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COMMENTARY
In honor of the anarchist martyrs Sacco and Vanzetti on the 88th Anniversary of their execution by the bloody State of Massachusetts. Their flag was black, this writer's flag is red. Nevertheless, as an elementary act of international working class solidarity we honor their sacrifice-red and black are one on this question. Of such militants as Sacco and Vanzett revolutions are made. The American working class has still not avenged their deaths. Forward.
Below find a commentary on the Sacco and Vanzetti executions by James P. Cannon, founder of the International Labor Defense, a forerunner of the Partisan Defense Committee, who led the international labor fight to save their lives taken from the American Communist Party’s Daily Worker of August 24, 1927. No comment I could make now could say it better.
I do note, however, that the Sacco-Vanzetti defense was plagued by, among other things, the same kind of political confusionism on the freedom/new trial issue that plagues current political death penalty cases today- witness Mumia Abu-Jamal's case. In political defense cases, particularly death penalty cases, militants support the use of every legal avenue to overturn a conviction while centrally depending on the masses for support in the streets and in meeting halls. Militants then (in the 1920's) correctly called for freedom for Sacco and Vanzetti (their convictions were, after all, prototypical frameups even under the norms of capitalist justice). Liberals and their reformist-minded socialist hangers-on called for new trials, commutations or pardons, etc. Basically this is a position that a simple miscarriage of justice had occurred in the case not that Sacco and Vanzetti had been framed-up. This writer says Sacco and Vanzetti were innocent- what the hell did they need a new trial for? As the Mumia case graphically illustrates-some things just never change.
DAILY WORKER August 24, 1927
The Murder of Sacco and Vanzetti
Sacco and Vanzetti are dead but their names will live forever and become a shining banner for the upward striving toilers of the world. They have been murdered by the assassins of the capitalist class. Their execution was a cynically brutal defiance of the world-wide demand of the millions of people that they be liberated or at least be given a new trial to prove again their innocence. It was a legal lynching, a fiendish act of class vengeance, cunningly prepared and planned and violently consummated by the willing tools of the capitalist class.
Sacco and Vanzetti died for the working class. Like their immortal comrades of Chicago's Haymarket they died as martyrs to the cause of labor. This was known or felt by tens of millions of workers in every corner of the globe who fought bitterly to the very last moment to vindicate the two martyred labor fighters. Their admirable loyalty and devotion to labor was the only crime they were guilty of; they were innocent of the crime charged against them by their executioners.
The last words of Vanzetti uttered a minute before the current of death silenced his voice were the echo of the deep convictions of the people:
"I wish to tell you that I am innocent and have never committed a crime, but perhaps some sins. I am innocent of all crimes, not only of this one but of all. I am an innocent man."
The Massachusetts executioners have put to death two glorious spirits. These two fighters, living for seven years in the shadow of the electric chair, unceasingly tortured by their suspension between delay and death, calmly watching the relentless net of the capitalist lynchers closing about them, showed by their heroic conduct how the revolutionary fighters of the working class can die at the hands of their class enemy.
The noble dignity and courage which sustained them throughout the seven years remained with them to the end. They went to death calmly and bravely without fear or embarrassment. It was their murderers, the governors and the judges who hid their faces in fear and shame.
Yes, their names will live forever, for the electric current that killed them has burned their names permanently into the hearts of the toilers of the world. Their miserable executioners will be buried in oblivion while the names and struggles of Sacco and Vanzetti still remain a shining guide to the masses, an inspiration to the oppressed everywhere.
They are our noble and heroic martyrs. Their conduct up to the very last moment was in that spirit. Their voices are stilled but their silence thunders around the world. The workers of America who fought to free Sacco and Vanzetti must pay tribute to their heroic memory in every section of the country. The workers must gather at memorial meetings to pledge themselves to keep alive the memory of Sacco and Vanzetti and their fight; to pour their hatred upon the heads of the murderers; to build their strength to prevent new Sacco-Vanzetti cases and to obtain freedom for the class fighters who are also victims of the frame-up and still in prison.
The International Labor Defense will continue its work for that cause in the spirit of Sacco and Vanzetti.
Honor and respect to our fallen comrades! Remember Sacco and Vanzetti! Remember labor's deathless martyrs!
COMMENTARY
In honor of the anarchist martyrs Sacco and Vanzetti on the 88th Anniversary of their execution by the bloody State of Massachusetts. Their flag was black, this writer's flag is red. Nevertheless, as an elementary act of international working class solidarity we honor their sacrifice-red and black are one on this question. Of such militants as Sacco and Vanzett revolutions are made. The American working class has still not avenged their deaths. Forward.
Below find a commentary on the Sacco and Vanzetti executions by James P. Cannon, founder of the International Labor Defense, a forerunner of the Partisan Defense Committee, who led the international labor fight to save their lives taken from the American Communist Party’s Daily Worker of August 24, 1927. No comment I could make now could say it better.
I do note, however, that the Sacco-Vanzetti defense was plagued by, among other things, the same kind of political confusionism on the freedom/new trial issue that plagues current political death penalty cases today- witness Mumia Abu-Jamal's case. In political defense cases, particularly death penalty cases, militants support the use of every legal avenue to overturn a conviction while centrally depending on the masses for support in the streets and in meeting halls. Militants then (in the 1920's) correctly called for freedom for Sacco and Vanzetti (their convictions were, after all, prototypical frameups even under the norms of capitalist justice). Liberals and their reformist-minded socialist hangers-on called for new trials, commutations or pardons, etc. Basically this is a position that a simple miscarriage of justice had occurred in the case not that Sacco and Vanzetti had been framed-up. This writer says Sacco and Vanzetti were innocent- what the hell did they need a new trial for? As the Mumia case graphically illustrates-some things just never change.
DAILY WORKER August 24, 1927
The Murder of Sacco and Vanzetti
Sacco and Vanzetti are dead but their names will live forever and become a shining banner for the upward striving toilers of the world. They have been murdered by the assassins of the capitalist class. Their execution was a cynically brutal defiance of the world-wide demand of the millions of people that they be liberated or at least be given a new trial to prove again their innocence. It was a legal lynching, a fiendish act of class vengeance, cunningly prepared and planned and violently consummated by the willing tools of the capitalist class.
Sacco and Vanzetti died for the working class. Like their immortal comrades of Chicago's Haymarket they died as martyrs to the cause of labor. This was known or felt by tens of millions of workers in every corner of the globe who fought bitterly to the very last moment to vindicate the two martyred labor fighters. Their admirable loyalty and devotion to labor was the only crime they were guilty of; they were innocent of the crime charged against them by their executioners.
The last words of Vanzetti uttered a minute before the current of death silenced his voice were the echo of the deep convictions of the people:
"I wish to tell you that I am innocent and have never committed a crime, but perhaps some sins. I am innocent of all crimes, not only of this one but of all. I am an innocent man."
The Massachusetts executioners have put to death two glorious spirits. These two fighters, living for seven years in the shadow of the electric chair, unceasingly tortured by their suspension between delay and death, calmly watching the relentless net of the capitalist lynchers closing about them, showed by their heroic conduct how the revolutionary fighters of the working class can die at the hands of their class enemy.
The noble dignity and courage which sustained them throughout the seven years remained with them to the end. They went to death calmly and bravely without fear or embarrassment. It was their murderers, the governors and the judges who hid their faces in fear and shame.
Yes, their names will live forever, for the electric current that killed them has burned their names permanently into the hearts of the toilers of the world. Their miserable executioners will be buried in oblivion while the names and struggles of Sacco and Vanzetti still remain a shining guide to the masses, an inspiration to the oppressed everywhere.
They are our noble and heroic martyrs. Their conduct up to the very last moment was in that spirit. Their voices are stilled but their silence thunders around the world. The workers of America who fought to free Sacco and Vanzetti must pay tribute to their heroic memory in every section of the country. The workers must gather at memorial meetings to pledge themselves to keep alive the memory of Sacco and Vanzetti and their fight; to pour their hatred upon the heads of the murderers; to build their strength to prevent new Sacco-Vanzetti cases and to obtain freedom for the class fighters who are also victims of the frame-up and still in prison.
The International Labor Defense will continue its work for that cause in the spirit of Sacco and Vanzetti.
Honor and respect to our fallen comrades! Remember Sacco and Vanzetti! Remember labor's deathless martyrs!
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