The Anarchists Respond
George Howland Jr.'s provocative cover story this week on the Emma Goldman Finishing School, an anarchist commune in Seattle's Beacon Hill neighborhood, has already prompted a response from the household about which he writes. George is on vacation this week, but I invite you to share your comments here about the story and this note from Goldman resident Parke Burgess:
Dear Editor:
While George Howland's article on the Emma Goldman Finishing School wasn't entirely false, he missed the real story. In an hours-long interview with me I conveyed to him what I thought the real story was. I also told him flatly that I expected him to disappoint—that the real story is simply too important and threatening for a fluffy human interest piece.
The Emma Goldman Finishing School exists because its members believe that the mainstream culture is morally bankrupt and ecologically unsustainable. In a world where 53 percent of the human population lives on less than two dollars a day, we believe it's simply wrong to live blithely as if everyone were middle class, and to participate in an economy that systematically enriches a few at the expense of the many. Our project is threatening because it compels folks to reflect on their own practices and the degree to which they are complicit in the scandalous impoverishment of people and nature.
None of us at Emma's believes that we represent a high standard of radical living to be emulated widely; we only insist that at least we're making the effort. Nonetheless, George did exactly what we feared and expected he would. Averting his eyes from the painful truth that lay at the ground of this story, he distracted himself and his readers with the silly and awkward troubles that inevitably bubble at the surface of much deeper waters.
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