In the summer of 1910, an anarchist named Sabato Rodia arrived in Seattle, a humble Italian worker visiting his brother and their comrades. Later known to the world as Sam Rodia, back then he was Sabato; quiet, passionate, and fiercely committed to the beautiful idea of anarchism where there would no more masters or slaves but only free people living as equals, their imaginations and agency unchained from the constraints of church and capital, free to soar to unknown heights.

When he arrived in Seattle, thirty-five year-old Sabato had recently separated from his wife and was estranged from his three children. In May of 1909, his wife Lucia Ucci had gone to the police near Berkeley, California and claimed Sabato had given her a black eye. Later, after her husband was arrested, she went back to the police and claimed it was a mistake, that she got the black after falling down the stairs. Several months later, in February of 1910, he filed for divorce from Lucia under the charge of cruelty.