NOVEMBER 17 — VOLTAIRINE DE CLEYRE
The original American anarcha-feminist, writer, social rebel.
“Humanity can not be made equal by declarations on paper. Unless the material conditions for equality exist, it is worse than mockery to pronounce men equal. And unless there is equality (and by equality I mean equal chances for every one to make the most of himself) unless, I say, these equal chances exist, freedom, either of thought, speech, or action, is equally a mockery.”
— In Defense of Emma Goldman and the Right of Expropriation, 1893.
NOVEMBER 17 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
CREATIVE ALIENATION DAY. HERE TO GO DAY.
ALSO ON NOVEMBER 17 IN HISTORY
1624 — Mystic philosopher Jacob Boehme dies, Görlitz, Germany.
1637 — American rebel Anne Hutchinson, antinomian, brought to trial.
1734 — John Peter Zenger arrested for libels against colonial government.
1790 — August Möbius, topologist, born, Schulpforta, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany.
1866 — Anarcha-feminist Voltairine de Cleyre born, Leslie, Michigan.
1875 — American Theosophical Society founded.
1896 — Sacramento, California reports first of dozens of sightings of huge myste-
rious airships appearing all over U.S. for the next six months.
1942 — Hobo organizer, cultural drop-out Ben Reitman dies, Chicago, Illinois.
1966 — 46,000 meteoroids fall on Arizona in twenty minutes.
1979 — Russian crackpot astro-physicist Immanuel Velikovsky dies.
Excerpted from The 2009 Autonomedia Calendar of Jubilee Saints: Radical Heroes for the New Millennium by James Koehnline and the Autonomedia Collective.