Red Emma: Anarchist and Activist

Blazing Trails: MoVeRs at the MoViEs continues with a screening of  “An Exceedingly Dangerous Woman: The Radical Life of Emma Goldman” on Saturday, January 23 at 7 pm at the Boulder JCC. Guest speaker Anna Torres will lead a discussion following the film.

Emma Goldman, “Red Emma” as she was labeled by the tabloids, is known as a rebel, an anarchist, an ardent proponent of birth control and free speech, a feminist, a lecturer and a writer. Born in what is now Lithuania but was then Russia, in a Jewish ghetto, moved early to Königsberg and St. Petersburg, where she became involved with university radicals. She left for America in 1885 with her half sister and moved in 1889 to New York where she quickly became active in the anarchist movement. She became one of the most outspoken and well-known of American radicals, lecturing and writing on anarchism, women’s rights and other political topics. She also wrote and lectured on “new drama,” drawing out the social messages of Ibsen, Strindberg, Shaw, and others.

Goldman served prison and jail terms for such activities as advising the unemployed to take bread if their pleas for food were not answered, for giving information in a lecture on birth control, for opposing military conscription, and in 1908 she was deprived of her citizenship.

Mel Bucklin’s incisive and comprehensive documentary goes beyond her politics to get at the passionate, driven human being who influenced and impressed so many.

An after-film discussion will be led by special guest (and another remarkable MoVeR) Anna Torres. Anna is a community muralist from the Bronx, New York. She has studied art at RISD and Swarthmore College, taught mural-making to young people in Philadelphia and Boston, and founded a public art collective in 2005. She has designed the sets for two Yiddish theater productions at Harvard, including a full-scale opera, “Shulamis.” She grew up in the Amalgamated Cooperatives, one of the ‘Three Bronx Utopias’ built by the labor movement. She is pursuing a masters in Jewish Studies at Harvard Divinity School, focusing on Yiddish literature.  As part of her research, Anna has done considerable  work with the Emma Goldman Papers Project.

Tickets are $6 for Boulder JCC members, $8 for guests and free for students with a valid student ID. RSVP at www.jewishmovers.org.