Blog Archives

Centenary of Radical Unionist Joe Hill's Execution

11/20/2015

100 years ago today, November 19, the State of Utah executed troubadour and radical union man Joe HIll after a troubled, questionable trial for murder. He was a member of the Industrial Workers of the World, a one-big-union organization outside mainstream trade unionism. Wobblies (IWW members) fought for free speech and better working conditions, and were assaulted, arrested, jailed, and sometimes killed for doing so. Joe Hill became a martyr for the cause. His music later influenced Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan.

Marie Equi Received Hill's Ashes for Oregon
Joe Hill directed that his cremated remains should be spread in every state -- but not in Utah -- and worldwide. Dr. Marie Equi, a radical activist lesbian in Portland, was said to have received an envelope of Hill's ashes as a representative of Oregon.

View a new graphic novel treatment of Joe Hill's life by Pat Bagley

1000 Stream MARIE EQUI After Broadcast on OPB Think Out Loud

11/17/2015

More than one-thousands listeners have streamed my author interview about the new biography MARIE EQUI: Radical Politics and Outlaw Passions. First broadcast on October 28, the program is titled, “Marie Equi: The Lesbian Anarchist Doctor You’ve Never Heard Of.” During the interview with host April Baer, I discuss Equi’s struggle as an outsider and her fierce determination to be an independent, secure woman. Listen to the full story here.

Equi risked her livelihood, health, and freedom for the cause of social and economic justice – so much so that the San Francisco Chronicle referred to her as “the most prominent woman activist on the West Coast.”

Marie Equi’s Portland at Oregon Historical Society

11/12/2015

The Oregon Historical Society (OHS) in downtown Portland now features an exhibit of the fiercely independent doctor, political radical, and lesbian Marie Equi. Titled Marie Equi’s Portland the display is presented “in honor of the new book by Michael Helquist, Marie Equi: Radical Politics & Outlaw Passions. Curated by Geoff Wexler, the director of the Davies Family Research Library at OHS, the display offers photos and text on the main floor by the lobby desk and on the 4th floor in the library.

Images of the buildings where Equi lived and worked in the early decades of the 20th century are part of the exhibit, including the Oregonian Building, the Elton Court, and the Hill Hotel on Lucretia Place. Copies of the federal government’s surveillance reports about Equi can be viewed as well as newspaper reports of her protests and arrests.

OHS hosted the Portland launch of the new Marie Equi biography in September of this year. The Davies Family Research Library holds the largest collection of source material and memorabilia related to Equi’s life and times.

Marie Equi’s Portland will remain available for viewing until the end of this year. Visitors can purchase signed copies of the Equi biography at the OHS Museum Store next to the lobby.

Thanks very much to OHS and to Geoff Wexler for this featured display.

Meryl Streep, Emmeline Pankhurst, Suffragette and MARIE EQUI

11/9/2015

Meryl Streep has a powerful cameo turn in the just-released film Suffragette as Emmeline Pankhurst, England’s foremost militant advocate for women’s right to vote. The story is set in 1912 as English women decide they have no choice but to resort to blowing up mailboxes and hurling stones through department store windows to get the government’s attention. Ultimately many of the suffragettes arrested endured hunger strikes and brutal forced feedings. Suffragette is powerful and disturbing with its portrayal of women who suffer abuse and risk their lives for the basic rights of citizenship.

In my biography of American suffragist-turned-radical Marie Equi, I describe a visit of Emmeline Pankhurst to Portland, Oregon in 1916. England had been at war for two years. The United States had yet to join. Here’s an excerpt:

“In early June 1916, Mrs. Emmeline Pankhurst stirred Portlanders with a glimpse of war on her country’s home front. For years the American press had vilified the aggressive tactics of English suffragettes – the smashed windows, harassment of government officials, and hunger strikes in prison – leaving many Portlanders expecting to be appalled by Pankhurst. Instead, the petite and cultured fifty-seven-year-old woman surprised them with her gentle manner and pleasant voice. She spoke with persuasion not stridency, and she addressed Portlanders’ beliefs about patriotism and their fears of what lay ahead.

“Pankhurst recounted the terror and destruction wrought on a defenseless Edinburgh, carpet-bombed by German zeppelins two months earlier. She described Londoners edgy anticipation of more attacks, and she recounted the domestic arrest that flared during Easter Week that year when Irish republicans staged an uprising to wrest independence from England. In the midst of both panic and resolve, Pankhurst told her hosts, she had shelved woman suffrage – her cause of twenty-five years – and joined the British war effort. Instead of clamoring for the vote, women marched fifty-thousand strong in London and demanded the right to work in munitions factories, military hospitals, and every sort of public endeavor. The women refused to accept that war service should be limited to men alone.

“Pankhurst …zeroed in on her most important message. “Patriotism isn’t enough,” she declared. “Preparedness is necessary. …The audience cheered Pankhurst and donated $1000 to her fund for humanitarian relief in the Allied countries. For pacifists and suffragists like Equi, Pankhurst’s story held great irony – a militant who had dropped her suffrage demands to support the war just as Equi retreated from suffrage work to protest the war that the United States stepped closer to entering.”

Meryl Streep as Emmeline Pankhurst

Emmeline Pankhurst

Marie Equi

Marie Equi never accepted Pankhurst’s argument for either preparedness or for the war. With her first vote in the presidential election of 1916, she marched for the supposed anti-war candidate – Democratic incumbent Woodrow Wilson – over the suffrage candidate – Republican Charles Evans Hughes. Months later Wilson took the nation to war.

What Others Are Saying about MARIE EQUI

11/8/2015

MEGAN PRELINGER, cultural historian & archivist, co-founder of Prelinger Library in San Francisco, author of "Inside the Machine: Art and Invention In the Electronic Age" commented on my Amazon page:

This is a wonderful biography that should be a model for future biographies of women and other human beings who have been overlooked by HIStory. What I especially like about it is the way that the author draws a full portrait of Marie Equi, someone whose most ordinary concerns -- her concern for the welfare of others -- led directly to a radical politics. Equi's radicalism is written as a natural and essential response to her times. Radicalism usually is a natural and essential response, but it's not always portrayed that way. It's more often sensationalized or over-theorized, or both.

I also really appreciate this book as a study of the interrelationships between Oregon and California, two neighbors that have sometimes seemed to share less than the span of their common border would suggest.

Helquist's biography of Equi peels back to become a human geography of these "two" places that are really magnetic draw points on a spectrum of human geography that spans one long common stretch of the west coast.

I'm also moved any time one person looks across gaps of time and gender and puts so much work into being a living ally for another. (How many other superlative and sympathetic biographies of historic Lesbian figures are written by male allies?). Thank you, Mr. Helquist!

"Someone Needed to Write this Book"

11/6/2015

Patricia Kullberg, historical fiction writer in Portland, on MARIE EQUI:

Someone needed to write this book. So lucky for us that Michael Helquist did. It is meticulously researched and cogently written. But best of all, Helquist brings to his subject precisely the kind of appreciation this important historical figure deserves, presenting her in full, living color for the amazing person she was. This is the kind of history that is always hidden from view: the ones who challenged authority and the authorities in many ways and did it with courage and with considerable risk to her own safety, freedom and well-being.

A great read and a critical story to understand and relish.

Amazon comment on Marie Equi: Radical Politics and Outlaw Passions)

THANKS, Patricia.

Check out Patricia's new noir novel "Girl In The River" with classic mid-century Portlanders like Mayor Dottie "Do-Good" Lee and skilled abortionist Ruth Barnett.

On Election Day: How Would Marie Equi Vote?

11/3/2015

A dearth of affordable housing, too few jobs and services for the unemployed, voting rights under attack, and gaping disparities between the wealthy few and everyone else. How would radical lesbian MARIE EQUI have voted on Election Day?

Equi had few opportunities at the ballot box. She lived in Oregon where woman suffrage was defeated five times before final passage in 1912. She was unable to vote in the momentous 1912 presidential election that ushered in Woodrow Wilson. But she registered as a Progressive and probably first voted in a 1913 municipal election.

Mostly Equi voted on her feet and in the streets with rallies, protests, pickets, and soapbox talks. Just over a hundred years ago, in 1913-1914, the nation slid into a recession. Business activity plummeted 26 percent. Laid-off workers slept in doorways, huddled in breadlines, and begged food for their children. In Oregon and Washington the timber industry closed 40 percent of its mills and laid off a third of its labor force. In the autumn of 1913, several thousand jobless men migrated to Portland, hoping to fend off the cold and wet of the rainy season. Portland leaders feared the city might become a magnet from the jobless throughout the West so they reserved jobs for local married men.

Equi Demanded Shelter for Homeless Men
Marie Equi urged unemployed men and women to demand the jobs, food, lodging, and services they needed. When the jobless paraded through Portland’s streets, Equi noted, “The sight of thousands of hungry, desperate men is not an inspiring one to the police.” As cold weather approached, she urged the city to open a public hall as free lodging for the homeless. After much delay, the Portland did just that, providing shelter for 900 men.

During a trip to Boston that winter, Equi was featured in the Boston Globe for her work with the jobless. The headline read: “Predicts Revolution Unless Aid Is Given to 5,000,000 Unemployed.” When a reporter remarked that she was noted for her work across the nation, Equi replied, “Noted in the country, perhaps, but notorious in Oregon.”

Equi mixed her direct action with strategies for immediate results. In December 1914, she organized a committee of women to rent a forty-seven unit rooming house in the North End of Portland to provide lodging for jobless men. Even after Marie Equi became radicalized by a police beating, she sometimes returned to the ballot box, often voting for the lesser of two evils. She continued until the federal government threw her into San Quentin prison in 1920.

Revolutionary Women -- And Their Images -- You Will Want to Know

11/2/2015

PM Press has published Revolutionary Women: A Book of Stencils. I was first drawn to the book because one of its stencils was that of the lesbian radical MARIE EQUI, and my biography of Equi was published September 2015 by Oregon State University Press. But then I found Equi was among 29 other profiles of fiercely courageous, bold women from the past and present who risked their lives and well-being for social, political, and economic justice. With a spare two-page narrative for each, the life stories of these women become compelling testaments to centuries of struggle. This book is a valuable guide and a needed primer on the often overlooked role of women in challenging and changing society. The bold, evocative stencils -- stunning images in themselves that can be used to trace and cut out for further use -- capture a meaning and spirit of the subject.

The introduction to this volume asserts the reason why the Queen of the Neighbourhood Collective, based in New Zealand, assembled and compiled this work. They wanted to counter the preponderance of male iconography -- for example, of Che Guevara and Bob Marley -- as symbols of rebellion with images of "iconic, universally recognizable women." Why shouldn't people appreciate at a glance the bold profiles of workers' rights activist Lucy Parsons, Underground Railway leader Harriet Tubman, lesbian anarchist and poet Lucia Sanchez Saornil, Tibetan freedom fighter Ani Pachen, Native American activist Anna Mae Aquash, and American transgender advocate Sylvia Rivera?

One drawback of this important contribution are occasional inaccuracies in the biographical sketches. I have not researched them all -- and many of these stories were new to me -- but for Marie Equi there exist a few. She served 10 months in prison (not a year and a half) after her conviction for sedition. She was not known for being a trouble-maker in prison; instead she was released early for her good behavior. She did not join antiwar protests of the 1940s. These are unfortunate errors, but they do not detract from the narrative power of Equi's profile.

Many thanks to the Queen of the Neighbourhood Collective and to PM Press for bringing these radical women and images to the public.