Today's Autonomedia Jubilee Saint—GAMEL WOOLSEY

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May 28 — GAMEL WOOLSEY
American belles-lettriste, chronicler of Spanish Civil War in Death’s Other Kingdom: A Spanish Village in 1936 (pub’d 1939, see extract below)

ALSO ON MAY 28 IN HISTORY…
1830 — Removal Act signed by U.S. Congress, moving all Native Americans to west of the Mississippi River.
1888 — Native American athletic great Jim Thorpe born, Shawnee, Oklahoma.
1897 — Spanish Civil War chronicler Gamel Woolsey born, Aiken, South Carolina.
1953 — Edmund Hillary and guide Norkay plant flags on Mt. Everest.
1955 — Two-hour work-day advocated in the United States by Albert Whitehouse of the U.S. Steel Workers Union.

Above info extracted from The 2009 Autonomedia Calendar of Jubilee Saints: Radical Heroes for the New Millennium by James Koehnline and the Autonomedia Collective

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Extract from Death’s Other Kingdom by Gamel Woolsey:

“After the bombing began the atmosphere had grown steadily worse. It is inevitable where open towns are bombed. Hate is the other side of fear. And it was horrible to see and feel this wave of hate-fear rising around us like a menacing sea. The talk of the villagers came to be more and more about Fascistas, and the Fascista was a purely mythical creature of unimaginable wickedness (twin brother I should think to the ‘Red’ of some of our daily papers) always mentioned in a special tone of horror. There was of course a great deal of talk about atrocities the Fascistas were committing; but also (a most curious feature of the war mentality) a good deal about atrocities they were supposed to be committing themselves, many of them quite imaginary. For instance I was told a melodramatic story about a hunt for a Fascista which had taken place near us, and how they had fired the cane brake to burn him out. ‘That men should hunt each other like beasts!’ they added in enjoyment of horror. But the whole story was quite fantastic. The hunt had never happened. The cane breaks were always catching fire in dry weather from the sparks from the train which ran through them at that point, and the sight of the blackened field had suggested that whole story to the atrocity making instinct.

“I was struck by what I can only call a look of dreamy blood-lust upon their faces when they told such stories. I realised then, what I realised even more clearly later at Gibralter, listening to the English talk of atrocities, what atrocity stories really are: they are the pornography of violence.”

Today's Autonomedia Jubilee Saint — Utah Phillips

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May 23– Utah Phillips
American folk singer, labor organizer, protest poet.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wsFmcFMeME
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07H6-YjdQhk

MAY 23, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
*5/23: Discordian Chaos Holiday.
*Rye, Sussex, England: New Mayor throws red-hot pennies to the children from his balcony.

ALSO ON MAY 23 IN HISTORY…
1810 — Transcendentalist writer Margaret Fuller born, Cambridgeport, MA.
1832 — Jamaican national hero Samuel Sharpe hung.
1838 — Four thousand die in forced removal of Cherokee “Trail of Tears.”
1930 — San Francisco gay activist politician Harvey Milk born, Woodmere, NY.
1939 — American outlaws Bonnie and Clyde killed by Texas Rangers.
2008 — American folk singer, activist Utah Phillips dies, Nevada City, California

Excerpted from The 2009 Autonomedia Calendar of Jubilee Saints: Radical Heroes for the New Millennium by James Koehnline and the Autonomedia Collective