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Lucy Parson - Revolutionary Woman Born Lucy Parson to Marie del Gather, a Mexicana mother and John Waller, a Creek Indian, Lucy was orphaned at age three and was raised by her uncle. It was during her early twenties when she moved from Texas to Chicago in 1873 that she became involved in revolutionary activism within the labor movement. Seeing all the poverty of capitalism she began to write articles on homelessness and unemployment. By 1883 Lucy Parsons helped found the International Working People’s Association (IWPA) an anarchist labor organization (which at the time was very progressive for its politics). She became a journalist writing for the IWPA’s newspaper The Alarm. She was most widely remembered by for her piece entitled “To Tramps,” which encouraged workers and the unemployed to rise up in direct violent actions against the rich capitalist ruling class. In part with struggling in defense of the working class she also contributed to anticolonial struggle when she wrote in defense of African people in the United States. The open racist attitudes in American society at the time openly attacked African people. The unjust treatment of Africans forced her to condemned the racist lynching taking place all across Occupied America. The victimization of Africans by white terror was primarily a product of class struggle, she believed, and that racism would disappear with the destruction of capitalism. In 1886 on behalf of the IWPA she and her husband participated in the Hay Market labor struggles along other labor organizations. After police provocation a rebellion took place and the police arrested many organizers and sent them to jail. Lucy Parsons began to organize the defense of many activists and traveled throughout Occupied America winning the support for the freedom of the labor activists. In 1892, after her husband was hung, she continued to publish a newspaper entitled Freedom where she wrote against lynchings and black peonage. In 1905 she participated in organizing the Industrial Workers of the World (an anarchosydicalist trade union), which published a paper called The Liberator. In 1927 she became member of the of the National Committee of the International Labor Defense- a communist led-organization which defended labor activist and unjustly accused Africans such as the Scottsboro Nine and Angelo Herndon. After working with the Communist Party for several years she finally joined in 1939 when capitalism and fascism were gaining power while anarchism was ineffective in confronting them. After 50 years of continuous activism Lucy Parsons died in a fire in her Chicago home in 1942. The pigs seized every piece of political propaganda and destroyed it. That is why in the pages of ¡LA VERDAD! we shall uphold Lucy Parsons for the contributions she lived, sacrificed and died for. Compañera Lucy Parsons dedication to activism through her political actions is an example of revolutionary activism and an example of our people’s long history of struggle for peace, justice and dignity.
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