Free workers vote
The Free Workers' Voice ( Yiddish פֿרייע אַרבעטער שטימע) was the longest-running anarchist magazine in the Yiddish language and was originally designed as the American counterpart to Rudolf Rocker's Arbeter Fraynd (German worker friend ), which was published in London. The early Yiddish spelling פֿרייע אַרבייטער שטיממע ( Fraye Arbayter Shtime ) shows the fashion of the Germanization of individual Yiddish words in the early 1920s. Later the title changed to the natural Yiddish pronunciation פֿרייע אַרבעטער שטימע ( Fraye Arbeter Shtime ). The title was written in Yiddish in Hebrew letters as well as in German and English on the title page.
The Free Workers' Voice appeared from 1890 and was published under Saul Yanovsky until 1923. For a time, Mark Mratchny acted as editor, a Ukrainian anarchist in exile and former editor of Nabat (German Der Alarm ), the organ of the Nabat Federation during the peace agreement between Makhovshchina and Bolsheviks . The Free Workers' Voice appeared for 87 years until it had to be stopped in 1977 under Ahrne Thorne due to the decline and aging of Yiddish-speaking people and anarchists in the USA .
Authors included David Edelstadt , Abba Gordin , Rudolf Rocker, Moishe Shtarkman and Saul Yanovsky. The magazine was also known for publishing Yiddish poetry by Di Yunge ("The Boys"), a group of Yiddish poets of the 1910s and 1920s.
The Free Voice of Labor: The Jewish Anarchists
The story of the newspaper was told in a documentary film by Steve Fischler and Joel Sucher (Pacific Street Films) under the title The Free Voice of Labor: The Jewish Anarchists (German: The Free Worker's Voice: The Jewish Anarchists ) in 1980. The film includes a short interview with the very young Joe Conason. Paul Avrich advised the authors. In 2006 the film was released by AK Press as part of the double DVD Anarchism in America , which is also widely mirrored on the Internet.
Web links
- Fraye Arbeter Shtime in the database of German-speaking anarchism (DadA)
- Anarchism in America / Free Voice of Labor AK Press DVD
- Fraye Arbeyter Shtime Archives . Available online at the International Institute for Social History (IISG, Amsterdam).