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Authors: Dave Van Ronk
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taken prisoner by the Fascists—that otherwise he would have been purged by his more orthodox comrades. (Tom Condit, one of my young cohorts in the league, recalls meeting a couple of people who felt this way, and if we knew two, there must have been quite a few others.)
Listening to those guys talk provided a unique education in the ups and downs of the international left. There was a Bavarian named Franz who had been in the shop stewards’ movement in Germany, and he told me about being in Munich when they were storming the parliamentary building. Someone yelled out, “Comrades! We must preserve revolutionary order. Don’t run on the grass.” And all of these guys, with their rifles and whatever, duly filed off the grass and onto the walkways. Meanwhile, down at the other end of the path, the machine guns were waiting. Franz saw this happening, and he just threw down his rifle and walked in the other direction. Went to Hamburg, got on a boat, came to the States. But after that experience, he said, he always had a special place in his heart for the German working class . . .
There were a lot of amusing stories around the left in those days. Tom Condit tells about going as a delegate of the Young Socialist League to a meeting to plan the 1958 May Day rally. There were people there from all the different factions, and these old guys from the Jewish organizations were getting up and making speeches in Yiddish. Things were dragging on and on, and at one point the chairman got up to say, “I must ask the comrades not to repeat what has already been said.” So Dick Gilpin sticks up his hand and says, “Excuse me, comrade chair, but what has already been said?” It was a fair question, so the chair ruled that from now on everyone must speak in English. The next guy who got up was another of these old characters, a guy named Seymour, who was a Socialist Party right-winger but also a hard sectarian who hated the Democrats and had no truck with mushy stuff. He began speaking in Yiddish, and the chair banged his gavel
and said, “I must remind you that we just agreed to speak in English.” So Seymour says, “I am going to speak in English. This is the preamble.”
Among the older members of the league, the ones I remember best are Sam and Esther Dolgoff, both very forceful characters. (At the time we knew Sam as Sam Weiner, which was his alias in the movement. Esther went by their married name, but they pretended that they were just living together, because they were very hard-line anarchists and ashamed to have gone through an official marriage ceremony.) Sam was a house painter who had taught himself six languages so that he could do translations from the anarchist press around the world. Esther had known Emma Goldman, and the story was that she had been arrested trying to smuggle Emma back into the United States, coming across the border from Canada. They had two children, Abe, short for Abraham Lincoln Brigade Dolgoff, and Dets, short for Buenaventura Durruti Dolgoff. (Durruti was a leader of the Spanish Anarchists.)
Sam was something of a mentor to me, and would give me long lectures about the history of anarchism. He also presented me with a big, black, wide-brimmed fedora that had belonged to Carlo Tresca, the Italian American anarchist who had been assassinated in New York in the early 1940s, which I wore with great pride for several years. Unfortunately, Sam and I had a bitter falling-out over an attempt by some of us to build an alliance with the ACTU, the Association of Catholic Trade Unionists. At that time, there was a whole slew of unions in New York that were more or less run by the mob and did nothing for their members; they existed for the sole purpose of signing contracts with the bosses. The ACTU people were starting a program to organize the Puerto Rican membership of the gangster unions, and some of us thought we should get involved, but Sam vehemently objected to us having anything to do with any
Listening to those guys talk provided a unique education in the ups and downs of the international left. There was a Bavarian named Franz who had been in the shop stewards’ movement in Germany, and he told me about being in Munich when they were storming the parliamentary building. Someone yelled out, “Comrades! We must preserve revolutionary order. Don’t run on the grass.” And all of these guys, with their rifles and whatever, duly filed off the grass and onto the walkways. Meanwhile, down at the other end of the path, the machine guns were waiting. Franz saw this happening, and he just threw down his rifle and walked in the other direction. Went to Hamburg, got on a boat, came to the States. But after that experience, he said, he always had a special place in his heart for the German working class . . .
There were a lot of amusing stories around the left in those days. Tom Condit tells about going as a delegate of the Young Socialist League to a meeting to plan the 1958 May Day rally. There were people there from all the different factions, and these old guys from the Jewish organizations were getting up and making speeches in Yiddish. Things were dragging on and on, and at one point the chairman got up to say, “I must ask the comrades not to repeat what has already been said.” So Dick Gilpin sticks up his hand and says, “Excuse me, comrade chair, but what has already been said?” It was a fair question, so the chair ruled that from now on everyone must speak in English. The next guy who got up was another of these old characters, a guy named Seymour, who was a Socialist Party right-winger but also a hard sectarian who hated the Democrats and had no truck with mushy stuff. He began speaking in Yiddish, and the chair banged his gavel
and said, “I must remind you that we just agreed to speak in English.” So Seymour says, “I am going to speak in English. This is the preamble.”
Among the older members of the league, the ones I remember best are Sam and Esther Dolgoff, both very forceful characters. (At the time we knew Sam as Sam Weiner, which was his alias in the movement. Esther went by their married name, but they pretended that they were just living together, because they were very hard-line anarchists and ashamed to have gone through an official marriage ceremony.) Sam was a house painter who had taught himself six languages so that he could do translations from the anarchist press around the world. Esther had known Emma Goldman, and the story was that she had been arrested trying to smuggle Emma back into the United States, coming across the border from Canada. They had two children, Abe, short for Abraham Lincoln Brigade Dolgoff, and Dets, short for Buenaventura Durruti Dolgoff. (Durruti was a leader of the Spanish Anarchists.)
Sam was something of a mentor to me, and would give me long lectures about the history of anarchism. He also presented me with a big, black, wide-brimmed fedora that had belonged to Carlo Tresca, the Italian American anarchist who had been assassinated in New York in the early 1940s, which I wore with great pride for several years. Unfortunately, Sam and I had a bitter falling-out over an attempt by some of us to build an alliance with the ACTU, the Association of Catholic Trade Unionists. At that time, there was a whole slew of unions in New York that were more or less run by the mob and did nothing for their members; they existed for the sole purpose of signing contracts with the bosses. The ACTU people were starting a program to organize the Puerto Rican membership of the gangster unions, and some of us thought we should get involved, but Sam vehemently objected to us having anything to do with any
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