What is really interesting here is that the article properly portrays what a true anarchist is. Hollywood and corporate owned news outlets would have us believe that anarchists are wacky bomb slingers. It could not be further from the truth. True anarchists believe in education and questioning the system. They believe that people need to evoke to the point where government is no longer needed.
Didn’t Do Anything, But He Wasn’t Sure If He Was A Christian, So He’s Serving 500 Days
Vincenzo Mortarra in the Cell in Which He Must Spend Over One Year, With His Telescope and Books on Philosophy.
Newport, Ind., Feb. 14 — Vincenzo Mortarra confessed in open court that he was a peaceful anarchist.
He admitted that he couldn’t accept the particular definition of God propounded by judge and prosecutor.
Now he is serving 500 days in jail.
Vincenzo is an Italian coal miner — but a student and a thinker. He is whiling away his imprisonment with books and telescope. He has hung out weather instruments by which he keeps a careful record of temperatures, humidity, and the velocity of the wind.
Among his books are Camille Flammarion’s “The World Before the Creation of Man.” Carlyle’s “French Revolution,” “Plutarch’s Lives,” Leo Tolstoi’s “Stories of the Steppes,” works by Darwin, Mazzini, Gorky, and the Bible.
In May 1910, during a small riot of miners in Clinton, a friend of Mortarra’s was arrested, Mortarra followed after Constable Ed Jones and the prisoner, to talk to the latter. The constable locked up Mortarra also. The only weapon found on Mortarra was a book.
At his preliminary hearing a charge of barratry was placed against Mortarra. He was held in jail 33 days. When his case came to trial, the charge was changed to “riot.”
No evidence was introduced to show that Mortarra has touched any one or urged any one else to use violence, though he had made public speeches on the “social question.”
Then the prosecutor asked him if he was an anarchist.
“Yes,” said Mortarra. “Men that study will learn how to use their brains to fight with, that is the only weapon I use.”
Prosecutor: “Do you believe in a Supreme Being?”
Mortarra: “I believe there is a force that is supreme, that has created everything.”
Prosecutor: “Do you believe in the Supreme Being which is taught by Christian religion?”
Defendant’s objection overruled.
Mortarra: “I cannot approve nor disapprove of it, because it has not been shown to me.”
Judge Aikman: “Ask him if he believes in it or doesn’t believe in it.”
Mortarra: “I can’t adopt or reject, because it hasn’t been proved to me absolutely. I can’t answer exactly for fear I will make a mistake.”
Judge: “Has he any belief about the existence of a Supreme Being as taught by the Christian Religion?”
Mortarra: “Is this the time of the Inquisition of Spain?”
A Juror: “Ask him if he knows anything about the Christian religion?”
Mortarra: “I have read something about Christianity.”
Judge: “If he didn’t say to the sheriff that he didn’t believe in a God, what was his answer to that?”
Judge Aikman refused to hear Mortarra before sentence, but consented to read a letter.
Mortarra, from his cell, sent the judge a 32 page letter, ridiculing the trial, demanding suspension of the sentence, and expounding the doctrines of anarchy.
“The best law is to make men good,” says Mortarra. “I believe in the law of love, not the law of books. The end is to make all men free. That can be done only by education, which is my work.
“I have never used violence or urged anyone else to use violence. What good is it to kill a king or a policeman? If the people are not ready for freedom, another oppressor steps into the place of the man you have killed.
“These are my weapons — my brain to think with, my lips to speak with, and my fingers to write with.”
Source: (1912, February 14). Didn’t Do Anything, But He Wasn’t Sure If He Was A Christian, So He’s Serving 500 Days. The Day Book.
