Mother Earth Magazine |
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PROCLAMATION!
TO THE CITY OF CHICAGO
The Unemployed of Chicago do hereby make a statement on the incident of the "Mass Meeting" of the Unemployed held at the Hull House January 17th, 2 P.M., which resulted in a brutal attack upon defenseless men and women by the police of this city. Under Constitutional guaranty of "free-assemblage and free speech" we met to discuss our deplorable conditions. The sentiment of the said meeting was for the getting out on public streets to expose our misery to the world; misery imposed upon us through no fault of our own!
We, the Unemployed, consider it a crime of civilization that millions of us starve in the midst of plenty, especially when we helped to create the "plenty."
Politicians, making stock out of our misery, reply to our cry for "work and bread" with "commissions." We cry for shelter; they give us "municipal flops" inadequate to shelter one-tenth of the homeless of this city.
American citizens once proud are today being humiliated on "bread lines" and "soup kitchens." Hungry, shivering in the cold, standing in line waiting for a "handout." The flag that once waved over an independent people is today waving over a nation of paupers.
We, the Unemployed, who have not lost our manhood, demand work; and shall persist in the right to demand the same in hall or street, as we think fit. Let the voice of the hungry be heard!
It is useless to talk about "permits from the police" to parade in the streets. The police will not issue permits to hungry men. If the police of this city think they can repress the hungry with club, blackjack and bullet they have another thing coming. Hunger knows but one law, and that is the law of self-preservation. Violence breeds violence! We are human.
THE UNEMPLOYED LEAGUE.
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ANARCHISM -- The philosophy of a new social order based on liberty unrestricted by man-made law; the theory that all forms of government rest on violence, and are therefore wrong and harmful, as well as unnecessary.
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