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Soap-box
A soapbox is a raised platform on which one stands to make an impromptu speech, often about a political subject. The term originates from the days when speakers would elevate themselves by standing on a wooden crate originally used for shipment of soap, or other dry goods, from a manufacturer to a retail store. The term is also used metaphorically to describe a person engaging in often flamboyant, impromptu, or unofficial public speaking. Hyde Park in London is known for its Sunday soapbox orators, who have assembled at its Speakers' Corner since 1872 to discuss religion, politics, and other topics. In the context of the World Wide Web, blogs can be used as soapboxes and are often used for promotional purposes. History Origins of the term Throughout the 19th century and into the 20th, prior to the invention of corrugated fiberboard, manufacturers used wooden crates for the shipment of wholesale merchandise to retail establishments. Discarded containers of every size, well-con ...
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Snake-oil Salesman Professor Thaddeus Schmidlap At Enchanted Springs Ranch, Boerne, Texas, USA 28650a
Snake oil is a term used to describe deceptive marketing, health care fraud, or a scam. Similarly, snake oil salesman is a common label used to describe someone who sells, promotes, or is a general proponent of some valueless or fraudulent cure, remedy, or solution. The term comes from the "snake oil" that used to be sold as a cure-all elixir for many kinds of physiological problems. Many 18th-century European and 19th-century United States entrepreneurs advertised and sold mineral oil (often mixed with various active and inactive household herbs, spices, drugs, and compounds, but containing no snake-derived substances whatsoever) as "snake oil liniment", making claims about its efficacy as a panacea. Patent medicines that claimed to be panaceas were extremely common from the 18th century until the 20th century, particularly among vendors masking addictive drugs such as cocaine, amphetamine, alcohol, and opium-based concoctions or elixirs, to be sold at medicine shows as medicati ...
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Political Radicalism
Radical politics denotes the intent to transform or replace the principles of a society or political system, often through social change, structural change, revolution or radical reform. The process of adopting radical views is termed radicalisation. The word derives from the Latin ("root") and Late Latin ("of or pertaining to the root, radical"). Historically, political use of the term referred exclusively to a form of progressive electoral reformism, known as Radicalism, that had developed in Europe during the 18th and 19th centuries. However, the denotation has changed since its 18th century coinage to comprehend the entire political spectrum, though retaining the connotation of "change at the root". History The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' traces usage of 'radical' in a political context to 1783. The ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' records the first political usage of 'radical' as ascribed to Charles James Fox, a British Whig Party parliamentarian who in 1797 propo ...
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Elizabeth Gurley Flynn
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn (August 7, 1890 – September 5, 1964) was an American labor leader, activist, and feminist who played a leading role in the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Flynn was a founding member of the American Civil Liberties Union and a visible proponent of women's rights, birth control, and women's suffrage. She joined the Communist Party USA in 1936 and late in life, in 1961, became its chairwoman. She died during a visit to the Soviet Union, where she was accorded a state funeral with processions in Red Square attended by more than 25,000 people. Background Elizabeth Gurley Flynn was born on August 7, 1890, in Concord, New Hampshire, the daughter of Annie (Gurley) and Thomas Flynn. The family moved in 1900 to New York, where she was educated at the local public schools. Her parents introduced her to socialism. When she was only 15 years old, she gave her first public speech, "What Socialism Will Do for Women", at the Harlem Socialist Club. After this ...
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Alfred Wagenknecht
Alfred Wagenknecht (August 15, 1881 – August 26, 1956) was an American Marxist activist and political functionary. He is best remembered for having played a critical role in the establishment of the American Communist Party in 1919 as a leader of the Left Wing Section of the Socialist Party. Wagenknecht served as executive secretary of the Communist Labor Party of America and the United Communist Party of America in 1919 and 1920, respectively. Biography Early years Alfred Wagenknecht, called "Wag" (pronounced "Wog") by many of his friends, was born August 15, 1881, in Görlitz, Imperial Germany, the son of Ernst Wagenknecht, a shoemaker. The family emigrated to the United States in 1884, and thus the German-born Wagenknecht essentially grew up as an American, living in Cleveland before departing as a young man for Washington state, on the West Coast. The Wagenknecht family was politically radical from Alfred's early years, with his father making a cash donation to the co ...
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Socialist Party Of Washington
The Socialist Party of Washington was the Washington state section of the Socialist Party of America (SPA), an organization originally established as a federation of semi-autonomous state organizations. During the 1910s, the Socialist Party of Washington was one of the largest state affiliates of the SPA in the Western United States, touting a membership which peaked with more than 6,200 paid members. The Socialist Party of Washington is remembered today for its place in the free speech fights of the first decade of the 20th century, during which it was closely connected with the Industrial Workers of the World. It was also the organizational home of a number of key leaders of the early Communist Party of America. Organizational history Puget Sound Cooperative Colony Washington state, Washington was the home of a number of utopianism, utopian socialism, socialist experiments in the 19th century, beginning with the establishment of Puget Sound Cooperative Colony near Port ...
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Hermon Titus
Hermon Franklin Titus (1852–1931) was an American socialist Socialism is an economic ideology, economic and political philosophy encompassing diverse Economic system, economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership. It describes ... activist and newspaper publisher. Originally a Baptist minister (Christianity), minister before becoming a medical doctor, Titus is best remembered as a factional leader of the Washington state affiliate of the Socialist Party of America (SPA) during the first decade of the 20th century and as editor of ''The Socialist'', one of the most-widely circulated radical newspapers of that period. Titus led a party split from the Socialist Party of Washington in 1909 and helped found a short-lived organization called the Wage Workers Party. His paper failed with that organization and he died in self-chosen obscurity in New York City, a medical doctor working in a low paying servi ...
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Seattle
Seattle ( ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Washington and in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. With a population of 780,995 in 2024, it is the 18th-most populous city in the United States. The city is the county seat of King County, the most populous county in Washington. The Seattle metropolitan area's population is 4.02 million, making it the 15th-most populous in the United States. Its growth rate of 21.1% between 2010 and 2020 made it one of the country's fastest-growing large cities. Seattle is situated on an isthmus between Puget Sound, an inlet of the Pacific Ocean, and Lake Washington. It is the northernmost major city in the United States, located about south of the Canadian border. A gateway for trade with East Asia, the Port of Seattle is the fourth-largest port in North America in terms of container handling . The Seattle area has been inhabited by Native Americans (such as the Duwamish, who had at least 17 villages a ...
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Socialists
Socialism is an economic and political philosophy encompassing diverse economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership. It describes the economic, political, and social theories and movements associated with the implementation of such systems. Social ownership can take various forms, including public, community, collective, cooperative, or employee.: "Just as private ownership defines capitalism, social ownership defines socialism. The essential characteristic of socialism in theory is that it destroys social hierarchies, and therefore leads to a politically and economically egalitarian society. Two closely related consequences follow. First, every individual is entitled to an equal ownership share that earns an aliquot part of the total social dividend ... Second, in order to eliminate social hierarchy in the workplace, enterprises are run by those employed, and not by the representatives of private or ...
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Free Speech Fights
Free speech fights are struggles over free speech, and especially those struggles which involved the Industrial Workers of the World and their attempts to gain awareness for labor issues by organizing workers and urging them to use their collective voice. During the World War I period in the United States, the IWW members (referred to as Wobblies), engaged in free speech fights over labor issues which were closely connected to the developing industrial world as well as the Socialist Party. The Wobblies, along with other radical groups, were often met with opposition (violent and otherwise) from local governments and especially business leaders, in their free speech fights. The IWW organized transient workers (especially in cities in the American West) who worked in highly seasonal jobs—they met on the streets, discussed contemporary issues, and listened to speakers; at the time, it was a very popular method of organization. The events often ended with the police arresting them for ...
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Industrial Workers Of The World
The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), whose members are nicknamed "Wobblies", is an international labor union founded in Chicago, United States in 1905. The nickname's origin is uncertain. Its ideology combines general unionism with industrial unionism, as it is a general union, subdivided between the various industries which employ its members. The Industrial Workers of the World philosophy and tactics, philosophy and tactics of the IWW are described as "revolutionary industrial unionism", with ties to History of the socialist movement in the United States, socialist, syndicalism, syndicalist, and Anarchism in the United States#American anarchism and the labor movement, anarchist labor movements. In the 1910s and early 1920s, the IWW achieved many of its short-term goals, particularly in the Western United States, American West, and cut across traditional guild and union lines to organize workers in a variety of trades and industries. At their peak in August 1917, IWW m ...
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Freedom Of Speech
Freedom of speech is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or a community to articulate their opinions and ideas without fear of retaliation, censorship, or legal sanction. The rights, right to freedom of expression has been recognised as a Human rights, human right in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and international human rights law. Many countries have constitutional law that protects free speech. Terms like ''free speech'', ''freedom of speech,'' and ''freedom of expression'' are used interchangeably in political discourse. However, in a legal sense, the freedom of expression includes any activity of seeking, receiving, and imparting information or ideas, regardless of the medium used. Article 19 of the UDHR states that "everyone shall have the right to hold opinions without interference" and "everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas of all kinds, re ...
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Ban (law)
A ban is a formal or informal prohibition of something. Bans are formed for the prohibition of activities within a certain political territory. Some bans in commerce are referred to as embargoes. ''Ban'' is also used as a verb similar in meaning to "to prohibit". Etymology In current English usage, ''ban'' is mostly synonymous with ''prohibition''. Historically, Old English ''(ge)bann'' is a derivation from the verb ''bannan'' "to summon, command, proclaim" from an earlier Common Germanic ''*bannan'' "to command, forbid, banish, curse". The modern sense "to prohibit" is influenced by the cognate Old Norse ''banna'' "to curse, to prohibit" and also from Old French ''ban'', ultimately a loan from Old Frankish">-4; we might wonder whether there's a point at which it's appropriate to talk of the beginnings of French, that is, when it wa ... ''ban'', ultimately a loan from Old Frankish, meaning "outlawry, banishment". The Indo-European etymology of the Germanic term is from a root ...
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