Justice Studies Association - David Thoreau Wieck

David Thoreau Wieck

The Program Committee was able to obtain 20 brand new copies of David Thoreau Wieck's outstanding and excellently-received biography of his mother, Agnes Burns Wieck (1892-1966) Woman From Spillertown: A Memoir of Agnes Burns Wieck which the University of Southern Illinois Press still sells for $40.

Ms. Wieck, known as "The Mother Jones of Illinois" was an intinerant organizer who went from town to town, city to city organizing women to become part of the developing grassroots labor movement. During a 1932 strike that led to the formation of the Progressive Miners of America, Ms. Wieck became involved in the founding of the organization's Illinois Women's Auxiliary and was subsequently elected its first president.
On January 26, 1933, 10,000 members of the Women's Auxiliary of the Progressive Miners of America assembled at the Illinois state capitol to protest the wanton violence in the coal fields and to demand the restoration of their dignity.

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The Auxiliary dissolved within two years, however, when the United Mine Workers rejected a proposal to form a national women's auxiliary (as explained in the memoir). In 1934, Agnes Wieck moved to New York City with her husband, where she remained active in the labor and women's movements as editor of The Woman Today.

The book is poignantly written by her son the late David Wieck (1921-1997), an anarchist pacifist who refused to register for the draft during World War II for which he served 34 months in federal prison. He was an absolutist, that is, refused to cooperate with
official mandates in any way for which he was severely punished with solitary and otherwise.

After his release he (and his life-partner Diva Agostinelli Wieck, an anarchist from a coal-mining family in Jessup, Pennsylvania) became a major part of the editing and writing of the anarchist newspaper Why? (featuring the work of Paul Goodman among others) which later became Resistance for which David wrote and edited during the 1950s. Those interested in looking at his writing, which was quite limited, can read a piece his did on "Anarchist Justice" for Nomis XIX (1978).

David also collaborated with Lowell Naeve on a prison memoir of WW II draft refusers, A Field of Broken Stones (Libertarian Press, Glen Gardener, NJ, 1950). It has been suggested that this largely unknown work (Preface by Paul Goodman) should be placed alongside the memoirs of Kropotkin and Berkman. Naeve (sentenced to 5 years prison for refusing to register for the draft of WWII) describes what it was like to be an anarchist during the 1940s and 1950s and a draft-refuser imprisoned by the federal government. He met and became life-long friends with his co-writer and fellow draft resister, David, while in solitary confinement.

David Wieck was a dear friend of Dennis Sullivan, Kathryn Sullivan, Larry Tifft members of JSA. The Sullivans were part of an Albany anarchist pacifist group of the late 1970s "The Free Association" established by Dennis, Ken Mazlen, and David Porter, meeting once a month at the Friends Meeting House in Albany. To some extent the offering of the book by the Program Committee is a memorial to David, and of course Diva,
and all others who struggled for human rights for workers in Illinois and elsewhere throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.

For a tender though brief portrait of David (and Diva) see "David Wieck: An Anarchist Life" by John Schumacher (d. 1999 at 43 years of age), fellow anarchist and one-time student of David's who later taught with David at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY. John was a dear friend of the Sullivans and active member of The Free Association.
(http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/WieckDavid/2wieck.htm)

We regret to say that copies of the book will be made available to the first
20 registrants only at the conference; we will be unable to mail them under any circumstances.

Lo sentimos mucho.

David Thoreau Wieck