Diane Reece of the Washington Post, a very talented writer who did not need a pile of dough from George Soros, Bill Burton, David Plouffe, or Mother Jones magazine to rent a house next to the Palin Family, is critical of Palin but honest and fair-minded. Rather than do a standard Joan Walsh Salon bitch, Diane Reece made an honest and forthright attempt to witness the impact of Sarah Palin on a crowd of people. Diane Reece wrote for the Washington Post -
It was the first time I’d ever seen Palin in person, and it was well worth the 19-mile drive from my suburban Kansas City home to The Berry Patch, a you-pick blueberry farm near Cleveland, Mo., population 665, in rural Cass County.
Not because I’m a fan or even agree with her ideology, but to see what all the fuss has been about.
There has been fuss aplenty! I believe that I am the only member of my vast family who admires Sarah Palin. The very pious, elegant and well-spoken woman who deigns to be seen in public with me is put off by Gov. Palin's rhetorical choices and her God-given voice. Coming from a blue-collar Irish Catholic family where Party loyalty equals Union (Real Labor) fidelity Ms. Palin's own Family Labor background gets lost in translation by my dear tribe, as well as the American Progressive Smart-Set. The same family members, my Mom most loudly, who hold that Ms. Palin must be "nuts" are not in the least put off by Nancy Pelosi's ghost whispering. Second to the mental health canards, comes the Celtic charge of being a "total phony!" Could be. It's lost on me.
I like and admire Sarah Palin. She can lead. President Obama, in the words of Hockey Dad and Chicago's own Bobby Hull, "couldn't lead a dog out of a thunderstorm with a T-bone steak." The man can baffle with soaring bullshit, I'll give him that . . .not that he writes any of it.
I'd follow Sarah Palin into a Jenny Craig Program; I would not follow President Obama into Old Country Buffet.
I understand that some people might be put-off by fashion, couture, and un-filtered plain-speak. Ms. Diane Reece is first mainstream journalist to make those objections personal and not universally dogmatic:
When Palin took to the makeshift stage in the middle of a Missouri farm field, she was dressed more for the part of Hollywood celebrity than serious politician. I know someone’s going to remind me that just last week, I said it was sexist to focus on the wardrobes of women in politics.
But it was hard for me to take Palin seriously dressed as she was.
First, her shoes: Five-inch wedges. Her black capris weren’t quite skin-tight but tight enough, and her t-shirt with its Superman logo (a Steelman campaign shirt emblazoned with “Our freedom. Our fight.”) emphasized her figure. She never once removed her oversized sunglasses.
I’m sorry, but I’d like my minister, my doctor and yes, my politicians, to look and dress for their parts.
Once Palin spoke, I couldn’t help but think she sometimes sounds like a caricature of herself. Perhaps it’s her unique manner of speaking or her overuse of certain phrases.
There were moments during her 15-minute speech that I felt like applauding and there were certainly moments that I groaned.
I do know that Sarah Palin scares the marrow out of people that I would not particularly care to spend any amount of time with, much less value their opinions -MSNBC's entire Clown Opera, Il. Gov. Pat Quinn, The jerks John McCain hired in 2008, The Second Wave Feminist Dowagers of the Abortion Industry, David " Crisp Britches" Brooks, or Martini Mo Dowd. Most of all the editors and contributors of Mother Jones Magazine have worked over-time to defraud American history and be-smeer the name of Mary Harris Jones, who was the Sarah Palin of the last century.
Mary Harris "Mother" Jones is an Irish Catholic woman, who lived a life that not only bridged America's Industrial Revolution to the Rise of American Labor, but defended the traditional family, unborn children and children forced into work, women torn from the hearth and most of all "Her Boys!" Mother Jones was tough old broad who had watched her working man husband and children die of fever, the business that she built with her two skilled hands burn in the Chicago Fire, and working men struggle for wages, reasonable working hours and conditions, as well as basic human dignity, and labor, politcal, social welfare frauds work against them.
Mother Jones was a force of nature. Mary Harris Jones was tough and very happy little widow. The Press, the Governors and frauds hated her.
Mother Jones magazine performed post-mortem hysterical castration on the historical Mary Harris Jones, denuding her memory of her Catholic Faith and identity, as well as her counter-Marxist methodologies.Mother Jones was no Emma Goldman, no Jane Addams, no Margret Sanger; Mary Harris Jones was an honest woman who never cashed in on her celebrity and never played ball with the radical phonies. She was no atheist. Mother Jones made war on phonies, weaklings, cowards, Prohibitionists, and do-gooder frauds, as well as capitalists. John L. Lewis made her sick to her stomach. Big Bill Haywood she considered a pawn to booze and Bolsheviks. Dowager abortionists? Forget about it.
Sarah Palin is the clearest image of Mother Jones. She is happy, honest, courageous and not a good fit for MSNBC. - Mother Jones would have turned Rachel Maddow into quivering belaboring curds of word-whey.
At the end of her article, Ms. Reece wondered if the SuperMan T-shirt, 5" Heel Wedgied Mother Jones would would help steer a Missouri Hawkey Mawm to the Senate Race. Nope. Like Mother Jones herself, sometimes your are the Grizzly and sometimes just a hard working Mom.
Mary Harris Mother Jones -“Goodbye, boys; I’m under arrest. I may have to go to jail. I may not see you for a long time. Keep up the fight! Don’t surrender! Pay no attention to the injunction machine at Parkersburg. The Federal judge is a scab anyhow. While you starve he plays golf. While you serve humanity, he serves injunctions for the money powers.” Governor Sarah Palin-“It’s unbelievable to me that you spent last week in campaign mode, gallivanting around the country to start raising the billion dollars for your reelection bid that is still 19 months away ‘while Rome burns.’ . . . As was recently asked: When do you ever just ‘roll up your sleeves, unplug the teleprompter’ and do the job of governing and administrating for which voters hired you? I know, I know, granted you will be even busier very soon. After all, golf season kicks into high gear shortly. NBA and NHL brackets await.”
America continues to subsist on a diet of Progressive bullshit - Big Labor is SEIU, Woman should be recognized with a stamp for the six lesbians who might have raised the flag on Iwo Jima and Americans should not use toilet paper. Mayor Bloomberg and other damp-brained types worry about sugar, trans fatties, salt and thick ply toilet paper, yet never once blink or squeak when the steam table of bullshit piles higher despite the ladling out by academics, ink-slingers, activists, mail-order preachers and political hacks in heaping helpings to ever more historically and rhetorically sated generations of citizens. Our President fell victim to this steady diet of deadly of nonsense, when his speech writers allowed him to read "Polish Death Camps" without a stuttered, or head shake.
The American intellectual gag reflex needs to be restored.
Yesterday, I jammed a feather down the gullet with a posting about Mary Harris "Mother" Jones*.
This was in reaction to a series of articles spewed out by Mother Jones Magazine -named in honor of the tiny, fearless Catholic woman who dedicated her life to fighting injustice. I chose one Woman's ( Feminist) Website: Women in History, as an example of how leftists have hijacked the truth about a heroic woman's life and spirit. From the get-go the presentation is nonsense and mythopoeic larceny -"She ( Mother Jones) came from a long line of social agitators. It was common in Ireland then to see British soldiers marching through the streets with the heads of Irish freedom fighters stuck on their bayonets." and it continues with more such leftist legerdemain . . .Several sources ( Chris Matthews? Pete Seeger? Albert Speer?) say her father also was one and, shortly after his father was hanged, was forced to flee Ireland with his family. Another source ( Rip Taylor? Susan Sarandon?) says he left to work on railway construction crews in the U.S. and Canada. At any rate, they did leave Ireland, eventually settling in Toronto, Ontario, in 1841." ( emphases and ridicule my own)
Mother Jones is presented as a fiery, secularist, bomb-the- NATO Bastards! Rachel Maddow. Nowhere is the word Catholic mentioned in the long offering, though a school identified as well as a eulogist for the Catholic widow's funeral in Mount Olive, IL where she is buried. Her Faith is Stalanized and her spirit is diluted with nonsense.
Mother Jones lived a long life that reads like the Book of Job her husband and children died of yellow fever and her business was destroyed by the Great Chicago Fire - natural causes. Mary Harris Jones took refuge following that last test of faith and character in St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church on South Wabash, in Chicago. From there she met another Irish Catholic Terence Powderly, founder of the Knights of Labor and immersed herself in the fight for others - workers, victims of injustice and especially children.
Mother Jones and Labor itself are and continue to be misrepresented in America. The diet of bullshit is far more dangerous than the outlawed fois gras, fats, sugars, and facts.
*"Mother" Mary Harris Jones
NAME: Mary Harris Jones
DATE OF BIRTH: August 1, 1837 (She later claimed it was May 1, 1830)
PLACE OF BIRTH: Cork, Ireland
FAMILY BACKGROUND: Mary Harris was born to Richard and Mary Harris. She came from a long line of social agitators. It was common in Ireland then to see British soldiers marching through the streets with the heads of Irish freedom fighters stuck on their bayonets. Her paternal grandfather was hanged by the British for being a freedom fighter. Several sources say her father also was one and, shortly after his father was hanged, was forced to flee Ireland with his family. Another source says he left to work on railway construction crews in the U.S. and Canada. At any rate, they did leave Ireland, eventually settling in Toronoto, Ontario, in 1841.
EDUCATION: Mary attended public schools in Toronto, and graduated from the normal school in 1854 at the age of 17. The next year, she began working as a private tutor in Maine. She received a teaching certificate in Michigan in 1857, at age 20, and taught at St. Mary's Convent school in Monroe, Michigan.
ACCOMPLISHMENTS: Mary only taught in Michigan for about eight months, moving to Chicago to work as a dressmaker. From there, she moved to Memphis, Tennessee, in 1860 to teach school again. It was here, in 1861, that she met and married George E. Jones, a staunch and prominent member of the Iron Molders' Union. At times, Mary traveled with George in his union organizing. Through him, Mary learned about unions and the psychology of working men. Later, she would advise women that "the wife must care for what the husband cares for, if he is to remain resolute."
Life was good for a while, as Mary and George bore four children in quick succession. But tragedy first struck in 1867, when her husband and all the children died in a yellow fever epidemic, within a week of each other. She stayed in Memphis nursing other victims until the epidemic waned, then moved back to Chicago, working as a dressmaker again. But tragedy soon followed. In 1871, she lost everything she owned in her home and seamstress shop in the great Chicago fire. It was then that Mary embarked upon the path that made her name synonymous with social justice. Probably the seeds were sown earlier, while sewing in the homes of wealthy Chicago families. She later said:
"Often while sewing for lords and barons who lived in magnificent houses on the Lake Shore Drive, I would look out of the plate glass windows and see the poor, shivering wretches, jobless and hungry, walking alongside the frozen lake front.... The contrast of their condition with that of the tropical comfort of the people for whom I sewed was painful to me. My employers seemed neither to notice nor to care."
After the great fire, Mary began to attend meetings of the newly formed Knights of Labor, held in a ragged, fire-scorched building. The fraternity and its ideals must have struck a chord in Mary, bringing forth her compassion and passion. And although she continued to work in Chicago as a seamstress, she had no fixed home. She began volunteering with the Knights of Labor as an organizer -- traveling back and forth across the country, from one industrial area to another, living with the workers in tent colonies and shantytowns near the mills. She in essence adopted the hard workers of America, and they called her 'Mother.' (One source says during a strike, a mine detective bashed the skull of a miner. While Mary cradled his head, the delirious, dying miner thought she was his mother and called her such; the name stuck.) When asked about where she lived, she said:
"My address is like my shoes. It travels with me. I abide where there is a fight against wrong."
The Industrial Revolution was in full swing. America was changing from an agricultural to an industrial economy. Immigrants and displaced farmers made up the vast array of workers, digging out coal and forging steel. But they were subjected to nightmarish conditions and paid starvation wages. Mary would travel to wherever there was a strike, organizing and helping the workers. She would hold educational meetings, and bolster the men's spirits to keep up the fight. Often she was at odds with union leaders. In 1877, Mary helped in the Baltimore and Ohio railroad workers' strike in Pittsburg. In the 1880s, she organized and ran educational meetings, saying:
"Sit down and read. Educate yourself for the coming conflicts."
On May 1, 1886, labor unions in Chicago organized a strike for an eight-hour work day. (Two years earlier, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions had called for the eight-hour work day to begin on that day.) Two days into the strike, a fight broke out and two strikers were killed by police; others were wounded. On May 4, spurred by incendiary fliers saying the police had murdered the strikers on behalf of the business owners, thousands of workers gathered in Chicago's Haymarket Square for a rally. Although the people remained calm throughout, when the police ordered everyone to disperse and began marching in formation through the crowd, a bomb was thrown and exploded near them, killing one policeman. (Seven more policemen died later from their injuries.) The police began firing into the crowd, ultimately killing 11 people. Many of the wounded were afraid to seek treatment, for fear of being arrested.
It was because of this event that Mary "changed" her birth date to May 1, 1830 -- May 1 in honor of the strike for an eight-hour work day. This date has become celebrated worldwide as International Workers' Day (except in the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Australia and New Zealand), commemorating the social and economic achievements of the labor movement and remembering the Haymarket Riot. Mary probably moved her birth seven years earlier to embellish the grandmotherly image of 'Mother' Jones.
Prominent strikes Mary participated in include the Pullman railroad strike in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1894; the Pennsylvania anthracite coal miners' strike in 1902; the Ludlow miners' strike in Colorado in 1913; and the nationwide steel workers' strike in 1919. She also helped other workers as well. In 1901, she helped form a union of domestic servants and helped silk weavers (often daughters of miners) fight for better work conditions. In 1909, she helped striking shirtwaist workers; the next year she helped organize women bottlers in Milwaukee breweries. In 1916, she helped streetcar workers in Texas and New York.
At only five feet tall and dressed in black with just a touch of lace at her throat and wrists, Mary was a perfect picture of a grandmother. Yet when she spoke, she was dynamic, energetic and enthusiastic -- bringing her audiences to tears, applause and laughter. She was a gifted storyteller with a brilliant sense of humor. Her intensity was almost explosive when she began to speak; her listeners (mostly men) sat up, fully alert, and believed that together they could do anything. She'd smile and scan the people gathered with her bright blue eyes, then say:
"I'm not a humanitarian. I'm a hell-raiser!" Another well-known quote is: "Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living."
Starting in 1890, she joined the coal miners' fight, becoming an organizer for the newly formed United Mine Workers of America. First she was a volunteer, then she became a union employee. She traveled to West Virginia, Alabama and Colorado, the hardest to organize areas. The miners and their families lived in towns where everything -- the houses, stores and even churches -- was owned by the mining company. She knew the gruesome conditions and hazards of their work, and even went into the mines during strikes to convince scabs (men who worked while others were striking) to quit and support their fellow workers. She warned miners to not trust the churches because they were financially supported by the mine owners. One preacher chastised Mary for holding a union meeting in "a house of God." She said:
"Oh, that isn't God's house. That is the coal company's house. ... God almighty never comes around to a place like this."
Although Mary was raised Catholic, she never claimed allegiance, feeling the organized church had abandoned the revolutionary nature Jesus had espoused. She also felt organized religion was used as a way to keep people from asking questions about their condition. When she spoke to groups, she portrayed Jesus as an organizer of the poor, saying he chose to die rather than betray the poor. On June 20, 1902, at a rally near Clarksburg, West Virginia, Mary was arrested after her speech. When she found out she would be detained in a hotel, she demanded to be put in jail with the other miners who had been arrested. During her career, she was arrested or escorted out of town many times -- only to return again and again.
Remembering lessons she learned from George, Mary often involved the wives and children of miners to dramatize the situation, as well as keep up the men's resolve. In 1902, she told striking miners in Arnot, Pennsylvania, to "stay home with the children for a change and let the women attend to the scabs." Then she led a march of the miners' wives from mine to mine, driving away strikebreakers with brooms and mops. She used this strategy many times at other strikes. In 1907 in Westmoreland, Pennsylvania, she urged strikers' wives to stand at the picket line, with their children. If arrested and imprisoned, she told them to sing as loudly as they could so the townspeople would be happy to have them released.
As for children, Mary traveled to several Southern cotton mills, assessing the working conditions -- although cotton mills were not exclusive to the South. She hired on at some, telling the managers she had children who would be working with her. She described the typical conditions at the mills:
"Little girls and boys, barefooted, walked up and down between the endless rows of spindles, reaching their little hands into the machinery to repair snapped threads. They crawled under machinery to oil it. They replaced spindles all day long, all day long; all night through. Tiny babies six years old with faces of sixty, did an eight hour shift for ten cents a day."
In 1903, to dramatize the need to abolish child labor, she led a caravan of striking children from the textile mills of Kensington, Pennsylvania, to President Theodore Roosevelt's home in Long Island, New York. They carried banners saying "We want time to play!" and "We want to go to school!" The president refused to meet with them, but the "Children's Crusade" caught the public's attention. She is quoted as saying:
"The employment of children is doing more to fill prisons, insane asylums, almshouses, reformatories, slums, and gin shops than all the efforts of reformers are doing to improve society."
In 1898, Mary helped found the Social Democratic Party. In 1904, she resigned from the UMWA and began lecturing for the Socialist Party of America, traveling throughout the southwest. She became an organizer for the Western Federation of Miners (who mined metal rather than coal), who were much more radical than the UMWA. In 1905, Mary was a founder of the Industrial Workers of the World union -- the only woman amond 27 people signing the manifesto calling for the organization. The predecessor of this union was the Knights of Labor.
While still participating in strikes and organized drives for unions, Mary became concerned as well about the conditions of Mexicans working in the U.S. She also focused energy on raising funds to defend Mexican revolutionaries who had been arrested or deported. She supported the overthrow of the dictatorial Mexican President Porfirio Diaz, and visited his successor, Francisco Madero, until he was assassinated.
In 1911, Mary left the Socialist Party to again work for the United Mine Workers union as an organizer. It was during this time that 'Mother' Jones came to national attention through the Paint Creek-Cabin Creek strike in West Virginia. On September 21, 1912, she led a march of miners' children through Charleston, West Virginia. On February 12, 1913, she led a protest about mining conditions and was arrested.
At the age of 76, Mary was convicted by a military court of conspiring to commit murder and was sentenced to 20 years in prison. This whole ordeal created such a fervor nationally that the U.S. Senate ordered a committee to investigate conditions in the coalfields. Before the investigations began, newly elected governor Hatfield set 'Mother' Jones free. (Because of her adding seven years to her age, everyone believed she was 83 years old.) She didn't waste any time -- traveling to Colorado to help miners in a yearlong strike. She arrived in Trinidad, Colorado, and spoke at the West Theatre:
"Rise up and strike ... strike until the last one of you drop into your graves. We are going to stand together and never surrender. Boys, always remember you ain't got a damn thing if you ain't got a union!"
Mary was evicted from mine company property several times, but returned again and again. She was arrested and imprisoned twice: first for about two months at Mt. San Rafael Hospital, and later for 23 days in a squalid semi-basement cell at Huerfano County Jail in Walsenburg. This second time was in Ludlow, Colorado, after she'd been told to leave town or be arrested. After her prison term, she was escorted out of town, but she slipped back in with the help of railroad workers.
On April 20, 1914, miners and their families, 20 people in all, were killed in a machine-gun massacre at a tent colony in Ludlow. Mary traveled the country telling the story. She caught the attention of the nation, and its leaders. President Wilson and members of the House Mines and Mining Committee responded by proposing that the union and each mine's owners agree to a truce and create grievance committees.
In 1915 and 1916, Mary helped in the strikes of garment workers and streecar workers in New York. In 1919, she helped steel workers striking in Pittsburg and was arrested again. In 1921, as a guest of the Mexican government, Mary attended the Pan-American Federation of Labor meeting in Mexico -- a highlight of recognition for her role in the labor movement. The next year, she resigned from the UMWA. (Both of her resignations from the UMWA were from disagreements with the presidents; the first time being John Mitchell. She felt Mitchell had been bought off by the mining companies and was serving their interests rather than the workers'. As for John L. Lewis, the later president, she thought he was a self-promoter and detested him until she died.)
In 1924, Mary was sued for libel, slander and sedition. The next year, the publisher of the Chicago Times, a fledgling newspaper at the time, won a shocking $350,000 judgment against her. Early in that year, Mary was attacked by a couple of thugs while staying at a friend's house. She fought them off, causing one to flee and seriously injuring the other, a 54-year-old man who later died from the wounds -- which included a blunt head injury from Mary's trademark black leather boots. Police arrested her, but she was released soon after when the attackers were identified as associates of a prominent local business man.
That same year, 1925, Mary published her autobiography, which she'd probably started writing in 1922 or 1923. She dictated her stories to Mary Field Parton, a reporter, friend and mistress of Clarence Darrow. (He wrote the introduction to the first edition.) Afterwards, she continued to lecture, as her health permitted. She was now 85 years old. Her last known public speaking engagement was in Alliance, Ohio, in 1926, as the guest of honor at a Labor Day celebration. Her last public appearance was at her 100th birthday party (although she was really only 92 years old) on May 1, 1930, in Silver Spring, Maryland.
Mary lived in Silver Spring with a retired coal miner and his wife, Walter and Lillie May Burgess. Seven months after the birthday party, 'Mother' Jones died on November 30, 1930, at the age of 93. A requiem mass was held at St. Gabriel's in Washington, D.C., then her body was sent to Mount Olive, Illinois, to be buried in the Union Miners Cemetery, in the coalfields of southern Illinois -- near the graves of victims of the Virden, Illinois, mine riot of 1898. (See the website on the cemetery, below, for more on this event.) Mary had requested to be buried there, back in 1924.
Mourners paid tribute to Mother Jones there, both at the Odd Fellows Temple and the Ascension Church, where the memorial service was held. About 10,000 to 15,000 people attended. The Reverend John W.F. Maguire, president of St. Viator's College in Bourbonnais, Illinois, said in his address:
"Wealthy coal operators and capitalists throughout the United States are breathing sighs of relief while toil-worn men and women are weeping tears of bitter grief. The reason for this contrast of relief and sorrow is apparent. Mother Jones is dead."
Starting in 1934, the Progressive Miners of America, who owned the cemetery, raised over $16,000 to erect a monument to 'Mother' Jones. It stands 22 feet high, built of 80 tons of pink Minnesota granite. On October 11, 1936, the dedication ceremony included an estimated 50,000 people. Five special trains and 25 Greyhound buses brought people to Mt. Olive. Others came by car or hitch-hiked. West Virginia Senator Rush D. Holt spoke, as did North Dakota Congressman William Lemke and socialist leader Duncan McDonald. The final speaker was Lillie May Burgess, who said Mother Jones had wanted to live another 100 years to "fight to the end" so that "there would be no more machine guns and no more sobbing of little children."
For years, October 12 was Miner's Day, celebrated with a big gathering in Mt. Olive and a visit to the monument. Mary's work was honored throughout the 1930s, by labor activists and Gene Autry recording "The Death of Mother Jones," whose song origins are obscure. After that, her memory faded and the copyright on her autobiography lapsed. Finally, in 1972, the Charles Kerr Company published a second edition of her autobiography, folk singers revived "The Death of Mother Jones," and in 1976, Mother Jones Magazine was formed, promising journalistic muck-raking much like its namesake.
'Mother' Jones has been criticized as not being a feminist. Her focus, though, was on the rights of workers -- men, women and children. She strongly opposed the suffrage movement, feeling it supported a passive inactivity; whereas she was wholeheartedly about taking action. She pointed out that the women of Ludlow, Colorado, had voting rights in the state, but it did not stop the massacre from happening. She said:
"[Women need to realize that with] what they have in their hands there is no limit to what they could accomplish. The trouble is they let the capitalists make them believe they wouldn't be ladylike."
As a side note, the popular children's song "She'll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain" is believed to have been inspired by 'Mother' Jones. It first was sung in the late 1800s, spread throughout Appalachia (probably by coal miners), and was widely sung by railroad work gangs in the 1890s. In addition to being nicknamed 'Mother' Jones, Mary also was called 'The Miners' Angel' and 'The Grandmother of All Agitators' -- a title she was proud of, saying she hoped to live to be the great-grandmother of agitators.
DATE OF DEATH: November 30, 1930
PLACE OF DEATH: Silver Spring, Maryland
PORTRAYED BY: Ann McEvoy
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Commire, Anne, editor. Women in World History: A Biographical Encyclopedia. Waterford, CT: Yorkin Publications, 2000.
Fetherling, Dale. Mother Jones, the Miner's Angel. Southern Illinois University Press, 1974.
Foner, Phillip S., editor. Mother Jones Speaks: Collected Writings and Speeches. Pathfinder Press, 1983.
Gilbert, Ronnie. Ronnie Gilbert: Face to Face with the Most Dangerous Woman in America. Conari Press, 1993.
Gorn, Elliott. Mother Jones: The Most Dangerous Woman in America. New York: Hill and Wang, 2001.
Jones, Mary Harris and Edward M. Steele, editor. The Speeches and Writings of Mother Jones: Pittsburg Series in Social and Labor History. University of Pittsburg, 1988.
Jones, Mary Harris. The Autobiography of Mother Jones. Dover Publications, 2004.
Josephson, Judith Pinkerton. Mother Jones: Fierce Fighter for Workers' Rights. Lerner Publications, 1996.
Coal Mining and Union Activities. Oral History Collection 1970-1975, 24 items. Sangaman State University, Oral History Office. Springfield, Illinois.
“Some day the workers will take possession of your city hall, and when we do, no child will be sacrificed on the altar of profit!” Mary Harris "Mother" Jones(August 1, 1837 – November 30, 1930)
Nothing seems more profitable than the murder of children by Progressive America. Abortion is the tide that lifts every secularist boat - gay marriage, redistribution of wealth, Green everything are tied to the apron strings of the American Dowager Class - Planned Parenthood.
Progressive thought requires a collective tabula rasa - erase history and begin anew. E.G. Mary Harris Jones, or Mother Jones. Progressives have been re-writing and burning history for decades and have succeeded in hoodwinking Americans that social justice has nothing to do with the Catholic Church in America, The Progressive treatment of Mother Jones informs one-and-all that Mother Jones was born and baptized a Roman Catholic and attributes here ';hell-raising' ways to her rebel Cork, Ireland beginnings. The common Progressive thread leads the un-discerning reader to assume that she repudiated her Faith in favor of Radical Socialism and Third Wave Feminism and found solace and comfort and support in godlees Hegelian community activism. Facts are swords. Group thought is fragile. In fact, Marry Harris Jones repudiated not the Faith of her birth and baptism, but the secularist and murderous ideologies of the Progressive.
Ignored is the fact that Mary Harris Jones ended her 93 years of teaching in Catholic schools, sewing for the rich Yanks of Chicago, fighting with and for the Knights of Labor, organizing and then repudiating the United Mine Workers as well as the Socialist Party of America, with last rites of her Roman Catholic Faith and burial along side the miners of southern Illinois.
( The Roman Catholic Funeral Mass for Mary Harris "Mother" Jones at the Church of Ascension in Mount Olive, IL 1930)
Mary Harris Jones, for whom the anti-Catholic and secularist magazine is named, was buried in full communion with the Roman Catholic Church from the Church of Ascension in Mount Olive, IL - facts are such troubling things. Mother Jones would spit in the eye of the Dowager Class and its murderous self-interest.
( Pleae note the Roman Catholic Crucifix on the coffin of Mother Jones)
Last month, when forty plus Roman Catholic Dioceses brought suit against the Obama Regime's HHS Mandate, Mother Jones magazine said this -
"The ACLU's Reproductive Freedom Project recently won its lawsuit against HHS over a federal grant through which USCCB provided services to human trafficking victims. The bishops had refused to allow subcontractors to use the federal money to refer women for reproductive health services. In 2009, the ACLU filed suit arguing that under the contract the USCCB (and by extension, the federal government) was unconstitutionally foisting Catholic religious beliefs on the larger public. (The Obama administration last year refused to renew the contract,prompting even more outrage from USCCB, which accused the administration of operating an "ABC policy," or "Anyone But Catholics."). . . Real religious freedom gives everyone the right to make personal decisions, ( How baout a 24 oz. Big Gulp Chalice full of grape NeHi?) including whether and when to use birth control, based on our beliefs. It doesn't give one group the right to impose its beliefs on others, (Gay Marriage?) or to use religion as an excuse to discriminate by denying employees access to vital services. The fight they are waging isn't about religious liberty at all, but about whether a woman should have insurance coverage for birth control. When you stop and think about it, it's incredible that this is an issue in 2012. Mother Jones May 22, 2012
Mother Mary? "Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living." Thank you, Mother Jones! The living children about to be murdered in their mother's wombs are alive, until the Dowager Class gets more of its way with the help of sharks of the ACLU.
The ACLU's Alicia Gay warns that the "powerful lobbying arm of the Catholic Church" mistakenly claims that the HHS contraception mandate violates their religious liberty. ACLU February 2012
Is that a mistake Mother Mary Jones?
“Injustice boils in men's hearts as does steel in its cauldron, ready to pour forth, white hot, in the fullness of time”
You got that right Mother Dear.
Mother Jones once said, " God Almighty made Women and the . . .( Rockefeller) gang of thieves made ladies. These daughters of Rockefeller are Planned Parenthood and the Abortion Industry. They made Barack Obama President and his Government made war on Mother Jones as well as all of us Catholics. I agree with Mother Jones that "Movements to suppress wrongs can be carried out under the protection of the flag." I also believe that the current regime and its allies in the media alone decides who gets that protection and the Catholic Church does not fit the bill.
Mother Jones can be witnessed in the actions of the USCCB, Cardinal George, Cardinal Dolan and the Thomas More Society. Mother Jones Rallied for Religious Liberty in most cities of America on June 8th, 2012.
Mother Jones would spit in the collective Progressive eyes - the lot of them. She was not a humanitarian; she was hell-raiser. Watch some hell-raising from Catholics who read and remember.
In his eulogy, Father J. W. R. Maquire * said Jones would find miners living in tents, the serfs of coal companies and left them free and independent men. “Because of her great struggle for economic justice, she became a world figure.” What seems left unsaid, is her great Catholic faith
* Church of the Ascension -705 E. Main Street-Mount Olive, IL 62069-0259 US
Fr Larry Anschutz
Phone:
(217) 999-4981
Fax:
(217) 999-4036
** Six Things Everyone Should Know About The HHS Mandate
February 6, 2012WASHINGTON— The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops offers the following clarifications regarding the Health and Human Services regulations on mandatory coverage of contraceptives, sterilization and abortion-inducing drugs. 1.The mandate does not exempt Catholic charities, schools, universities, or hospitals. These institutions are vital to the mission of the Church, but HHS does not deem them "religious employers" worthy of conscience protection, because they do not "serve primarily persons who share the[ir] religious tenets."HHS denies these organizations religious freedom precisely because their purpose is to serve the common good of society—a purpose that government should encourage, not punish. 2.The mandate forces these institutions and others, against their conscience, to pay for things they consider immoral. Under the mandate, the government forces religious insurers to write policies that violate their beliefs;forces religious employers and schools to sponsor and subsidize coverage that violates their beliefs; and forces religious employees and students to purchase coverage that violates their beliefs. 3.The mandate forces coverage of sterilization and abortion-inducing drugs and devices as well as contraception. Though commonly called the "contraceptive mandate," HHS's mandate also forces employers to sponsor and subsidize coverage of sterilization.And by including all drugs approved by the FDA for use as contraceptives, the HHS mandate includes drugs that can induce abortion, such as "Ella," a close cousin of the abortion pill RU-486. 4.Catholics of all political persuasions are unified in their opposition to the mandateCatholics who have long supported this Administration and its healthcare policies have publicly criticized HHS's decision, including columnistsE.J. Dionne. . . ,Mark Shields. . . , andMichael Sean Winters. . . ; college presidents Father John Jenkins. . . andArturo Chavez. . . ; and Daughter of CharitySister Carol Keehan. . . , president and chief executive officer of the Catholic Health Association of the United States. 5.Many other religious and secular people and groups have spoken out strongly against the mandate. Many recognize this as an assault on the broader principle of religious liberty, even if they disagree with the Church on the underlying moral question.For example, Protestant Christian. . . ,Orthodox Christian. . . , andOrthodox Jewish. . . groups--none of which oppose contraception--have issued statements against the HHS's decision.TheWashington Post. . . ,USA Today. . . ,N.Y. Daily News. . . ,Detroit News. . . , and other secular outlets,columnists. . . , andbloggers. . . have editorialized against it.6.The federal mandate is much stricter than existing state mandates. HHS chose the narrowest state-level religious exemption as the model for its own.That exemption was drafted by the ACLU and exists in only 3 states (New York, California, Oregon).Even without a religious exemption, religious employers can already avoid the contraceptive mandates in 28 states by self-insuring their prescription drug coverage, dropping that coverage altogether, or opting for regulation under a federal law (ERISA) that pre-empts state law.The HHS mandate closes off all these avenues of relief. Additional information on the U.S. Catholic bishops’ stance on religious liberty, conscience protection and the HHS ruling regarding mandatory coverage of contraceptives, sterilization and abortion-inducing drugs is available athttp://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/religious-liberty/conscience-protection/index.cfm.---Keywords: religious freedom, freedom of conscience, Catholic charities, hospitals, schools, universities, religious employers, mandatory coverage, contraceptives, abortion, sterilization, HHS mandate, health care policies, religious exemption # # # # # MEDIA CONTACT:Mar Muñoz-Visoso O: 202-541-3202 M: 301-646-8616 Emailhttp://campaign2012.washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/beltway-confidential/aclu-catholic-religious-liberty-not-risk/362671
Dad always said that I couldn't find my butt with both hands. I can. Allow me to add this imperative -“Defend the unborn against abortion even if they persecute you, calumniate you, set traps for you, take you to court or kill you." - Pope Francis to celebrate Pro-life Mass, Vatican
"You stand up for what you believe in, even if it gets in the way of what other people think. You are proud of yourself and your accomplishments and you enjoy letting people know that."
A peach of a guy with all the sweetness one could expect from a life well-spent and in good company: short on brains but a terrific dancer!
Author:
Every Heart and Hand: A Leo High School Story
The Chorito Hog Leg, Book One: A Novel of Guam in Time of War
NAME: Mary Harris Jones
