Socialist students from Columbia, N.Y.U., and Hunter lead a demonstration on the Austrian Consulate in solidarity with the anti-fascist uprising in that country, to be attacked by massed New York City police.

‘A Student Demonstration’ from Student Outlook (L.I.D.). Vol. 2 No. 4. March, 1934.

ONE of the most spectacular and effective demonstrations ever staged in New York City was organized by the Student L.I.D. outside of the Austrian Consulate at 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue.

When on Monday, February 12th, news of the revolt of the Socialists in Austria first became known in this country, every Socialist pulse beat faster. Down at the L.I.D. office people kept running in with successive issues of the papers. Cheers, when it was rumored that the army was deserting to the Socialists. Despair, when the howitzers were turned on the apartment houses of the Viennese workers. “Could they possibly win?” everyone asked. “What heroes!” everyone cried. This was the sign we had all been waiting for—that  world Socialism could and would fight.

But what could we do to help the Austrian Socialists? The members of the Executive Committee Columbia Socialist Club put their heads together and drew up a memorandum to the New York Student L.I.D. requesting it to take some immediate action to show our solidarity with the embattled workers of Austria. Members were called on the phone to come down immediately to the Students and Workers House to plan a demonstration outside of the Austrian Consulate. Columbia was assigned to getting out a release to the newspapers and preparing copy for a printed circular. Hunter College, in the meantime, set to work to mimeograph a demonstration circular. N.Y.U. painted placards for the demonstration. Others were sent over to the Socialist Party offices where a meeting of organizers pledged support to the demonstration. The Young Peoples Socialist League ordered all its members to come down.

We had called our demonstration for Wednesday at five o’clock. The next morning, Tuesday, we were all out on our various campuses distributing mimeographed circulars. As the printed ones came off the press, they were rushed up to the colleges and to the garment districts.

Tuesday evening, we learned from the early Wednesday edition of The Daily Worker that the Communist Party had called a demonstration at the same spot for four o’clock. Although we were flattered at having the Communist Party take its cue from the Student L.I.D. we were flabbergasted at so childish a ruse to get the leadership in the demonstration. A telegram was sent late Tuesday night to the Communist offices inviting them to join our picket line.

Early Wednesday afternoon groups began congregating outside of the Salmon Towers at 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue in which the Austrian Consul has his offices. Groups of Yipsels marched up Fifth Avenue with red flags unfurled and placards denouncing Dolfuss and proclaiming the solidarity of world Socialism.

By five o’clock there was one huge line running all around the block from Fifth Avenue to Sixth, from 42nd Street to 43rd. Ten thousand people were in the picket line. Never had so many students come out for a demonstration. Socialists and Communists and liberals all were marching in honor of Austrian Socialism.

The line moved slowly. Red songs were chanted. Mass imprecations were hurled at Austrian brutality. The busiest corner in the world had never seen anything of this character before. The police were bewildered. How long should they permit the line to march? It was steadily growing. It would soon snarl up traffic. The leaders were ordered to march away.

Someone shoved. Police began using their clubs. All over the plaza of the Public Library the marchers were harried with clubs and billies. Mounted officers, ten abreast, galloped down the street. If you couldn’t run fast enough you got it over the skull. In desperation the protestants gathered in knots on the steps of the Library and for a while fought off the police. They were scattered by flying wedges. The line reformed. The police ordered us to march off. Instead we circled the block again.

That night the evening papers carried stream head-lines: “Thousands Riot in Austrian Protests.” We had accomplished our purpose. It wasn’t much. But it was the first demonstration of the solidarity of world socialism, after we heard of the uprising in Vienna.

Going through a series of names in the 1930s starting with Revolt, then Student Outlook, then New Frontiers, and finally Industrial Democracy these were the publications of the Socialist Party-allied National Student League for Industrial Democracy. The journal’s changes in part reflected the shifting organizations of the larger student movement.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/student-outlook/v02n04-mar-1934-student-outlook.pdf