Kaweah 1894

By Jim Pangrazio

It's 1894. The Pullman strike has led to a national rail strike led by Debs' American Railway Union. Because of the financial crisis, workers of all sorts are motivated to join the fight. While centered in Chicago, the most serious challenge is in the West. In central California two men ill treated by the Southern Pacific Railroad are robbing their trains. Large wheat farmers leasing land from the SP have just learned that the land purchase prices stated in their leases are a fiction. The very successful Kaweah community is about to be obliterated by having Congress declare its land Sequoia National Park. The reason these protectors of the great trees must go is because they plan to build there own railroad connection, with the underlining factor that capitalism will not allow any communistic venture to succeed. All the newspapers in the state are on the side of big business with the exception of Hearst's San Francisco Examiner, whose principle journalist, Ambrose Bierce, is particularly interested in the crimes of the ruling class. With the powers of the state coming down upon the malefactors, they each decide that only unity will prevent them from being picked off one by one.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jim Pangrazio
• Release date: Dec 30, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311064899

Jim Pangrazio

The general consensus is that change is urgent. Yet those claiming to work toward that end choose illusory paths that serve more as an impediment to the change they profess to seek. It is a closed loop -- a path that follows itself -- a safe at home tour rather than an expedition in search of wherever. My plays attempt to untangle the complex knots created by repeated trips to nowhere by focusing on the fearful simplicity of uncontaminated life where acceptance and rejection meet to hash out what's bothering them.

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