Today we pay tribute to the dead.
Tomorrow we turn, with spirit unquellable,
to give battle to the foe!
-Charles Ashleigh
Hellraisers Journal, Tuesday January 16, 1917
From Seattle, Washington: The Everett Martyrs Remembered
In this month’s edition of the International Socialist Review, Walker C. Smith gives a moving account of the great mass funeral given by the Industrial Workers of the World to honor our fallen fellow workers, Hugo Gerlot, Felix Baran, and John Looney. Gus Johnson and Abraham Rabinowitz are also honored as martyrs. They were buried separately by their families.
Remember the Fifth of November
By WALKER C. SMITH
“Do you remember the fifth of November,
With its gunpowder, treason and plot?
I see no reason why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot!”THIS ancient English verse in commemoration of the exploits of Guy Fawkes applies so undeniably well to the operations of the murderous master-class mob on Bloody Sunday at Everett, Wash., that it should be accorded a place among the songs of the social revolution.
Why should we forget that five members of our class were shot down in cold blood by the scab-loving lackeys of the lumber trust on November 5, 1916? Why should we forget that many of our brothers were punctured by the poisonous copper bullets and soft lead slugs from the guns of the open-shop camoristas [camorristas] acting for the commercial clubs on the Pacific coast? Why should we forget that seventy-four stalwarts of labor, absurdly charged with first degree murder, are at the mercy of the half-crazed sheriff of Snohomish county and thirty-four more are imprisoned in the King county bastile on the charge of unlawful assembly? I see no reason why any of these things “should ever be forgot” by the working class.
Felix Baran, Hugo Gerlot, Gus Johnson, John Looney, Abe Rabinowitz-French, German, Swedish, Irish, Jewish—these are the true internationalists who died in the fight for free speech in this “land of liberty.” In the words of Courtenay Lemon, “That the defense of traditional rights to which this government is supposed to be dedicated should devolve upon an organization so often denounced as ‘unpatriotic’ and ‘un-American’ is but the usual, the unfailing irony of history.” The names of those who are martyrs to the cause of free speech will be a source of inspiration to the workers when their cowardly murderers have long been forgotten.
