From: ANSWER Coalition info@answercoalition.org>
Date: Sun, 13 Jan 2013 08:00:02
To: joanlives@earthlink.net>
Reply-To: ANSWER Coalition info@answercoalition.org>
Subject: March 8-9: International Women's Day protests to Stop Violence Against Women Everywhere

ANSWER Coalition
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The ANSWER Coalition is actively supporting the March 8-9 International Women's Day demonstrations called by Women Organized to Resist and Defend (WORD). We encourage all of our members and supporters to participate.

MARCH 8 - 9, 2013: STOP VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN EVERYWHERE! THE STATUS QUO MUST GO!
JOIN OR ORGANIZE A PROTEST IN YOUR AREA AND JOIN THE WOMEN'S SPRING!

Rise up! We hold the power to bring an end to sexual violence. Every single gain, every single right we as women have today is the result of struggle. We have to fight back. The status quo must go!

In the United States, 1.3 million women are raped every year. One in every four women experience severe violence at the hands of a current or former partner. Thirty-seven percent of reported rape cases are prosecuted and only 18 percent end in a conviction. Women face intimidation in the workplace. Women in the U.S. military face a record number of sexual assaults. Our sisters in U.S. prisons face horrendous threats and have nowhere to turn. Young women in high schools and on college campuses are regularly forced to contend with intimidation, assault and rape.

This has to end!

From the streets of India to Steubenville, Ohio, mass protests have been organized against sexual violence against women. In both cases, the horrific crimes that were then ignored or covered up have sparked an outcry, a rallying cry against a culture and a society that protects victimizers and alienates victims.

In India, these protests have galvanized a mass movement. We can do the same.

Sexual violence against women isn't "normal." It's not human nature. Oppression against women-the violence, the objectification, the impoverishment and inequality that women experience-isn't just the way it is. It is a function of patriarchy and of institutionalized sexism, of the sexual objectification of women for corporate profit and of a society that tolerates-and often condones-sexual intimidation and violence.

The time is now to rise up and stop sexual violence against women. Last year, the Occupy movements took on the 1%-the wealth owners-and defended the rights of the 99%-the wealth-makers. The year before, a series of revolutionary movements in the Arab World took on oppressive governments in Egypt and Tunisia in the Arab Spring. We need a Women's Spring all over the world.

Friday, March 8 is International Women's Day. On that Friday and Saturday (March 9) women and their allies in the struggle against violence and for justice will take to the streets all over the world.

There will be demonstrations and protests throughout the United States on March 8th and 9th to say: Stop Violence Against Women Everywhere - The Status Quo Must Go!

Join a demonstration on March 8th and 9th where you are. If no action has been announced in your area, get together with your friends and organize one. Every one of us can take action and make a difference in building this new movement against violence and in support of women's rights.

Initial Calendar of Actions

Sacramento, CA
Friday, March 8
March & Rally to Stop Violence Against Women Everywhere!
Assemble at Southside Park (2115 6th St), 4 pm

Los Angeles, CA
Saturday, March 9
March & Rally to Stop Violence Against Women Everywhere!
Assemble at Hollywood/Vine, 1pm

San Francisco, CA
Saturday, March 9
March & Rally to Stop Violence Against Women Everywhere!
Assemble at UN Plaza, 12 noon

New York City, NY
Saturday, March 9
March & Rally to Stop Violence Against Women Everywhere!
Assemble at Washington Sq Park, 1 pm

Chicago, IL
International Women's Day Forum
Date & time TBA

RISE UP! GET INVOLVED:

* Endorse these actions:
http://www.defendwomensrights.org/pages/endorse-stop-violence.html

* Join a demonstration in your city:
http://www.defendwomensrights.org/pages/join-stop-violence-against.html

* List an event taking place in your city March 8th or 9th:
http://www.defendwomensrights.org/pages/list-an-international-womens.html

* Make a donation to support this effort:
http://www.defendwomensrights.org/donate

* Sign up to receive occasional email updates from WORD:
http://www.defendwomensrights.org/signup.html

WORD (Women Organized to Resist and Defend) is a new grassroots, feminist organization that is dedicated to building the struggle for women's rights and equality for all. Learn more:
http://www.defendwomensrights.org

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A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition
www.answercoalition.org
info@internationalanswer.org
National Office in Washington DC: 202-265-1948
Boston: 857-334-5084 | New York City: 212-694-8720 | Chicago: 773-463-0311
San Francisco: 415-821-6545 | Los Angeles: 213-251-1025 | Albuquerque: 505-268-2488

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3b

Re: Fw: March 8-9, Int'l Women's Day, protests to stop violence agai

Sun Jan 13, 2013 12:59 pm (PST) . Posted by:

"Robert Funke" rfunke12

I just sent them an e-mail asking that Boston be added to the list. I also sent a donation to this worthy cause and urge others to contact them to add Boston to the list of cities that can/will take part in such an important cause.

Peace,

Bob
To: saa@lists.occupyboston.org; bostonunac@googlegroups.com; smedleyvfp@yahoogroups.com
CC: chesterzev1@gmail.com
From: joanlives@earthlink.net
Date: Sun, 13 Jan 2013 14:59:03 +0000
Subject: [smedleyvfp] Fw: March 8-9, Int'l Women's Day, protests to stop violence against women everywhere

Nothing listed for Boston yet, but we had actions last year (and we have an active chapter of ANSWER--Act Now to Stop War and End Racism--here). Early heads-up for planning purposes. IS, JoanSent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerryFrom: ANSWER Coalition info@answercoalition.org>
Date: Sun, 13 Jan 2013 08:00:02 -0600 (CST)To: joanlives@earthlink.net>ReplyTo: ANSWER Coalition info@answercoalition.org>
Subject: March 8-9: International Women's Day protests to Stop Violence Against Women Everywhere

Subscribe
Forward this email
Donate

The ANSWER Coalition is actively supporting the March 8-9 International Women's Day demonstrations called by Women Organized to Resist and Defend (WORD). We encourage all of our members and supporters to participate.

March 8 - 9, 2013:
Stop Violence Against Women Everywhere!
The Status
Quo Must Go!
Join or organize a protest in your area
and join the Women's Spring

Women protest in Bangalore on Jan. 4, 2013.
Aijaz Rahi/AP

Rise up! We hold
the power to bring an end to sexual violence. Every single gain, every single
right we as women have today is the result of struggle. We have to fight back.
The status quo must go!
In the United
States, 1.3 million women are raped every year. One in every four women experience
severe violence at the hands of a current or former partner. Thirty-seven percent of
reported rape cases are prosecuted and only 18 percent end in a conviction. Women face intimidation
in the workplace. Women in the U.S. military face a record number of sexual
assaults. Our sisters in U.S. prisons face horrendous threats and have nowhere
to turn. Young women in high schools and
on college campuses are regularly forced to contend with intimidation, assault
and rape.
This has to end!
From the streets of
India to Steubenville, Ohio, mass protests have been organized against sexual violence against women. In both cases, the horrific
crimes that were then ignored or covered up have sparked an outcry, a rallying
cry against a culture and a society that protects victimizers and alienates
victims.
In India, these protests have galvanized a mass movement. We can do the same.
Sexual violence
against women isn't �normal.� It's not human nature. Oppression against
women�the violence, the objectification, the impoverishment and inequality that
women experience�isn't just the way it is. It is a function of patriarchy and
of institutionalized sexism, of the sexual objectification of women for
corporate profit and of a society that tolerates�and often condones�sexual
intimidation and violence.
The time is now to
rise up and stop sexual violence against women. Last year, the Occupy movements
took on the 1%�the wealth owners�and defended the rights of the 99%�the wealth-makers. The year before, a series of revolutionary movements
in the Arab World took on oppressive governments in Egypt and Tunisia in the
Arab Spring. We need a Women's Spring all over the world.
Friday, March 8 is
International Women�s Day. On that Friday and Saturday (March 9) women and
their allies in the struggle against violence and for justice will take to the
streets all over the world.
There will be
demonstrations and protests throughout the United States on March 8th and 9th to say: Stop Violence
Against Women Everywhere � The Status Quo Must Go!
Join a
demonstration on March 8th and 9th where you are. If no action has been announced
in your area, get together with your friends and organize one. Every one of us
can take action and make a difference in building this new movement against
violence and in support of women�s rights.
Initial
Calendar of Actions
Sacramento, CA
Friday, March 8
March & Rally to Stop Violence Against Women Everywhere!
Assemble at Southside Park (2115 6th St), 4 pm
Los Angeles, CA
Saturday, March 9
March & Rally to Stop Violence Against Women Everywhere!
Assemble at Hollywood/Vine, 1pm
San Francisco, CA
Saturday, March 9
March & Rally to Stop Violence Against Women Everywhere!
Assemble at UN Plaza, 12 noon
New York City, NY
Saturday, March 9
March & Rally to Stop Violence Against Women Everywhere!
Assemble at Washington Sq Park, 1 pm

Chicago, IL
International Women's Day Forum
Date & time TBA
Rise up! Get involved:

Endorse these actions
Join a demonstration in your city
List an
event taking place in your city March 8th or 9th
Make a donation to support this effort
Sign up to receive occasional email updates from WORD

WORD
(Women Organized to Resist and Defend) is a new grassroots, feminist
organization that is dedicated to building the struggle for women�s rights and
equality for all. Learn more at DefendWomensRights.org.

A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition
http://www.AnswerCoalition.org/
info@AnswerCoalition.org
National Office in Washington DC: 202-265-1948
Boston: 857-334-5084 | New York City: 212-694-8720 | Chicago: 773-463-0311
San Francisco: 415-821-6545| Los Angeles: 213-251-1025 | Albuquerque: 505-268-2488

If this message was forwarded to you and you'd like to receive future ANSWER updates,
click here to subscribe.
Having trouble viewing this message? Click here.

Click here to unsubscribe from the ANSWER e-mail list.

Reply to sender . Reply to group . Reply via Web Post . All Messages (2) . Top ^

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- From “The Lonseome Hobo”Series - New Year’s Eve, 1977

… he looked out from the ancient smudged sooted back window (showing frigid glass crack slivers breakable and some rotten pane wood ) of his fourth floor single room sad sack, no elevator, long gone downhill from prosperous Victorian mayfair swells times brownstone ready for the wrecker’s’ ball, down the street, down Joy Street, down Beacon Hill Boston Joy Street, ironically named , as the late afternoon crowd of government workers clinging to their annual New Year’s holiday early release (at the discretion of their supervisors, although they, the supervisors. were long gone at noontime, if the day’s work was done) strolled by, ditto post-Christmas shoppers who had wisely waited until after black Christmas day to bring back to Jordan’s or Filene’s those unwanted ties, toys, and bric-a-brac that inevitable arrived at that time each year, and watched wistfully as an early returning college student or two, bulging cloth book bags over their shoulders, trying to catch up on some recess-delayed study, headed a few streets over to school as the town prepared for its first First Night, an officially sanctioned chamber of commerce-style city booster event complete with usually reserved for the Fourth of July shout-out fireworks to welcome in the new year, 1977.

Closer at hand he also observed across narrow Joy Street sad-eyed Saco Steve and beat Billy, Billy of no known moniker, two wine-soaked winos, wine-soaked by this hour if he was any judge, across from his smudged sooted brownstone window. He stopped himself, as he began to judge their shabby low-rent existence, their ceaseless nickel and dime pan-handling, soup kitchen, day labor existence (mostly pearl-diving these days, pearl-diving washing dishes and whatnot over at the Park Plaza where the head union guy, the crew picker, was a second cousin of Billy’s who got him on when they had big shot dinners in the big ballrooms and they, Billy and Steve, and the other guys too, mostly fellow winos or guys down on their luck, would take, as a personal bonus, all those half-full before diner wine glasses and empty them in waiting wine bottles before the glasses went into the racks and on to the conveyor belts. Billy, when he had hit bottom and hit joy street had gotten him some work there, and had showed him that trick of the trade.).

Then he smirk chuckled realizing the immense slough of despond hypocrisy of that forming thought, the joy street hard luck thought, and of his own fast lane addictions, drugs, gambling, cigarettes, whores when he was in the clover, held at bay for the moment, as he continued his view of the lads appearing, as always, to be arguing over something from the sound of their voices that could be heard all the way up to his fourth floor digs. That argument would before long wind up on the floor below his where this pair, when not homeless street-bound, or Sally (Salvation Army), or Pine Street worthy, when not too far in rent arrears (like he was at the moment), kept a shabby flop, a flop not unlike his, single bed, mattress sagging from too many years of faithful addicted service (addicted, drugs, gambling, liquor, although not seemingly the new addiction fad, sex, for, as far as he knew and he knew for certain in his own case, no women crossed the brownstone front door threshold, not that he had seen anyway, nor given the single-minded nature of the listed addictions matched to listed tenants was that likely, a woman, a woman’s wanting habits, were too distracting to trump such devotions), a left behind rumbled hard hospital pillow, pillow-cased (by him), probably gathered by some previous tenant from one of the about seventeen local hospitals that started just the other side of Cambridge Street, Joy Street downstream river flow into Cambridge Street, sheets, rumpled and he provided as well, a bureau, a cockroach-friendly cheap bureau until he stamped out every one of the veiled bastards, for his small personal wardrobe, a couple of changes of this and that, maybe three, along with the usual stash of undergarments, a small table for bric-a-brac (which he used for occasional writing) and toilet articles, no cooking facilities (thankfully, thinking about the Saco Steve and Billy voices moving in on him), no frig, nothing personal on the walls, a common bathroom complete with some Victorian-era tub for the four residents of each floor, and done.

As he heard the rough-hewn gravel hoarse voices of Saco Steve and Billy making their way up the stairs he threw on his best short- sleeved shirt (simple logic, and not picked up from some hobo, tramp, bum met on the road like a lot of good and useful information he had picked up over the years, most of those brethren would not have cared, understood, or comprehended one way or the other about such logic, they lived closer to the moment than even he did -usable all seasons, heat or cold), dark green plaid, Bermuda shorts plaid, something like that, like what was fashionable about 1960 and mother –bought for the first day of school (bought, always bought, at the Bargie, new, a hometown cheap jack discount house before those kind of places became world franchised and spread out to serve the fellahin world), fresh second-hand from the Sally (Salvation Army, remember) bin over on Berkeley Street, his mauve sweater (also purchased at Sally’s but earlier in the winter backing up the logic of that short -sleeved shirt decision), his waist-length denim jean jacket, not Sally-bought but bought when he was in the clover after hitting the perfecta at Suffolk a couple of months before and deciding, deciding against all gambler’s reason, that he should buy it against the coming winter colds, threw his keys in his pants’ pocket and headed down the stairs, waving and shouting happy new year to Steve and Billy, who embroiled in some argument about who was to buy the night’s Thunderbird, let his remark pass without comment, and out the door to investigate the first night officially-sanctioned activity. And to figure out how, with eight dollars (and a couple of buck in change which he never counted as money, in the chips or out) in his pocket and the tracks closed for the season until after the new year, he was going to come up with a week’s twenty-two dollar rent due in a couple of days, and a couple of months in arrest, to keep the super from his door for a while.

As he walked up Cambridge Street pass monstrous (monstrous in taking good cheap cold water flat tenement housing for his brethren and monstrous for its low –bidder unfriendly design that looks to his now faux- professional architect’s opinion like a space station platform against the generally Bulfinch décor of the surrounding area) City Hall where it veered into Tremont toward the Common he suddenly had an idea, hell, why hadn’t he thought of it before, constantly studying those racing forms up in that fourth floor cold water flat, hell not even cold water, not in the room anyway, he thought must had finally gotten the better of him. What better night to work the pan-handle, the pan-handle that a few years back he had worked into an art form of sorts before the chilly winds of the 70s, his own hubristic addictions, Susie, and , hell, just some plain bad luck, had forced him into a few years of work, work doing a little of this and a little of that, before he got tired of that little of this and little of that, and focused all his energies on his “system,” his absolutely fool-proof system of beating the ponies, the dogs, or whatever other animal wanted to run like hell for the paying customers, the guys, the guys like him, who all had their own sure-fire beat-down systems and who could live, like him, on easy street on the profits. Just now though he had to work on his approach, his new year’s festive crowd approach since he knew his act would be rusty starting out.

Funny, he thought, as he worked up his approach in his head thinking about the finer points of the art form, most civilians, most people who have never been on the wrong side of the bum, or been just plain down on their luck and thus clueless about how to survive without about seventeen beautiful support systems around them to cushion the landing , think pan-handling is just pan-handling, put out your hat or hand kind of polite, eyes glued down to the ground, maybe taking their and pretending to shake off their dust, kind of “sorry to bother you,” and pitch for spare change, and mainly keep moving along playing the percentages by covering a lot of ground fast, or just staying put, maybe on the ground looking like some third world fellaheen refugee, blanket underneath (smart move against cold night and winter troubles), with all your worldly possessions, rucksack, some desperate towel to occasionally wipe off sweat or drool, your pitiful donut shop coffee cup with “donations” spelled wrong on it, about you. Jesus. Forget all that. That approach was strictly for winos and losers. It might have worked in about 1926 or 27 when people walking by, mayfair swells or just ordinary joes, working stiffs, actually looked at a person, any person, when something was spoken to them, even by a ragamuffin stranger, or actually took the time and looked down at the ground and thought poor guy there but the grace of god go I, or some such thing. Today a guy needed an angle, a reason for a passer-by to stop. And that is where his old friend’s advice, his hobo road friend Black River Whitey, told around a jungle camp fire one night out in Indio, out in the California desert near the old Southern Pacific railroad tracks, about the tricks of the pan-handling trade came in handy.

Black River Whitey simply said this- shout at or do some fake (maybe not fake when you get into it) mental flip out when asking for dough. Nothing over the edge, way over the edge, nothing that they would yell copper over or take a swing at you for just to take a swing at you and impress their friends that they could beat up on a stewball bum ,but firm. See the idea Whitey said was that those couple of dollars (hey, not quarters or chump change like that, not when you are running this scam, this is strictly dollar minimum stuff not that quarter for coffee gag) they practically threw at you to get you out of their faces was far easier for them to do than to guess at what your next move will be, especially a guy with his girl and he thinking of later in the night thoughts and maybe scoring and not wanting to go mano y mano with some half-hobo and, and, losing. Or some lonely girl, thinking who knows what she would be thinking, nothing good for her for sure. Beautiful, Black River Whitey, beautiful. But he thought as he walked toward the Common and geared up to his night’s work past a couple of half-frozen stoop winos spread out down on the ground, cup in front, across from Park Street Station any fool could see where winos and other lamos best stick with that cup in front of them and be glad of the few quarters that trickle their way.

Of course, Whitey also mentioned around that old Indio camp fire, that if you had time and had some dough to get some half-decent clothes, clothes like he had on now (only half-decent you don’t want to pitch hard luck stuff in a Brooks Brothers suit, not on the mean city streets anyway, save that pitch for sunnier days), you could work “the down on your luck” angle, needing an angel angle that worked with private social welfare organizations and single women especially. He knew the score on that one because he had, just young enough, just gentile shabby enough, just“rehab-able ” enough, and just civilized enough to pull it off made many dollars in tough times the last time they came his way a few years back (and a couple of friendly one night stands with some lonely women too, and not bad looking either, as a bonus). But that was day time magic, lunch time, and took precious time and that night with frozen temperatures in the air and distracted fast-moving people going from place to place the shout-out was his strategy of choice by default.

And his night of work, after a few off-hand rusty stumbles and a bunch of brush-offs, worked, worked to the tune of thirty-two dollars, about six packs worth of cigarettes of all kinds (oh yah, Black River Whitey always said if they pleaded no dough ask for cigarettes, or something, but keep asking), a least six belts of high- shelf booze from no dough pleaders with a flask at their hip to keep the chill off, a couple of joints (to be saved for cooler, maybe a stray woman share , times) from lingering 1960s freak-types, and he thought, an offer to stay at some woman’s house for the night, although the booze might have been taking his head over by then. (Besides he was still half-pining for Susie, Susie who had up and left him with her wanting habits intact, her now little white picket fence, kids, and dog dreams, when he decided he would rather do a little of this and that than work the nine to five numbness.) Now if he could only keep that dough ready for the rent and not bet on some foolish new year’s college football game or something before then he might be able to work on that sure-fire betting system of his in the comfort of him room and then really be on easy street.

Those Who Fought For Our Communist Future Are Kindred Spirits-Honor 1930s American Socialist Workers Party Leader Felix Morrow

 

 

 

 

Markin comment (2008):

 

Every January, as readers of this blog are now, hopefully, familiar with the international communist movement honors the 3 Ls-Lenin, Luxemburg and Liebknecht, fallen leaders of the early 20th century communist movement who died in this month (and whose untimely deaths left a huge, irreplaceable gap in the international leadership of that time). January is thus a time for us to reflect on the roots of our movement and those who brought us along this far. In order to give a fuller measure of honor to our fallen forbears this January, and in future Januarys, this space will honor others who have contributed in some way to the struggle for our communist future. That future classless society, however, will be the true memorial to their sacrifices. This year we pay special honor to1930s American Socialist Workers Party leader Felix Morrow.

 

Note on inclusion: As in other series on this site (“Labor’s Untold Story”, “Leaders Of The Bolshevik Revolution”, etc.) this year’s honorees do not exhaust the list of every possible communist worthy of the name. Nor, in fact, is the list limited to Bolshevik-style communists. There will be names included from other traditions (like anarchism, social democracy, the Diggers, Levellers, Jacobins, etc.) whose efforts contributed to the international struggle. Also, as was true of previous series this year’s efforts are no more than an introduction to these heroes of the class struggle. Future years will see more detailed information on each entry, particularly about many of the lesser known figures. Better yet, the reader can pick up the ball and run with it if he or she has more knowledge about the particular exploits of some communist militant, or to include a missing one.

********

 

Biography

Felix Morrow was for many years a leading figure figure in American Trotskyism, best known for his classic Revolution and Counter-Revolution In Spain. He joined the Communist League of America in 1933 and after Max Shachtman’s minority split in 1940, served as editor of the Socialist Workers Party’s paper, the Militant, and its theoretical journal, Fourth International. He was one of 18 SWP leaders imprisoned under the Smith Act during the Second World War. In 1943 he formed a faction with Albert Goldman which challenged the SWP’s ‘orthodox’ catastrophic perspective. In one of the most instructive factional struggles in the history of the Trotskyist movement, Morrow and Goldman projected the likelihood of a prolonged period of bourgeois democracy in western Europe and emphasised the need for democratic and transitional demands against the maximalism advocated by the majority. Although he was expelled from the SWP in 1946 for ‘unauthorised collaboration’ with Shachtman’s Workers Party, he did not join Shachtman, and drifted out of politics.

Felix Morrow

The Minneapolis ‘Sedition’ Trial

(January 1942)

---

Source: Fourth International, New York, Vol.3 No.1, January 1942, pp.4-9.
Transcription/XHTML Markup: Ted Crawford and David Walters
Copyleft: Felix Morrow Internet Archive (www.marx.org) 2004. Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

---

I. The Verdict

The Minneapolis “sedition” trial was an unprecedented development in the class struggle in the United States. Never before has the federal government ordered a trial which was so nakedly a political trial, a persecution of the workers’ political movement. The political trials of the last World War were the most significant prior to Minneapolis; but they were limited formally in their scope; they were brought under the wartime Espionage Act and ostensibly were merely aimed at persons allegedly obstructing the war. In Minneapolis, however, the government directly characterized as criminal the doctrines of Marx, Lenin and Trotsky, in the indictment and the prosecution arguments. In this assault upon the Socialist Workers Party the government stood out more plainly than ever before as a government of the capitalist class, persecuting proletarian politics.

As the capitalist prosecution marked a new stage in the class struggle, so too did the conduct of the proletarian defense. Never before in a labor trial in this country have defendants so deliberately, so systematically, defended their revolutionary doctrines, using the courtroom as a forum from which to proclaim their ideas; but simultaneously demonstrating that the defense of their doctrines was the most effective way to defend themselves against the charges, not only outside the courtroom but also in the courtroom. By this method the defense won from the jury important concessions, partial victories which enormously facilitate the task of rallying working class and liberal public opinion to support the Civil Rights Defense Committee’s appeal to the higher courts.
An analysis of the jury’s verdict will show how much the Socialist Workers Party has bettered the position of labor’s rights in this battle in contrast to where we stood when the indictment drawn up by the Department of Justice was handed down by a federal grand jury on July 15, 1941, and we went on trial on October 27, 1941.
The jury found all 23 defendants not guilty on Count 1 of the indictment. (Five of the 28 defendants who originally went on trial were acquitted on both counts by directed verdict by the judge for lack of evidence, at the conclusion of the prosecution’s presentation of the case.) Three important consequences resulted from rejecting Count I.

1. The jury thwarted the government’s attempt to use against the labor movement a statute enacted by Congress in 1861, aimed against the southern slaveholders.

Count I charged violation of this statute; the section of the statute adduced against us—used, incidentally, for the first time since its adoption!—makes it a crime to conspire to overthrow the government by force and violence. In argument prior to the trial (for dismissal of the indictment) our chief counsel, Albert Goldman, showed that the statute obviously was designed against attempts to overthrow the government in the immediate present, such as the 1861 rebellion of the southern states. Government counsel, however, stated that it was the position of the government that the statute applied also to any movement whose doctrines could be charged to indicate an attempt to overthrow the government at some time in the remote future. The full meaning of this extension of the application of the statute became clear in final argument, when Assistant Attorney-General Henry A. Schweinhaut called upon the jury to convict us because, although the Socialist Workers Party is a tiny party now, its avowal of the doctrines of the Russian revolution make it possible that, like the Bolshevik Party of Lenin and Trotsky, it could eventually grow to become the leader of a similar revolution here!
In acquitting us on Count 1, the jury, in effect, rejected the government’s attempt to transform the 1861 statute into a ban against revolutionary doctrines. The importance of this as a precedent is that the constitutionality of the 1861 statute as a whole is firmly established by Supreme Court decisions; a conviction under it would be much more likely to remain untouched by the higher courts than one under the hitherto untested Smith Act of 1940. In his final argument, Albert Goldman carefully explained to the jury the important distinction between conspiring to overthrow the government (Count 1) and conspiring to advocate overthrow of the government (Count 2), a distinction which the government, in extending the meaning of the 1861 statute, had refused to recognize. On this important question the jury aligned itself with the defense.

2. Furthermore, by acquitting us on this count, the jury, in effect, characterized the main section of the government’s case as a frame-up. The main purpose of the parade of government witnesses had been to secure a conviction on Count 1. These witnesses were to show the existence of an actual conspiracy to forcibly overthrow the government. This was particularly so in their testimony on the Union Defense Guard of Minneapolis, which the government attempted to depict as an armed force organized with the ultimate aim of overthrowing the government. It was under Count 1 that the indictment brought in the Union Defense Guard. Likewise under this count it was charged that we did “procure certain explosives” for the same purpose.

It is one thing to charge that the doctrines of the Socialist Workers Party constitute “seditious conspiracy”; that is a political persecution. It is something very different, it is a crude police frame-up, to charge that we obtained explosives and armed the Union Defense Guard to assault the government. “If the government persists in its attempt to make of the Union Defense Guard an organization aimed at destroying the government, then this whole case is nothing but a frame-up,” Albert Goldman told the jury in his opening statement; the government did persist; and the jury’s acquittal of the defendants on that count upheld Albert Goldman’s charge of frame-up.

Now Clearly a Civil Liberties Issue

3. The third and most important result of acquittal on Count 1 is that it left the case squarely an issue of civil liberties. The introduction of the charge of violating the 1861 statute, the “evidence” about the Union Defense Guard, the blood-curdling references in Count 1 of the indictment to procuring “explosives,” to soldiers under our influence who would “turn their weapons against their officers,” etcetera—all this had as its aim to picture the defendants as desperados and criminals and not as political prisoners. The liberal Attorney-General wanted at all costs to deny that the case was a civil liberties issue. Biddle, answering a protest from the American Civil Liberties Union, wrote in his letter of September 4, 1941:

“You state from your examination of the ‘character of the evidence on which the indictment rests’ that the charges attack utterances or publications and include only one overt act—the organization of the workers in a defense corps. This overt act, however—arming workers to carry out the purpose to which the utterances are addressed—is clearly sufficient to remove the case from one involving expression of opinion... You suggest that the facts show that the intent (of the Union Defense Guard) was merely to protect union property against threats of violence. But the indictment specifically alleges otherwise, and I am confident that it will be supported in the evidence.” So unconvincing was the evidence, however, that the jury aligned itself with the defense on this question and left Biddle in the extremely embarrassing position of having lost his chief prop for his claim that the case was not one “involving expression of opinion.” Let us note in passing that the liberal Attorney-General’s chief prop was an attempted frame-up. Even if we concede he was deceived by subordinates on the Union Defense Guard, Biddle avidly seized upon it—to show his liberalism!

As a clear-cut issue of civil liberties, the appeal to the higher courts will receive far broader support than we could have hoped for had we been convicted on Count 1. Unquestionably it was the jury’s absolving us of the charges of “procuring explosives” and arming guards which has encouraged The Nation and other liberal spokesmen to give their unqualified endorsement to the movement to appeal the case to the higher courts.

The Recommendation of Leniency

On Count 2 the jury found 18 of the 23 defendants guilty, but with a recommendation of leniency. That recommendation undermines the moral validity of the guilty verdict. What does leniency imply here? This was no case of crime committed by a young boy or girl under extenuating circumstances. The defendants were obviously in full possession of their faculties, and not a bit remorseful; indignant against their accusers; clearly determined to go on with their revolutionary work. Under these conditions what could a recommendation of leniency mean, except a formal registration by the jury of its disagreement with the ideas of the defendants rather than a condemnation of the defendants as criminals.

Such a guilty verdict is robbed of all moral validity. No wonder that Mr. Biddle and his associates—it is no secret—are chagrined by such a victory!
An examination of Count 2 renders the verdict still less defensible. Of what were the defendants convicted? Count 2 charged violation of the Smith Act of 1940, popularly known, during the fight against enactment of it, as the Omnibus Gag Bill; the justice of that nickname becomes apparent by describing Count 2. It lists five numbered acts which the defendants allegedly conspired to commit: 1. “Advise, counsel, urge” and “distribute written and printed matter” to cause insubordination in the armed forces. 2. “Advocate, abet, advise and teach the duty, necessity, desirability and propriety of overthrowing the government by force and violence.” 3. “Print, publish, edit, issue, circulate, sell, distribute and publicly display written and printed matter advocating” such overthrow. 4. “Organize societies, groups and assemblies of persons to teach” the same. 5. Become members of such groups.
The last three of these charges played no role. Count 2 was considered, by both prosecution and defense, as if it consisted of the first two charges—causing insubordination and advocating violence.
The jury could vote guilty or not guilty on Count 2 as a whole and could not indicate whether it held the defendants guilty on one, or the other, or both charges in the count. The recommendation of leniency tends to indicate that the jury did not consider the defendants guilty of both.
One of these two charges was so unsubstantiated that it should never have been submitted to the jury at all—that on insubordination in the armed forces. Albert Goldman pointed this out to Judge Joyce in argument for a new trial. For the only “evidence” on this point was some oral testimony by two government witnesses to the effect that one or two defendants had told them that soldiers should be induced to “kick” about food and living conditions. Judge Joyce’s answer was that, since “some” evidence had been offered in this point, he had been bound to submit the question to the jury. Federal judges may dismiss all or any part of any count in an indictment when in the judge’s opinion no substantial evidence has been introduced warranting the submission of the point in question to the jury.
Certainly it is hard to believe that a jury recommended leniency if it held the defendants guilty of such a serious charge as conspiring to cause insubordination in the army.

What Happened in the Jury Room

So far we have discussed the verdict and its logical implications. Perhaps even more devastating to the moral validity of the verdict of guilty on Count 2 is the story of what actually happened in the jury room, which has now been told by some of the jurors. There were three jurors who were ready to vote not guilty on both counts. Had they withstood the pressure, there would have been no verdict, but a hung jury, with a new trial—if the government had decided to go through with a second one.

Instead the jurors compromised. Those who believed us not guilty secured acquittal on the first count, acquittal of five on the second count, and a recommendation of leniency, and in return voted guilty on Count 2.
All in all, the jury’s verdict is scarcely one which the government can point to as a vindication of the government charges on which the trial took place. On the contrary, the defendants are in a strong moral position on the basis of which, even in wartime, great sections of the labor and liberal movement can be united in the appeal against the convictions

II. The Jury

No one connected with the defense, I believe, thought it possible to win from a jury a verdict of not guilty on both counts. With the prestige of the federal government backing the charges, with charges of such a character, with the given procedure in the federal courts, with the trial taking place on the eve of war, it was inconceivable that a jury could be found hardy enough to go against bourgeois public opinion and declare us not guilty. The defendants were not the only ones who held this view. Roger Baldwin, Director of the American Civil Liberties Union, just before the case went to the jury, sent out an urgent appeal for funds for the defense in which he assumed that a conviction was coming.

A disagreement in the jury—no verdict—seemed more conceivable than a blanket verdict of not guilty. But those who believed us innocent accepted a compromise, instead of insisting upon a hung jury. Shall we criticize then for that? Perhaps. But let us also examine the real situation of the jury.
Here were jurors chosen by a procedure which made certain that no one sympathetic to labor would be on the venire. They were called upon to pass on a case which, they well understood, had been initiated by the highest circles of the United States Government; an Assistant Attorney-General, sent from Washington, was present in the courtroom to demand of them a guilty verdict. The defendants were revolutionaries committed to the overthrow of the existing order, that is to say, members of a small unpopular movement anathematized by respectable society. Over the courtroom was the shadow of the impending war—the defendants were sentenced the day Congress declared war against Japan. Under those conditions, it would have taken men and women of extraordinary calibre to stand up in the jury room on behalf of the defendants to the point of a hung jury. In truth it is more surprising that those who believed us innocent were not finally beaten down to submit to a blanket verdict of guilty against all defendants, on both counts, and with no recommendation of leniency.
The really significant fact is not that the three jurors compromised, but that the other nine were ready to agree to a compromise favorable to the defendants. A significant fact, for when the trial began these jurors were unquestionably steeped in hostility and prejudice against the revolutionary Marxists they were called upon to judge. That the jurors ended ready to show leniency toward the defendants is a tribute to the character of the defense conducted by Albert Goldman.
Consider who these jurors were and how they were chosen. The venire for a federal jury in this district is constituted as follows: The court clerk and a jury commissioner write to their friends and acquaintances in all the counties of this predominantly rural federal district, asking them to send in the names of persons likely to make good jurors. The court clerk and jury commissioner naturally write to “solid” citizens who, in turn, name the same type. Those named receive routine questionnaires which they fill in and return to the court clerk, who files them. When a court term is about to open and a venire is needed, the clerk gets out of the files the required number distributed almost equally among the counties, which means an overwhelmingly rural venire. In this case the judge called for a venire drawn from 33 counties, predominantly rural.
Nor was Albert Goldman permitted to question prospective jurors, as defense counsel are traditionally allowed to do. The procedure permitted questioning of prospective jurors only by the judge. Defense counsel could submit questions to the judge, who put some of them, rejected the rest. Thus defense counsel could not, by skillful, probing questioning, ferret out prejudiced jurors.
The defense was limited to ten peremptory challenges. After using up the first few, Albert Goldman could not but ask himself: “If I use up the rest, isn’t it almost certain, from such a venire, that I shall get worse than I already have in the jury box?”
And so this jury was chosen: a grain elevator owner; a small town newspaper publisher; a bank executive; a garage owner; a farmer; a farm laborer; a general store owner a general store clerk; a plumbing contractor; a hardware clerk; the wife of a courthouse janitor; a lumber company sales manager. Most of them from rural counties, and not a single person who is or ever has been a member of a trade union.
Visualize that jury and you will begin to understand Albert Goldman’s achievement in conducting the defense!

III. The Method of the Defense

The method of the defense will perhaps be best understood if we contrast it with the method which liberals and civil libertarians advised us to employ.

Retain eminent and respectable attorneys. Leave the strategy of the defense entirely in their hands, without “politically motivated” interference by the defendants. How would such counsel picture the defendants to the jury? As “harmless, theoretical ‘revolutionists’ innocent enough, foolish enough, to talk about overthrowing the government of the United States. To pretend that these people are a danger to this country is simply fantastic.” These words from a New Leader (December 20, 1941) editorial, protesting the prosecution, typify what such counsel would say to the jury: try to laugh it off at the expense of the defendants, plus an appeal to civil liberties.
This approach would include systematic objections by defense counsel to acceptance into evidence of any and all government exhibits from the literature of the Socialist Workers Party—objections designed to limit as far as possible the number of government exhibits, so that there would be as few as possible to explain away. Similar objections would be made to testimony of government witnesses. Each exhibit and item of oral testimony, at least the most damaging, would then be separately “interpreted” to persuade the jury that it isn’t as bad as it is painted. Government witnesses would be cross-examined on the same basis. Defendants would be called as witnesses only primarily to refute specific charges made by government witnesses.
The liberal method of trying the case would eschew any systematic exposition in the case, or in final argument, of the socialist theories of the defendants. Proposals by defendants to defend their doctrines would be frowned upon by the liberal attorneys as having no other purpose than to use the court for propaganda purposes. It might make good propaganda for socialism but would prejudice the jury against the defendants.
This, I think, is a fair presentation of the method that the liberals would use in the Minneapolis and similar cases.

Fallacies of the Liberal Method

There are two fundamental flaws in this strategy.

1. It does not cope with the fact that there are laws on the statute books making it a crime to advocate the overthrow of the government by violence. When the New Leader, impliedly conceding the main contention of the government indictment, calls us “foolish enough to talk about overthrowing the government of the United States,” it leaves us with no defense in a jury trial against the Smith Act so long as that is law. When The Nation, while outspokenly calling for support to our appeal, condemns the prosecution as similar to Japan’s prosecutions of “dangerous thoughts,” it is in reality assuming that we, as charged in the indictment, advocate overthrow of the government by violence.

These liberal organs prove to their own satisfaction that the Socialist Workers Party is no danger to the government; and that argument may conceivably be accepted by the United States Supreme Court, for reversing the conviction by adopting the Holmes-Brandeis theory of “clear and present danger.” But that argument is in point only in appellate courts and on a motion to dismiss the indictment, prior to trial. Albert Goldman made that motion on our behalf. Judge Joyce rejected that motion—finding that there was a clear and present danger of the evils which the statutes cited in the indictment sought to prevent and therefore the statutes were applicable! We were then faced with the necessity of convincing a jury that we were not guilty of violating those statutes. The liberal argument that it is unjust to convict “foolish, unpopular, tiny grouplets” for advocating overthrow of the government by violence would get nowhere with a jury which is sworn to take the law as it is handed to them by the judge.

2. The liberals’ appeal to the jury to uphold civil liberties is not likely to sway a jury which has heard such a defense as the liberals would present. The jurors, as we have seen, came into the courtroom with the habits and prejudices of a lifetime standing like a Chinese wall between them and us. Unions were strange and alien to them—a hundredfold more so were proletarian revolutionists. The liberal method of presenting the case would not have broken down those prejudices against the defendants and their socialist doctrines. The perfect civil libertarian may say, with Voltaire: “I abhor to the death what you believe in but I will fight to the death for your right to say it.” But the ordinary mortal, sitting as a juror in a doctrinal case, if he abhors to the death what you stand for, is fairly certain to vote guilty.

These reasons would have been sufficient to decide us to reject the liberal strategy. But even had the liberal method been efficacious enough to win us an acquittal, we could not have agreed to that kind of a defense.
To have defense counsel deride the potency of our doctrines, urge the jury to laugh at us as foolish doctrinaires and to let us go because we could never achieve our goal—such a defense would be little better than abandoning our principles for the sake of a possible acquittal.
Instead we employed a principled method which may justly be said to have been used for the first time in this country—certainly for the first time systematically and consciously.
We set out to get those jurors to cease abhorring socialism and to recognize and respect the sincerity, sanity and seriousness of the defendants and their ideas. It might even be said that, in a sense, we set out to make socialist sympathizers or half-sympathizers out of those jurors. The defense had as its main object to make those jurors understand what we are really like and what we really stand for. That could be done only by explaining to them, in the simplest and most persuasive terms, our beliefs and our hopes for the socialist future of humanity.

The Kind of Attorney We Needed

That method of defense necessitated a chief counsel learned in socialist theory; no other could skillfully guide defense witnesses in expounding the doctrines of the Socialist Workers Party, decide what questions to ask government witnesses, which government exhibits were satisfactory to the defense, and make an exhaustive final argument in defense of socialism. Indeed it would be impossible to carry out such a method of defense except under the leadership of an attorney thoroughly trained in Marxism.

There was one man above all in the country who had those qualifications: Albert Goldman. Friendly liberals pointed out to us that he was seriously handicapped by the fact that he was himself one of the defendants in the case; moreover he was a Jew facing a rural jury which might harbor anti-Semitic prejudices. These were facts which we had to take into account. Were Albert Goldman not a Jew and a defendant, perhaps he would have been still more effective with a jury. But for those reasons replace him with another lawyer? Yes—if the other lawyer were Goldman’s equal as a lawyer, as a speaker, as a Marxist. But in those qualities there is no lawyer alive who measures up to Albert Goldman. And by the time he had concluded his final argument all serious observers were agreed that the handicaps had paled away and disappeared as Albert Goldman established his moral authority in that courtroom.
The trial began with opening statements by both sides. After US District Attorney Anderson made his statement, Goldman incisively called the attention of the jury to the heart of the case:

“We shall show to you, by the very evidence introduced by the prosecution, that the Socialist Workers Party’s aim is to win a majority of the people for its ideas. And Mr. Anderson will have to convince you that that is criminal...

“The evidence will show that we were very, very interested in the question of trade unionism. We will not deny it. We instructed our members to be active in all organizations, particularly trade unions. Where people congregate, there should we be, to show the majority of the people that they, in order to solve their problems, must accept those ideas...

“The defense will prove Mr. Anderson’s contention that we are opposed to this war, and the evidence will prove further Mr. Anderson’s contention that the defendants consider this war on the part of England and Germany and Italy, and the United States as an imperialistic war, fought for the economic interests of the small group of financiers and capitalists who control the destinies of these countries...

“Those are ideas of ours with which the jurors may agree or not, but the evidence will show that every statement made by Mr. Anderson to the effect that we believe in sabotage is absolutely false. The evidence will show that so long as we are in a minority, so long as we cannot convince the majority of the people that our ideas are correct, we shall submit and we have nothing else to do but to submit to the government.

“Essentially the question boils itself down to this: Did we advocate the overthrow of the government by force and violence? ...

“The evidence will show that we prefer a peaceful transition to socialism; but that we analyze all the conditions in society, we analyze history, and on the basis of this analysis we predict, we predict that the reactionary minority, by violence, will not permit the majority its right to establish socialism. That is the heart of the question!”

The rest of the trial consisted, so far as the defense was concerned, in proving these propositions.

Our Attitude to Prosecution Evidence

Goldman made clear to the jury that he welcomed all exhibits introduced by the government which were programmatic documents of the Socialist Workers Party, articles on policy in our press written by authoritative leaders of the party, resolutions of the party conventions or the National Committee, etc. He explained to the jury that the defense would introduce few exhibits since it would prove its case from the exhibits of the government.

The comparatively few objections he made to exhibits submitted by the government were clearly in protest against irrelevant or unfair items: a floorplan of the Minneapolis party branch offices, red flags and pictures of Lenin and Trotsky seized in an FBI raid on the Twin City branch offices; unsigned articles from our press which had no bearing on the issues, etc. Goldman also objected to the introduction of works by Marx, Lenin and Trotsky on the ground that, while we accept the fundamental doctrines of these founders of our movement, we are not idol-worshippers who accept every single word they wrote; hence their doctrines should be considered in the form in which they appear in the official literature and resolutions of the Socialist Workers Party.
Goldman followed a similar procedure toward government witnesses. He made no objections to their descriptions of the structure and history of the party, their recital of events at party meetings, their account of party activities in the trade unions, etc. As the reader of Goldman’s final argument will note, he made effective use of this hostile testimony in clinching important points, notably on the question of the party’s aims in the unions. Only where the prosecutors led their witnesses into fabulous tales of private conversations allegedly had between witnesses and defendants in barrooms, automobiles and house-parties, or government testimony was completely irrelevant to the issues, did Goldman object.
Likewise his extremely effective cross-examination carefully avoided any appearance of hammering witnesses merely for the sake of tripping them up. Much of their testimony he did not cross-examine at all, dealing only with crucial points such as their allegations about the Union Defense Guard and about statements by defendants advocating violence against the government. Goldman’s activities during the three weeks that the prosecution was presenting its side of the case clearly indicated his willingness to have everything brought in which would give the jury a complete picture of the doctrines and activities of the Socialist Workers Party.
The defense took only four day’s to presents its case. The party’s National Secretary, James P. Cannon, was on the stand for two days. Under Goldman’s questioning he gave the jury an effectively simple description of our ideas; under cross-examination he defended those ideas against prosecution attempts to pervert their meaning.
This was supplemented by the testimony of Farrell Dobbs and Vincent Dunne on the policy and activities of the party in the trade unions. Short but convincing testimony by six Union Defense Guard members on the nature of the organization, and testimony by Grace Carlson rebutting government testimony about statements allegedly made by her were other important items in the defense presentation.
The effect of the whole was not so much to deny specific government allegations as to describe to the jury the ideas of the Socialist Workers Party.
Whatever may have been the effect of the defense witnesses on the jury, in the end everything depended upon Albert Goldman’s final argument. For after the defense witnesses came the prosecution’s final argument, a day-long speech by US District Attorney Victor Anderson.

IV. The Final Arguments

On the eve of the trial, Attorney-General Biddle had issued a statement, presumably to conciliate protesting liberals, promising that the trial would be conducted in “a low key.” But Anderson’s final argument was an utterly brutal thing, devoid of any hint of concession to the rights of labor; a speech aimed at evoking the most reactionary sentiments; not appealing to the jury’s sense of justice but demanding, in the name of constituted authority, that it bring in a verdict of guilty for the sake of God and country. The jury appeared to us to be visibly affected by Anderson’s demand, either because it shared his sentiments or bowed to his authority.

One felt that all the previous handicaps against us were revived in full force by Anderson’s vicious assault. I have not yet mentioned the handicaps imposed by Judge Matthew M. Joyce; he had scarcely made easier our task of acquainting the jury with our real ideas. I cite but a few examples. The prosecution insisted on introducing as evidence against us Wintringham’s book, New Ways of War, replete with diagrams of how to make bombs, grenades and other weapons; it is a book written to train Britain’s Home Guards to resist Nazi invasion; but we had written a book review of it and the judge admitted the book in evidence. We had visions of the jurors deliberating their verdict and poring over those diagrams! Judge Joyce had also admitted into evidence Marx and Engels’ Communist Manifesto of 1848; what its words, written about the Europe of 93 years ago, could conjure up in the jurors’ minds, we could only conjecture.
On the other hand Judge Joyce would not permit the defense witnesses to tell the jury the whole story behind the trial—the struggle between AFL Teamsters President Daniel J. Tobin and the Trotskyist leadership of the Motor Transport Workers Union, Local 544-CIO, and the series of governmental actions siding with Tobin, culminating in the indictment of the leadership of the Socialist Workers Party and Local 544-CIO. Whenever defense witnesses approached this question, the prosecutors jumped up to object and were sustained by the judge.
Such were the onerous conditions under which Albert Goldman delivered his final argument, speaking for two days, for a total of ten hours.
His speech, as the reader can see for himself, is austerely simple in its construction. There are no tricks in it, nor flights of rhetoric. The secret of its great power is that it is an unadorned but clear and persuasive explanation of what socialism is. The task Albert Goldman set for himself was to try to make those jurors understand who we defendants are, what we believe, why we believe it, and why we have a moral and legal right to our beliefs. He set out to move those jurors, not inches, but worlds, from their capitalist-dominated world into seeing distance of the socialist world of the future.
The obstacles in the way were well-nigh insuperable. But hour after hour, with an eloquence which lent restrained passion to his words, Goldman labored upon that jury, And, finally, his labors were not in vain. He won from them a partial victory, partial but rich with fruitful consequences for the preservation and building of the revolutionary movement.
Not the least of the fruitful consequences of this trial is the text of Goldman’s speech. It provides something which the American revolutionary movement has long lacked—an elementary exposition of the socialist outlook. Now we have it, not in a dry textbook, but in the dramatic form of a defense of revolutionists against the government’s attempt to imprison them for their ideas. Let us see to it that the new generation of youth, in whose hands is the power to put an end to capitalist slaughter, is given the opportunity to read Albert Goldman’s great speech. [1]

Footnote

1. This article is the introduction to Albert Goldman’s In Defense of Socialism, the text of the first argument in the Minneapolis “sedition” trial, which will shortly appear in pamphlet form. A companion pamphlet is Socialism on Trial, by James P. Cannon, consisting of the official court record of Cannon’s testimony.

Those Who Fought For Our Communist Future Are Kindred Spirits-Honor 1930s American Socialist Workers Party Leader Felix Morrow

 

 

 

Markin comment (2008):

Every January, as readers of this blog are now, hopefully, familiar with the international communist movement honors the 3 Ls-Lenin, Luxemburg and Liebknecht, fallen leaders of the early 20th century communist movement who died in this month (and whose untimely deaths left a huge, irreplaceable gap in the international leadership of that time). January is thus a time for us to reflect on the roots of our movement and those who brought us along this far. In order to give a fuller measure of honor to our fallen forbears this January, and in future Januarys, this space will honor others who have contributed in some way to the struggle for our communist future. That future classless society, however, will be the true memorial to their sacrifices. This year we pay special honor to1930s American Socialist Workers Party leader Felix Morrow.

 

Note on inclusion: As in other series on this site (“Labor’s Untold Story”, “Leaders Of The Bolshevik Revolution”, etc.) this year’s honorees do not exhaust the list of every possible communist worthy of the name. Nor, in fact, is the list limited to Bolshevik-style communists. There will be names included from other traditions (like anarchism, social democracy, the Diggers, Levellers, Jacobins, etc.) whose efforts contributed to the international struggle. Also, as was true of previous series this year’s efforts are no more than an introduction to these heroes of the class struggle. Future years will see more detailed information on each entry, particularly about many of the lesser known figures. Better yet, the reader can pick up the ball and run with it if he or she has more knowledge about the particular exploits of some communist militant, or to include a missing one.

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Biography

Felix Morrow was for many years a leading figure figure in American Trotskyism, best known for his classic Revolution and Counter-Revolution In Spain. He joined the Communist League of America in 1933 and after Max Shachtman’s minority split in 1940, served as editor of the Socialist Workers Party’s paper, the Militant, and its theoretical journal, Fourth International. He was one of 18 SWP leaders imprisoned under the Smith Act during the Second World War. In 1943 he formed a faction with Albert Goldman which challenged the SWP’s ‘orthodox’ catastrophic perspective. In one of the most instructive factional struggles in the history of the Trotskyist movement, Morrow and Goldman projected the likelihood of a prolonged period of bourgeois democracy in western Europe and emphasised the need for democratic and transitional demands against the maximalism advocated by the majority. Although he was expelled from the SWP in 1946 for ‘unauthorised collaboration’ with Shachtman’s Workers Party, he did not join Shachtman, and drifted out of politics.

Felix Morrow

The Federal Prosecution of the Socialist Workers Party

(August 1941)

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Source: Fourth International, New York, Vol.2 No.7, August 1941, pp.214-217.
Transcription/XHTML Markup: Ted Crawford and David Walters, 2004
Copyleft: Felix Morrow Internet Archive (www.marx.org) 2004. Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

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The text of the indictment drawn up by the United States Department of Justice and handed down by a federal grand jury in St. Paul, Minnesota, on July 15, appears on page 212.

This indictment makes strange reading, not only to the friends of the Socialist Workers Party, but to all politically literate people. Even the “left” liberal friends of the government (The Nation, New Republic, New York Post), haunted by memories of other frame-ups, are embarrassed by the government’s attempt to distort the anti-war and anti-fascist slogans of our party into criminal offenses.

These distortions, though fantastic, are nevertheless necessary to the government’s attempted frameup of the Socialist Workers Party. The wildly false charges in the indictment had to be concocted in order to provide a semblance of a basis for bringing the Socialist Workers Party under the stricture of laws which are in no way applicable to our party.
If the laws of the United States were to be observed by the present government, it could not find a way to indict us. The most the government could truthfully say of us is that we are revolutionists, irreconcilable opponents of its imperialist war plans. But the right to advocate revolution and oppose imperialist war is in no way prohibited by American law. Were revolutionists condemned by the law, we would scarcely have been permitted the legal existence which has been ours. What has actually happened is that the Roosevelt administration has reached the point where it is desperately attempting to suppress every voice raised against American entry into the war. When Roosevelt and Stimson go to the length of accusing so respectable a gentleman as Senator Wheeler of “verging on treason,” they will scarcely hesitate at engineering a frame up against the Socialist Workers Party.

Roosevelt Violates the Bill of Rights

In drawing up this indictment the Department of Justice, representative of the ruling bourgeois class of today, had to cope with the revolutionary past of that class. For. That class once led the most progressive forces in American society. It successfully carried through two revolutions. Those revolutions left their indelible marks on the laws of the United States, making it impossible for the Department of Justice to indict us except by doing violence to the law.

Neither of the two American revolutions could have been successful without the aid of the great masses of the American people; to draw them into the struggle necessitated democratic-revolutionary doctrines, and those doctrines became in part incorporated into the Constitution and legal traditions of the United States.
The Constitution, written after the first American Revolution, is far more conservative than the great inspirational document of the revolution itself, the Declaration of Independence. But the makers of the Constitution could not entirely escape the democratic doctrine of the Declaration: the Constitution was adopted only on condition that the Bill of Rights—the first ten amendments—became part of it.
The Bill of Rights expressed the democratic aspirations of the small farmers and working artisans of the cities. They had borne the brunt of the first American revolution. They were to reap few of its benefits. But they did. Succeed in securing the Bill of Rights.
The courts, serving the ruling class, have, often enough done violence to the Bill of Rights. Only by lawless violence can the courts pervert the plain and simple meaning of those first ten amendments to the Constitution. The first amendment of the Constitution says clearly:

“Congress shall make no law .... abridging the freedom of speech or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

The Roosevelt administration has violated this Constitutional provision in its attempt to railroad to prison the leaders of the Socialist Workers Party.

This Constitutional provision rendered unconstitutional the Smith “Omnibus Gag” Bill, as the American Civil Liberties Union reminded Roosevelt when it appealed to him to veto that bill. However, the Civil Liberties appeal fell on deaf ears; Roosevelt signed the bill on June 29, 1940, and we are the first to be indicted under it. The truth is that the appeal for a veto to Roosevelt must be considered as rather naive since the key sections of the Smith Act, its “sedition” provisions—Congressman Howard W. Smith, the bill’s sponsor, the authority for this fact—were drafted by the Navy Department, that is, by the Roosevelt administration. But there can no doubt in any honest mind that the Smith Act violates the Bill of Rights. Here are the relevant portions of the Smith Act, which constitute Sections 9, 10 and 11 of Title 18 of the United States Code:

“9. Advocating disloyalty of military or naval forces of the United States (a) It shall be unlawful for any person, with intent to interfere with, impair or influence the loyalty, morale, or discipline of military or naval forces of the United States—
or
“(1) to advise, counsel, urge or in any manner cause insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, or refusal of duty by any member of the military or naval forces of the United States;
or
(2) to distribute any written or printed matter which advises, counsels, or urges insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, or refusal of duty by any member of the military or naval forces of the United States.

“10. Advocating overthrow of any government in the United States by force or violence - (a) It shall be unlawful for any person—
(1) to knowingly or willfully advocate, abet, advise, or teach the duty, necessity, desirability or propriety of overthrowing any government in the United States by force or violence...
(2) with the intent to cause the overthrow or destruction of any government in the United States, to print, publish, edit, issue, circulate, sell, distribute, or publicly display any written or printed matter advocating, advising, or teaching the duty, necessity, desirability or propriety of overthrowing or destroying any government in the United States by force or violence;
(3) to organize or help to organize any society, group or assembly of persons who teach, advocate or encourage the overthrow or destruction of any government in the United States by force or violence; or to be or become a member of, or affiliate with, any such society, group or assembly of persons, knowing the purpose thereof.

“11. It shall be unlawful for any person to attempt to commit, or to conspire to commit, any of the acts prohibited by provisions of this Title.”

Quite apart from the fact that none of the activities of the Socialist Workers Party can be justly described in the language of the Smith Act, it is obvious at a first reading of these provisions of the Smith Act that they are unconstitutional. To make it a crime to “advocate, advise, teach” anything is a violation of the first amendment to the Constitution which guarantees freedom of speech.

Government Knows Smith Act Is Unconstitutional

The Department of Justice officials are admittedly aware of the unconstitutional character of the “sedition” provisions of the Smith Act. The Washington correspondent of The Nation, I.F. Stone, who talked to the Department of Justice officials, writes:

“‘Off the record’ at least one official engaged in the prosecution is prepared to admit that the Supreme Court may find the sedition provisions of the Smith Act unconstitutional. For the first time in peace since the Alien and Sedition Laws of John Adams a mere expression of opinion is made a federal crime. Under these provisions a man might be sent to jail for ten years because he circulated such un-American documents as the Declaration of Independence and Lincoln’s Second Inaugural, for both ‘advocate, abet, advise, or teach the duty, necessity, desirability, or propriety of overthrowing or destroying any government’ by force.” (The Nation, July 26, 1941.)

Feeling so unsure of the Smith Act, the Department of Justice did not limit the indictment to that Act, but also added another count under Section 6, Title 18, of the United States Code. As the Washington correspondent of The Nation says: “It is felt in the Department that though this (the Smith Act) may be too much for the court, the convictions will stand under Section 6.” The extremely cynical implications of this fact scarcely require comment; if they can’t get us under one law, the Department of Justice officials concoct additional charges—i.e., “facts,” to bring us under another law.

Anti-Slaveholders Law Used Against Us!

Section 6 has nothing whatsoever to do with the doctrines and activities of the Socialist Workers Party. It does not prohibit the right to advocate revolution. Such a prohibition could never have been adopted at that time. Section 6 was adopted by Congress on July 31, 1861—in the midst of the Civil War. The right to advocate revolution was then still explicitly recognized by the American bourgeoisie. And for good reason! The American bourgeoisie chanced to have formal legality on its side in its revolutionary struggle against the counter-revolution of the Southern slavocracy, by virtue of the fact that Abraham Lincoln, although securing only a minority of the votes, was legally elected president in November 1860 and legally took office in March 1861. But in the decades of political struggle leading up to the actual civil war, the bourgeoisie could not possibly have been sure that it would be legally in control of the state institutions at the moment when the “irresponsible conflict” finally took the form of armed battle. From 1848 to 1860, the Southern slavocracy was in well-nigh complete control of the federal state apparatus. Had the South not broken its solid front in the elections—there were four presidential candidates, three of them favorable or semi-favorable to the South—the election returns of November 1860 might have left the American bourgeoisie in the position of having to overthrow the legal government controlled by the Southern slavocracy.

Furthermore, above all in the first year of the war, the North was by no means assured of success. There was at least a likelihood that it would be defeated, or would be forced to an armistice or compromise, and the bourgeoisie would then have had to await a more propitious moment for crushing the slavocracy, perhaps in the form of a revolution against an administration controlled by or favorable to the slavocracy.
Such were the conditions under which, on July 31, 1861, Congress adopted Section 6 of Title 18 of the United States Code. It was directed not against the right to advocate revolution, but against the armed counter-revolution that was then being conducted by the Confederacy. Section 6 reads:

“If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any piece subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution or any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be tined not more than $5,000, or imprisoned not more than six years, or both.”

On the same day that Congress passed this it adopted many other provisions against the Confederacy: one appropriating money to pay for arms for Unionists in Southern states; an appropriation for the regular army; an increase for the medical corps of the Navy; further powers to the president to declare a state or part thereof to be in a state of insurrection; an act reimbursing volunteers for expenses incurred in employing regimental or other bands, etc., etc. Not even the elastic judicial mind can with any plausibility claim that Congress was thinking of outlawing the right to advocate revolution, including socialist revolution. On the contrary, the attitude of the bourgeoisie, during the time when it was making the second American revolution, is symbolized by the fact that it commissioned Joseph Wedemeyer, Marx’s leading disciple in the United States, a colonel in the United States Army.

The Judicial Interpretation of Section 6

It would not be surprising if, after the Civil War, Section 6 had been systematically perverted by the courts despite its plain meaning. Interestingly enough, however, this is not the case.

Baldwin vs. Franks (7 SCR 656) is what jurists call the leading case under Section 6. The case had nothing to do with radicalism. It arose in the 1870’s out of the bitter conflict in California over the importation of cheap Chinese labor, which the defendants had been opposing. The Supreme Court freed the defendants and laid down a clear ruling as to the specific limits of the meaning of Section 6, a ruling which excludes the present use of Section 6 against us. The court said:

“The offense (any offense under the Section 6) ... means something more than putting the laws themselves at defiance. There must be a forcible resistance of the authority of the United States while its officers are endeavoring to carry the laws into execution.”

In short, only actual resistance to law enforcement was legally punishable.

Section 6 was invoked against trade unions and working class parties during the first World War. However, in those cases where the defendants during the trial challenged the applicability of Section 6, the higher courts agreed that the section was not applicable. In 1921, the latest decision of that period, Anderson et al vs. U.S. (273 FR 20), the US Circuit Court of Appeals approvingly quotes the ruling we have already cited from Baldwin vs. Franks and dismisses the count in the indictment under Section 6. This was a case against members of the IWW Similarly, in 1920, in the famous case of Bill Haywood and Vincent St. John (268 FR 795), the Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled that Section 6 could not be made to apply to violations of the Selective Service Act and the Espionage Act. The court said:

“Granting that Section 6 of the Penal Code, on which count is predicated, is broad enough in its terms to cover conspiracies to use force in preventing, hindering, or delaying the execution of the Selective Service Act and the Espionage Act, the penal provisions of these last-named acts constitute the specific directions of Congress for the punishment of all obstructions forcible or otherwise, of the recruiting and enlistment service. Congress did not intend, in the face of the constitutional prohibition, to inflict punishment twice for the same offense.”

The Smith Act, being later and more specific than Section 6 is, by the federal court decision just cited, obviously the only available basis for the indictment against us. The only reason the Department of Justice dragged in Section 6, as we have said before, is its own realization of the unconstitutionality of the Smith Act.

It is fantastic that an act adopted for the suppression of slaveholders shall now be invoked to suppress the party of proletarian emancipation. Fantastic, but—necessary, because the bourgeoisie, then leading the battle against slavery, is now the most reactionary force in society.
Even in the First World War cases we have just cited, in which the higher courts sustained the conviction of Bill Haywood, Vincent St. John and other working class leaders or counts brought under the so-called Espionage Act (which comes into operation only after an official declaration of War), the higher court felt it necessary to sharply warn against attempts to expand the meaning of Section 6. In the case of Bill Haywood already cited, the Circuit Court of Appeals wrote against the attempt to make the trade union activity of revolutionists an offense under Section 6:

“But the question now before us (on count 1) concerns the true meaning of Section 6. That was enacted long before the war. It must be enforced after the war is officially ended. Manifestly in each period, before, during and after, it must be given the same meaning and effect.

“So the question under Section 6 covers not only war supplies but also any peacetime supplies which the government might intend to buy... How are the laws of the United States executed? By officials upon whom the duty is laid. Performance of the duty cannot be delegated. Producers who have contracts to furnish the government with supplies are not thereby officials of the government. Defendants’ force was exerted only against producers in various localities. Defendants thereby may have violated local laws. With that we have nothing to do... Section 6 should not be enlarged by construction. Its prima facie meaning condemns force only when a conspiracy exists to against it against some person who has authority to execute and who is immediately engaged in executing a law of the United States” (Our italics).

This precisely-worded decision of the federal appeal court means, in our case, that there is no juridical basis for the Department of Justice to invoke Section 6 against our advocacy of Union Defense Guards and our other trade union activities, which are the main target of the Department of Justice.

We have no doubt that the Department of Justice officials, reading these cases in a vain attempt to find a more plausible basis for a case against us, must have sighed at the fact that the United States is not now officially at war, so the prosecution could use against us the wartime “sedition” provision of the so-called Espionage Act under which most of the cases against the labor movement were prosecuted during the first World War.

Prosecution Will Push Frameup Ruthlessly

But despite everything that Roosevelt has so far been able to do, he has not succeeded in officially committing this country to war, and the law used against our comrades in 1917 and 1918 is not legally operative today, Roosevelt’s governments can prosecute us, therefore, only by violating the letter and spirit of the existing laws. Deliberately, cynically, they concoct charges which they and all politically literate people know to be false. On the same moral level as any cop in the pay of the local open-shoppers, the Department of Justice officials twist and pervert both the facts and the laws.

That the government is demonstrably lawless does not breed in us the illusion that our demonstration of its lawlessess will suffice to free us. The government in its lawlessness is not any the less powerful than when it is within the law. Having put its prestige at stake in this case the government will prosecute with utter ruthlessness. Reactionary governments are even more ferocious in their frameups than in their other activities. Witness the Dreyfus case, the Moscow trials, Sacco-Vanzetti, Tom Mooney—the list is very long.
The flimsiness of the government’s frameup against our party and Local 544-CIO reflects the panic and desperation of the Roosevelt administration as it drags the unwilling American people deeper into the war. The War Party knows that it cannot have its way by the voluntary assent of the masses. It can prosecute the imperialist war only by simultaneously conducting class war against the American labor movement. The first victims of this “war for democracy” will be the democratic rights of the American people, if Roosevelt has his way.
This frameup is an alarm signal to the American working class. And it has been so recognized by CIO’s political body, Labor’s Non-Partisan League which has warned:

“If this prosecution is successful, many informed observers are expecting other indictments of labor figures who do not toe the mark... If Minneapolis teamsters can be jailed for their opinions, so can anybody. That is why the case is of national importance to civil liberties.”

The fight to repel the FBI-Gestapo attack upon the 29 defendants is an integral part of the fight for the life and liberty of the American labor movement.