The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1934-04-28
Question of Workers
Defense Insistent AS
New Struggles Loom
Kew National and International Struggles Must
SerUe to Unite Working Class
D. T Otis COT MAN
By LOUIS COLMAN

WITH the question of the struggle
" for power on the order of the
day, with open fascism raging in a
dozen countries and the fascist
trend of the American bourgeoisie
becoming more apparent, questions
of workers defense assume con-
SANITY greater Importance.
In every city, every county in the
United States, the N. r, A. and the
entire New Deal administration is
attempting to drown the struggles
of the workers and toiling masses
in blood, to behead their movement
by the murder and imprisonment Of
their leaders. Open terror is being
developed daily in every part Of the
country. Open organization of fas-
cist bands to attack and terrorize
the toilers and the Negro people is
going on in the South, in Florida,
in California, in Massachusetts,,
Utah. Troops, tear-gas, billies and
bullets are used everywhere.
In the struggle against this ter
ror, which takes place first of all
in the factories on the streets and
countryside (where it is applied)
the development of international
working-class solidarity is of prime
importance.
Key Struggles Unite Workers
Certain defense struggles around
particular cases of national and
international importance serve in
this fight to consolidate and link
the defense battles along the widest
front, to draw new, broader forces
into the working-class movement in
defense of workers rights, in de-
Tense Of the national liberation
struggles of the Negro people, of the
struggles Of the farmers and the
foreign-born
On the international field, the
celebration Of May Day as a day of
struggle Of the proletariat brings
sharply forward the worldwide
fight in defense of the German and
Austrian workers, ground under the
heel of open fascist dictatorship.
The demand for the freedom of
Ernst Thaelmann, of the thousands
of proletariat fighters in the prisons
and concentration camps of Ger
many and Austria, must be raised
more clearly, more loudly, and by
many thousands more than ever be-
fore. The solidarity actions on
behalf of these imprisoned working
class brothers must be intensified.
Collections for support of their
struggles, for their defense and re-
lief, must be increased a hundred
fold.
5000 in Cuban Dungeons
In Cuba, 5000 political prisoners
lie in President Mendieta's dungeons
for the profit of American i'm
perialists. Murder and terror walk
the streets at the behest of Wash
tngton and Wall Street, AS in Ger
many and Austria, every working
class movement, every organization
of the toilers, has been outlawed.
Against this repression and terror,
the Cuban masses are putting up
an heroic struggle. Support to this
struggle must take the form of mass
demonstrations before consulates,
but also it must be carried into the
everyday work and agitation in the
shops, on the streets, and in the
countryside.
Among our Gown" national
cases, the fight for the freedom
Of the Scottsboro boys, in which
every issue of the national liberia
ton struggles of the Negro people
is involved, of Tom Mooney and
Billings, miIitants of the trade
union movement, and of Angelo
HerndOn, young organizer of the
unemployed, linked together with
the international struggles. form
the spear-head of our defense
struggles.
On this May Day, the white and
Negro workers of Birmingham are
demonstrating in Jim Grow park,
under the windows of Jefferson