What can only be described as sadistic treatment of foreign-born radicals under the Hoover administration’s deportation wave designed to terrorize the larger working class movement; including forcing an 18-year-old into an asylum because his political activities “are an outward manifestation of an unsound mind.”

‘Deportations, Prison Terms in Portland’ from Labor Defender. Vol. 6 No. 1. January, 1931.

Northwest Bosses Seek to Deport 14 and Jail 12; Throw Young Worker Into Insane Asylum

AN eighteen-year-old boy, a student in the Washington High School, up in Portland, Oregon, was playing the piano in one of the rooms of the institution, while some companions were singing revolutionary songs.

A special officer of the school board walked into the room, hailed the boy before the authorities, who dragged him before the federal immigration officials.

This lad, Mike Kulikoff, a member of the Young Communist League, International Labor Defense and the Young Communist League, is now in the Salem (Oregon) Insane Asylum where he was hustled off after plans to have him deported fizzled. “Kulikoff’s radical activities,” declared the so-called “alienist” hired to bring in a frame-up verdict, “are an outward manifestation of an unsound mind.”

Twenty-six other workers in Portland have been singled out for attack in the latest wave of boss persecution in the Northwest: 14 are being held for deportation and 12 on criminal syndicalist charges, with ten year prison terms facing them upon conviction.

Young Kulikoff has been adjudged insane because he advocated that the workers and farmers of the United States rule the country. Unable to deport him to Russia where he was born because of the absence of “diplomatic” relations–fearing an acquittal if he were indicted for “criminal syndicalism,” the authorities resorted to this special form of cruelty.

And in Los Angeles, facing deportation is John Vilerino, the father of 11 children, who has lived and worked in the United States for the past 27 years. His deportation would leave the family utterly helpless.

Both Vilerino and his wife were severely grilled at the hearing following his arrest. Did they believe in God? Did they believe in force and violence? Did they believe in the sanctity of the home and the purity of the family?

Now it has been discovered that, a short time after the hearing, a deputy sheriff raped Vilerino’s thirteen-year old daughter, and infected the child with a venereal disease.

In Portland, the deportation and criminal syndicalist cases followed a raid on the Workers Center, although four had been jailed just prior to the raid. Other workers were picked up at mass meetings four days thereafter.

Those slated for deportation if the bosses’ hirelings in the Immigration department have their way, represent many countries. They include: Steve Okicich, Jugoslavia; Miro Lacos, Jugoslavia; Llambo Mitser, Jugoslavia; Sadik Jafer, Macedonia; Pete Males, Jugoslavia; George Johnson, Sweden; George Tuukkanen, Finland; Henry Struve, Germany; Mike Gencheff, Bulgaria; Tom Evanoff, Macedonia; E. Millson, Sweden; V. Gosheff, Jugoslavia;

The workers held in criminal syndicalism cases are Dan Stoeff, Fred Walker, Paul Munter, John Moore, Ed. Levitt, Llamba Mitseff (also for deportation); Abe Ozeranski; Ben Boloff; Ellis Bjorkman; Rubin Sandstrom; Bill Worral; Jim Howell; John Torrko.

The raid and subsequent arrests were facilitated by a stool-pigeon, M.R. Bacon, who, under orders of Chief of Police Jenkins had joined both the International Labor Defense and the Communist Party.

And at the hearing before the immigration authorities, Bacon was the “star” witness. The hearings were held behind closed doors and Bacon, who had worked his way into the confidence of trusting workers, had his own sweet way in spinning hair-raising tales of “plots, violence and anarchism.” For months Bacon had been attending workers’ meetings posing as a “Texas schoolteacher.”

The line of questioning directed against Vilerino, the father of the child which the deputy sheriff had raped during his hearing in Los Angeles, was directed with equal venom against all the other defendants and their wives in Portland. “Do you believe in God?” “Do you believe in force and violence?”

The criminal syndicalist law of Oregon has been revived for the first time since. 1919, and is a clear attempt to smash all working-class organizations. A number of workers face ten year prison sentences for the crime of reading working-class literature; they were arrested when the raid was made and the only evidence against them is the fact that they were reading some books in the Workers Center.

The activity of the International Labor Defense in Portland, and throughout the Pacific Coast in defending the workers. should be an incentive for strengthening the organization throughout the country.

Labor Defender was published monthly from 1926 until 1937 by the International Labor Defense (ILD), a Workers Party of America, and later Communist Party-led, non-partisan defense organization founded by James Cannon and William Haywood while in Moscow, 1925 to support prisoners of the class war, victims of racism and imperialism, and the struggle against fascism. It included, poetry, letters from prisoners, and was heavily illustrated with photos, images, and cartoons. Labor Defender was the central organ of the Scottsboro and Sacco and Vanzetti defense campaigns. Not only were these among the most successful campaigns by Communists, they were among the most important of the period and the urgency and activity is duly reflected in its pages. Editors included T. J. O’ Flaherty, Max Shactman, Karl Reeve, J. Louis Engdahl, William L. Patterson, Sasha Small, and Sender Garlin.

PDF of original issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/labordefender/1931/v06n01-jan-1931-LD.pdf