Seattle’s Unemployed Council stops the eviction, its first victory, of Mrs. Lee from her home at 1515 Spruce St. during the Great Depression.

‘Seattle Unemployed Council Stops Eviction’ from the Daily Worker. Vol. 8 No. 210. September 1, 1931.

(By a Worker Correspondent.) SEATTLE, Wash.—On August 26 the Unemployed Council of Seattle met its first test in an eviction case and with it came victory. And one victory, no matter how small, is like the taste of blood to a young lion. We, like the same lion, are ready and eager to go. As the winter comes and more eviction cases occur, we are determined to do our best to rally the workers to the mass protest as their only means of relief in a time of dire need.

In this particular case the landlord, one Katz by name, served a notice on Mrs. Lee of 1515 E. Spruce Street to vacate. On Tuesday morning Mrs. Lee heard the sheriff tell her that the notice did not come from the sheriff’s office and that he had never heard of it or one like it.

When Mrs. Lee returned she found that Katz had entered and removed two front windows and the front door and had taken them to his home, leaving her house wide open. She then informed the Unemployed Council and they rapidly mobilized. A partial force arrived just in time. Katz was there with a second notice signed by some lawyer and also a man to carry out the furniture.

When Katz found that he couldn’t move the furniture into the street he called the police. Out they came in two autos, but what could they do? We were mobilized too strong.

We forced Katz to replace the door and windows and waited to see that he did a good job of it. Katz was convinced by the simple evidence of a number 20 spike which we were going to going to use to board up the openings.

The Daily Worker began in 1924 and was published in New York City by the Communist Party US and its predecessor organizations. Among the most long-lasting and important left publications in US history, it had a circulation of 35,000 at its peak. The Daily Worker came from The Ohio Socialist, published by the Left Wing-dominated Socialist Party of Ohio in Cleveland from 1917 to November 1919, when it became became The Toiler, paper of the Communist Labor Party. In December 1921 the above-ground Workers Party of America merged the Toiler with the paper Workers Council to found The Worker, which became The Daily Worker beginning January 13, 1924.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1931/v08-n210-NY-sep-01-1931-DW-LOC.pdf