Mother Jones Quotes
Arm yourselves! Return home and kill every goddamned mine guard on the creeks.
The mine owners had hired goons as "guards" who had shot some of the protesting mine workers. Unlike most labor leaders, Mother Jones advocated retaliatory violence which was against her female, motherly stereotype. She was one of the very few female labor leaders, and one of the most militant.
Mary Harris Jones, 1830-1930, [Mother Jones], Co-Founder, Social Democratic Party and IWW, Labor Organizer, Speech at a striking miners' union rally, Quoted in Elliott J. Gorn, Mother Jones: The Most Dangerous Woman in America
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
“Operators” referred to an Executives of the Coal Mining Companies most of whom were grossly impolite and unconstructive in the mediation sessions. The President was a very fit man who boxed and wrestled several times a week for exercise and could get very physical as well as social and intellectual.
The British wanted to turn over control of India to Nehru's Congress Party and make India independent. However, there had been sectarian rioting and murder between Muslims and all the other religions of India—Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, and Christians. Wavell was not confident that Nehru and Congress could control the situation and huge massacres would result. Gandhi, who normally did everything to avoid violence, this time placed Indian independence first and demanded continuation of the complete transition process including the police and military powers. This is one of the very few occasions on which non-violence was not pre-eminent for Gandhi.
Many radicals of the day argued that violence was a legitimate form of protest and self defense. Goldman urged then not to advocate violence because under the then existing law and practical considerations, that gave the law enforcement authorities the tools to persecute the dissidents.
He was criticizing the George W. Bush administration for attacking Iraq, a country which had not attacked the United States or Americans abroad while America did not attack those terrorists and countries which had killed Americans. For example, Hezbollah which blew up the Marine Barracks in Lebanon and the naval ship Cole.
It was fairly common at the time for the management of a company undergoing a strike to hire goons and gunmen to beat up and even murdering strikers to intimidate the strikers. But some state and locall governments supporting private companies began to do that as well. Sometimes they even used the police and the state national guard.
Mary G. Harris Jones, known as Mother Jones from 1897 onwards, was an Irish-born American schoolteacher and dressmaker who became a prominent union organizer, community organizer, and activist. She helped coordinate major strikes and co-founded the Industrial Workers of the World.
