One of the last actions of James Connolly’s years of U.S. political activity was to speak to a thousand workers at a Socialist Party open-air meeting in the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn. The previous week’s meeting on the same corner had been broken up by police, with hundreds showing up for Connolly’s talk in solidarity and defense of free speech. A week after this article and Connolly was feted by comrades at a Manhattan restaurant before sailing back to Ireland.

‘Brooklyn Socialists Demand Free Speech’ from the New York Call. Vol. 3 No. 188. July 7, 1910.

In Rousing Street Meeting Thug Methods of Police Are Denounced Amid Loud Cheers.

Over 1.000 working men and women of the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn last night turned out at the corner of Manhattan avenue and Huron street to listen to addresses made by Socialists in protest against the police to breaking up the Socialist meetings.

Ever since the meeting of last Saturday night, when the police arrested a Socialist speaker, John Lockwood. who was trying to hold a meeting on the same corner, there has been a bitter feeling against the police by the workers living in that vicinity. The big turn-out of last night is the result of the feeling of protest.

The 15th Assembly district distributed several thousand copies of a protest leaflet in the homes of the workers of Greenpoint. The leaflet reads, in part, as follows:

Is Greenpoint in America?

The Constitution of the United States guarantees to its citizens freedom of speech and assembly!

The Socialist party arranged a meeting for Saturday, July 2, and notified the police as usual; prior to this week they have always accepted our notification, and sent a policeman to keep order if necessary. But on this occasion, before the chairman had spoken two minutes he was arrested.

Who stands behind the police in this recent attack upon free speech?

Albert Pauley, chairman of the meeting last night, before introducing James Connolly as the speaker of the evening, delivered a short address. He said in part: “Although one of the Socialists was arrested last Saturday night for trying to hold a meeting, and while his case is still pending, the Socialist party does not want to wait until the police tell them they can hold meetings on that corner. The party is determined to carry on the fight and a meeting is arranged for Thursday night.

“The meetings of last Saturday night and of tonight are of the same nature and are legal, and the police cannot deny a political party the right of free speech, which was given to us by the American Constitution.”

Irish Socialist Speaks.

James Connolly, editor of The Harp. was then introduced, and he delivered an address on “Socialism in Ireland and United States.”

He delivered an eloquent speech and all his remarks were received with great applause. He said that here, as well as in Ireland, there are two classes, the propertied and the working class. People are starving under the Stars and Stripes, as well as under the green flag. The conditions will continue to be the same as long as there are two classes. In order to remedy the present conditions men, and women must organize politically just as well as economically. He told the audience of the conditions of labor as they are in Ireland and this country, and also of the growth of Socialism both here and on the other side.

Long before the meeting opened there were hundreds of people waiting on the corner to hear what the Socialists had to say to them. The police behaved well and every disturbance by the hired thugs was suppressed by them. Bosses of the cordage company were on the corner, together with a number of thugs, who are said to be in the employ of the cordage trust. Before the meeting opened one of the bosses was engaged in a conversation with the strong-armed men. When the meeting was called to order they separated and went into different parts of the crowd. While the police did not interfere with the meeting on Huron street and Manhattan avenue, they tried to break up a meeting held by the Socialist party for the cordage strikers on Kent avenue and North 12th street at 6 o’clock in the evening. When Tylkoff, organizer of the striking cordage workers, came down with the platform and was about to start the meeting the sergeant in charge of the police on the corner told him that he could not hold the meeting unless he produced a permit. Tylkoff explained to them that police headquarters had been notified and that he did not need a permit.

Tylkoff started the meeting despite the efforts and threats of the “city’s finest” to stop it and he held the meeting unmolested.

The New York Call was the first English-language Socialist daily paper in New York City and the second in the US after the Chicago Daily Socialist. The paper was the center of the Socialist Party and under the influence of Morris Hillquit, Charles Ervin, Julius Gerber, and William Butscher. The paper was opposed to World War One, and, unsurprising given the era’s fluidity, ambivalent on the Russian Revolution even after the expulsion of the SP’s Left Wing. The paper is an invaluable resource for information on the city’s workers movement and history and one of the most important papers in the history of US socialism. The paper ran from 1908 until 1923.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/the-new-york-call/1910/100707-newyorkcall-v03n188.pdf