 |
|
 |
|
 Latest
|
Diaryland |
|
2003-03-05 - 10:34 a.m. Last entry I cut and pasted my first essay on Emma Goldman relating to her activism in today's day and age. I focused on more government when I learned after the fact, that my paper needed to reflect the views of today's feminism. I was in shit creek, but this is my finished product. It is less assholish and preachy without joking nonsense thanks to the keen eye of my brother, a great writer and proof reader. I found out I like to say "then" when I mean "than" alot. I use "have" and "has" incorrectly alot. My brother was disappointed with all the focusless wit and told me that it seemed to him I knew very little of Emma Goldman, and he was right. I think I wrote in such an emotional, biting satire due to the fact it's sort of an emulation of my professor and Emma Goldman, albeit sadder recreation of what these great minds have done everyday of their lives. Anyways, here's a more tighter, less bullshit paper that I hope packs more of an intellectual punch. So here's "The echoes of Red Emma" Before I first started reading selections from Emma Goldman, I had no idea who or what she was. My family and friends also seemed to have the same problem as I did. It just seemed like some random named author pulled out of the obscurity of printed academia. Needless to say, I was in for a shock. As I started reading her work, all I wanted to do was to tell somebody. I remember thinking while I took breaks between reading passages that I really wanted to get a good picture of her and put it on a t-shirt. I just envisioned walking down the street, speaking in front of crowds, having people come up to me and ask, �Who is that on your shirt?� �Why It�s Emma Goldman.� I would reply. �A feisty woman whose spit-fire wit and ideas rocked the very foundations of this country so bad in the early twentieth century, they had to kick her out.� Of course after the listener heard this, I would imagine their eyes lighting up and curiosity heightening to the point that they would have to sop up any and all of Goldman�s writings forthwith. It just got that serious to me. But Emma Goldman is far more than a conversation piece on a t-shirt. She was a woman first and foremost, a woman with compassion for the plight of her fellow women, but really a true champion of all humankind. She was a lover. Emma fought passionately for her beliefs and stood strong in the face of tremendous adversity. She was an intellectual. The very ideas she wrote and spoke about were far ahead of her time, a time where the word �Feminism� was alien to mainstream society. Emma�s ideas were considered so extreme amongst the backdrop of the gilded age it got her jailed, hounded, and ultimately exiled. Considering the span of a near century that her ideas came into fruition, you would seem to think they would have a less radical edge to them in today�s society but that�s just not the case. We�ve reached a new gilded age of industry. Yesterday�s monopolies are today�s conglomerates. We see Henry Clay Fricke�s and Andrew Carnegie�s reincarnated all over again in the likenesses of Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, and a host of oil barons; all of which have made what Fricke and Carnegie did look like child�s play. We can all see remnants of Emma�s past through the fact that the ten most influential billionaires in the world today are white men. It seems that with the exception of wealth itself, the inequalities of race, gender, and culture have still �trickled� down significantly into our social order from times since past. The American dream of life and liberty has been replaced with dollar signs and creature comforts. The American custom of �excessive display of finery and clothes� in Goldman�s time has monstrously grown to such a level that it is seen plain as day throughout our popular culture. The dream has been mutated from just being liberated and free to today�s idea of having the house, the cars, the clothes and the fat �bank-roll� in our designer pockets. Emma believed that property was just a means of controlling and restricting people and here we are today, women and minorities alike still buying into this property dream. This can be clearly illustrated by the trends in Hip-Hop music. A music grown out of the frustrations and stories of minorities of African Americans rooted in the drum, blues, and soul; Hip-Hop has now become a unique vessel for the modern quest of property. Once known for being the voice of inner city frustrations has now become a voice of celebration for what a dollar can bring. Emma�s description of women of the night who had grown accustomed to American tastes parallels that of many avid fans of today�s Hip-Hop culture. Lyrics of many mainstream emcees today talk of designer clothing, fancy liquor, and luxury cars many of which most Hip-Hop listeners will never see in their own lifetimes. This fact that many will never see themselves living lavish lifestyles does not put a damper on many young people from the modern day hustles of drugs, prostitution, and theft. This parallel echoes the times of when those women who sold themselves in the early twentieth century, whose chances of owning any property at all legitimately were slim to none, and ultimately drove them to things such as the dangerous world of prostitution. Emma Goldman pioneered ideas of many of today�s independent woman. Her efforts laid the groundwork for increasing equality for women and their reproductive rights. Her crusades for birth control have made possible the freedom of career-oriented women in present-day society. Today�s woman need to worry less about raising children and maintaining a home can focus on individual pursuits outside the sphere of the house, which was much of the case during the days of Emma Goldman. Varieties of birth control can now be found readily in drug stores Sex education is taught in schools. More women are finding their own stability away from the realm of men and the sanctity of the family. However, a lot of the same problems exist now that did back then. Women, even with newfound independence still on average, are making fewer wages in comparison to typical males. Of these career women, very few receive little or no aid from our social systems if they ultimately decide to have children. Even today, like during the Guilded age, women struggle to live a double standard of being a worker and a mother. The only difference is that now they are expected even more so to face the consequences alone making the act of childbirth, the ultimate act of preservation of our civilization, a blend of being a choice and a god given right. Women are still not free from the imposed rules of society to raise and rear children as they were a century ago and are being chastised more in many respects then those women who were housewives and servants to their husbands and families. It�s without a doubt that Emma Goldman would have a field day in this day and age. There�s almost too much human injustice around these days that even she would probably be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of social inequalities that have been tacked onto the struggles of her day that still prevail amongst our present populace. Her words are more sooth saying than that of Nostradamus and are just as eerie, but I wouldn�t think if she was around today that she would say, �I told you so.� If she would say anything, it would be to fight the good fight by raising consciousness of the evil empire and realize there wasn�t a minute to spare. Emma Goldman believed in herself and more importantly, people. Her words will continue to reverberate throughout my soul and be spit back out to all that choose to listen about my �fly� new T-shirt.
|
|
 |
|
