Anarchy 84/Notes on poverty 3: Kropotkin House, Duluth

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Notes on poverty

3: Kropotkin House, Duluth

JAMES W. CAIN

I remember that monday night when first I stum­bled up the grey, over­sized steps of the old house. (Contro­versy was fresh and flag­rant: it was not long after we had distri­buted over a thou­sand copies of a broad­side—entitled “Blast!”—through­out the city of Duluth on May Day of last year; because of the confu­sion and excite­ment, I was invited into the Univer­sity and several high schools to speak on Anar­chism.) I had rented the house from Slum­lord Over­man without even seeing it. It was the cheap­est ghetto-dwel­ling he had avail­able. It was dirty, dis­inte­gra­ting, Victorian, red-brown brick buil­ding; it leaned unas­sum­ingly on another buil­ding which was exactly like it (which in turn unas­sum­ingly leaned on another just like it: the three gave the impres­sion of being one huge rock mound.)

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  When I tried the key, it jammed in the lock and I cursed quite assum­ingly. On the side­walk below, a small child in a blue dress was prat­tling in French-Canadian and an old man with one leg (known locally as “the Polish Fascist”) was surrounded by three barking, leaping dogs. Finally, I opened the door and bundled my few pieces of furniture and baggage into the house. The smell was pier­cing and pungent: cheap paint, rotting wood, and broken toilet. I felt lonely, appre­hen­sive, tired, and stunned.

  A weird, unver­balized, and dis­torted collage leaped through my mind: I thought of the Diggers in San Francisco (I had been there in Febru­ary when the police tried to destroy them); I thought of Dorothy Day’s Chrystie Street House of Hospi­tal­ity in New York and her farm at Tivoli (I had been there in the bitter weeks of early Janu­ary and the Christ­mas season); I thought of Emmaus House and Ammon Hennacy’s Joe Hill House; and I thought of a sug­ges­tion by Herbert Read: “The strike General Strike of the future must be orga­nized as a strike of the com­mun­ity against the State. The result of that strike will not be in doubt. The State is just as vulner­able as a human being, and can be killed by the cutting of a single artery. But the event must be catas­tro­phic. Tyrrany, whether of a person or a class, can never be des­troyed in any other way.” I sighed. I opened a window and, without further ritual, named the house: Peter Kropot­kin House of Hospi­tal­ity.

  During the first week of my resi­dency, the nights were spent in cleaning the house. Gary Moland, a paci­fist friend, swept and mopped the floors. Kelene Koval (an Anar­chist), Bob Pokor­ney, and Jim McCaf­frey exuber­antly scrubbed the walls and cei­lings. Neigh­bours, timidly at first, but with growing confi­dence, pro­vided mutual aid (even ‘the Polish Fascist’). Propa­ganda was not needed; their curi­osity (and their lone­li­ness) brought them. A great crowd of stu­dents (most of whom had heard me speak on Anar­chism at their res­pec­tive schools) came, bare­footed and wearing cut-offs, eager to talk and work but mostly to talk (about God mostly and the State—and some­times Capi­tal­ism). I pro­voked one young fellow into reading Kropot­kin’s Memoirs of a Revo­lu­tion­ist; and a Univer­sity student read Maximoff’s anthology of Bakunin’s writings.

  Most of the old people who came from the neigh­bour­hood to work at the house were ex­treme­ly aggra­vated by the young people. One wrin­kled woman, an alco­holic, told me that she was afraid of a Red Guard riot. I told her that she had no reason to worry: the stu­dents are quite conven­tion­al and mostly middle-class; they would be more

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likely to riot for Hubert Humphrey than for Mao. In either case (said I) it would be defi­nitely reac­tion­ary. (I was perhaps too brutal; many young minds were just awa­kening to a com­mit­ment against segre­gation and the war in Viet­nam.) The poor woman said she couldn’t under­stand and deci­ded to go out and get some­thing to drink.

  By this time, about half a dozen people were staying more or less regu­larly at the house. Someone had given us a bed; someone had given us a sleeping-cot. We began to make prepar­ations for a series of “gatherings” in Cascade Park (on the edge of the ghetto).

  I do not wish to give the impres­sion that life at Kropot­kin House was all gentle, beau­ti­ful, sensi­tive, serene, and un­ruf­fled. I had to stay up all night once with a raving “druggie” who couldn’t find enough money to pay for his parti­cu­lar escape. All that this friend­less creature of para­noia wanted was to find someone who would talk with him. (I actu­ally fell asleep on my feet in the laundry the next day; but, ever since, I have had little pa­tience for crude Calvin­ists who call for more laws and stric­ter punish­ment against drug-addicts.)