"In Carrara", the Italian anarchist Galileo Palla said, "even the stones are anarchist." "A Carrara anche le pietre sono anarchiche."
Carrara - the white mountain - Michelangelo's mountain - Carrara has produced more marble than any other place on earth.
By the late 1800s Carrara had become a "cradle of anarchy", especially among the quarry workers. The first organized anarchist group in Italy was founded there - with the New York Times remarking, in January of 1894, that Carrara was "the original hotbed of anarchism in Italy".
Barre, Vermont
In Barre, the local granite was dreaming - "Let's bring over some Italian anarchists and stir things up" - and they came.
Italian stoneworkers came to America to work the quarries in Barre and a number of other towns. In Barre, by 1899, 90 % of the quarry workers were union members. By 1914, one quarter of Barre's population was Italian. One of these Italians was Luigi Galleani - at the time called " the most dangerous man in America" or the most important anarchist in early 20th century America. Galleani had previously been deported from both France and Switzerland, and had escaped from internal exile on the Italian island of Pantelleria, off the coast of Sicily.
Coming to the United States, Galleani was arrested for inciting a riot (one fellow anarchist said "You heard Galleani speak, and you were ready to shoot the first policeman you saw." Galleani fled to Canada, but was expelled back into the United States, arriving in Barre.
Galleani was befriended in Barre by anarchist and artist Carlo Abate. The two of them created what would become the leading Italian language anarchist periodical in America -Cronaca Sovversiva (Chronicle of Subversion). The first issue was published in Barre on June 6, 1903.The periodical continued for 15 years (its first office in Barre mysteriously burned to the ground) at its highest point claiming over 5000 subscribers. It was closed down by the US government under the Sedition Act of 1918. Galleani was deported back to Italy, eventually dying there.
Galleani and others brought a number of speakers to Barre, including Mother Jones, Eugene V. Debs, and Big Bill Haywood. Emma Goldman came to town, speaking to a crowd of over 900, and was later arrested and run out of town.
Galleani also published a widely circulated pamphlet called "La Salute e in voi" - roughly "The health is within you". This pamphlet was actually a manual for the manufacture of explosives and weapons.
Carlo Abate established a drawing school in Barre to enable young men to earn a living without working in the dust of the quarries ( because of silicosis, explosives, and rough conditions, the average lifespan of a quarry worker at the time was 42 years -)
One worker, Innocent Belli, has one word on his tombstone - "Anarchist" - He was arrested in 1900 after a "nearly successful" assassination attempt on Barre's chief of police. Another worker, a leading anarchist stone sculptor Elia Corti, was shot and killed when a fight broke out between anarchists and socialists at Barre's Socialist Hall. Corti's brother carved Elia's tombstone from a single piece of granite.
We rest in the rock. Stone tells our stories, carries us into the future. What would the stories of these places be, without the stone...
