Russia following the revolution she applauded.  

There was no sublime arrogance that prevented anyone from entering into dialogue with her (as is evidenced through the differences she espoused with her fellow anarchists). She displayed a level of transparent honesty I dearly wish I could see in at least one of our so-called leaders of today. 

I think that is what one calls character.  Emma Goldman was definitely one of those.