Hellraisers Journal: Jack Whyte States His Contempt for San Diego Court: “To hell with your courts; I know what justice is.”

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Quote Jack Whyte, Too Hell with Your Court, Ky Pst p4, Aug 21, 1912—————

Hellraisers Journal – Friday August 23, 1912
San Diego, California – Fellow Worker Jack Whyte Expresses His Contempt of Court

From The Kentucky Post of August 21, 1912:

San Diego I. W. W., Convicted, Bluntly Explains
to Judge His Contempt for Court
———-

Jack Whyte, To Hell With Your Courts SDg FSF Aug 5, KY Pst p4, Aug 21, 1912

SAN DIEGO, CAL., Aug. 21-Contempt of court, more bluntly expressed than probably ever before in the history of California, whose court records have been dirtied often by judicial acts which have disgraced the State, marked the close of proceedings here recently [August 5th], when Judge Sloane sentenced several members of the Industrial Workers of the World for conspiracy to violate the street-speaking ordinance. 

Sloane asked Jack Whyte, Industrial Worker, if he had anything to say as to why he should not receive sentence.

Whyte had something to say. He talked straight. This is what he said:

There are only a few word that I care to say, and this court will not mistake them for a legal argument, for I am not acquainted with the phraseology of the bar, nor the language common to the courtroom.

There are two points which I want to touch upon-the indictment itself and the misstatement of the Prosecuting Attorney. The indictment reads: “The People of the State of California against J. W. Whyte and others.”

It’s a hideous lie. The people of this courtroom know that it is a lie, and I know that it is a lie. If the people of the State are to blame for this persecution, then the people are to blame for the murder of Michael Hoey and the assassination of Joseph Mickolasek. They are to blame and responsible for every bruise, every insult and injury inflicted upon the members of the working class by the vigilantes of this city.

The people deny it, and have so emphatically denied it that Gov. Johnson sent Harris Weinstock down here to make an investigation and clear the reputation of the people of the State of California from the odor that you would attach to it. You cowards throw the blame upon the people, but I know who is to blame and I name them-it is Spreckels and his partners in business, and this court is the lackey and lickspittle of that class, defending the property of that class against the advancing horde of starving American workers.

The Prosecuting Attorney in his plea to the jury accused me of saying on a public platform at a public meeting: “To hell with the courts; we know what justice is.” He told a great truth when he lied, for if he had searched the innermost recesses of my mind he could have found that thought, never expressed by me before, but which I express now. “To hell with your courts, I know what justice is,” for I have sat in your courtroom day after day and have seen members of my class pass before this, the so-called bar of justice.

I have seen you, Judge Sloane, and others of your kind, send them to prison because they dared to infringe upon the sacred right of property. You have become blind and deaf to the rights of men to pursue life and happiness, and you have crushed those rights so that the sacred rights of property should be preserved. Then you tell me to respect the law.

I don’t. I did violate the law, and I will violate every one of your laws and still come before you and say: “To hell with the courts,” because I believe that my right to live is far more sacred than the sacred right of property that you and your kind so ably defend.

I don’t tell you this with the expectation of getting justice, but to show my contempt for the whole machinery of law and justice as represented by this and every other court. The Prosecutor lied, but I will accept it as a truth and say again, so that you, Judge Sloane, may not be mistaken as to my attitude:

“To hell with your courts; I know what justice is.”

[Emphasis added.]

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Hellraisers Journal: “Advertise San Diego!” -Brutal Crimes Committed Against Men and Women Engaged in Free Speech Fight

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Quote re IWW FSF San Diego Tribune, Mar 4, 1912 fr Mother Earth p106, June 1912—————

Hellraisers Journal – Friday June 14, 1912
San Diego, California – Brutal Crimes Committed in Effort to Stop Free Speech Fight

From the Spokane Industrial Worker of June 13, 1912:

IWW San Diego FSF, List of Crimes, IW p4, June 13, 1912

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Hellraisers Journal: Inquiry into San Diego Free Speech Fight Strips Mask from Army of Thugs and Brutal Vigilante Justice

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Quote EGF, re Spk FSF, ISR p618, Jan 1910—————

Hellraisers Journal – Sunday May 12, 1912
San Diego, California – Weinstock Inquiry Proves Brutality of Vigilantes 

From the Spokane Industrial Worker of May 9, 1912:

INQUIRY STRIPS MASK FROM THUGS

GOVERNOR ORDERS INVESTIGATION OF SAN DIEGO
-INQUIRY REVEALS FRIGHTENED OFFICIALS
-MEN STILL ENTERING CITY.

[-by Stumpy]

San Diego FSF, Jail re Death of Hoey, Cmg Ntn p13, May 4, 912

San Diego, Cal., April 22, 1912

To the “Worker”-The most notable event of the past week has been the taking of testimony in the Free Speech fight by commissioner, Mr. Harris Weinstock, appointed by Governor Johnson to come to San Diego to get the facts in regard to the complete abrogation of all laws by the police and vigilantes, and incidentally this investigation has been the means of showing as fine an example of unqualified heroism as the world has ever seen.

The governor has appointed the commissioner in response to requests from scores of people here and elsewhere who knew of the lawlessness that was being carried on here, and he had issued invitations to all who wished to come forth and testify regarding the methods of the police and the justification for the vigilantes.

It would seem that here was a chance for the lovers of “law and order” to come forth and prove what martyrs the people of San Diego had been, but with the exception of two police officials and two others, one of them a vigilante, there was no one in all the town who had the nerve to come forth and justify their actions.

The first of the “citizens” to come forth had been well loaded with whisky, and he wanted to know if the commissioner was going to take the word of a lot of “anarchists and ragamuffins who were there to make trouble.” He then wanted the commissioner to go somewhere to get the statements of “a thousand citizens who were willing to testify, but the room where the investigation was being held was no fit place for them to come.” His scheme failed, as the commissioner told him plainly that no star chamber proceedings would be held.

Detective Shepherd was also on the job, but was unable to hold it down for more than a few minutes. When he was asked one or two questions about taking men out to be slugged by the vigilantes his prompter at a side door said “Telephone message for Shepherd,” and that was the end of his talk.

But it was not the end of the record. Thomas Kilcullen and one of the other I. W. W. men at once took the stand and testified that Shepherd was telling a point blank lie in the very essence of his testimony. He had had the nerve to state that no men were beaten up and that no one was turned over to the vigilantes. But men were there to prove him to be an unqualified liar, and the proof went into the record next after Shepherd’s attempt at a whitewash.

The true heroes were seven men who had been driven from the town and clubbed, some of them to insensibility, and told that if they ever returned to San Diego they would be killed. Some of them had been driven out two or three times, some had been clubbed on the streets of rotten San Diego, all had been threatened with death if they ever returned, yet they were defying the most vicious gun men of the west to give their story of cruelty to the governor that there might be the evidence for him to give us a measure of justice and fair dealing in our fight.

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