User:Julius177/GDC

The General Defense Committee (GDC) is a legal and direct defense organization operated as an international standing committee of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). It was established in Chicago, Illinois in 1917 after the IWW's experience in conducting legal defense of many key members who were arrested and imprisoned under the United States Espionage Act of 1917.

Background
Criminal syndicalism, free speech fights. Wobbly tradition of populist pressure tactics (filling jails, "taking over" towns, etc.) rather than legal defense.

Formation
Palmer Raids, etc. Mention National Civil Liberties Bureau (morphed into ACLU?).

The GDC was formed on 5 October 1917.

By 1920, tens of thousands of dollars were being raised under the coordination of the GDC through fundraisers to pay bail for IWW prisoners held as a result of the government crackdown. Notice was being drawn in particular to mass arrests and "snatching" of organizers in Kansas, Oklahoma, and Missouri, and the rise in criminal syndicalism cases being charged, with William Haywood writing that "[t]he reaction is coming."

Fiske trial
Harold B. Fiske was an organizer for the IWW's Agricultural Workers Industrial Union No. 110 who was convicted in 1923 under a Kansas criminal syndicalism statute and sentenced to between one and ten years in a Kansas state prison. His legal defense was coordinated by the GDC, which contracted lawyer Charles L. Carroll for his defense, and his bail was posted by the American Civil Liberties Union. Carroll mishandled the case and its appeal, with the Kansas Supreme Court affirming the earlier judgement against him on 8 November 1924. Coming off an opposing judgement in the case of Gitlow v. New York, the Supreme Court of the United States overturned Fiske's conviction, creating the precedent that Bill of Rights provisions could override the legislative and judicial power of states under the Fourteenth Amendment, and challenging the Constitutionality of criminal syndicalism laws.

After 2000
General Defense Committee Local 6 in Ottawa, Ontario was instrumental in the formation of the IWW's Ottawa Panhandlers Union (OPU). In 2013, Local 6 and the OPU launched their ticket defense program, which targeted the practice of police issuing tickets to panhandlers under aggressive interpretations of the Safe Streets Act, and citing bylaws the OPU described as "irrelevant". Most recently, Local 6 pledged its support for Deepan Budlakoti, a Canadian citizen born in Canada who as of 2016 was being threatened with deportation.

The Twin Cities GDC Local 14 [ADD MORE LOCAL 14 STUFF]

In Kansas City, Missouri in 2016, GDC Local 15 was active in raising a bail fund for people arrested while protesting against police violence.