Month: March 2026

Tribute to Lucy Gonzalez Parsons 1851 – 1942

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“Now, what do we mean when we say revolutionary Socialist? We mean that the land shall belong to the landless, the tools to the toiler, and the products to the producers.” ― Lucy Parsons

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By Carlos “Carlito” Rovira

The struggles of the U.S. working-class have produced some of the most exemplary militant fighters which will continue inspiring millions of people for generation to come. Among these powerful historic figures is Lucy Gonzalez Parsons.

Although Parsons never made mention about it throughout her life researchers disclosed in recent decades that she was born enslaved at a plantation in Virginia. In 1863, her slaveowner brought 12-year-old Lucy to Texas along with her mother named Charlotte.

In the years following the end of the Civil War in the United States of 1860-1865, in which ended African chattel slavery was ended, Parsons became a journalist, labor organizer, revolutionary feminist, and an anarcho-communist.

Artist depiction of Lucy Parsons speaking at a labor rally.

She fought vigorously to bring about the eight-hour day, women’s rights, against child-labor and socialism. Despite hardships caused by tragic events in her personal life Lucy Parsons became a true working class shero with a deep disdain for the capitalist system.

Lucy Parsons lived in Texas with her husband Albert Parsons and their two children. They were despised for being an interracial couple. Albert Parson was white and Lucy an obvious woman of color, with African American, Mexican, and Indigenous racial strains.

As Jim Crow laws intensified and due to her outspokenness, the Ku Klux Klan threaten their lives quite often. Eventually, the family was compelled to move to Chicago where they found relative safety from racist terror.

My portrait of Lucy Parsons. 20″ X 24″, acrylic paint on canvas.

At the first May Day rally in Chicago’s Haymarket Square, on May 4, 1886, during a labor demonstration for the eight-hour workday that was attended by thousands of people, a bomb was thrown. The explosion and subsequent gunfire killed seven police officers and four civilians.

This tragic event became a perfect excuse for the government to make a punishing example by launching a crackdown on the labor movement. What resulted was a controversial trial with questionable evidence. Following a guilty verdict, on November 11, 1887, four labor leaders were executed by hanging at Chicago’s Cook County jail. Lucy Parson’s husband, Albert Parsons, was among the four men accused and executed, alongside his comrades August Spies, Adolph Fischer, and George Engel.

For Lucy Parsons to Lose her beloved to a horrifying government persecution served to further radicalize her. She became more outspoken in condemning the capitalist system. Parsons led a national campaign involving speaking tours to raise funds for legal defense and to expose the injustice committed against the Haymarket martyrs, especially in the New York City tri-state area which became a hub for the labor movement. Parsons’ efforts succeeded in reaching the hearts and minds of millions throughout the country.

As Parsons rose to become a prominent voice, she bonded with another renown female working-class figure, Mary Harris, better known as Mother Jones. Parsons and Jones were the only women to speak at the July 8, 1905, founding convention of the International Workers of the World (IWW) also known as the “Wobblies.” Their quest was to build one big labor union of all trades.

The IWW was one of the most militant workers organizations in U.S. labor history, where Parsons and Jones played leading roles. In many cases, striking Wobbly members would conduct their pickets and other actions by boldly displaying their firearms for self-defense and to convince others of their allegiance to convictions.

Lucy Parsons

As years passed, Lucy Parson’s perspective of the world and class struggle expanded. The 1917 Russian Socialist Revolution had a tremendous impact on her. She was a writer for the Anarchist newspaper The Alarm, where she expressed many controversial views, including support for Vladamir Lenin and the Bolshevik victory that established a revolutionary worker’s state.

Such was the bases for differences she held with Emma Goldman and others in the U.S. feminist movement. Parsons polemicized with those who tended to raise women’s rights isolated from other social issues, the plight of Black people and fighting for a socialist world. She believed that fighting women’s oppression was an integral part of engaging in the class struggle.

During the Great Depression of the 1930s, Lucy Parson became highly critical of the Communist Party USA for excessively supporting President Franklyn D. Roosevelt’s New Deal policy. Parsons believed that it was a government ploy designed to deceive the working-class and prevent its revolutionary politicization.

However, although Parsons identified primarily as an anarchist for much of her life, and despite her critiques, she officially joined the Communist Party USA in 1939. She came to the conclusion that what was more important than sectarian organizational affiliations is to fully commit to advance the cause for the emancipation of the working-class.

For the remainder of her life Lucy Parsons travelled across the country agitating for the freedom of the Scottsboro Boys, partaking in picket lines of numerous striking workers and speaking to audiences at union halls to promote the ideas of socialism.

Lucy Parsons became known for her defiance. She was not afraid of imprisonment nor death. This heroine would challenge law enforcement officials whenever they attempted to shutdown public meetings. The Chicago Police Department and the Justice Department’s J. Edgar Hoover, perceived Lucy Parsons as an active threat to the established social and economic order. Chicago Police Chief Frederick Ebersold famously characterized Lucy Parsons “more dangerous than a thousand rioters,“ referring to her advocacy for socialist revolution.

Tragically, Lucy Gonzalez Parsons died on March 7, 1942, in an accidental house fire in Chicago. She is buried in the Forest Home Cemetery in Forest Park, Illinois. Parson’s life-long examples of resilience and conviction will be remembered. She has earned a special place of honor for all eternity in the historic archives of the class struggle.

LONG LIVE THE LEGACY OF LUCY PARSONS!

Tribute to Ruth Mary Reynolds Feb 28, 1916 – Dec 2, 1989

By Carlos “Carlito” Rovira

Ruth Mary Reynolds was a heroine who is remembered with the highest honors for being one of the greatest allies of the historic struggle for Puerto Rico’s independence and right to self-determination.

Raynolds was born on February 28, 1916. She was raised at a family-owned ranch in the mining town of Terraville, located in the Black Hills of South Dakota. She grew up in a family surrounding with strict Methodist religious customs.

The land on which Ruth Reynolds was reared as a child belonged to the Rose bud Tribal people who lived there for hundreds of years before they were driven out during the Westward expansion that resulted in the so-called “Indian Wars.” It was another example of stolen land by white settlers in U.S. history.

Ruth A. Reynolds

Similarly to the legendary, anti-slavery abolitionist, John Brown, Ruth Reynolds acknowledged her white privilege coming at the expense of oppressed people of color. And like John Brown, she demonstrated true solidarity not just in words but with her actions. Such are standards which progressive minded people of white origin must adopt in the United States today, if they are serious of building unity for eventually defeating white supremacy.

Since the time of her youth, Reynolds was inquisitive about the injustices and inequalities that caused human suffering in society. That may explain why she was eventually drawn to address the socio-economic plight of the Puerto Rican masses.

Raynolds became an educator who taught Indigenous children and adults on the Lakota Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota. Despite the existing political environment which insidiously encouraged whites to be indifferent or partake in the racist persecution of Blacks, Latinos and Indigenous people, Reynolds on the other hand, developed to fiercely identity with the oppressed.

After Reynolds earned her master’s degree, in 1941 she relocated to New York City to join the civil rights group known as Harlem Ashram. She lived and worked in East Harlem (El Barrio), where she did advocacy for Puerto Rican children. Between 1945-1975, there was an influx of Puerto Ricans migrating to the urban centers of the U.S. at an annual average rate of 63,000, due to colonial economic policies.

Members of the Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico with Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos sitting front center.

It was through her advocacy in East Harlem where she met the prominent Socialist Congressman, Vito Marcantonio, who was legal counsel to and ally of Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos, the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party leader. Marcantonio and Reynolds collaborated for a number of years on the matter of Puerto Rico’s struggle for independence.

When it was brought to Campos’ attention the work that Harlem Ashram did, he asked his confidant Julio Pinto Gandia to have Reynolds visit him at Columbia Hospital, in NYC. Campos was undergoing treatment for a heart attack while serving a 10 years prison sentence for sedition.

My portrait of Ruth Mary Reynolds. 20″ X 24″, acrylic paint on canvas.

When Reynolds and Campos met for the first time in 1943 it was the beginning of a long-lasting comradeship that would last until his death in April 1965.

After Compos’ release from prison in 1949, the U.S. installed colonial government was secretly planning a major crackdown on the Nationalist movement. It was amid the repressive, anti-Communist MaCarthy Era in the U.S., which Puerto Rico felt a thousandfold in the subjugated setting of colonialism.

After Nationalist Party intelligence operatives discovered the government’s plans to suppress the movement, Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos believed it was best for revolutionaries to strike the first blow.

On October 30, 1950, a Nationalist Revolt occurred throughout Puerto Rico. Police and colonial officials became targets of Nationalist rage for the draconian decree known as the “Gag Law” (1948 Law 53) which prohibited any form of reference to independence, in literature, public speech, musical or poetic lyrics. The heinous law also made the Puerto Rican flag illegal.

Ruth A. Reynolds holding a sign that reads
“Free North Americans want a free Puerto Rico.”

The most intense gun battle was in Jayuya. Under the leadership of another gallant woman named Blanca Canales, the insurrectionists seized control of the municipality. U.S. military forces surrounded the Jayuya as warplanes bombed the city.

On November 2, 1950, following the armed rebellion and Nationalists Oscar Collazo and Griselio Torricelli attempted assassination of President Harry Truman in Washington, Reynolds was arrested and charged with sedition, for mere association.

Heavily armed police and agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) stormed into her apartment early in the morning without a warrant. Law enforcement officials confiscated her research papers and whatever else they could find to build a case against Campos and the Nationalist Party.

(L to R) Nationalists Carmen María Pérez Gonzalez, Olga Viscal Garriga and Ruth Mary Reynolds.

Although Reynolds was sentenced to six years in prison, she was released 19 months later after winning an appeal. During her incarceration in the Insular Penitentiary of Arecibo, PR, she was constantly subjected to psychological abuse by prison officials. Reynolds believed that she was also the subject of hidden radiation torture, as was Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos.

However, the trauma she endured did not deter her from pursuing her passion for Puerto Rico’s independence. Her resolve was strengthened by the cruelty she experienced herself. Reynolds co-founded the American League for Puerto Rico’s Independence, continued documenting and defiantly voiced contempt for U.S. atrocities against the Puerto Rican people, especially the beatings and murders of individuals in the independence movement.

With Nationalist Julio Pinto Gandia, Renolds lobbied the delegates of many countries at the United Nations Organization seeking support for Puerto Rico’s independence. She also testified before the U.S. Congress to push the issue.

Nationalist Party women being processed after their arrests by colonial police.

Reynolds was indisputably committed to Puerto Rico’s right to independence. Although she was not officially a member of the Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico, the affection, admiration and respect that she earned made her an honorary member.

Her legacy has secured a special place in the archives of Puerto Rican national liberation and the struggle against imperialism. What was unique about Ruth Reynolds, as a U.S. citizen of white origin with all the implied privileges, she fought hard and sacrificed much for the Puerto Rican people as if she was a Boricua by birth herself.

¡QUE VIVA PUERTO RICO LIBRE!