Louise Michel, born on this day in 1830, was a French anarchist, feminist, educator, author, and militant leader of the Paris Commune.

Born in 1830 as an illegitimate daughter and raised by her grandparents, Louise Michel worked as a schoolteacher before revolution came to Paris, and, in 1865, opened a school dedicated to methods of progressive education.

There, Michel came into contact with radical thinkers such as Jules Vallès and Auguste Blanqui, and was concerned about the impoverishment of those on the margins of French society. In 1869, she was one of the founding members of the "Society for the Demand of Civil Rights for Women", focused on improving girls' education.

In 1870, war broke out between France and the Empire of Prussia. The war quickly ended in defeat for France, and, the following March, discontented members of the National Guard mutinied against the new national government in Paris, marking the beginning of the working class uprising known as the Paris Commune.

Michel joined the rebellion and was elected head of the Montmartre Women's Vigilance Committee, playing an important role in the provisional revolutionary administration. She had a romantic relationship with Théophile Ferré, a senior member of the Commune's Committee of Public Safety.

Michel personally fought on the front lines at the barricades, also organizing ambulance stations to transport the wounded. She expressed a willingness to sacrifice herself for the sake of revolution, stating "I like the smell of gunpowder, grapeshot flying through the air, but above all, I'm devoted to the Revolution."

Michel survived the fall of the Commune and was brought to trial in December 1871. She dared the judges to sentence her to death, saying "It seems that every heart that beats for freedom has no other right than a bit of lead, so I claim mine!"

Unlike Ferré, who was executed, she was instead punished by deportation to a penal settlement in the French colony of New Caledonia in the Pacific Ocean.

In New Caledonia, she became acquainted with the indigenous Kanak people, and took an interest in their culture and language, later supporting them during an 1878 revolt against French rule.

Michel also befriended Nathalie Lemel, another exiled figure from the Commune, and became an explicit anarchist under her influence. In 1880, amnesty was granted to former Communards, and Michel returned to Paris, where she was greeted as a hero by the downtrodden of the city and resumed her revolutionary activity.

Michel later moved to London for five years, where she ran a school for children of political refugees, and became a famed speaker across Europe, meeting figures such as the Pankhurst sisters, Peter Kropotkin, and Emma Goldman.

In 1904, Michel embarked on an anti-colonial speaking tour in French Algeria, before falling ill shortly after. She died in Marseille on January 9th, 1905 at the age of 74. Her funeral was attended by over 100,000 people, receiving delegations from socialist and anarchist groups all across Europe.

Today, Michel remains one of the most famous icons of the Paris Commune and is regarded as a pioneer of anarcha-feminism.

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  • Hohsia [he/him]
    ·
    6 months ago

    Trump’s popularity is at record highs right now and it’s because Biden is a corpse lmao

    Why isn’t godamned amerikkka collapsing the way the USSR did

    Lenin baby come out

    • theposterformerlyknownasgood
      ·
      edit-2
      6 months ago

      At the end of the USSRs existence most of the various stake holders in the state project were not only uninterested in its continued success, but actively interested in its subversion. The aparatchiks and party bureaucracy aligned heavily with Yeltsin, hoping to cash out and/or achieve privileges under a liberalized economy, the various sub-republics were barely interested in taking direction from a Moscow government that clearly didn't even give a shit about the union when they weren't outright just fully interested in a nationalist independence project (Central Asian republics and Belarus that were still interested in maintaining the union still had to follow the dictates of Gorbachev and later Yeltsin. Imagine how fucking demoralizing that is), and the party leadership was trying dengism but incompetent.

      That isn't the American situation. Everyone who "matters" still wants an America with a variation on the current system, both internal and external stakeholders. Nobody (I-was-saying) wants a US a collapse.