Join hosts Ani Raven and Lyn Moelich for a great conversaton with Thai Jones about his new book, "More Powerful Than Dynamite: Radicals, Plutocrats, Progressives and New York's Year of Anarchy".
Check out the currents of radical history as we talk about the anarchist scene in New York City of 1914, when bright expectations quickly tumbled into disillusionment and violence. For John Purroy Mitchel, the city’s new “boy mayor,” the trouble started in January when a crushing winter caused homeless shelters to overflow. By April, anarchist throngs paraded past industrialists’ mansions, and tens of thousands filled Union Square demanding “Bread or Revolution.” Then, on July 4, 1914, a detonation destroyed a six-story Harlem tenement. It was the largest explosion the city had ever known. Among the dead were three bomb-makers; incited by anarchist Alexander Berkman, they had been preparing to dynamite the estate of John D. Rockefeller, Jr., the son of a plutocratic dynasty, who had been widely vilified for a massacre of his company’s striking workers in Colorado earlier that spring.
More Powerful Than Dynamite charts how anarchist anger, progressive idealism, and plutocratic influence converged in that July explosion. Its cast ranges from celebrated figures such as Emma Goldman, Upton Sinclair, and Andrew Carnegie to the fascinating and heretofore little known: Frank Tannenbaum, a homeless teenager who dared to lead his followers into the city’s churches; police inspector Max Schmittberger, too honest for his department and too crooked for everyone else; and Becky Edelsohn, a young anarchist known for her red tights and for spitting in millionaires’ faces. Historian and journalist Thai Jones has created a fascinating portrait of a city on the edge of chaos coming to terms with modernity, and today, when the chasm between the haves and have-nots is greater than ever before, More Powerful Than Dynamite is especially resonant.
Please support Positively Revolting and all KBOO programs with your contribution! We will have a few copies of Thai Jones' book available to thank you when you join and contribute at least $75 at 503-232-8818.
Stay in touch with Positively Revolting all week -- like our Facebook page facebook.com/positivelyrevolting
You can always email us at positivelyrevolting at gmail dot com