Freedom, Equality and Solidarity

Book excerpt: Edited and introduced by Gale Ahrens, here, for the first time, is a hefty selection of the writings and speeches of the woman the Chicago police called 'More dangerous than a thousand rioters!' "Lucy Parsons' writings are among the best and strongest in the history of US anarchism. ...Her long and often traumatic experience of the capitalist injustice system - from the KKK terror in her youth, through Haymarket and the judicial murder of her husband, to the US government's war on the Wobblies - made her not 'just another victim' but an extraordinarily articulate witness to, and vehement crusader against, all injustice." [from the introduction by Gale Ahrens] "Lucy Parsons personae and historical role provide material for the makings of a truly exemplary figure.....anarchist, labor organizer, writer, editor, publisher, and dynamic speaker, a woman of color of mixed black, Mexican and Native American heritage, a founder of the 1880s Chicago Working women's Union that organized garment workers, called for equal pay for equal work, and even invited housewives to join with the demand of wages for housework; and later (1905) co-founder of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), which made the organizing of women and people of color a priority....For a better understanding of the concept of direct action and its implications, no other historical figure can match the lessons provided by Lucy Parsons." [from the Afterword by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz]