Un frammento delle esperienze carcerarie di Emma Goldman e Alexander Berkman

How rich in comparison are we political prisoners! Kate Richards O’Hare, who has the gift of going into the life of every prisoner, soothing and comforting and sustaining her, and is herself sustained by the ideal and the love of thousands. Rare little Ella Antolini, with her marvelous stoicism, her splendid fortitude, and her great capacity for human sympathy. We politicals are rich, indeed. Rich in the love of our dear comrades, rich in our faith of the future, strong in our position. But the others? It is for them we plead, against the wrongs, the inhumanities committed against those in the prison we left behind. Indeed, in every prison in the land. EMMA GOLDMAN THE ATLANTA FEDERAL PENITENTIARY STATEMENT BY ALEXANDER BERKMAN Published in the Atlanta _Constitution_, October 1, 1919, on the day of his release from the Federal Penitentiary, Atlanta, Ga. This country is at the present time going through the same throes of social and industrial rebirth that are convulsing England, France and other European countries. The steelworkers’ strike is merely one of the symptoms of the social evolutionary process that may in the near future culminate in revolution. The sources of labor discontent in this country are identical with those in every other land of our so-called civilization. The working masses are not satisfied any more with empty political democracy; they demand a share in the products of their industry, and the opportunity to live, to enjoy life. Industrial slavery, perhaps more acute in the United States than anywhere else, is on its death-bed. The next step in the social life of the world is the taking over of all industry by the workers, both manual and mental, to be managed and operated by themselves, for the benefit of the producers instead of for the profit of our industrial and financial Kaisers.…