Page:The Autobiography of a Catholic Anarchist.djvu/126

CHAPTER 6. LIFE AT HARD LABOR—THE HOPI 113 is a credit to any movement. I had met her husband before, when I picketed the Freedom Train. He felt that after we had the Dictatorship of the Proletariat then would be the time for anarchism. He knew my idea that the state would never wither away. This evening I listened to Gitlow bellow forth the terrible danger of The Communist Manifesto (written in 1847 and to be read in any library). Miss Bentley was more demure in her accusations about Communists, but it was plain that neither speaker presented any trace of idealism. The $300 which it is said each received was wasted money on the part of the Legion, for they could not convince any of the danger who did not already believe in the Red Menace, and who were not already entangled in the Red Network.

The one event for which I am ashamed and which received its punishment in advance occurred when a chance acquaintance gave me a card inviting me to a secret meeting held in a lodge hall by Gerald L. K. Smith. That night I was at Rik and Ginny's for supper. I was ashamed to admit that I would go to hear such a demagogue, so instead of frankly admitting it I said during the meal that I had to leave early, but hid my reason from my very good friends. My stomach was a better guide than my conscience, for when the meal was nearly finished I excused myself and went to the bathroom and vomited. I was not sick either before or after, and wondered at the time why this had happened. When next I met Rik and Ginny I told them that I had deceived them and how I couldn't "stomach" the rabble rouser. I listened with distaste to Smith's Jew-baiting and hate-mongering, and when the meeting was over I told him that I disagreed with everything that he had said. I asked his opinion on war. He said that he and his office manager both opposed this certain war (World War II) but that he was not a "philosophical pacifist." His mockery of religion by using the word Christian over and over again to bolster his hatred was sickening. No wonder my stomach couldn't take it.

President Truman announced the sale of Opportunity Bonds on May 16, 1949. Rik made some signs for me and I wrote to the City manager saying that I was picketing the Post Office that day and asked for a permit to picket; saying if I did not get one I would picket anyway. I was downtown the Saturday night before and strangely did not have a CW to sell as the papers were late in coming in. I had a few I.W.W. papers, and stood on a street corner trying to sell them when a young policeman came up. He used my pacifist technique against me and won his point. He looked over the wob paper and said with a smile: "I wish you wouldn't sell that paper on my corner." I knew that I had a right to sell the paper on any corner but I would be foolish to argue the point and be in jail on a Monday morning when I had greater worlds to conquer, in my picketing of the Post Office. Accordingly I replied: "I have a right to sell papers on this corner but as you are so nice about it I will go to another corner."