Denied relief at the Anacortes, Washington office of the Red Cross during the Great Depression, one hundred hungry workers march two blocks to the local Safeway and expropriate the expropriators.

‘Starving Workers Take Groceries in Anacortes’ from Western Worker. Vol. 1 No. 19. October 1, 1932.

ANACORTES, Wash., Sept 18. “Let’s go get food. We must get something for our babies!” With these words over 100 men, women and children moved as one from the Red Cross station, where relief had been denied them, to Skaggs Safeway Store, two blocks distant on September 3.

Police and four clerks were powerless before the half-starved workers who were impelled to act by the horror of returning to empty cupboards and crying, pale-faced children. The “law” confined its activity to spying on the determined group, taking down names.

NO RIOT

The workers were orderly and well disciplined though the manager and another shop keeper, Paul Luvera, did their best to create a riot.

On September 7 five of the militant Anacortes workers were arrested on charges of grand larceny, incitement to riot and conspiracy as a result of the raid on Skaggs. The framed workers, Iver Moe, A.L. Marshall, Ray Trafton, Stanley Anderson, William Wollertz, are well known here and will handle their own defense. Wollertz is organizer of the Unemployed Council, Trafton is the proposed candidate for county commissioner on the Communist ticket, and Moe is organizer of the Young Communists League. Anderson was recently head of the Equality Club, and had just joined the Unemployed Council.

THREATEN MORE ARRESTS

To intimidate witnesses, authorities are threatening 55 more arrests.

The Anacortes branch of the International Labor Defense, has mobilized free transportation to take workers to the trial tomorrow at Mount Vernon, the county seat, 18 miles away. Cars went out to notify the workers in Sedro Valley and other towns, and to get in touch with the hundreds of members of the United Farmers League.

The Unemployed Council has forced the city to turn on water in every house in town. Almost half the homes had been without water. But so far the only food relief given had been Red Cross flour, 24 pounds per 20 days for a family of eight.

MOUNT VERNON, Wash., Sept. 8. The militancy of the defendants and of the workers and farmers who jammed the courtroom here, today stopped an immediate railroading to the penitentiary, and forced release of the five defendants on their own recognizance.

Authorities had planned to set bail at $1000 cash each.

At the end of the hearing the workers and the defendants marched out singing “Solidarity,” and held a mass meeting on the courthouse steps.

Workers and farmers from Skagit and nearby counties will march on Mount Vernon Thursday morning, September 15, the date set for the trial, before Judge Joiner.

FOUR WHO LED ANACORTES FOOD RAID CONVICTED

1000 Farmers and Workers Force Release Without Bail

ANACORTES, Wash., Sept. 19. Four workers, leaders in the hunger raid on Skaggs chain store here, were found guilty of grand larceny by a hand picked jury of rich land owners. However, the four, Moe, Anderson, Trafton and Wollertz, are at liberty on their own recognizance as the result of a militant demonstration by more than a thousand workers and farmers when the verdict was announced pending appeal. Marshall was found not guilty.

The militant attitude and mass resentment reflected at the trial forced the county commissioners to call an emergency meeting and furnish immediate relief to the starving workers.

The judge denied that starving conditions and other contributing circumstances were admissible as evidence, but the workers, in their closing arguments defending themselves, brought out the class issues submerged by the judge. The judge charged the jury to find a verdict of guilty, even if it appeared any of the defendants were passively present when food was taken.

The International Labor Defense is intensifying the fight for the freedom of the convicted workers, and has the support of thousands of workers and poor farmers.

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/v1n19-oct-01-1932.pdf