Teamsters victory in Minneapolis

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This is the third installment of a series of articles marking the 80th anniversary of the historic Minneapo­ lis Teamster strikes of 1934. The first part appeared in our March 2014 issue, and the second in our May 2014 issue.

We rejoin our brother and sister workers in the Minneapolis trucking industry in July 1934, as they are preparing to go back on strike. When we last left them, they had just concluded a successful strike at the end of May, the second in a series of strikes that would prove the power of the working class and make Minneapolis a union town.

Although the workers had won an important victory against the Citizen’s Alliance, the bosses’ organization that ruled the city by breaking strikes, the employers were already violating the freshly signed contract.

One of the most important battles during the May strike was to gain the right of Local 574, which rep­ resented the trucking industry in Minneapolis, to represent not just drivers but also employees who worked inside the warehouses. But soon after the new contract was signed, the employers said that their interpretation of the contract did not cover in­ side workers—thus excluding thousands of workers who had recently joined the union. The dispute quick­ ly reached the boiling point, and the stage was set for the final battle of the historic strike to take place.

As a third strike became imminent, Local 574 worked to solidify relations with its allies in the movement. The union cemented its alliances with three different farmers’ associations, which allowed small farmers who had a pass from the union to bring their goods into the market to sell to small businesses. The union also organized a union conference on unemployment to discuss ways to increase welfare benefits for work­ ers who were without a job. By the spring of 1934, the unemployed and their dependents made up almost a third of the population of the city—an important layer of the working class. The Minneapolis Central Council of Workers (MCCW) supplied volunteers for unem­ ployed pickets during the strike, who played a central supportive role throughout.

Local 574 also organized a campaign to win support from other unions, culminating in a mass conference of all local unions, called by the AFL. The march to the hall filled 18 city blocks, while 12,000 workers attend­ ed the rally, with thousands more waiting outside. The march included two airplanes with “574” painted on their bodies zooming over the crowd.

This massive attendance of workers showed the true strength of the union movement in Minneapolis at that time, and the respect that Local 574 had won from its use of militant tactics in the previous two strikes. Miles Dunne, a central strike leader and mem­ 6 SOCIALIST ACTION JULY 2014 ber of the Communist League (the name of the U.S. Trotskyist organization at the time), said at the meet­ ing: “… when a social system exists which permits the bosses in Minneapolis to grow fat off the misery, hun­ ger, and degradation of the majority, it’s time that this system changes. The hour has come that the workers … take at the very least a just portion of all the riches that they produce.”

The meeting unanimously approved the demands that Local 574 had the right to represent all its mem­ bers, that all union members receive an increase in salary, and that the employers sign a written agree­ ment to this effect; they were given the deadline of July 11 to respond. The meeting ended under the call, “Make Minneapolis a Union Town!” which would become the rallying cry of the union in the weeks to come.

The employers, however, refused to increase work­ ers’ salaries or to improve their working conditions, and they refused to recognize the right of the union to represent all of its members. They also launched personal attacks against the union leadership, at­ tempting to split the union through red baiting. Even Danel J. Tobin, the president of the bureaucratic In­ ternational Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), who had been against the militant tactics of Local 574 from the beginning, joined in, claiming that the May strike was in “violation of all its laws.” Tobin called the Dunne brothers “radicals” and “wolves in sheep’s clothing.”

On July 16, a mass union meeting voted to put their confidence in the tried and trusted central union leadership—including three of the Dunne brothers (Vincent Ray, Grant, and Miles), Carl Skoglund, Farrell Dobbs, and other members of the Trotskyist Commu­ nist League—who had led the previous two strikes. The vote to immediately go on strike was unanimous.

The strikers set up their headquarters in a two-story garage at 215 S. 8th Street in Minneapolis, complete with a commissary, picket dispatchers, and its own hospital. The rank and file had elected a Committee of 100 to lead the strike, with Ray Dunne and Farrell (Above right) Mass memorial for a worker killed by police on Bloody Friday. (Left) Strikers battle scabs and deputies.

Dobbs elected as representatives who were authorized to meet with the bosses during negotiations.

The strike operated on the principles of democratic centralism; the union representa­ tives were not allowed to make any decisions without first taking them to the rank and file for approval, inspiring internal unity and trust in the leadership, which were essential elements in the ultimate success of the strike. The Organizer, the first daily strike paper ever pub­ lished by a union in the U.S., was also essential to the success of the strike, keeping workers up to pace with rapidly changing events, and breaking the monopoly of the capitalist press by exposing the tricks of the bosses as they took place.

Local 574 immediately deployed pickets all over Minneapolis, soon controlling all traffic in the city by granting or denying passes for the circulation of trucks on city streets. Governor Floyd B. Olson, a member of the Democratic Farmer-Labor Party, at­ tempted to remain neutral by playing both sides of the struggle, but soon agreed to mobilize the National Guard to “maintain law and order.”

Mike Johannes, the chief of police, requested more money for the police force and began to arm them in preparation for the use of violence and repression against the strikers. His budget included money for 400 additional men, $1000 worth of machine guns, 800 rifles with bayonets, 800 steel helmets, and 800 riot clubs. “The police must be trained just like an army to handle riots,” he proclaimed.

And violence soon broke out in the form of a terrible attack against the strikers, which came to be known as the infamous Bloody Friday. Two federal mediators had recently arrived in Minneapolis, E.H. Dunnigan and the Reverend Francis J. Haas, but the employers weren’t interested in negotiating with the workers. Instead, they laid a trap for the strikers and invited the media to record the spectacle. Their intent was to send a clear message to the strikers—go back to work, or we’ll replace you with scabs. If you fight the scabs, you could lose your lives.

As word spread that a truck was going to be moved, a group of peaceful, unarmed pickets began to amass in the market area of the warehouse district of Minne­ apolis. A truck was loaded with a few boxes at the Slo­ cum-Bergren loading dock and pulled into the street, guarded by 100 armed cops. When an open truck carrying 10 pickets followed the scab truck into the street, the cops suddenly opened fire on it, shooting to kill. As strikers rushed in to assist the wounded, cops continued shooting at them, in a massacre that earned Police Chief Johannes the nickname “Bloody Mike.”

Meridel Le Sueur, a strike supporter, described the scene as the wounded arrived at strike headquarters in her powerful memoir, “I Was Marching.” “The cars were coming back. The announcer cried, ‘This is mur­ der.’ Cars were coming in. I don’t know how we got to the stairs. Everyone seemed to be converging at a menaced point. I saw below the crowd stirring, un­ coiling. I saw them taking men out of cars and putting them on the hospital cots, on the floor. At first I felt frightened, the close black area of the barn, the blood the heavy movement, the sense of myself lost, gone.

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But I couldn’t have turned away now.

“A woman clung to my hand. I was pressed against the body of another. If you are to understand anything you must understand it in the muscular event, in ac­ tions we have not been trained for. Something broke all my surfaces in something that was beyond horror and I was dabbing alcohol on the gaping wounds that buckshot makes, hanging open like crying mouths. Buckshot wounds splay in the body and then swell like a blow. Ness, who died, had thirty-eight slugs in his body, in the chest and in the back. … We have living blood on our skirts.”

In all, 67 workers were shot, mostly in the back as they attempted to run away or to help their fallen com­ rades. Newspaper reporters recounted immediately after leaving the scene that police had opened fire on the strikers without warning; they later changed their story to say that the shots broke out only after a po­ liceman had been brutally attacked by a striker.

An official investigation ordered by Governor Olson later found that the police had shot to kill the strik­ ers, even though their own physical safety was not at any time endangered, as there were no weapons in the possession of the strikers, who were unprepared for such an attack. Furthermore, the movement of the truck was a direct plant, in which the police did not act impartially, but as a strikebreaking force, hoping to discredit the union in the public’s eyes.

Following the attack, The Organizer declared, “You thought you would shoot Local 574 into oblivion. But you only succeeded in making Local 574 a battle cry on the lips of all self-respecting working men and women in Minneapolis.” That night, 15,000 workers attended a mass meeting. Far from breaking the will of the workers, the attack on Bloody Friday injected new energy into the strike, as thousands of workers chose sides in the battle on class lines, including a large section of the middle class who now supported the strike.

Forty-eight hours later, Henry Ness died from the 38 bullet wounds he had received in the attack, when po­ lice shot him in the back as he lay under a car, attempt­ ing to escape the gunfire. He left behind his wife and four children. Over 40,000 workers attended his mass funeral, held on July 27.

Albert Goldman, the lawyer representing the strik­ ers, delivered a moving funeral speech, stating, “The life of our murdered brother is representative of the lives of all workers. The social system never gave him an opportunity. At a young age he was forced to work to earn a living and produce profits for his employer. Along with other workers, he was sent to kill or be killed in the world war. For what? For liberty? No. For the sake of profits and imperialist markets for the bosses. Underline these words! There only exists one path, one fight in which the worker has a true interest. It is the fight of Labor against Capital.”

On Aug. 1, John Belor, an unemployed worker sup­ porting the strike, also died of his wounds. Although his family requested not to hold a mass demonstra­ tion, thousands of union members attended his funer­ al, honoring his sacrifice for the struggle.

After the attack, Governor Olson quickly declared martial law in the city, asking the strikers and em­ ployers to approve a settlement known as the HaasDunnigan plan, or risk military action. Although the union voted to accept the plan, the employers rejected it. Under the rule of martial law, 4000 soldiers were deployed, all pickets and movement of trucks were prohibited, and the National Guard took charge of is­ suing permission to operate trucks to companies that agreed to the Hass-Dunnigan plan.

The primary role of the police as agents protecting private property and as a repressive force against threats to the ruling class had now become imminent­ ly clear, and the role of martial law and the National Guard was the same. They were gradually breaking the strike as their control over the operation of trucks in the city loosened. Within a few days, 6000 trucks were operating on the streets of Minneapolis, with or without permits.

Despite Olson’s ongoing attempts to appear as a “neutral” force in the conflict, he was ultimately act­ ing on the side of the Citizen’s Alliance. Bill Brown de­ clared in a mass meeting attended by 25,000 workers on July 31, “The Farmer-Laborer government is the best strikebreaking force our union has ever gone up against.”

In the early morning of Aug. 1, around 1000 National Guard soldiers surrounded strike headquarters, ar­ resting V.R. and Miles Dunne, Bill Brown, and other strike leaders, and holding them in deplorable con­ ditions at an improvised military prison on the state fairgrounds in St. Paul. Grant, Dobbs, and Skoglund managed to escape by a stroke of luck.

Later that day, Olson met with Jack Maloney, Ray Rainbolt, Kelly Postal, Grant Dunne, and Farrell Dobbs. They demanded an immediate release of the strike leaders, the return of strike headquarters, and the withdrawal of soldiers from the streets so pickets could resume their duties without interference. Olson justified the raid by saying the strikers had not had permission to hold their mass meeting, but was un­ able to respond when they produced their permit. He was forced to return strike headquarters to the work­ ers at 11 p.m. that night.

In an attempt to recuperate from the political dam­ age he had sustained from the raid on strike head­ quarters, Olson sent a few soldiers to raid the offices of the Citizen’s Alliance a few days later, but to little effect.

As the strike dragged on, the employers tried many tricks to break the strike, including offering a new strike deal with worse conditions and pushing for scab elections, but without avail. Throughout the duration of the strike, Local 574 maintained a line of indepen­ dent class action and the rank and file proved their loyalty to their leaders, whom they trusted through long experience, despite the continued attacks and at­ tempts at red-baiting.

Daily life ground on for the strikers, and many were becoming demoralized. Many families had had their lights shut off or had been kicked out of their homes as their funds dwindled, and the strike was costing the union $1000 a day to maintain. They knew they would have to find a resolution to the conflict soon, or risk defeat.

In the meantime, a new federal mediator, P.A. Dono­ ghue, had arrived. He soon produced a new proposal, which included the following conditions: (1) a Labor Board election would be held within 10 days to estab­ lish collective bargaining rights wherever the union won a majority; (2) gains in representation of inside workers would be made in 22 companies; (3) wages would increase to 50 cents an hour for drivers and 40 cents for helpers, with the ability to negotiate further increases; and (4) all employees would be returned to their jobs without discrimination.

On Aug. 21, a general meeting of the strikers ap­ proved the new plan. They knew it was the best they could get at the time, and would give them a solid base from which to continue organizing efforts in the fu­ ture.

The next step was to prepare for the elections, which took place on Aug. 28. After the votes came in, Local 574 became the representative of 61% of the trucking industry, gaining the right to represent all workers in 62 companies where they had the majority vote, and half the workers in an additional 15 companies where the vote had tied. The union immediately submitted for arbitration a petition for a wage increase to 52 ½ cents an hour for drivers and 42 ½ cents for helpers, which the employers did not dare to refuse. The new wage scale also included inside workers’ a resounding victory for the union.

After the strike, the strike leaders were elected as the new leadership of Local 574. A Committee of 100 was elected as union delegates, whose primary job was to make sure that employers were complying with the new contract. The MCCW, which represented unemployed workers, agreed to dissolve into Local 574, who created a special organization for them to continue fighting for their own demands from within the union.

In the meantime, the Minneapolis branch of the Communist League had consolidated an important victory as well, doubling its membership to 100 and gaining important new members and supporters, such as Marvel Scholl, Bill Brown, and Harry DeBoer, who later remarked on the success of the strike, “We wouldn’t have been able to do it without a disciplined revolutionary party.”

The 1934 Teamster’s strike also had national impli­ cations that reached beyond the borders of Minneapo­ lis. This strike, along with the Toledo Auto-Lite strike and the Longshore strike in San Francisco, which also took place in 1934, led to a revitalization of the labor movement at the height of the Great Depression. All three of these strikes were led by radicals against the union bureaucracy and faced significant police repres­ sion, but were ultimately successful, showing the mas­ sive potential power of the rank and file. They contrib­ uted to a huge boost of morale among workers across the country, and opened up the wave of industrial unionization in the 1930s that led to the formation of the Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO).

The Minneapolis Labor Review remarked of the strike on Aug. 24, “The triumph of this strike represents the largest victory in the annals of the local union move­ ment. … It has changed Minneapolis, so that it is no longer known as a paradise for scabs, but has become a city of hope for all workers.” Indeed, this victory of the truckers’ strike truly opened up all of Minneapolis to become a union town, inspiring many more strikes that looked to Local 574 for guidance as they fought to maintain and improve upon rights for workers across many industries in the city.

This year, 2014, marks the 80th anniversary of the Minneapolis Teamster Strikes. The Remember 1934 Committee—made up of labor activists, descendants of the strikers, and community organizers—is plan­ ning a commemoration of this decisive event.

On July 19, a street festival for the working class will be held in the warehouse district of Minneapolis, at the site of Bloody Friday. Teamsters Local 120 will also march to the site, where they will place a funeral wreath to honor the workers who were injured and killed on that terrible day. The activities for the day will include bands, speakers, historical speeches, par­ ticipatory art, and much more to commemorate the strike and connect people to local labor struggles that are taking place today.

On the following day, July 20, a union and familyfriendly picnic will take place at Minnehaha Park, which will include free food, recognition of the de­ scendants of the strikers, speeches, and kids’ games. To find out more information or to support the Re­ member 1934 committee, visit their Facebook page at www.facebook.com/Remember1934. n

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(continued from page 1: “U.S. out of Iraq! Washington fosters sectarian divisions”) ing U.S. surveillance and intelligence “assets” in the country. These forces will augment some 600 U.S. soldiers and an unspecified number of armed “pri­ vate contractors” who are already in Iraq. At the same time, the U.S. has increased military aid to so-called “moderate” rebel forces fighting in Syria, in order to counter the power of the Islamic State in that country.

While calling for the military build-up, the White House and Democratic Party members of Congress have been forced to respond to the fact that U.S. pub­ lic opinion (by a 74 percent majority in a June 17 poll) has expressed itself strongly against the reintroduc­ tion of U.S. combat soldiers into Iraq. Thus, Demo­ cratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi urged “caution” in the U.S. military escalation, while observ­ ing: “You have to be careful sending special forces, be­ cause it’s a number that has a tendency to grow.”

Obama did not rule out U.S. air strikes in the future, but stressed that they would be “targeted and pre­ cise.” By the use of such phrasing, the administration obviously intends to assuage fears of the civilian casu­ alties that inevitably accompany the use of air strikes. A high number of civilian deaths could prove highly embarrassing for the White House.

While lobbying the U.S. Congress for air support, the Iraqi ambassador to the United States, Lukman Faily, raised the alarm that IS would commit “ethnic cleans­ ing” in the cities that it has captured. Faily’s warning, of course, probably elicited knowing winks among some U.S. officials—who are well aware that U.S. oc­ cupation forces and their client governments in Iraq commonly and effectively employed ethnic cleansing as part of their strategy. In fact, the current Sunni re­ bellion is a direct consequence of the sectarian war­ fare unleashed by the U.S. invasion over a decade ago.

When the U.S. toppled the Saddam Hussein regime in 2003, the ruling echelons and their representatives in Washington estimated that risks would be minimal. They knew that working-class and left Arab national­ ist forces had already been crushed by Hussein’s au­ tocratic regime. Likewise, the fall of the Soviet Union and the smothering of the Iranian Revolution had di­ minished the possibility of opposition in the interna­ tional arena.

Washington and its allies counted, moreover, on the hysterical climate of the “war on terror,” together with the charade over Saddam’s having authorized ”weap­ ons of mass destruction,” as the means to quell any significant antiwar opposition from arising against the Iraq adventure.

It’s difficult to say how many U.S. politicians at the time really believed the rosy rhetoric of ideologues like Dick Cheney, who insisted that U.S. troops “will, in fact, be greeted as liberators” in Iraq. Yet most U.S. policy makers no doubt believed that feuding ethnic and religious groupings in the shattered country—the legacy of imperialism’s longstanding divide-and-rule policies throughout the Arab world—could be quickly knitted together within a regime that was completely subservient to U.S. dictates.

With that outcome in mind, they expected that the United States would soon have sufficient peace and comfort to reap the great reward of its military vic­ tory—Iraq’s vast oil wealth, which was quickly pieced out to U.S. corporations.

But Iraq turned into a quagmire for the imperialists. As resistance to the U.S. invasion solidified, Washing­ ton saw fit to pour more and more troops and arma­ ments into Iraq, utterly destroying Fallujah and other cities. At least half a million Iraqis have been killed in the war (some sources report many more deaths), with several million displaced from their homes.

The U.S. invasion and war left Iraq, once one of the 8 SOCIALIST ACTION JULY 2014 Fares Nawfal / AFP / Getty Images wealthiest nations in the Middle East, marooned in a state of economic and social collapse. Unemployment today is officially 18 percent, and illiteracy is 60 per­ cent. Billions of dollars in oil wealth have disappeared into the bank accounts of favored businessmen, while much of the urban population survives on merely four hours of electricity a day.

As social conditions steadily worsened during the early months and years of the occupation, they fur­ ther enflamed resistance to the U.S. and allied forces and to their puppet Iraqi armies.

Early in the war, signs began to appear that ethnic groupings might work together to defy the occupiers. For example, after the first U.S. attack on Fallujah, in April 2004, Sunnis and Shiites mounted a joint convoy to provide aid to civilians. That same month, 200,000 Sunnis and Shiites demonstrated in Baghdad against the U.S. occupation. To forestall any such attempts at unity in the future, the U.S. looked to the tactic that imperialism had successfully employed many times in the past—fanning the flames of nationalist and reli­ gious rivalries. Accordingly, the U.S. fostered the for­ mation of religion-based militias and death squads— which its Saudi, Kuwaiti, and other “allies” helped to supply with weaponry.

In many U.S.-led offensives in the “Sunni triangle,” like the murderous assault on Fallujah, the main allied Iraqi troops were made up of Shiite and Kurd militias. Many of these forces sought to turn the tables on their Sunni opponents who had dominated the country during the Saddam Hussein years.

However, the U.S. still held an open hand toward Sunni forces who were willing to collaborate. After U.S. Marines withdrew from Falluja in 2004, they left the city under control of a group of Sunnis they had armed and equipped—the so-called Fallujah Brigade, led largely by former Baathists. In the meantime, the U.S. continued to bomb Fallujah from the air, with high civilian casualties.

Soon, it became clear to the Americans that many in the Fallujah Brigade were sympathetic to the suf­ fering and grievances of the local Sunni population, and ineffective in carrying out U.S. directives to ar­ rest the insurgents still in the city. The brigade was demobilized by the U.S. puppet government in Bagh­ dad, but Fallujah remained in the hands of a coalition of Islamic fundamentalists (including al-Qaeda), for­ mer Baathists, and Sunni tribal nationalists. The U.S. military responded with an onslaught that it later de­ scribed as “the heaviest urban combat Marines have been involved in since the battle of Hue City in Viet­ nam.” At least 800 civilians lost their lives, according to the Red Cross.

In the meantime, Sunni elements, including al-Qae­ da, had undertaken a wave of jihadist attacks, includ­ ing massacres, suicide bombings, and assassinations of political officials who were deemed to be collabo­ rators. These actions further stiffened the old Shi­ ite grudges against Sunnis. After the February 2006 bombing in Samarra of the al-Askari mosque, one of the Shiites’ holiest shrines, the country quickly de­ scended into civil war. Well over 1000 people were killed in the days following the bombing.

Nouri al-Maliki, who took office in 2006 with a base among Shiite political forces, increasingly acted to remove Sunni politicians from their posts, and has cracked down hard on dissent. Torture has been com­ monplace.

The Maliki regime organized several attacks on Camp Ashraf, a refugee compound that was home to people who had been persecuted by the fundamental­ ist Shiite regime in Iran. In the last attack, on Sept. 1, 2013, Iraqi troops fired grenades and mortars into the camp’s sleeping quarters, and then machine-gunned people as they tried to escape. At least 52 refugees (according to UN observers) were massacred, with seven others deported to Iran, where they face the (Left) During the “Arab Spring,” people throughout Iraq rose up against unemployment and the Maliki regime’s corruption. Here protesters in Mosul are attacked by police in March 2011.

prospect of torture and execution.

Minority nationalities and religious groups have fared no better. The Christian population of the coun­ try (now 500,000) has declined by two-thirds since the U.S. invasion; most Christians have fled to escape repression by militant Islamists. And the 2 million “Black Iraqis,” descendants of escaped African slaves, live as poverty-stricken pariahs in southern Iraq, where they are regularly denied identity documents, marriage certificates, and education.

A major flashpoint for the current insurgency was ignited when ISIS occupied the western dessert re­ gion of Anbar province, near the border with Syria, at the end of last year. The Iraqi army, freshly supplied with U.S. Hellfire missiles and reconnaissance drones, attempted to expel the ISIS fighters, but met with lit­ tle success. Video footage from the campaign showed Maliki’s troops raising Shiite religious banners and slogans as they operated in the Sunni-majority region.

As an outgrowth of its operations, in late December, the Iraqi army moved in to disburse the Sunni-led protest camp in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar prov­ ince, situated nearly 80 miles west of Baghdad. Maliki had claimed, with little evidence, that the camp was an “al-Qaeda” (i.e., ISIS) headquarters. At the same time, the government arrested a local Sunni member of parliament, Ahmed al-Alwani, after a firefight at his residence in which Alwani’s brother was killed.

As a result of these incidents, Sunni clerics and tribal leaders issued a call for Sunnis to take up arms against the Maliki government. A three-way armed struggle ensued in Anbar province between Sunni tribal mili­ tias, the mainly Shiite Iraqi army, and al-Qaeda/ISIS. “We don’t like ISIS, but we also don’t like to be treated like second-class citizens,” the deputy head of the An­ bar provincial council, Falah al-Alssawi, explained at the time.

The Iraqi army was forced to withdraw from Ramadi and Fallujah in January, and in the breach, ISIS moved in to occupy those cities.

Today, IS and its allies continue to gain territory in Anbar province, having recently seized several key towns on the Euphrates River and gained control of the key highway into Jordan. In some regions, Sunni tribes, as well as former Saddam Hussein loyalists from the Baath Party and officers from Saddam’s army, have formed an alliance with ISIS, since they share the goals of creating a separate Sunni state or even overthrowing the Shiite-backed government in Baghdad. However, the insurgent coalition has not remained intact throughout the country. Both in An­ bar province and in the north around Kirkuk, several Baathist and other Sunni militias have engaged in firefights against ISIS.

Working people in Iraq—whether they belong to Sunni, Shiite, Kurdish, or other ethnic groups—have nothing to gain from the sectarian mayhem. None of the current belligerents can speak to their interests and wellbeing. However odious and reactionary IS and al-Qaeda might be, it is necessary to acknowledge that the imperialist-backed Maliki regime has yielded nothing but death and misery for the Iraqi people— while the ex-collaborators of Saddam Hussein and the Baathists were even more repressive when they held power.

The only way that Iraq’s working people can elimi­ nate the ongoing cycles of war, repression, and pov­ erty is for them to carefully construct their own in­ dependent workers’ party, open to people of all na­ tionalities and religious groupings, and armed with a revolutionary socialist program. Councils of demo­ cratically elected workers’ representatives can be built to organize defense of communities and work­ places from the marauding armies and death squads, while taking action to replace the present corrupt and pro-imperialist capitalist regime with one that is fully representative of working people.

Oppressed nationalities like the Kurds must be rec­ ognized as having the right of self-determination, which would include supporting their choice to sepa­ rate into a new state if they wish. But they must also be given absolute assurance that they would be guar­ anteed equal rights and opportunities if they choose instead to help build a united socialist Iraq. Ultimately, the borders that the imperialists erected in the region a century ago must fall—replaced by a united, confed­ erated socialist Middle East.

In the meantime, President Obama and Congress have left open the option of further escalating the U.S. intervention in Iraq, with jet and drone strikes as well as larger quantities of U.S. troops. The United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC) has called for united, mas­ sive protests in the streets. The antiwar movement must make itself heard: “No new U.S. war in Iraq!” n

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olitical prisoner Dr. Sami Al-Arian neering professor at the University of South Florida and nationally known as an activist in the struggle for civil lib­ erties for the Muslim and Palestinian American community, has been jailed for over 11 years on spurious charges related to his support for the struggle for Palestinian rights.

The persecution of Dr. Al-Arian had its roots in the Patriot Act as well as in the notorious Anti-Terrorism and Ef­ fective Death Penalty Act, initiated and signed by President Bill Clinton. This legislation made it a crime to give “ma­ terial support” to organizations that the U.S. had placed on its “terrorism” list. Among these groups was Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which Dr. Al-Arian and other activists in the U.S. were accused of supporting.

A trial jury acquitted Al-Arian on eight of the counts against him but was dead­ locked on nine other counts. Because of the stress on his family, Al-Arian de­ cided not to proceed to a re-trial and instead agreed to plead “guilty” to the count of “providing services” to “people associated with” Palestinian Islamic Ji­ had. On May 1, 2006, he was sentenced to 57 months in prison. Dr. Al-Arian was scheduled for deportation from the U.S. after his release from prison, despite the facts that he has lived here for 30 years and that his children were born here.

As his release date approached, a Fed­ eral District Court in Virginia extended his sentence, holding him on contempt charges for his refusal to testify before grand juries investigating “terrorism.” In January 2007, in protest against his treatment, Al-Arian began a 60-day hunger strike.

STATEMENT FROM ATTORNEY JONATHAN TURLEY It is with a great sense of relief and thankfulness that I can now report that all charges have been dropped against my client Dr. Sami Al-Arian. Minutes ago, United States District Judge Antho­ ny J. Trenga signed the order dismiss­ ing the indictment against Dr. Al-Arian. The case was before Judge Leonie M. Brinkema, but it was Judge Trenga who signed the order on Friday afternoon [June 27, 2014].

I have represented Dr. Al-Arian for roughly eight years as we fought against his deportation and the dismissal of these charges. We have litigated the case from the 11th Circuit to the 4th Circuit to the Supreme Court and back again. It has been a long and difficult road for the Al-Arian family.

In September 2004, Dr. Sami Amin AlArian was charged, along with various co-defendants, in a 53-count Super­ seding Indictment. Following a highly publicized six-month trial in 2005, Dr. Al-Arian was acquitted on eight counts and the jury was unable to reach a unanimous verdict on the remaining nine counts. There were only two ju­ rors who voted against acquitting Dr. Al-Arian of all of the remaining counts.

As the government considered wheth­ er to bring charges against Dr. Al-Arian on the remaining counts, the parties began to negotiate a plea agreement. As a result of these negotiations, Dr. Al- Arian executed a written plea agree­ ment on February 28, 2006. Pursuant to this agreement, Dr. Al-Arian com­ mitted to pleading guilty to Court 4 of the Superseding Indictment. The nar­ rative of this count largely dealt with Samadoun: Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network a statement that Dr. Al- Arian made to a reporter and his support with an im­ migration matter for a person “associ­ ated” with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). The count notably did not admit to any of the core terrorism charges levied against him regarding alleged leadership in PIJ and the other terror­ ism acts. Dr. Al-Arian was sentenced to a 57-month term of imprisonment on May 1, 2006.

In fact, as evidence of the high-profile nature of the case, then-Attorney Gen­ eral Ashcroft called an unorthodox press conference to announce Dr. AlArian’s arrest. Ashcroft had publicly and repeatedly cited the prosecution as a major victory in his administra­ tion. See, e.g., Paul Lomartire, Professor Says Terrorism Arrest ‘All About Poli­ tics,’ Cox News Service, Feb. 20, 2003. A movie has since been made of the trial and hundreds of articles have appeared in local and national publications re­ garding the case.

The trial loss and plea agreement was viewed as a significant defeat for the Justice Department. In the immediate aftermath of the settlement and public criticism, prosecutors set out to call Dr. Al-Arian to a grand jury despite his pri­ or insistence that he would not cooper­ ate in such an investigation as a condi­ tion of his plea agreement.

The result was a highly abusive incar­ ceration of Dr. Al-Arian and eventually this indictment for criminal contempt (for refusing to testify) in 2008 by the Justice Department. He was indicted despite my producing a polygraph showing that he could offer nothing of the matters under investigation by the grand jury and a sworn detailed dec­ laration of his lack of knowledge. We filed a series of motions contesting the indictment for selective prosecution, errors in the indictment, and a clear violation of the agreement made by the Justice Department.

A few years ago, we were able to have Dr. Al-Arian released from jail and later we were able to have his home confine­ ment conditions lifted. He has lived with his family in Virginia.

This case remains one of the most troubling chapters in this nation’s crackdown after 9-11. Despite the jury verdict and the agreement reached to allow Dr. Al-Arian to leave the coun­ try, the Justice Department continued to fight for his incarceration and for a trial in this case. It will remain one of the most disturbing cases of my career in terms of the actions taken by our government. However, despite our of­ ten heated hearings in this case, I thank those at the Justice Department who agreed to the dismissal of the indict­ ment. This family has been put through over a decade of grinding, unrelenting litigation. It is time to bring closure to this matter once for all.

I am very thankful to the many law students who have assisted me on this case as well as the help of the law firm of Bryan Cave as local counsel in the case. We have represented Dr. Al-Arian pro bono because of the important con­ stitutional and ethical issues raised by his case.

The core values underlying this de­ fense ultimately prevailed but only due to the extraordinary effort of Dr. Al-Ari­ an, his loyal family, and a wide array of supporters. It is often said that Justice delay is Justice denied. However, de­ spite this delay, justice did ultimately prevail for not just the Al-Arians but our legal system. n

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‘The triumph of this strike has changed Minneapolis so that ... it has become a city of hope for all workers.’ — Minneapolis Labor Review

SOCIALIST ACTION JULY 2014 7 ... U.S. out of Iraq