teifidancer: Emma Goldman (27/6/1869 -14/5/40) - If I can't dance, it's not my revolution! (the real quote)

Sunday 15 December 2013

Emma Goldman (27/6/1869 -14/5/40) - If I can't dance, it's not my revolution! (the real quote)

'If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution'.

The above quote was widely attributed to Emma Goldman, but was the invention of anarchist printer Jack Frager for a small batch of Goldman T.shirts he printed in 1973. However in her memoirs,from the early 1950;s. 'Living My Life Goldman remembers being censured for dancing and states:-

"At the dances I was one of the most untiring and gayest. One evening a cousin of Sasha, a young boy, took me aside. With a grave face, as if he was about to announce the death of a dear comrade, he whispered to me that it did not behoove an agitator to dance. Certainly not with such reckless abandon, anyway. It was undignified for one who was on the way to become a force in the anarchist movement. My frivolity would only hurt the cause.
I grew furious at the impudent interference of the boy. I told him to mind his own business. I was tired of having the Cause constantly thrown into my face. I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from convention and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy. I insisted that our Cause could not expect me to become a nun and that the movement would not be turned into a cloister. If it meant, that I did not want it.
'I want freedom, the right to self-expression, everybody's right to beautiful, radiant things.' Anarchism meant that to me, and I would live it in spite of the whole world - prisons, persecutions, everything. Yes, even in spite of the condemnation of my own closest comrades I would live my beautiful ideal."

Emma Goldman 1911, from p56 of her autobiography,
Living My life

The story has since been passed around and condensed in the folk process as simply the slogan 'If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution'. And although, one the one hand, a fake quote, it''s since had a lot of positive results–it’s been a rallying cry for feminists, a rallying cry for anarchists, an inspiration to many. me included, and I don't feel undermines Emma Goldman's rich legacy or her charisma, and actually makes more people aware of her actions and deeds.

Remembered as a passionate political activist.writer and thinker during the beginning of the 20th century and known for her free-thinking and rebellious anarchist and communist beliefs. Her writings include discussions on free love, marriage, free speech, atheism, prisons, homosexuality, and capitalism, among other topics.

Goldman continues to command respect for her outstanding contribution to the history of radical working class struggle. As she once declared, “Everyone is an anarchist who loves liberty and hates oppression;” men to that.