Today's Autonomedia Jubilee Saint — BUENAVENTURA DURRUTI

durutti

July 14– BUENAVENTURA DURRUTI
Anarcho-communist militant, Spanish Civil War martyr.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_SsqCOEiH8

JULY 14, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
*Bastille Day: Tremendous festivity throughout France. Paris dances all night along the Seine and in the streets.

ALSO ON JULY 14 IN HISTORY…
1789 — Storming of the Bastille in Paris heralds French Revolution.
1811 — Luddites break machines at Sunnon-in-Ashuano.
1896 — Spanish anarchist leader Buenaventura Durruti born, Léon, Spain.
1912 — Woody Guthrie, peoples’ songwriter, born, Okemah, Oklahoma.
1995 — MP3 digital file format introduced.

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

Today's Autonomedia Jubilee Saint—GAMEL WOOLSEY

woolsey
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

woolsey

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 – Camillo Berneri


May 7– Camillo Berneri
Italian-born anarchist philosopher, killed by Spanish Stalinists.

MAY 7, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
*Feast of St. Nicola in Bari, Italy, celebrates the transfer of his relics to Bari. Religious rites followed by spectacular fireworks displays honor this patron of orphans, pirates, etc.

ALSO ON MAY 7 IN HISTORY…
1937 — Stalinist squad assassinates 500 anarchists, including Italian-born
philosopher Camillo Berneri, in Barcelona, Spain.
1941 — Golden Bough author Sir James George Frazer dies, Cambridge, England.
1968 — Parisian students and workers revolt in near-successful revolution.