Difference between revisions of "Anarchy 84/Notes on poverty 3: Kropotkin House, Duluth"
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{{tab}}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 {{qq|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 {{w|Calvin­ists|Calvinism}} who call for more laws and stric­ter punish­ment against drug-<wbr>addicts.) | {{tab}}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 {{qq|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 {{w|Calvin­ists|Calvinism}} who call for more laws and stric­ter punish­ment against drug-<wbr>addicts.) | ||
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+ | {{tab}}About a month after the house was opened, Kai Johnson, an Anarchist and pacifist, brought some paints and pro­ceeded to paint murals on the walls of two of the up­stairs rooms. I painted the door of my room black with bril­liant red panels. The {{w|Bene­dic­tine Sisters|Order_of_Saint_Benedict}} of the Sacred Heart (a local convent in the ghetto) disco­vered the house and, even though they did not approve of me, were quite im­pressed with the idea and donated two desks, seven chairs, an old French writing-<wbr>table and a {{l|Bible|https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Bible}}. Nina Garber, an Anar­chist, baked bread for the always hungry people of the house; and, one night, Esme Evans, a folk-<wbr>singer of some renown in the {{w|Upper Midwest|Upper_Midwest}}, arrived with a massive meal of {{w|beef stroganoff|Beef_Stroganoff}}, salads, and wine (by this time, and until its closing, there were usually over fifty people in the house every night). Many of us became sick from the good food. | ||
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+ | {{tab}}A few days after our {{qq|gather­ing}} on July 19 in Cascade Park in honour of the Anar­chists in {{w|Spanish|Francoist_Spain}} prisons, a {{w|Mexican-<wbr>Ameri­can|Mexican_Americans}} homo­sexual, a {{w|manic-<wbr>depres­ive|Bipolar_disorder}} of sorts, decided he wanted to commit suicide in the house; al­though the attempt failed, there was still a con­sider­able amount of chaos, con­fusion, and angry people. | ||
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+ | {{tab}}Some of the teenage boys in the neigh­bour­hood saw Kai pain­ting one day and they pa­tient­ly waited until no one was in the house and then climbed through the second-<wbr>storey window (even though the door was always open, they always showed a prefer­ence to enter through the second-<wbr>storey window) and painted a hideous mural that covered all of the walls and ceiling of the {{qq|Mrs. Murphy}}. They were quite proud of their work. Their own parents objec­ted. The boys were confi­dent; they merely quoted one of the regu­la­tions of Kropot­kin House: {{qq|This house is dedi­cated to pro­vi­ding the pos­sibi­lity for anyone to ini­tiate creative activity.}} | ||
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+ | {{tab}}One night, a pros­ti­tute was beaten bloody and thrown out of a moving car in front of the house. She refused to go to the hos­pital; she wanted to stay at the house until her wounds were healed: she stayed at the house until her wounds were healed: she stayed until the house {{p|51}}was closed. Several people of the house were con­tinu­ally de­noun­cing her as a thief; she would quietly respond: {{qq|It will all come out in the end.}} Last week, the police found her bloodied body. She had been mauled and aban­doned in a gutter again. | ||
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+ | {{tab}}The {{w|hippie|Hippie}} came in pro­ces­sion one evening and pre­sented me with great bunches of red roses and lilacs and named me: {{qq|the Digger}}. | ||
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+ | {{tab}}When I finally lost my job (I was most impru­dent: they caught me dis­semi­nating infor­mation about worker{{s|r}} control and the war in Viet­nam) and we needed money for the house, we sent an appeal for support to over 500 people (human­ists, as it were) in the area. I quote from it to give some idea of the simple and basi prin­ci­ples we tried to acti­vate: | ||
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+ | {{tab}}{{qq|{{w|Central Hill­side|Central_Hillside}}, Duluth, Minne­sota, is a com­muni­ty facing enor­mous human prob­lems: poor housing and high rents, social and emo­tion­al iso­lation and anguish, insuf­fi­cient income and infla­ting prices, deteri­ora­ting family life, vio­lence, lone­li­ness, frag­mented edu­ca­tional and cultural at­tempts, and racial in­jus­tice. Central Hill­side is a symbol of urban man{{s}} suf­fer­ing and des­pera­tion{{dash}}and of his hopes.|l}} | ||
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+ | {{tab}}{{qq|Now the ter­rify­ing paradox of the whole thing is this: Central Hill­side, and every person in it, is a living con­dem­na­tion and exhor­ta­tion of the city of Duluth. For it is here, in Central Hill­side, that we find a new situ­ation of urban man, with its envi­ron­ment of iso­la­tion and dehu­mani­za­tion, which is begin­ning to shape the desire for new struc­tures, new pat­terns, new forms of renewed and acti­vized life. There is tak now of {{q|turning Central Hill­side inside out}}, of a burst of new energy and life as the commu­nity dis­co­vers ideas and forms that are rele­vant to the vast shapes of need and strength, of hope an despair. Both the world of Central Hill­side and the power of love and joy are forcing the city of Duluth to face the need for radical and creatie renewal and refor­ma­tion. Peter Kropot­kin House of Hos­pita­lity is a sign of new shapes and values in the commu­nity of Central Hill­side and in the city of Duluth.|l}} | ||
+ | |||
+ | {{tab}}{{qq|Peter Kropot­kin House of Hos­pita­lity is a gather­ing place for those people who are con­cerned about the prob­lems of Central Hill­side and desire to contri­bute to its social and emo­tion­al growth and refor­ma­tion. The house is named in honour of Peter Kropot­kin, the great writer and acti­vist of the anar­chist move­ment, who taught the neces­sity of per­sona­lized and func­tion­al commu­ni­ties as means of enjoy­ing life and resis­ting blatant tota­litari­anism (as in {{w|China|China}} and the {{w|Soviet Union|Soviet_Union}}) and creep­ing cen­trali­za­tion (as in {{w|England|England}} and the {{w|United States|United_States}}). We are a group of neigh­bours and friends who seek to be avail­able in their commu­nity day after day, day in and day out. Our gather­ing of friends and neigh­bours is flex­ible, plura­lis­tic, ad hoc, and dis­pen­sable. We do not desire to estab­lish the same old forma­lized struc­tures and pro­grammes. We do not re­ceive money from any insti­tu­tion. We do ot re­ceive money from the Govern­ment. We do not re­ceive money from any cor­pora­tion. We believe that the people of Central Hill­side must solve their own prob­lems through direct action.|l}} | ||
+ | |||
+ | {{tab}}{{qq|Peter Kropot­kin House of Hos­pita­lity is always open and ready to welcome anyone. It is a place where indi­vidu­als and fami­lies in need {{p|52}}come to stay for a while; it is a place where persons inter­ested in this kind of action may come and see and talk for a time. Here, the muti­lated, the addic­ted, and the healthy, the afflu­ent and the poor, black, red, and white, un­poli­ti­cal and radical come to­gether and realize that they must link them­selves in mutual aid, and to­gether in friend­ship seek out a pattern of living which is more just, more cre­ative, more per­sona­lis­tic, and more rea­lis­tic for our commu­nity of Central Hill­side in the modern world.}} | ||
</div></div> | </div></div> | ||
Revision as of 20:45, 28 September 2016
3: Kropotkin House, Duluth
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-
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-
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-
About a month after the house was opened, Kai Johnson, an Anarchist and pacifist, brought some paints and proceeded to paint murals on the walls of two of the upstairs rooms. I painted the door of my room black with brilliant red panels. The Benedictine Sisters of the Sacred Heart (a local convent in the ghetto) discovered the house and, even though they did not approve of me, were quite impressed with the idea and donated two desks, seven chairs, an old French writing-
A few days after our “gathering” on July 19 in Cascade Park in honour of the Anarchists in Spanish prisons, a <span data-html="true" class="plainlinks" title="Wikipedia: Mexican-
Some of the teenage boys in the neighbourhood saw Kai painting one day and they patiently waited until no one was in the house and then climbed through the second-
The hippie came in procession one evening and presented me with great bunches of red roses and lilacs and named me: “the Digger”.
When I finally lost my job (I was most imprudent: they caught me disseminating information about workers’ control and the war in Vietnam) and we needed money for the house, we sent an appeal for support to over 500 people (humanists, as it were) in the area. I quote from it to give some idea of the simple and basi principles we tried to activate:
“Central Hillside, Duluth, Minnesota, is a community facing enormous human problems: poor housing and high rents, social and emotional isolation and anguish, insufficient income and inflating prices, deteriorating family life, violence, loneliness, fragmented educational and cultural attempts, and racial injustice. Central Hillside is a symbol of urban man’s suffering and desperation—
“Now the terrifying paradox of the whole thing is this: Central Hillside, and every person in it, is a living condemnation and exhortation of the city of Duluth. For it is here, in Central Hillside, that we find a new situation of urban man, with its environment of isolation and dehumanization, which is beginning to shape the desire for new structures, new patterns, new forms of renewed and activized life. There is tak now of ‘turning Central Hillside inside out’, of a burst of new energy and life as the community discovers ideas and forms that are relevant to the vast shapes of need and strength, of hope an despair. Both the world of Central Hillside and the power of love and joy are forcing the city of Duluth to face the need for radical and creatie renewal and reformation. Peter Kropotkin House of Hospitality is a sign of new shapes and values in the community of Central Hillside and in the city of Duluth.
“Peter Kropotkin House of Hospitality is a gathering place for those people who are concerned about the problems of Central Hillside and desire to contribute to its social and emotional growth and reformation. The house is named in honour of Peter Kropotkin, the great writer and activist of the anarchist movement, who taught the necessity of personalized and functional communities as means of enjoying life and resisting blatant totalitarianism (as in China and the Soviet Union) and creeping centralization (as in England and the United States). We are a group of neighbours and friends who seek to be available in their community day after day, day in and day out. Our gathering of friends and neighbours is flexible, pluralistic, ad hoc, and dispensable. We do not desire to establish the same old formalized structures and programmes. We do not receive money from any institution. We do ot receive money from the Government. We do not receive money from any corporation. We believe that the people of Central Hillside must solve their own problems through direct action.
“Peter Kropotkin House of Hospitality is always open and ready to welcome anyone. It is a place where individuals and families in need