Former Executive Councilor and failed candidate for governor Andru Volinsky is representing two folks suing the state of New Hampshire after it removed a historical marker honoring devoted communist and activist Elizabeth Gurley Flynn.
According to the complaint submitted by Attorney Andru Volinsky on behalf of Mary Lee Sargent and Arnie Alpert, the plaintiffs “are without remedies at law or in equity other than the restoration of the Flynn Marker to its location near Montgomery and Court Streets in Concord.”
I’m not saying they don’t have a case. The marker was removed with alacrity after it made local and then national news. Far too quickly for anything approaching the sturm und drang of a typical interaction with the bureaucratic process. It is possible someone skipped a few Is and Ts along the way.
Defendants are accused of violating state law,
“including, but not limited to, the State’s Administrative Procedures Act, R.S.A. 541-A; the Historic Markers Program, R.S.A. 227-C:5 and 236:40; and the Plaintiffs’ rights to the due process of law as guaranteed by the New Hampshire Constitution by interfering with the Plaintiffs’ right to duly petition for the approval and erection of a historical marker near the birthplace of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn in Concord, New Hampshire.”
Their other argument is that the provisions for historical markers are not limited to ideology, which made me laugh out loud.
Sargent said, “The marker was illegally removed based on ideological considerations that fly in the face of the historical marker program’s purpose.” Sargent taught American history for several decades at colleges and universities in the Midwest and in New Hampshire.
Few, if any, of those leaning left oppose the removal or destruction of statues to American History to how it is taught. It may not be long for this world if it hurts someone’s feelings or can be linked to some human rights violation or injustice (actual or alleged). But if Mary Lee Sargent is correct about ideology, don’t those all need to go back?
And does that open us up to honoring every slave owner, racist, fascist, or white supremacist of historical interest or influence who was born or lived in New Hampshire. Elizabeth Gurley Flynn’s ideological passion, after all, resulted in the ethnic and political persecution, cleansing, and deaths of many millions of people.
If we add to this list the deaths caused by communist regimes that the Soviet Union created and supported—including those in Eastern Europe, China, Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam and Cambodia—the total number of victims is closer to 100 million. That makes communism the greatest catastrophe in human history.
Communist regimes murdered blacks, Jews, Women, Children, Christians, and homosexuals, but that does not begin to plumb the depths of incarceration, abuse, discrimination, and intolerance credited to Elizabeth Gurley Flynn’s preferred ideology.
If that’s worth celebrating, and why wouldn’t Democrats want that – it is, after all, the promise of their political ambitions; perhaps the answer is to put the marker back. Elizabeth Gurley Flynn represents not just Concord’s past but its future. A movement disguised as pro-labor and pro-democracy destined to use and undermine the people it claims to defend to erect a violent, intolerant, despotic one-party state.
If that’s what you want to celebrate, have at it. Granite Staters deserve to see it until some peaceful protesters™ pull it out of the ground in the name of social justice and toss it into the Merrimack River.
That’s not a suggestion, by the way, but it might be situational irony.
Update: With apologies to Arnie for referring to him as a woman in the original published version.
