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Anti-Capitalist Meet-Up: Ralph Chaplin [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2025-01-04

Sorry about this, I published 24 hours early because I thought it was Sunday. I don't know how to unpublished it.

Ralph Chaplin was one of the great heroes of the American labor movement, a union organizer, labor activist, artist, and poet. He worked with Mother Jones in West Virginia during the coal miners strike of 1912 to 1913. During this time he wrote the stirring labor anthem "Solidarity Forever".

(Listen to Pete Seeger and friends sing Solidarity Forever.)

From 1914 to 1917 he worked for the Industrial Workers of the World and became editor of its publication. In 1917 he was one of 100 members of the IWW to be arrested, tried, and convicted of opposing the war. In a blatant attack on first amendment freedoms he was sentenced to 20 years in prison for his opinions.

Here is a portrait, artist unknown.

During the 4 years he served in prison he wrote a book of poetry, "Bars And Shadows: The Prison Poems".

Following are three excerpts from the introduction by Scott Nearing and one of the poems from the book.

"Not because he and his fellows conspired to obstruct the war, but because they denounced the present order of economic society and taught the inauguration of a better one, are they still held in prison more than three years after the signing of the armistice; after the proclamation of peace and the resumption of trade with all of the enemy countries; after the repeal or the lapse of the Espionage Act and the other war-time laws under which they were convicted; and after German agents and German spies, caught red-handed in their attempts to interfere with the prosecution of the war, have won their freedom through presidential pardon."

"The advocate of a labor state is as unpopular in a capitalist society as the abolitionist was in the Carolinas before the Civil War. He sees a vision that the stalwarts of the existing order do not care to see; he speaks a language that they cannot comprehend; he represents an interest that is as hateful to them as it is alien to their privileges."

"Chaplin, in prison, like Debs in prison, is doing his work. He is resisting the encroachments of those jail demons—hate, bitterness, revenge; he is holding his mind on the goal—a newer, better social order; he is keeping his vision of nature, of humanity, of brotherhood, of courage, of love, of beauty,—clear and bright. Chaplin, the man, is in jail; but Chaplin the poet and singer is roaming wherever books go; wherever papers are read, and wherever comrades repeat verses to one another in the flickering light of the evening fire."

TO FREEDOM

Out on the "lookout" in the wind and sleet,

Out in the woods of fir and spruce and pine,

Down in the hot slopes of the dripping mine

We dreamed of you and Oh, the dream was sweet!

And now you bless the felon food we eat

And make each iron cell a sacred shrine;

For when your love thrills in the blood like wine,

The very stones grow holy to our feet.

We shall be faithful though we march with Death

And singing storm the barricades of Wrong,

For life is such a little thing to give.

We shall fight on as long as we have breath—

Love in our hearts and on our lips a song—

Without you it were better not to live!"

Among his many artworks was the famous black cat emblem of the IWW known as sabokitty. This has since been used by many other people and organizations.

There is a great deal more of his poetry and art worth reading and seeing. He was a true Renaissance man, though unheralded in his time. His book can be obtained at Amazon for $1.99.

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