UniversalMonk

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/44474803

From teenage civil rights organizer to hero of the historic 1963 March on Washington

From teenage civil rights organizer to hero of the historic 1963 March on Washington

Gov. Jared Polis made good Friday on his threat to veto a pro-union bill backed by every legislative Democrat and the state’s labor organizations, a move that’s likely to deepen the governor’s rift with key parts of the party’s coalition and set up a 2026 ballot fight.

Polis’ office announced his rejection of Senate Bill 5 on Friday afternoon, 10 days after it cleared the legislature. In his veto letter, the governor said he was open to changing the state’s Labor Peace Act, “if agreed to by both labor and business.”

SB-5 would’ve eliminated the second election in union formation, which is a unique provision of Colorado law that requires organized workers to pass another vote, with a 75% threshold, before they can negotiate the collection of union dues with their employer. It was sponsored by Democratic Sens. Robert Rodriguez and Jessie Danielson and Reps. Javier Mabrey and Jennifer Bacon.

Polis wrote that he felt SB-5 “does not satisfy” the high threshold he believes is necessary before workers can negotiate dues deduction.

“Unfortunately, while both sides moved their positions, labor and business missed an opportunity this year to modernize this outdated law while providing lasting certainty to Colorado workers and businesses,” Polis wrote. His office previously defended the Labor Peace Act as a law that “serves the state and workers so well.”

In a joint statement Friday, leaders of Colorado labor unions blasted the governor’s veto as a “slap in the face.”

“Governor Polis has chosen to protect an 80-year-old, anti-union law over the rights of working Coloradans,” Stephanie Felix-Sowy, the president of SEIU Local 105, said in the statement. “He is now the only Democratic governor in the country defending a ‘right to work’ policy that undermines worker freedom and shields corporate power. Nurses, janitors, caregivers, and service workers across Colorado won’t forget, and we’re just getting started.”

Polis’ veto comes as no surprise: He’d privately told SB-5 supporters for months that he would reject the proposal unless the business community signed off on it, and he reiterated that position to reporters last week, after the bill passed.

In an interview with the Colorado Sun on Thursday, Polis said it would be “politically, suicide if I were to sign the bill,” given his earlier threats to veto it.

Talks to reconcile the differences between labor groups, business leaders and Polis’ office broke down in the final days of the session earlier this month. Business groups rejected Polis’ final compromise, and labor leaders — who’d accepted that deal — then rejected Polis’ attempt to inject his own priorities, like cuts to restaurant workers’ pay and expansion of charter schools, into the talks.

Loren Furman, the president and CEO of the Colorado Chamber of Commerce, praised Polis for the veto in a statement Friday, and she said business leaders had negotiated in good faith.

“SB-5 would have also threatened our statewide business climate at a time when we should be fostering a competitive economy,” Furman wrote. “We want Colorado to be a top state where business leaders choose to invest and create jobs, and vetoing SB-5 preserves the unique labor laws that set us apart from other states.”

For months, Democratic lawmakers and labor unions mounted a public pressure campaign on Polis to sway him, which included a letter signed by five former U.S. Labor secretaries urging him to sign the bill.

On Tuesday, with the bill passed and a veto imminent, supporters held a rally behind the governor’s mansion in Denver. It included a Polis impersonator in enormous basketball shoes — a nod to the governor’s casual footwear — who introduced himself as “Jerry Polis, Jared Polis’ cooler cousin who cares about workers.”

Unions have long opposed the second election as unnecessary government interference that effectively makes Colorado a diet version of a “right-to-work” state, referring to states that prohibit requirements that workers join a union or pay dues. They have argued that workers should be able to more easily negotiate their contracts.

But in the second election, Colorado’s free market-friendly governor found a business regulation that he would defend. He and business groups argued that the state’s labor laws have worked effectively for decades and that workers should have maximum say in the collection of union dues from their paychecks.

Though Polis stressed in his letter that he support unions, his rejection of SB-5 puts him at odds with the Democratic lawmakers who control the legislature, and it will worsen his relationship with labor groups, who have accused Polis of going back on his promise to champion organized workers during his 2018 gubernatorial campaign. A year ago, Polis rejected other pro-union bills, sparking a rally outside his office attended by a number of elected Democratic leaders.

Legal advocate for workers, renters announces run for Colorado attorney general Polis’ SB-5 veto is not the end of the debate. Labor unions are likely to bring the bill back in Polis’ final year in office and then again, if necessary, when his successor takes office in 2027.

They’ve also begun gathering signatures for a 2026 ballot measure that would enshrine “just cause” protections in state law, which would require employers to have a valid reason before they can fire someone.

That may be the first of multiple labor-backed ballot measures in 2026. Labor officials are eying the potential: Not only is 2026 a midterm year during a Republican presidency, but April data released by the bipartisan Colorado Polling Institute found that labor unions had the highest total favorability ratings of any person or group in the state included in the survey — including Polis, who placed second.

Business groups, meanwhile, have not publicly indicated if they’ll respond. A libertarian activist, Jon Caldara of the Independence Institute, has proposed a right-to-work ballot initiative, which is also approved for signature-gathering.

Older article, but it's funny how things haven't changed in over a year.

Transcript of the Jerilderie letter written by bushranger Ned Kelly in 1879.

Page 1 Dear Sir

I wish to acquaint you with some of the occurrences of the present, past and future. In or about the Spring of 1870 the ground was very soft. A Hawker named Mr Gould got his waggon bogged between Greta and my mother’s place house on the eleven mile creek. The ground was that rotten it would bog a duck in places so Mr Gould had to abandon his waggon for fear of losing his horses in the spewy ground. He was stopping at my mother’s awaiting finer or dryer weather. Mr McCormack and his wife (Hawkers’ also) were camped in Greta and the mosquitoes were very bad which they generally are in a wet spring, and to help them Mr Johns had a horse called Ruita Cruta. Although a gelding was as clever as old Wombat or any other Stallion

Page 2 at running horses away and taking them on his beat, which was from Greta swamp to the seven mile creek, consequently he enticed McCormack’s horse away from Greta. Mr Gould was up early finding his horses, heard a bell and seen McCormack’s horse for he knew the horse well. He sent his boy to take him back to Greta, when McCormack’s got the horse, they came straight out to Gould and accused him of working the horse. This was false and Gould was amazed at the idea. I could not help laughing to hear Mrs McCormack accusing him of using the horse after him being so kind as to send his boy to take him from the Ruita Cruta and take him back to him. I pleaded Gould’s innocence and Mrs McCormack turned on me and accused me of

Page 3 bringing the horse from Greta to Gould’s waggon to pull him out of the bog. I did not say much to the woman as my mother was present, but that same day me and my uncle was cutting calves. Gould wrapped up a note and a pair of the calves testicles and gave them to me to give them to Mrs McCormack. I did not see her and I gave the parcel to a boy to give to her when she would come. Instead of giving it to her he gave it to her husband. Consequently McCormack said he would summons me. I told him neither me or Gould used their horse. He said I was a liar and he could welt me or any of my breed. I was about 14 years of age but accepted the challenge and dismounting when Mrs McCormack

Page 4 struck my horse in the flank with a bullocks shin it jumped forward and my fist came in collision with McCormack’s nose and caused him to lose his equilibrium and fall prostrate. I tied up my horse to finish the battle but McCormack got up and ran to the police .camp Constable Hall asked me what the row was about. I told him they accused me and Gould of using their horse and I hit him and I would do the same to him if he challenged me. McCormack pulled me and swore their lives against me. I was sentenced to three months for hitting him and three months for the parcel and bound to keep the peace for 12 months. Mrs McCormack gave good substantial evidence as she is well acquainted

Page 5 with that place called Tasmania better known as the Dervon or Van Dieman’s land. And McCormack being a policeman over the convicts and w omen being scarce released her from that land of bondage and tyranny. And they came to Victoria and are at present, residents of Greta and on the 29th of March I was released from prison and came home. Wild Wright came to the eleven mile to see Mr Gunn, stopped all night and lost his mare. Both him and me looked all day for her and could not get her. Wright who was a stranger to me was in a hurry to get back to Mansfield and I gave him another mare and he told me if I found his mare to keep her until he brought mine back. I was going to Wangaratta

Page 6 and seen the mare I caught her and took her with me. All the police and Detective Berrill seen her as Martain’s girls used to ride her about the town during several days that I stopped at Peter Martain’s Star Hotel in Wangaratta. She was a chestnut mare, white face, docked tail, very remarkable. Branded as plain as the hands on a town clock. The property of a Telegraph master in Mansfield, he lost her on the 6th, gazetted her on the 12th of March and I was a prisoner in Beechworth Goal until the 29th March. Therefore I could not have stole the mare. I was riding the mare through Greta. Constable Hall came to me and said he wanted me to sign some papers that I did not sign at Beechworth concerning my

Page 7 bail bonds. I thought it was the truth. He said the papers was at the Barracks and I had no idea he wanted to arrest me or I would have quietly rode away instead of going to the Barracks. I was getting off when Hall caught hold of me and thought to throw me but made a mistake and came on the broad of his back, himself in the dust. The mare galloped away and instead of me putting my foot on Hall’s neck and taking his revolver and putting him in the lockup, I tried to catch the mare. Hall got up and snapped three or four caps at me and would have shot me but the Colts patent refused. This is well known in Greta. Hall never told me he wanted to

Page 8 arrest me until after he tried to shoot me. When I heard the caps snapping, I stood until Hall came close. He had me covered and was shaking with fear and I knew he would pull the trigger before he would be game to put his hand on me so I duped and jumped at him, caught the revolver with one hand and Hall by the collar with the other. I dare not strike him or my sureties would loose the bond money. I used to trip and let him take a mouthful of dust now and again as he was as helpless as a big guano after leaving a dead horse or bullock. I kept throwing him in the dust until I got him across the street, the very spot where Mrs O’Brien’s hotel stands now. The cellar was just

Page 9 dug then. There was some brush fencing where the post and rail was taking down and on this I threw big cowardly Hall on his belly. I straddled him and rolled both spurs into his thighs. He roared like a big calf attacked by dogs and shifted several yards of the fence. I got his hands at the back of his neck and tried to make him let the revolver go but he stuck to it like grim death to a dead volunteer. He called for assistance to a man named Cohan and Barnett Lewis, Thompson Jewell, two blacksmiths who was looking on. I dare not strike any of them as I was bound to keep the peace or I could have spread those curs like dung in a paddock. They got ropes, tied my hands and feet and Hall beat me over the head

Page 10 with his six chambered colts revolver. nine stitches were put in some of the cuts by Dr Hastings And when Wild Wright and my Mother came they could trace us across the street by the blood in the dust and which spoiled the lustre of the paint on the gate post of the Barracks. Hall sent for more police and Dr Hastings next morning. I was handcuffed, a rope tied from them to my legs and to the seat of the cart and taken to Wangaratta Hall. He was frightened I would throw him out of the cart so he tied me whilst Constable Arthur laughed at his cowardice for it was he who escorted me and Hall to Wangaratta. I was tried and committed as Hall swore I claimed the mare the

Page 11 Doctor died or he would have proved Hall a perjurer. Hall has been tried several times for perjury but got clear. As this is no crime in the police force it is a credit to a policeman to convict an innocent man but any muff can pot a guilty one. Hall’s character is well known about El Dorado and Snowy Creek and Hall was considerably in debt to Mr L O’Brien and as he was going to leave Greta, Mr O’Brien seen no other chance of getting his money so there was a subscription collected for Hall and with the aid of this money he got James Murdock who was recently hung in Wagga Wagga to give false evidence against me. But I was acquitted on the charge of horse stealing and on Hall and Murdock’s evidence,

Page 12 I was found guilty of receiving and got 3 years experience in Beechworth Pentridges dungeons. This is the only charge ever proved against me. Therefore I can say I never was convicted of horse or cattle stealing. My Brother Dan was never charged with assaulting a woman but he was sentenced to three months without the option of a fine and one month and two pounds fine for damaging property by Mr Butler PM, a sentence that there is no law to uphold. Therefore the Minister of Justice neglected his duty in that case but there never was such a thing as justice in the English laws. But any amount of injustice to be had. Out of over thirty head of the very best horses the land

Page 13 could produce, I could only find one when I got my liberty. Constable Flood stole and sold the most of them to the navvies on the railway line. One bay cob he stole and sold four different times, the line was completed and the men all gone when I came out and Flood was shifted to Oxley. He carried on the same game, there all the stray horses that was any time without an owner and not in the police Gazette Flood used to claim. He was doing a good trade at Oxley until Mr Brown of the Laceby Station got him shifted as he was always running his horses about. Flood is different to Sergeant Steel. Strachan Hall and the most of police as they have to hire cads and if they fail they,

Page 14 the police are quite helpless but Flood can make a cheque single handed he is the greatest horse stealer with the exception of myself and George King I know of. I never worked on a farm. A horse and saddle was never traced to me after leaving employment since February 1873. I worked as a faller at Mr J Saunders and K. Rules Sawmills then for Heach and Dochendorf. I never worked for less than two pounds ten a week since I left Pentridge and in 1875 or 1876 I was overseer for Saunders and Rules. Bourke’s water holes sawmills in Victoria since then I was on the King River during my stay there I ran in a wild bull which I gave to Lydicher, a farmer.

Page 15 He sold him to Carr, a publican and butcher who killed him for beef some time afterwards. I was blamed for stealing this bull from James Whitty Boggy Creek. I asked Whitty Oxley racecourse why he blamed me for stealing his bull. He said he had found his bull and never blamed me but his son-in-law Farrell told him he heard I sold the bull to Carr. Not long afterwards I heard again I was blamed for stealing a mob of calves from Whitty and Farrell which I knew nothing about. I began to think they wanted me to give them something to talk about. Therefore I started wholesale and retail horse and cattle dealing. Whitty and Burns not being satisfied with all the picked land on the

Page 16 Boggy Creek and King river and the run of their stock on the certificate ground free and no one interfering with them paid heavy rent to the Banks for all the open ground so as a poor man could keep no stock. And impounded every beast they could get even off Government roads. If a poor man happened to leave his horse or a bit of poddy calf outside his paddock they would be impounded. I have known over 60 head of horses impounded in one day by Whitty and Burns all belonging to poor farmers. They would have to leave their ploughing or harvest or other employment to go to Oxley. When they would get there perhaps not have money enough to release them

Page 17 and have to give a bill of sale or borrow the money which is no easy matter. And along with all this sort of work, Farrell the policeman stole a horse from George King and had him in Whitty and Farrell’s paddock until he left the force and all this was the cause of me and my stepfather George King taking their horses and selling them to Baumgarten and Kennedy. The pick of them was taken to a good market and the culls were kept in Peterson’s paddock and their brands altered by me two was sold to Kennedy and the rest to Baumgarten who were strangers to me and I believe honest men.

Page 18 They paid me full value for the horses and could not have known they were stolen. No person had anything to do with the stealing and selling of the horses but me and George King William Cooke who was convicted for Whitty’s horses was innocent. He was not in my company at Peterson’s. But it is not the place of the police to convict guilty men, as it is by them they get their living. Had the right parties been convicted it would have been a bad job for the police as Berry would have sacked a great many of them, only I came to their aid and kept them in their billets and good employment and got them double pay. And yet the ungrateful articles my mother and an infant, my brother-in-law and another

Page 19 man who was innocent, and still annoy my brothers and sisters and the ignorant unicorns, even threaten to shoot myself. But as soon as I am dead they will be heels up in the muroo, there will be no more police required. They will be sacked and supplanted by soldiers on low pay in the towns and special constables made of some of the farmers to make up for this double pay and expense. It will pay Government to give those people who are suffering innocence justice and liberty. If not I will be compelled to show some colonial stratagem which will open the eyes of not only the Victorian police and inhabitants but also the whole British army, and no doubt

Page 20 they will acknowledge their hounds were barking at the wrong stump, and that Fitzpatrick will be the cause of greater slaughter to the Union Jack than Saint Patrick was to the snakes and toads in Ireland. The Queen of England was as guilty as Baumgarten and Kennedy, Williamson and Skillion of what they were convicted for. When the horses were found on the Murray River I wrote a letter to Mr Swanhill of Lake Rowan to acquaint the auctioneer and to advertize my horses for sale, brought some of them to that place but did not sell. I sold some of them in Benalla, Melbourne and other places and left the colony and became a rambling gambler soon after

Page 21 I left - there was a warrant for me and the police searched the place and watched night and day for two or three weeks and they could not snare me. They got a warrant against my brother Dan and on the 15 April, Fitzpatrick came to the Eleven Mile Creek to arrest him. He had some conversation with a horse dealer whom he swore was William Skillion, this man was not called in Beechworth. Besides several other witnesses who alone could have proved Fitzpatrick’s falsehood after leaving this man he went to the house asked was Dan in. Dan came out. I hear previous to this Fitzpatrick had some conversation with Williamsons on the hill he asked Dan to come to Greta with him as he had a warrant for him for stealing Whitty’s horses. Dan said all right, they both went inside. Dan was having something to eat. His mother asked Fitzpatrick what he wanted Dan for. The Trooper said he had a warrant for him. Dan then asked him to produce it. He said it was only a telegram sent from Chiltern but Sergeant Whelan ordered him to relieve Steel at Greta and call and arrest Dan and take him into Wangaratta next morning and get him remanded. Dan’s mother said Dan need not go without a warrant unless he liked and that the trooper had no business on her premises without some authority besides his own word. The trooper pulled out his revolver and said he would blow her brains out if she interfered in the arrest. She told him it was a good job for him Ned was not there or he would ram the revolver down his throat. Dan looked out and said Ned is

Page 22 coming now. The trooper being off his guard looked out and when Dan got his attention drawn, he dropped the knife and fork which showed he had he had no murderous intent and slapped Leenan’s hug on him, took his revolver and kept him there until Skillion and Ryan came with horses which Dan sold that night. The trooper left and invented some scheme to say that he got shot which any man can see is false. He told Dan to clear out that Sergeant Steel and Detective Brown and Strachan would be there before morning. Strachan had been over the Murray trying to get up a case against him and they would convict him if they caught him as the stock society offered an enticement for witnesses to swear anything and the Germans over the Murray would swear to the wrong man as well as the right. Next day Williamson and my mother were arrested and Skillion the day after who was not there at all at the time of the row which can be proved by 8 or 9 witnesses. And the police got credit and praise in the papers for arresting the mother of 12 children, one an infant on her breast and those two quiet hardworking innocent men who would not know the difference in a revolver and a saucepan handle, and kept them six months awaiting trial and then convicted them on the evidence of the meanest article that ever the sun shone on. It seems that the jury were well chosen by the police as there was a discharged sergeant amongst them which is contrary to law. They thought it impossible for a policeman to swear a lie but I can assure them it is by that means and hiring cads they get promotion. I have heard from a trooper that he never

Page 23 knew Fitzpatrick to be one night sober and that he sold his sister to a China man. But he looks a young strapping (fellow), rather genteel, more fit to be a starcher to a laundress than policeman for to a keen observer he has the wrong appearance or a manly heart. The deceit and cowardice is too plain to be seen in the puny cabbage hearted looking face. I heard nothing of this transaction until very close on the trial. I being then over 400 miles from Greta when I heard I was outlawed and a hundred pounds reward for me for shooting at a trooper in Victoria and a hundred pound reward for any man that could prove a conviction of horse stealing against me. So I came back to Victoria, knew I would get no justice if I gave myself up. I enquired after my brother Dan and found him digging on Bullock Creek, heard how the police used to be blowing that they would not ask me to stand, they would shoot me first and then cry surrender and how they used to rush into the house upset all the milk dishes break tins of eggs, empty the flour out of the bags on to the ground and even the meat out of the cask and destroy all the provisions, and shove the girls in front of them into the rooms like dogs so as if any one was there they would shoot the girls first. But they knew well I was not there or I would have scattered their blood and brains like rain. I would manure the Eleven Mile with their bloated carcasses and yet remember there is not one drop of murderous blood in my veins. Superintendent Smith used to say to my sisters, see all the

Page 24 men I have out today, I will have as many more tomorrow and we will blow him into pieces as small as paper that is in our guns. Detective Ward and Constable Hays took out their revolvers and threatened to shoot the girls and Children in Mrs Skillion’s absence the greatest ruffians and murderers no matter how depraved would not be guilty of such a cowardly action, and this sort of cruelty and disgraceful and cowardly conduct to my brothers and sisters who had no protection coupled with the conviction of my mother. And those men certainly made my blood boil as I don’t think there is a man born could have the patience to suffer it as long as I did or ever allow his blood to get cold cold while such insults as these were unavenged. And yet in every paper that is printed I am called the blackest and coldest blooded murderer ever on record. But if I hear any more of it I will not exactly show them what cold blooded murder is but wholesale and retail slaughter something different to shooting three troopers in self defence and robbing a bank. I would have been rather hot blooded to throw down my rifle and let them shoot me and my innocent brother. They were not satisfied with frightening my sisters night and day and destroying their provisions and lagging my mother and infant and those innocent men but should follow me and my brother into the wilds where he had been quietly digging neither molesting or interfering with any one he was making good wages as the creek is very rich within half a mile from where I shot Kennedy. I was not there long and on the 25 October, I came on police tracks between Tabletop and the bogs. I crossed

Page 25 them and returning in the evening I came on a different lot of tracks making for the shingle hut. I went to our camp and told my brother and his two mates and my brother went and found their camp at the shingle hut, about a mile from my brother’s house, saw they carried long firearms and we knew our doom was sealed if we could not beat those before the others would come as I knew the other party of police would soon join them. And if they came on us at our camp they would shoot us down like dogs at our work as we had only two guns. We thought if best to try and bail those up, take their firearms and ammunition and horses and we could stand a chance with the rest. We approached the spring as close as we could get to the camp, as the intervening space being clear ground and no battery we saw two men at the logs. They got up and one took a double barrelled fowling piece and fetched a horse down and hobbled him at the tent, and we thought there were more men in the tent asleep, those being on sentry. We could have shot those two men without speaking but not wishing to take their lives we waited. McIntyre laid the gun against a stump and Lonigan sat on the log. I advanced, my brother Dan keeping McIntyre covered which he took to be Constable Flood. And had he not obeyed my orders or attempted to reach for the gun or draw his revolver, he would have been shot dead. But when I called on them to throw up their hands, McIntyre obeyed and Lonigan ran some six or seven yards to a battery of logs instead of dropping behind the one

Page 26 he was sitting on. He had just got to the logs and put his head up to take aim when I shot him that instant, or he would have shot me as I took him to be Strachan, the man who said he would not ask me to stand, he would shoot me first like a dog. But it happened to be Lonigan the man who in company with Sergeant Whelan Fitzpatrick and King, the boot maker and Constable O’Day that tried to put a pair of handcuffs on me in Benalla, but could not and had to allow McInnes the Miller to put them on. Previous to Fitzpatrick swearing, he was shot. I was fined two pounds for not allowing five curs like Sergeant Whelan, O’Day, Fitzpatrick, King and Lonigan, and would have sent me to kingdom come. Only I was not ready and he is the man that blowed before he left Violet Town. If Ned Kelly was to be shot, he was the man that would shoot him and no doubt he would shoot me even if I threw up my arms and laid down as he knew four of them could not arrest me single handed, not to talk of the rest of my mates. Also either him or me would have to die, this he knew well therefore he had a right to keep out of my road. Fitzpatrick is the only one I hit out of the five in Benalla. This shows my feelings towards him as he said we were good friends and even swore it. But he was the biggest enemy I had in the country with the exception of Lonigan, and he can be thankful I was not there when he took a revolver and threatened to shoot my mother in her own house. It is not fire three shots and miss him at a yard and a half. I don’t think I would use a revolver to shoot a man like him when I was within a yard and a half of him or attempt to

Page 27 fire into a house where my mother, brothers and sisters was. And according to Fitzpatrick’s statement, all around him a man that is such a bad shot as to miss a man three times at a yard and a half would never attempt to fire into a house where my mother brothers among a houseful of women and children while I had a pair of arms and a bunch of fives on the end of them that never failed to peg at anything they came in contact with. And Fitzpatrick knew the weight of one of them only too well as it run against him once in Benalla and cost me two pound odd as he is very subject to fainting. As soon as I shot Lonigan he jumped up and staggered some distance from the logs with his hands raised and then fell. He surrendered but too late I asked McIntyre who was in the tent. He replied no one. I advanced and took possession of their two revolvers and fowling piece which I loaded with bullets instead of shot. I asked McIntyre where his mates was. He said they had gone down the creek and he did not expect them that night. He asked me was I going to shoot him and his mates. I told him no I would shoot no man if he gave up his arms and leave the force. He said the police all knew Fitzpatrick had wronged us and he intended to leave the force as he had bad health and his life was insured. He told me he intended going home and that Kennedy and Scanlon were out looking for our camp and also about the other police he told me the New South Wales police had shot a man for shooting Sergeant Walling. I told him if they did, they had shot the wrong man and I expect your gang came

Page 28 to do the same with me. He said no they did not come to shoot me, they came to apprehend me. I asked him what they carried, spencer rifles and breech loading, fowling places, and so much ammunition for, as the police was only supposed to carry one revolver and six cartridges in the revolver but they had eighteen rounds of revolver cartridges, each three dozen for the fowling piece and twenty one spencer rifle cartridges. And God knows how many they had away with the rifle this looked as if they meant not only to shoot me, only to riddle me. but I don’t know either Kennedy, Scanlan or him and had nothing against them. He said he would get them to give up their arms if I would not shoot them as I could not blame them, they had to do their duty. I said I did not blame them for doing honest duty but I could not suffer them blowing me to pieces in my own native land and they knew Fitzpatrick wronged us and why not make it public and convict him. But no, they would rather riddle poor unfortunate creoles. But they will rue the day ever Fitzpatrick got among them. Our two mates came over when they heard the shots fired but went back again for fear the police might come to our camp while we were all away, and manure bullock flat with us. On our arrival, I stopped at the logs and Dan went back to the spring, for the troopers would come in that way. But I soon heard them coming up the creek. I told McIntyre to tell them to give up their arms. He spoke to Kennedy who was some distance in front of Scanlan he reached for his revolver and jumped off on the off side of his horse and got behind a tree when I

Page 29 called on them to surrender, throw up their arms, and Scanlon who carried the rifle slewed his horse around to gallop away. But the horse would not go and as quick as thought fired at me with the rifle without unslinging it, and was in the act of firing again when I had to shoot him and he fell from his horse. I could have shot them without speaking but their lives was no good to me. McIntyre jumped on Kennedy’s horse and I allowed him to go as I did not like to shoot him after he surrendered or I would have shot him as he was between me and Kennedy. Therefore I could not shoot Kennedy without shooting him first. Kennedy kept firing from behind a tree. My brother Dan advanced and Kennedy ran I followed him, he stopped behind another tree and fired again. I shot him in the armpit and he dropped his revolver and ran. I fired again with the gun as he slewed around to surrender. I did not know he had dropped his revolver the bullet passed through the right side of his chest and he could not live or I would have let him go. Had they been my own brothers, I could not help shooting them or else let them shoot me which they would have done had their bullets been directed as they intended them. But as for handcuffing Kennedy to a tree or cutting his ear off or brutally treating any of them is a falsehood. If Kennedy’s ear was cut off, it was not done by me, and none of my mates was near him after he was shot. I put his cloak over him and left him as well as I could. And were they my own brothers, I could not have been more sorry for them. This cannot be called wilful murder for I was compelled to shoot them or lie down and let them shoot me, it would not be wilful murder if they packed our remains in shattered into a mass of animated gore to Mansfield. They would have got great praise and credit as well as promotion but I

Page 30 am recorded a horrid brute because I had not been cowardly enough to lie down for them under such trying circumstances, and insults to my people. Certainly their wives and children are to be pitied but they must remember those men came into the bush with the intention of scattering pieces of me and my brother all over the bush and yet they know and acknowledge I have been wronged. And my mother and four or five men lagged innocent, and is my brothers and sisters and my mother not to be pitied also who was has no alternative only to put up with the brutal and cowardly conduct of a parcel of big ugly, fat necked, wombat headed, big bellied, magpie legged, narrow hipped splaw-footed sons of Irish bailiffs or English landlords which is better known as officers of justice or Victorian police who some calls honest gentlemen. But I would like to know what business an honest man would have in the police as it is an old saying, ’it takes a rogue to catch a rogue’ and a man that knows nothing about roguery would never enter the force and take an oath to arrest brother, sister, father or mother if required. And to have a case and conviction if possible, any man knows it is possible to swear a lie. And if a policeman looses a conviction for the sake of swearing a lie he has broke his oath, therefore he is a perjurer. Either ways a policeman is a disgrace to his country and ancestors and religion, as they were all Catholics before the Saxons and Cranmore yoke held sway since then they were persecuted massacred, thrown into martyrdom and tortured beyond the ideas of the present generation. What would people say if they saw a strapping big lump of an Irishman shepparding sheep for fifteen bob a week or tailing turkeys in Tallarook ranges for a smile from Julia or even begging his tucker.

Page 31 They would say he ought to be ashamed of himself and tar and feather him. But he would be a king to a policeman who for a lazy loafing cowardly billet left the ash corner, deserted the Shamrock, the emblem of true wit and beauty to serve under a flag and nation that has destroyed, massacred and murdered their forefathers by the greatest of torture as rolling them down hill in spiked barrels, pulling their toes and finger nails, and on the wheel and every torture imaginable. More was transported to Van Dieman’s Land to pine their young lives away in starvation and misery among tyrants worse than the promised hell itself. All of true blood, bone and beauty that was not murdered on their own soil or had fled to America or other countries to bloom again another day, were doomed to Port McQuarie, Toweringabbie and Norfolk Island and Emu Plain. And in those places of tyranny and condemnation, many a blooming Irishman rather than subdue to the Saxon yoke were flogged to death and bravely died in servile chains, but true to the Shamrock and a credit to Paddy’s land. What would people say if I became a policeman and took an oath to arrest my brothers, sisters and relations, and convict them by fair or foul means after the conviction of my mother, and the persecutions and insults offered to myself. And people would they say I was a decent gentleman

Page 32 and yet a policeman is still in worse and guilty of meaner actions than that the Queen must surely be proud of such heroic men as the police and Irish soldiers. As it takes eight or eleven of the biggest mud crushers in Melbourne to take one poor little half starved larrikin to a watch house. I have seen as many as eleven big and ugly enough to lift Mount Macedon out of a crab hole, move like the species of a baboon or guerrilla than a man actually come into a court house and swear they could not arrest one eight stone larrikin. And them, armed with battens and neddies without some civilian’s assistance and some of them going to the hospital from the effects of hits from the fists of the larrikin. And the magistrate could send the poor little larrikin into a dungeon for being a better man than such a parcel of armed curs. What would England do if America declared war and hoisted a green flag as it is all Irishmen that has got command army forts of her batterys, even her very life guards and beef tasters are Irish. Would they not slew round and fight her with their own arms for the sake of the color they dare not wear for years and to reinstate it and rise old Erin’s isle once more from the pressure and tyrannism of the English yoke, and which has kept in poverty and starvation and caused them to wear the enemy’s coat. What else can England expect, is there not big fat necked unicorns enough paid to torment and drive me to do things which I don’t wish to do without the public assisting them.

Page 33 I have never interfered with any person unless they deserved it and yet there are civilians who take firearms against me for what reason I do not know. Unless they want me to turn on them and exterminate them. Without medicine I shall be compelled to make an example of some of them if they cannot find no other employment. If I had robbed and plundered, ravished and murdered everything I met, young and old, rich and poor, the public could not do anymore than take firearms and assisting the police as they have done. But by the light that shines pegged on an ant bed with their bellies opened, their fat taken out, rendered and poured down their throat boiling hot, will be fool to what pleasure I will give some of them. And any person aiding or harbouring or assisting the police in any way whatever or employing any person whom they know to be a detective, or cad or those who would be so depraved as to take blood money, will be outlawed and declared unfit to be allowed human burial. Their property either consumed or confiscated and them and theirs and all belonging to them exterminated of the face of the earth, the enemy I cannot catch myself. I shall give a payable reward for I would like to know who put that article that reminds me of a poodle dog half clipped in the lion fashion called Brooker Smith superintendent of police he knows as much about commanding police

Page 34 as Captain Standing does about mustering mosquitoes and boiling them down for their fat on the back blocks of the Lachlan, for he has a head like a turnip, a stiff neck as big as his shoulders, narrow hipped and pointed towards the feet like a vine stake. And if there is any one to be called a murderer regarding Kennedy, Scanlan and Lonigan it is that misplaced poodle he gets as much pay as a doz good troopers, if there is any good in them. And what does he do for it he cannot look behind him without turning his whole frame. It take three or four police to keep sentry while he sleep in Wangaratta for fear of body snatchers. Do they think he is a superior animal to the men that has to guard them him. If so why not send the men that gets big pay and rec k oned superior to the common police after me and you shall soon save the country of high salaries to men that is fit for nothing else but getting better men than himself shot, and sending orphan children to the industrial school to make prostitutes for the detectives, and other evil disposed persons send the high paid men that receive big salaries for years in a gang by themselves after me, as it will make no difference to them but it will give the public a chance of showing whether they are worth more pay than a common trooper or not. And I think the public will soon find out they are only in the road of good men. That is if there

Page 35 is any good men among them and obtaining money under false pretences.

Page 36 PLEASE NOTE: Page 36 of the original document is a blank page.

Page 37 I do not call McIntyre a coward as he is as good a man, as wears the jacket he had the presence of mind to know his position directly he was spoken to, it is only foolishness to disobey an outlaw, it was cowardice and foolhardiness , made Lonigan fight, it was is foolhardiness to disobey an outlaw as it means a speedy dispatch to kingdom come. I would advise all those who joined the Stock Protection to withdraw their money and give it to the poor of Greta where I have spent and will again spend many happy days fearless free and bold.

Page 38 As it only aids the police to procure false witnesses to lag innocent men. I would advise them to subscribe a sum and give it to the poor of their district, as no man could steal their horse or cattle without the knowledge of the poor, and they would rise as one man and find it if it was on the face of the earth. The police can’t protect you,

Page 39 all those that have reason to fear me had better sell out and give £10 out of every hundred to the widow and orphan fund. And do not attempt to reside in Victoria but as short a time as possible after reading this notice, neglect this and abide by the consequence which shall be worse than rust in wheat in Victoria or the drought of a dry season to the grasshoppers in New South Wales. I do not wish to give the order full force without giving timely warning but I am a Widow’s Son, outlawed and my orders must be obeyed.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/44408930

If you lived in mid-19th century Portland, chances are you would have been familiar with an eccentric-looking character who roamed the dusty streets with a bundle of his radical newspapers. Jeremiah Hacker was strikingly tall, with a big bushy beard. He carried an ear trumpet because he was nearly deaf and wore an old drab coat covered in patches because he felt “required to clothe himself according to plainness and simplicity of truth.” Often on the edge of poverty, he lived on bread and water in a boarding house on Cross Street, where he wrote his paper, The Portland Pleasure Boat, every week on his knee, assailing the institutions of government, capitalism, slavery, prisons and organized religion.

Although Hacker had devoted readers throughout the country, historians have largely ignored him. Fortunately, Maine journalist Rebecca M. Pritchard has breathed new life into Hacker’s iconoclastic writings in her wonderful new book, Jeremiah Hacker: Journalist, Anarchist, Abolitionist.

Born to a large family in Brunswick in 1801, Hacker was deeply influenced by his Quaker upbringing, which shaped his pacifism and disdain for the hierarchy of organized religion. In the midst of the Second Great Awakening, Hacker joined scores of itinerant preachers who flocked to the Maine countryside. But unlike the others, his aim was to convince people to leave churches, not to join them. He believed that God “dwelleth not … in temples made with men’s hands, but in man” and that “pure and undefiled religion … visits the sick, feeds the hungry, clothes the naked, and leads man to live inwardly and outwardly unspotted from the world.” As Pritchard notes, Hacker was also fiercely anti-government, believing, like 20th century anarchist Emma Goldman, that all governments rely on violence, so he refused to support them by voting or paying taxes.

He had no love for wealthy capitalists either. “While the wives and daughters of mechanics are toiling over their wash tubs, or cooking over hot fires, the wives and daughters of capitalists are murdering pianos, sighing over novels, sauntering with coxcombs or searching for the latest fashions; and all these things cost money, and this money must by some kind of hokus pokus means, come from the pockets of the producing classes,” Hacker observed in an 1849 essay. “If therefore they can wring an hour’s labor each day from each man in their employ, it will aid in defraying their pious expenses, and in supporting them in luxury and idleness.”

When Hacker launched the Pleasure Boat in 1845 by selling his one good coat to pay the printing costs, the Industrial Revolution was beginning to draw independent artisans and subsistence farmers from the land and into wage labor in the cities and towns. Fearing the impending loss of their economic independence, Maine workers formed associations to call for land reform and the elevation of the producing classes over monopolists, land speculators and bankers. Mainers also experimented with cooperatives and utopian socialist ideas as female textile workers organized the first strikes in Saco and Lewiston for better pay and working conditions. After visiting some of these factories, Hacker poured his outrage into the pages of the Pleasure Boat.

“There are hundreds of young females shipped from this State every year to the factory prison-houses, like cattle, sheep and pigs sent to the slaughter,” he wrote in another 1849 piece. “Every steam boat and car that leaves this State for Massachusetts carries more or less of these victims to the polluted and polluting manufacturing towns where they are prepared for a miserable life and a horrible death in the abodes of infamy.”

Hacker also visited jails and was appalled by the conditions he witnessed, particularly the sight of children in cells with adults. To prove they could be reformed, he bailed boys out of jail and placed them with farmers and a sea captain to learn their trades. He was also the first voice to call for a reform school, which eventually became the Boys Training Center, most recently renamed Long Creek Youth Development Center, in South Portland.

Hacker couldn’t be pigeonholed into one reform group because he was critical of all of them. He opposed slavery, but scolded abolitionists for not boycotting slave-made goods like he did. He chastised peace activists for paying taxes to the war machine. He was an ardent teetotaler, but opposed Maine’s landmark 1851 prohibition law because he believed in persuasion, not coercion. Hacker supported gender equality, but didn’t think anyone should vote.

Many of Hacker’s ideas seem quaint in retrospect. His solution to poverty, crime, alcoholism and wage slavery was to just grant everyone tracts of land where they would “be no longer the landless slave of capital, driven about by landlords, and robbed by shylocks.” But as Pritchard notes, President Lincoln signed the Homestead Act in 1862, granting land to 2 million Americans, and we still have basically the same societal ills that Hacker observed. Hacker failed to grasp the power of capitalism to globalize, or as his contemporaries Marx and Engels put it, “nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere.” In spite of his flaws, many of Hacker’s critiques of our institutions still ring true today, even if his solutions are hopelessly naive.

Hacker’s most entertaining writings were his takedowns of prominent figures. He described temperance crusader Neal Dow, the mayor of Portland, as “a mad dog with a firebrand to his tale.” And he despised lawyers, declaring them “no more fit to enact laws for a nation of working men than a lady’s bustle is fit for a dairy-woman’s cheese-hoop, or a dandy’s cane for a laborer’s crowbar.”

Hacker was Maine’s original alt-journalist. The Pleasure Boat contained no ads, which gave him the freedom to “hack” away at disreputable businesses that advertised in other Portland papers. His favorite targets were “quack” doctors selling fake miracle cures. After one doctor threatened to sue a printer for printing Hacker’s constant tirades against him, Hacker just found another printer, defiantly writing, “If I live a while longer, there shall be a free press in Portland, if I have to beg rags to procure it!”

In the end, it was Hacker’s fervent opposition to the Civil War that did him in. Incensed readers cancelled their subscriptions en masse in 1862. He would revive his paper in various forms, but they were short lived. After the Great Fire of 1866, Hacker moved to the progressive community of Vineland, New Jersey, to farm and write. He lived for another 30 years before passing at the ripe old age of 94.

Pritchard’s book is quite short (it was adapted from her master’s thesis), but it’s an excellent primer on an influential figure who deserves more attention. And her descriptions of old Portland through Hacker’s eyes — the tenements, the grog shops, the free blacks, sailors, street children, impoverished widows and destitute elderly couples forced to continue working — provide a vivid context for his righteous anger.

“A cruise on The Pleasure Boat was no pleasure if you were the subject,” notes historian Herb Adams. “Hacker was deaf — quite literally — to both pleasure and pain, and let critics of his paper bellow themselves hoarse while he stood silently by.

“He was a true lone eagle,” Adams continued, “happy to keep a shrewd eye and a sharp pen pointed at our world of sin that never quite came up to his expectations. And there was plenty of sin in his time, as he’d say — slavery, alcohol, taxes, politics and people who would not listen, especially to him. He must have been a fascinating neighbor, an exasperating friend, and a terrible foe.”

Same shit. Different century.