Page 47 - Report on the National Lawyers Guild, legal bulwark of the Communist Party

COMMUNIST PARTY, IT. 8. A.
maketheAmericangovernmentaggres- sively support their capitalist interests by violent measures against their im- perialist rivals and against the Latin
American peoples. This imperialist pressure must be offset by democratic pressure upon Roosevelt by the masses in the United States and Latin America (ibid., p. 612).
NATIONAL LAWYERS GUILD
NationalLawyersGuildQuarterly,vol.2, No. 1 (April 1939), p. 86).
(Word-order of last lines in original text was garbled.)
for Prestes' Freedom Has Just Begun
The brutal sentence of 30 years im- posed upon Luis Carlos Prestes by the Vargas regime in Brazil is a challenge,
not only to the oppressed people of this South American country, but to labor and the public here as well.
This is the second out-and-out frame-
up against the Brazilian people's "Knight- of Hope." He has been Ian-
guishing in jail under a 16-year sentence for the political "crime" of uniting the people in the progressive Nafional Liber- ation Alliance The last conviction of Prestes and six of his coworkers was based on the fantastic slander that he was the "intellectual author" of the murder of a 17-year-old girl.
This outrage heralds a fresh wave of attacks against labor and the Brazilian people as the Vargas dictatorship sells out to the war plans of the Roosevelt Administration and Wall Street.
Notwithstanding this long torturous sentence against Prestes, the Vargas dictatorship had intended to murder himinstantlywitha"legal"deathdecree. This was prevented by the wave of protests which came from the Brazilian people and from labor and liberals in the United States, Mexico, Cuba and other American countries.
Once these protests are raised to greatervolume,theycanremovePrestes entirely from the fascist dungeons. Demands for his freedom and that of his co-workers, should deluge the Brazilian embassy in Washington and Vargas {Daily Worker, December 2, 1940, p. 6 (editorial)).
Continental Activity in Defense of Prestes, Brazil's "Knight of Hope"
(By Dionisio Encina, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Mexico)
The ferocious persecution organized against him by Public Enemy No. 1 of the Brazilian people, Getulio Vargas,
is directed toward physically liquidat-
Lawyers Guild Sends Member to Aid
The Council for Pan American De- mocracy announced today that the National Lawyers Guild has decided to send an observer to Brazil to extend legal aid to the defense of Luis Carlos Prestes, Chairman of the National Liberation Alliance and leader of the democratic movement of Brazil,
The Council for Pan American De- mocracy has learned that the retrial of Prestes has been ordered by President Vargas of Brazil because of the desire of the Vargas dictatorship to secure, via his Special Tribunal, a death sentence for Prestes.
The National Lawyers Guild is now in communication with the Brazilian Embassy in Washington to secure
official recognition for its observer, and to guarantee contact with Prestes and attendance at his trial * * * {Daily
Worker, December 20, 1940, p. 2).
[The Council for Pan American Democracy was cited by the U. S. Attorney General as a Communist
organization.]
According to The Communist, vol.
XV, No. 11 (November 1936), p. 1076, the Communist Party of Brazil issued the call for the formation of the above- mentionedNationalLiberationAlliance,
The
Fight
—
of Brazil Popular Leader
THE NATIONAL LAWYERS GUILD 41
9. Brazil
Prestes
Will Act as Observer at Trial