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EARLY YEARS Born in Messina of Tuscan parents in 1878, he moved with his family to Livorno . Still very young, he joined a Monarchist Association, from which he was expelled for being dishonourable, and began writing for a moderate journal ''La Riforma''. In 1886 he enrolled in the University Of Pisa . He soon joined the Anarchist movement there, quickly becoming one of its most influential figures. In 1887 , Gori was arrested for having written about the Chicago protesters killed in the Haymarket Square Riot , and having protested the presence of United States ships in Livorno's port. The following year, as the secretary of the Students' Union , he organized a memorial for philosopher Giordano Bruno . In 1889, Gori received a law degree with a thesis called ''La miseria e il delitto'' ("Poverty and Crime "). In November, under the pseudonym of ''Rigo'' (an anagram of his last name), he published the texts of his first conferences in a booklet called ''Pensieri ribelli'' ("Rebel Thoughts"). For that, he was arrested for "''inciting Class Hatred ''". A legal team composed of his professors and fellow students defended him; he was cleared of the charges and released. The following year, on May 13, he was arrested once more, this time for having been one of the organizers of the May Day demonstrations in Livorno. He was convicted and sentenced to one year (later reduced in Appeal ). He remained in jail until November 10, first in Livorno, then in Lucca . IN MILAN Gori then moved to Milan and worked as a lawyer with Filippo Turati . In January 1891 , he supported the views of Errico Malatesta in the Congress of Capolago during which the Socialist Revolutionary Anarchist Party (''Partito Socialista Anarchico Rivoluzionario'') was founded. The same year, he attended the Italian Workers' Party Congress in Milan. He translated Karl Marx ' and Friedrich Engels ' '' Communist Manifesto '' into Italian for the Popular Socialist Library. Towards the end of that year, he began publishing ''L'amico del popolo'', a "''Socialist-Anarchist''" periodical. He published 27 issues, all of which were seized by the authorities, which netted him more arrests and trials. On April 4 1892 , he attended the ''Legal Socialism and Anarchist Socialism'' conference, at the "Labor Embassy" in Milan. There, he presented Socialist views strongly critical of the Reformist Socialism , which he considered Authoritarian and Parliamentarian . The August 14 of that year he attended the ''National Congress of Worker's and Socialist Organizations'' in Genoa ; there, unsurprisingly, he was among the strongest opponents to the majority of reformers who had decided to create the Italian Workers' Party. By then, Gori was well known to the police: a secret memorandum from the Luigi Pelloux 's Ministry Of The Interior of November 22 , 1891 , sent to all the Italian regions, requested that he be kept under special Surveillance . As a precautionary measure, he was arrested regularly before each 1st of May, just before the May Day demonstrations. It was during one of these detentions, in 1892 , in San Vittore Prison , that he wrote the lyrics for one of his best known songs: ''Inno del primo maggio'' ("Hymn to the 1st of May"). Gori published his first poetry books in the following months: ''Alla conquista dell’Avvenire'' ("Conquering the Future") and ''Prigioni e Battaglie'' ("Jails and Battles"). They were soon sold out, despite a printing run of 9,000 copies; in the meanwhile, he continued working as a lawyer, defending his political comrades. In August 1893 he attended the Socialist Congress in Zürich , form which he was expelled. He then founded the ''Lotta Sociale'' magazine, which was short lived because it was constantly seized by the authorities. FIRST EXILE The Italian government of Francesco Crispi passed three anti-anarchist laws limiting Civil Rights in July 1894 . Afterwards, the Middle-class press accused Gori of inspiring the murder of French President Sadi Carnot . To avoid going to jail for five years, he escaped to Lugano , in Switzerland . In January 1895, he was arrested there, along with seventeen other political exiles. After two weeks in jail, he and the others were expelled. These events inspired him to compose the lyrics of the best known Italian anarchist song: ''Addio a Lugano''. After traveling through Germany and Belgium , he arrived in London , where he met the foremost representatives of the international anarchist movement. After a short while, he traveled to New York City , and from there he went on a speaking tour (more than 400 engagements in one year) in Canada and in the United States . During this time he wrote for the ''La Questione Sociale'' magazine. In the summer of 1896, he returned to London to attend the 4th Congress of the Second International , as a representative of the United States Trade Union s, and presented it with his Anarchist ideas. In London, he became severely ill, and recovered at the National Hospital . Thanks to the intervention of certain members of Italian Parliament , the Italian government allowed him to return to Italy, though initially he was restricted to the island of Elba . Back in Italy, he reestablished his contacts with anarchists, his work as a lawyer defending comrades, and on his contributions to anarchist publications, among which ''L'Agitazione'' in Ancona . SECOND EXILE AND RETURN In 1898 , riots broke-out throughout Italy because of a sudden increase in the price of bread. The government responded with a crackdown; in Milan, General Fiorenzo Bava Beccaris ordered his troops to fire into to the crowds. Somewhere between 80 and 300 people were killed (depending on the account). The following repression of Leftist political organizations and unions was even more fierce, and Gori was forced to flee once more, being condemned to 12 years '' In Absentia ''. From Marseille , he sailed to Argentina . There, he became known not only for his political activities, but also for his scientific work. He was a union organizer, taught courses in criminology at the University of Buenos Aires and started the magazine ''Modern Criminology''. Thanks to an 1911 in Portoferraio , leaving behind a large body of literary work, ranging from the political essays to theater, from criminology to poetry, from harangues to conferences. |
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