workingclasshistory:

On this day, 4 October 1939, four Italian immigrant anarchists, Arthur Bortolotti (aka: Attilio Bortolotti and Athur Bartell, pictured), Ruggero Benvenuti, Ernest Gava, and Vittorio Valopi (some say the third was a Cuban named Marco Joachim), were arrested under Canada’s new War Measures Act for possession of anti-fascist “subversive literature” and in Bortolotti’s case a triggerless handgun. They were threatened to be deported back to Mussolini’s fascist Italy, which was basically a death sentence. Luckily, famous American anarchist Emma Goldman dived into helping them with their case, organising a support committee to exert pressure for their release and to raise money for their legal defence. A progressive lawyer known to defend workers, found by Goldman, got all of them but Bortolotti out in two to three weeks; Bortolotti took the burden upon himself and insisted he alone was responsible. Bortolotti was released on bail three and a half months later, then sentenced to deportation on 13 February 1940 (just days before Goldman’s stroke), and finally had his sentence reversed before Goldman died in May. https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1226646007520547/?type=3