Statement from Teamsters Local 574 in Minneapolis after deployment of the National Guard and declaration of martial law by Minnesota’s Farmer-Labor Party Governor Olson during that city’s epic 1934 union drive. A week earlier police had killed two strikers and wounded dozens on Bloody Friday. In response troops raided UNION headquarters and arrested its leaders. One of four of the most important strike in U.S. history happened over a few transformative months that year; Toledo’s Auto-Lite strike led by the American Workers Party, the West Coast general strike led by the Communist Party, the Minneapolis Teamsters and general strike led by the Communist League of America, and finally the uprising of one million, leaderless, textile workers. The U.S. labor movement would never be the same, as, broadly speaking, the CIO was born in the summer of 1934.

‘Answer Military Tyranny in Minneapolis with a General Strike’ from The Organizer (Teamsters Local 574). Vol. 1 No. 17. August 1, 1934.

To the Trade Unions and the Working People of Minneapolis:

Military tyranny has reached its peak in Minneapolis. For the first time in decades, a trade union headquarters has been occupied by military forces and trade union leaders have been arrested and imprisoned in a military stockade. Picket cars are ordered off the street while every scab truck gets a free permit. Not even in Toledo, where troops were called out by a Democratic Governor, nor in San Francisco, where they were called out by a Republican Governor, has such a monstrous violation of the rights of workingmen been perpetrated. Never before in our time has such a direct and outright act of strike-breaking by military force been witnessed. A dastardly blow has been struck at the very heart of the labor movement by military forces under the command of Floyd B. Olson, Governor of the State of Minnesota.

The Citizens Alliance is out to break Local Union 574, and with it the entire labor movement of Minneapolis. They want to make Minneapolis an “open shop” town in order to beat us all down to the level of slaves and coolies.

They have already shed the blood of two Union men. Henry Ness was torn from the bosom of his family a few days ago, a martyr to the sacred cause of labor and a victim of this murderous gang of brigands. John Belor died in the hospital early today, his back riddled with slugs from the shot-guns of Johannes’ murderers, the second victim of the Union-smashing campaign, the second immortal martyr of labor’s cause.

But the Citizens Alliance and the infamous band of assassins commanded by Bloody Johannes sought in vain to break the strike. Our ranks stood like a wall of steel. No scab trucks, loaded for the purpose of taking bread and milk out of the mouths of our men and their families, were allowed to move.

And now, what the Alliance and its police force were unable to do, is being undertaken by Governor Olson and his National Guard. They have set out to break the strike with armed force.

Union men of Minneapolis, what are you going to do about it?

Is there one fool who still thinks that Olson’s National Guard is here to help the strikers?

Is there one scoundrel who will dare to say that the suppression of picketing, the raiding of our headquarters and the imprisonment of our leaders in a military stockade–while scab trucks roll with military approval is a favor to the workers?

Is there one man so blind as not to see that if 574 is allowed to go down in defeat, under the brutal hammering of military despotism, the whole labor movement of this city will have been dealt a mortal blow?

Union men, brothers, sisters, fellow workers! What are you going to do about it?

We appeal to you for help, for solidarity!

We solemnly call upon every trade union in the city, upon every trade union leader, upon every trade union member, upon every workingman and woman, to meet this challenge of military tyranny with a GENERAL STRIKE OF PROTEST!

Up to now, Local 574 has borne the brunt of the battle. We are still fighting. And as far as we are concerned, our answer to the attempt to suppress our strike and our Union by the military force of the National Guard, is the same reply we made to Bloody Mike Johannes when he shot our pickets in the back:

We shall fight for our rights to the bitter end! We have been dealt heavy blows–first by the bosses of the Citizens Alliance, then by their murderous tools in the Police Department.

Now Floyd Olson’s National Guard points bayonets and machine guns at us and tells us to give up our fight and go back to work as beaten slaves.

They ordered us to quit picketing. Our answer is, the right to picket has been conquered and defended by the labor movement for a hundred years. We shall never give it up.

They raided our headquarters with a thousand National Guardsmen, equipped with field machine guns, the latest model tear gas bombs, bayonets and pistols, and commanded by the “friend of labor,” Floyd B. Olson.

They didn’t raid the headquarters of the Citizens Alliance. They didn’t interfere with the sinister clique which meets in the dark of the moon to conspire against the lives and the working conditions of labor. The officers of the “Employers Advisory Board” are inviolate. The men against whom Governor Olson directs his words, are not touched.

No! Only the headquarters of workingmen fighting for the right to live, is raided by Olson’s militiamen. And Olson, remember, is the Farmer-Labor Governor, the friend of the workingman and the farmer, the friend of labor. Let him run for office now on the platform: “I raided the headquarters of Local 574. I flung their leaders into the military stockade. I broke a strike which Johannes couldn’t break. Therefore, workers and farmers, vote for me!”

Let him come before the workingmen who put him into office and defend his actions. He will hear the roar of protest that will make the indignant shouts of the 25,000 workingmen who gathered last night at the Parade Grounds, sound like a whisper.

It was the Citizens Alliance and the employers whom he criticized in words–in his statements and over the radio. But the ringleaders of the Alliance walk the streets scot-free, with satisfied smiles wreathing their fat jowls, unhampered and untouched by Governor Olson and his militia.

Our leaders, whose only crime is their unswerving allegiance to the just cause of the truck drivers, helpers and inside men, are taken prisoner at the point of machine guns and bayonets and incarcerated in the stockade. And what a magnificent tribute Olson is thereby paying to Bill Brown and Vincent Dunne and Miles Dunne, and the other fearless leaders of our Union who are even now being hunted and tracked like wild beasts! The bosses couldn’t buy them off. The bosses couldn’t kid them out of the fight for the men. The bosses couldn’t scare them or bulldoze them. The riot guns of Johannes the Murderer couldn’t make them quit. So it was left to the Labor Governor, Floyd B. Olson, to arrest them out of our ranks and fling them into prison.

But if he thinks that that will break our ranks, he is mistaken. We have learned from our leaders how to hold out, how to fight, how to keep together, how to meet all bluffs and threats and shows of force. Their imprisonment only inspires us to fight all the more resolutely and uncompromisingly in the spirit of those incorruptible and fearless militants whom we are proud of having chosen as our leaders.

We are confident that we shall not fight alone. From the very outset, we declared repeatedly that our cause is the cause of the whole labor movement, of every working man. Our defeat will be YOUR defeat. Our victory will be YOUR victory. We know that you all understand this. You have endorsed our struggle on many occasions. You have manifested your sympathy and solidarity in various ways. We know for sure that the heart of every honest worker in Minneapolis beats with ours. They are aiming their murderous, strike-breaking blows at you as well as against us. Now you must understand the necessity of striking back with the whole force of the organized labor movement of Minneapolis.

We shall not be slaves!

Every trade union in Minneapolis must call an emergency meeting immediately!

A Council of Action representing the entire labor movement of the city must be set up to organize and direct the general strike of protest!

The working class of Minneapolis must form an iron ring of solidarity around Local 574!

Every union man and every union leader must show his colors now!

Resistance to tyranny is the beginning of freedom

Answer Olson’s military tyranny with the General Strike of Protest!

The Organizer was the paper of the Minneapolis. Teamsters’ Local 574 (General Drivers and Helpers Union during the 1934 strikes. Those strikes were among the most important of the 1930s and helped to bring about what would become the CIO. Published weekly and daily and edited by labor organizer and Trotskyist militant Farrell Dobbs, and sometimes by James P Cannon, the bulletin provides essential coverage of the strike and its aftermath. Succeeded by the Northwest Organizer in 1935.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/theorganizer/v1n17-aug-01-1934-the-org.pdf