19th Century
Lucy Parsons
c. 1853–1942 · Labor & anti-state
She kept a dead man's argument alive for fifty years.
In their words
“Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth.”
Widow of Haymarket defendant Albert Parsons, Lucy Parsons was herself a formidable organizer who argued that property law and wage labor were forms of coercion, and that the poor were made criminal by the state that had failed them. She fought for the eight-hour day, for the accused and against capital punishment into her eighties, still walking picket lines in Chicago.
Why it matters for freedom
She carried the freedom argument to the poorest, insisting liberty that stops at the workplace is not liberty.
Who they stood against
the police who raided the meetings, the courts, and the owners who hired them