Jewish Women on the Map - New York World Building

Location

Emma Goldman's personal manifesto, "What I Believe," was published by the New York World on this site on July 19, 1908. Written in response to "widespread public misconceptions about anarchism," the article systematically combated slanders against Goldman and outlined her anarchist approach to issues of property, government, militarism, free speech, the church, marriage and love, and violence.  In "What I Believe," Goldman sought to explain and defend her struggle for "freedom in the large sense of the word" through anarchism. The struggle for universal freedom served as the basis for her radical critique of property and capitalism: "It is the private dominion over things that condemns millions of people to be mere nonentities...who pile up mountains of wealth for others and pay for it with a gray, dull and wretched existence for themselves." Since in her opinion government did nothing to further individual liberty or social harmony, Goldman saw it as nothing more than a protector of property and monopoly, and thus as an obstacle to freedom.

The World Building was demolished in 1955 for the expanded car ramp entrance to the Brooklyn Bridge.

See also: "Emma Goldman's What I Believe" in This Week in History.