Born in Poland, textile worker Edith Berkman emigrated to Cleveland in 1921 where she soon became involved in the labor and Communist movements. She did not become a citizen. Organizing textile workers and writing for the Daily Worker, comrade Berkman was active in many strikes, becoming a field organizer for the National Textile Workers Union. In 1931, Berkman was arrested during a strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts. There she was held for seven months as the federal government tried to deport her to Pilsudski’s Poland, and potential death. Here, Berkman says it was the mass campaign helped to win her release and urges the same for others. Berkman’s daughter was the radical filmmaker Roz Payne.

‘A Call to Stop the Deportation Terror’ by Edith Berkman from Labor Defender. Vol. 9 No. 2. February, 1933.

TWO years ago, on February 27, 1931, I was snatched out of a successful strike struggle and arrested for deportation. During these two years all the schemes of the bosses’ “deportation department,” to deport me was stopped through the organized protest of the International Labor Defense. Now, after two years of continuous persecution, I was released for recovery from tuberculosis contracted during my imprisonment.

Since the February, 1931, Lawrence strike the Department of Labor is used by the bosses, as an open strike breaker. During the Lawrence strike the first time telegraphic warrants for deportation of union organizers were used. Since then every strike has deportation cases. Every strike, demonstration or hunger march is followed by singling out of foreign-born workers for deportation. This is done for many reasons: to terrorize the millions of underpaid and starving foreign-born workers, to focus the attention, through the boss controlled press, on the fact that “only foreigners are Reds,” to divide the workers into native and foreign-born.

Can we stop the deportation terror? My release on $1,000 bond, after the Department of Labor was ready to deport me to Poland, should serve as a signal, to all, that mass protest will bring victories.

And let no one say that the I.L.D.’s policy of workers’ mass defense through demonstrations, protest delegations, sending of protest letters and telegrams does not help to defeat terror. Yes, comrades, if it were not for the nationwide protest and my 10-day Hunger Strike I would now be in a Polish dungeon, dying from T.B. If not for the world-wide protest the Scottsboro boys would have been dead long ago. But mass protest without continuity of the defense movement defeats the bosses’ terror only partially. To defeat the terror successfully we must increase the membership of the I.L.D. We must build new branches and get workers’ unions and other organizations to affiliate with the I.L.D. And above all we should connect the deportation struggle with our fight against starvation.

To stop deportations we must organize a broad, united front movement. In every city conferences and meetings should be called. Special leaflets should be issued teaching the workers how to behave when questioned by Immigration inspectors. The fight against the terror means a fight for the right to organize for the right to build fighting unions.

Deportation Doak and many district immigration (read deportation) commissioners will be replaced when Roosevelt becomes president. A “Democratic” set of deportation officials will come into power. The workers must be ready for renewed terror. We must prepare to greet the “Democratic” deportation officials with the following demands:

1. The right of all foreign-born workers, now out on bail to remain in America.

2. A stop to the deportation terror.

3. The right of all workers to organize and to strike.

4. Against the Dies Deportation Bill.

Only through the organized might of the workers have I been saved from deportation to Poland. Only the solidarity of all workers will win freedom not only for those held for deportation but for Tom Mooney, the Scottsboro boys, and all class war prisoners.