August 2nd: the Second Annual Frank Little Memorial!
Submitted on Wed, 07/23/2014 - 4:27pm
I.W.W. organizer Frank Little was in Butte, Montana, in the summer of 1917, organizing for the OBU after the disastrous Granite Mountain - Speculator Mine fire that killed 168 miners earlier that year. Early in the morning of August First, agents of the Copper Trust forced their way into his rooming house, dragged him out, and lynched him from a railroad trestle. He's buried in a Butte cemetery.
Fellow Workers will meet at Stodden Park in Butte (directions below) at noon on August 2nd for a potluck lunch and to get acquainted or re-acquainted, maybe have a brief organizing meeting; and maybe, if we're so inclined and anyone brings instruments, some music.
Then, after the potluck we'll convoy a mile or so down to the cemetery where FW Little is buried, have a brief ceremony, and hopefully some inspiring soapbox speeches and more music; and if necessary, do a little tidying up around FW Little's gravesite.
All this will be pretty informal, without a formal program or a rigid time schedule.
Remember, this will be a potluck, so bring something to eat, and enough extra to share !
Also, if anyone has an I.W.W. flag or banner, or knows where one is, please bring it ! (Last year we made the same appeal and I think a couple people responded positively if I remember right, but no flag or banner showed up.)
DIRECTIONS TO STODDEN PARK : Take the Harrison Avenue Exit, exit #127, off I-15 (see NOTE #2, below), and start south, toward the flat, away from "the hill" and the Berkeley Pit (You can't miss the Berkeley Pit !). Then turn right (west) onto Dewey Blvd. (I believe it's the first street south of the freeway. It's a major street, and if I recall correctly it has a stoplight.) Continue west on Dewey for about 6 or 7 blocks (~3/4 mile), then take a left onto Utah Ave. After about 2 short blocks, you're in the park.
NOTE #1 : Utah Ave. accesses both Stodden Park and Highland View Golf Course. The city street map show that it forks inside the park but doesn't indicate which fork is to the park and which to the golf course, but I assume it's either obvious, or signed, or both. It should go without saying that we'll be at the park, not at the bourgeois pasture pool course !
NOTE #2 : If you've never been to Butte before, and assuming you're approaching Butte by Freeway, be aware that two freeways cross in Butte : The North-South I-15, and the East-West I-90. The two freeways share a common roadway for about eight or so miles through Butte, and the common roadway uses the North-South I-15 mile markers and exit numbers in that section. The Butte exits are numbered 121 through 129. (The East-West I-90 mile markers on each side of this common stretch are in the two hundreds.)
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