Martin Blank tells the story of resistance to his family’s eviction from 180 Rose St. in San Francisco during the Depression.

‘Twelve Jailed in Frisco Fight to Stop Eviction’ from Western Worker. Vol. 1 No. 21. October 24, 1932.

Because he refused to follow the instructions of the Associated Charities and use fraudulent means to get a house for his wife and children to move into, an unemployed worker, Martin Blank, was evicted from the flat he occupied with his wife and three children at 180 Rose street.

Twelve members of the Unemployed Council and the Workers Ex-Servicemen’s League were manhandled and arrested by a riot squad of scores of police, and thrown in jail as a result of an attempt to prevent the eviction.

The resistance offered by comrade Blank was in protest of the “move on and swindle the landlord” system of the Associated Charities, and was intended to expose this particular phase of San Francisco’s flourishing charity racketeering business.

Those arrested are now out on $25 bail each, furnished through the I.L.D.

His story follows below:

“Early in September I went to the Associated Charities and told them that my landlord, Matthew Kusick, was threatening to evict me unless I paid my rent. I asked if there wasn’t some way I could work and pay for it, like many others were doing, but was told to ‘hold my horses,’ the landlord would have to spend nearly a hundred dollars to evict me, and when he did they would give me a deposit on another place.

“Eventually the first of the series of eviction notices came, and the Associated Charities gave me a $5 deposit as rent on another place. My wife and I started out to find a place. We were limited to $18. But wherever we went we were turned down by landlords and real estate men because they said they had been skinned too often by charity racketeers to take any chances.

“September 24 I wrote Mayor Rossi, Archbishop Hanna, chairman of the Community Chest, and many others, including leaders in political, social and working class life of the city, asking whether I should passively allow my wife and children to degenerate into a gang of crooks, cheats, liars and swindlers in order to get a roof over our heads, or I should try to follow the dictates of my conscience and resist eviction as a protest against this damnable system.

“The only replies I got were from militant working class organizations including the W.E.S.L. and U.C. So, when the sheriff came, word was sent to these organizations and many answered. Shortly after Deputy Sheriff Spring and a moving van arrived, about 500 neighbors were attracted. The eviction was halted until riot squads with machine guns and tear gas bombs arrived and began to terrorize the workers there, and the arrests resulted.”

The twelve workers arrested in the Martin Blank eviction case were arraigned Saturday morning and property bail of $500 each was fixed by the red-baiting Judge Fritz, when all demanded a jury trial. The bond and warrant clerk’s office refused to consider bail after noon, and all except Jack Robinson were jailed over the weekend. The trial was set for November 2.

The defense announces that Rossi, Wallenberg, Archbishop Hanna, Katherine Felton and other heads of the Community Chest and Associated Charities, would be subpoenaed with a view of exposing the reason why unemployed families cannot have their rent paid out of the $10,500,000 coming from bond issues and forced donations designated for unemployment relief.

Western Worker was the publication of the Communist Party in the western United States, focused on the Pacific Coast, from 1933 until 1937. Originally published twice monthly in San Francisco, it grew to a weekly, then a twice-weekly and then merged with the Party’s Daily Worker on the West Coast to form the People’s Daily World which published until 1957. Its issues contain a wealth of information on Communist activity and cultural events in the west of those years.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/westernworker/1932/v1n21-oct-24-1932.pdf