Statement of the National Committee for the Protection of the Foreign-Born calling on a day of action against the ‘Doak Deportations’ called for March 28, 1931.

‘March 28—National Day of Struggle Against Deportations’ from The Daily Worker. Vol. 7 No. 61. March 11, 1931.

Workers, native and foreign born, white and Negro, employed and unemployed:

HUNDREDS of workers are being deported from the United States every month, and thousands more are facing deportation. Some of them face certain death in the countries to which they are being deported, the countries of fascist terror. The government is especially seizing the workers who appear in any form as leaders of the struggle against unemployment, against wage cuts, against persecution of the Negroes and foreign born.

Among those now held for deportation are Yokinen, a Finnish worker, arrested because, after a workers’ trial in which he was found guilty of discrimination against the Negroes, he promised to prove himself worthy of readmission into the Communist Party by fighting for the equality of Negro and white workers; Pat Devine, Edith Berkman, and William Murdoch, jailed because they dared to lead the great strike of ten thousand textile workers in Lawrence; Bebrits, editor of the Hungarian workers’ daily, Uj Elore, seized because he defended before the infamous Fish Committee the workers’ struggle against starvation; Serio, an Italian worker arrested because he exposed the fascist dictatorship of Mussolini and denounced the support extended to it by Wall Street; Kenmotsu, a Japanese worker who dared to help organize the agricultural workers of Imperial Valley, California; hundreds of others seized in raids such as those on the Seamen’s Institute, on the Finnish Club in New York, and in every large city in the United States.

The new laws proposed by the Fish Committee against the foreign-born workers are already being carried out even before they have been adopted by Congress. Without waiting for any new laws, the recently appointed Secretary of Labor, William N. Doak, has “resurrected” a long-forgotten statute which he claims gives him all the powers proposed by the Fish Commission. Doak, expressing the policy of the Hoover government and the capitalist class, is already organizing mass arrests and deportation of foreign-born workers. The government made clear its policy on this question when it met the delegation sent to the capital by the National Conference for the Protection of the Foreign Born at Washington on November 30th with police clubs and gas bombs. The United States courts in the case of the Italian worker, Serio, have even denied him the right to voluntary departure to some other country than Italy and demand that he shall be delivered over directly into the hands of Mussolini’s executioners. The Post Office Department is beginning to carry out this policy by excluding from the mails one by one the publications of militant labor organizations. The entire third session of the Seventy-First Congress which has just closed was carried on under the sign of the Fish Committee, and its program of suppression of the entire militant working class. The entire situation raises the question of the immediate necessity of mobilizing the masses of oppressed workers, native and foreign born, white and Negro, employed and unemployed, to protest against this, new wave of persecutions and to organize the masses to protect their rights.

Workers! What is the cause of this terroristic attack against the foreign-born workers? Why all these raids, persecutions and deportations? Why the increased wave of lynchings against Negroes? Why the suppression of the workers’ press? Why this organized government strike-breaking? The reason is that the capitalist system is in a tremendous crisis. More than ten million of workers are without work. Millions of farmers and their families, producers of food, are starving. No relief is being given, except the miserable crumbs of charity which only serve to make more clear the sentence of starvation that has been passed by the capitalist class upon the workers. Under these conditions of misery and starvation, the discontent of the masses is growing. The protest of the workers is becoming louder and more emphatic every day. The workers are beginning to organize, to demonstrate, to fight. They demand work or wages and social insurance, insurance against unemployment, immediate grants of relief from the government treasuries.

The capitalist class is trying to solve this crisis at the expense of starvation of millions of workers. They are using all their forces to divide the working class, to smash its protests, to use one group of workers against another in order to drive down conditions of all workers. They expect to reduce the living standards of the entire working class by at least 50 per cent this year. Therefore they proceed to deport all foreign-born workers who join in the struggle, they organize lynch terror against the Negroes, they imprison the native white workers, and by smashing the leading fighters, they hope to smash the resistance of the working masses to their starvation policy. They give the police full freedom to arrest without warrant. They fill the workers’ quarters with spies. They organize raids on workers’ clubs, and all places where workers gather, on shops where they work, on the bread lines and lodging houses, everywhere.

With this attack the capitalists think that they have an effective whip against not only the foreign-born workers and the Negroes, but against the entire working class. The persecution of foreign-born workers must be stopped. Lynch terror and discrimination against Negroes must be wiped out. The working class must rally all its forces to protect its class interests.

For this purpose the National Committee for the Protection of the Foreign Born, in agreement with its associated organizations designates March 28th as a National Day of Struggle against deportation, discriminations and lynchings.

Workers! Mobilize all your forces against the enslaving drive of the capitalists! Join in a nationwide protest! Join the local fighting organizations! Call meetings on March 28th in every city, town and neighborhood in the United States. Make all preparations for raising the working class voice in protest against the capitalist attacks for organizing the forces of the working class on March 28th.

Native Born Workers! Do not allow yourself to be fooled into believing that the capitalist terror against the foreign born and against the Negroes has no connection with your vital problems. This is exactly what the bosses want you to think. They want to smash one section of the working class with the help of the other sections, or with their passive agreement. Beware! It is impossible that one section of the working class can enjoy high standards of living while the other part is enslaved. You must join the struggle against the persecution of the foreign born, against the lynch terror, in order to protect your own conditions of life.

Negro workers! This offensive against the foreign born workers, and the strikebreaking attacks against all workers is also directed against you. It is a part of the same capitalist tactics which express themselves in the Jim-Crow laws against the Negroes. Join the movement for the protection of the foreign born! Fight against deportations! Fight against Jim-Crow laws, against lynching and against discriminations! Increase the power of your struggle by joining hands with all oppressed workers in common struggle.

We appeal to all workers to offer a united front against deportation of the foreign born, against the oppression of the Negro workers. March 28th shall be a day of nationwide protest.

Demand the unconditional release of Yokinen, Bebrits, Serio, Li, Kenmotsu! Defend Murdoch, Berkman and all foreign born workers held for deportation! Demand the abolition of all Jim-Crow laws and the death penalty for lynchers! Smash the capitalist attack against the workers! Build the united solidarity of the working class! Down with the splitting tactics of the bosses! Down with discrimination against any section of the working class!

Long live the solidarity of the workers of all races and nationalities!

Support the National Day of Struggle Against Deportations and Lynching!

National Committee For the Protection of the Foreign-Born.

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.

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