From ‘The Masses’, September 1915, New York City, edited by Max Eastman
All night long you lay by my side, then you rose and sought and found death.
All night long your hand cold as ice lay in mine, your breathing labored, irregular, your tears wetting my cheek — and I whom you loved could not reach your sorrow. Once you thought nothing could come between us, and now you have put death between us.
You hurried and yet you lingered — you gathered up your strength to go, and yet you stayed, your head on my shoulder, your side pressed to mine.
At dawn I slept. It was then you left me, to find death by your own hand.
Through the fog you could see the harbor with its many little boats which swayed from side to side. You forgot what it was that they felt who would sail in them a few hours hence past the sun-lit banks. You forgot all that people lived for. The dawn was empty of promise.
You forgot happiness, struggle, love.
Your mother-heart forgot your baby, your comrade-soul the cause it espoused.
Death! You did not know it as death. You knew it only as something utterly different from this in which you did not seem to fit. You knew it as peace. It was an irresistible effort towards love — abandoned, proud, asking nothing, giving all, throwing infinity and eternity into your gift.
You found it easy to die — as easy and as beautiful to die as it had been to live.
You forgot? You remembered! Not apathy, not despair, but affirmation was in your deed. Life must never become a habit, you said. It must be a triumph, it must be a consecration. When that was not possible then you were inspired to die, and in your death Life spoke with all her voices.
You remembered — you remembered your child, and out of the immensity of your love for him was wrought your thought of death; you could not live and be less than mother. Out of your devotion was born your strength to die. You remembered — and your hopes, your dreams, your love left you no choice but to die!
What high demand was it you made that only death could fulfill it?
The rest of us are content with less, are not so concerned with happiness, with truth, with beauty, that we die when we do not believe we can attain them.
Few there are who ask so much from love as you, few have seen the face of love as you have seen it.
Your hopes were not dead but alive when they could so torture and drive you — how alive when you must die because the dream that life had been grew pale!
On a battle-field upon which few have ventured you fell, in the war between the real and the ideal.
Step by step I follow you to the jetty by the sea. I lay you in the grave, I stoop to plant the geranium at your head, I walk away for the wild-flowers with which to cover the fresh mound, I write your name, your date …
Yet I can not feel that it was inevitable. If the fog had not lain so thick on the harbor, if on that night words or kisses had come to me with which to pierce your isolation, if a friend had broken in upon us, if someone else’s child had nestled against your heart, you might have changed your resolution. You might have then lived long enough to learn that the heart’s dreams come true and that life itself rights what is wrong.
I walk the streets and think this. I can not go from here, though I know you are no more here than anywhere else.
Anna Strunsky Walling
Protest Through Suicide – Mother Earth (1911)
From ‘Mother Earth’, January 1911, New York City, published by Emma Goldman, edited by Alexander Berkman
The suicide of Sasonov, the brave executioner of the tyrannous Plehve, and of five of his fellow-sufferers in Eastern Siberia, once more throws in sharp relief the sublime heroism of the Russian revolutionists. Sasonov and his comrades took their lives because the director of the prison, having exhausted his list of ingenious tortures, introduced the now extinct custom of flogging prisoners.
Sasonov and his five comrades protested, but their protest was in vain with the prison authorities, and the outside world it did not reach. They then decided that if they could not protest in life, they would protest in death. By committing suicide, all at the same time, they hoped that this news would break through the prison walls, would travel to civilization and disclose the actual conditions of horror and torture prevailing in Russian prisons.
And they were not mistaken. Their protest was heard. It was heard among all classes. The students of Russia, however, were the first to take up the protest of Sasonov and his five comrades. There is not a university in Russia where there have not been strikes since the news of Sasonov’s death. Everywhere the students turn the lecture halls into places for mass meetings and protest against the government. There is not a higher institution of learning where the students, both men and women, have not expressed their flaming hatred of the government in uncertain terms. Our capitalist papers, however, printed little or nothing about these student uprisings.
Tough Times – T-Bone Slim (1939)
Except from ‘Industrial Worker’, with added title, April 8, 1939, Chicago
Things must be pretty tough in Tunisia. I see where the folks there are “willing to die for France.” I suppose a feller does get unstrung that way and is willing to commit harikari for South Chicago, Union Stockyards or dear old Yale. Stranger things have happened.
If I were to commit harikari it wouldn’t be for dear old Ashtabula Harbor. It would be a purely personal matter of improving my lot. And I am such a stinker that I’d make it a point to put the funeral expenses (and cost of cleaning up the blood) upon my sorrowing countrymen. Yes – I would say with the last dying death rattle in my throat, “Gentlemen, I’m sore because I have not more blood to spill on the carpet.”
[Note: Former hobo T-Bone Slim here compares dying for Chicago railway-related capitalists to dying for colonial France in the context of its spat with Italy over Tunisia and the beginning of the Second World War. Ashtabula Harbor is an Ohio port and nexus for rail lines, connected to Chicago and Pittsburgh. – M.Gouldhawke]
What Do They Want – T-Bone Slim (1937)
Untitled excerpt from ‘Industrial Worker’, September 25, 1937, Chicago
Irritated men say, “T-Bone Slim always writes the same thing over and over again.” That’s OK by me. The slavery is the same. The bed is the same. The raiment is the same. The sorrows are the same, (there is no joy) so what the hell do they want me to write?
Which Kind of Life – T-Bone Slim (1937)
Untitled excerpt from ‘Industrial Worker’, September 18, 1937, Chicago
Scientists are toiling day and night to lengthen our lives. We don’t want it, we want it thickened; it’s too damned thin now and if they stretch and stretch it, ’twill break in the middle. We want it thickened with a few porkchops, veal steaks and smothered in tomatoes and so on; higher pay, better burlaps, and revival of Eddie Cantor — in other words: we want the whole damn smear, all that’s coming to us and no chiseling.
Also:
Call or Text 9-8-8 (Suicide Crisis Hotline Canada)
988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline (USA)
KUU-US First Nations and Aboriginal Crisis Line Support Available 24 Hrs – 1-800-588-8717
Suicide Prevention – First Nations Health Authority
About Face: Veterans Against The War
Palestine Children’s Relief Fund
Hell Here, No Hereafter, from Industrial Worker (1911)
Our Moral Censors, by Emma Goldman (1913)
Why War?, from The Blast (1916)
The Revolutionist and War, by Anna Strunsky (1915)
How to End War, T-Bone Slim (1939)
Indigenous Intifada: Federal MP Compares Natives to Palestinians (2002)
Taking Aaron Bushnell at His Word (and Deed), by Lyle Jeremy Rubin (2024)
If We Must Fight, Let’s Fight for the Most Glorious Nation, Insubordination
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