Note: This is an encore post from 2006.

Nov. 9, 1907
Los Angeles

Local sympathizers, anarchists and socialists are organizing a mass meeting to protest the imprisonment of Ricardo Flores Magon, Librado Rivera, Antonio Villareal and L. Gutierrez De Lara, who are being held on charges of trying to overthrow the Mexican government.

After years of avoiding capture, Magon, Rivera and Villareal were arrested Aug. 23 at 111 E. Pico St. after a brawl with Thomas Furlong of the Furlong Secret Service Bureau of St. Louis, along with Los Angeles Police Detectives Felipe Talamantes, [Thomas F.?] Rico and two deputies. De Lara was arrested by U.S. marshals at 420 W. 4th St. on Sept. 27.

The Times said of the August incident: “The street was filling with people. Men and women crowded before the house just in time to see a light survey and a coupe dash up before the door. Then the door opened and out into the light staggered the officers and their prisoners. They fought on the steps and in the street.”

“ ‘We are revolutionists! We are patriots! We are being kidnapped! Help! Help!’ they shrieked.”

In a 1921 letter to his attorney, Magon wrote: “We avoided being kidnapped into Mexico by voicing in the street the intentions of our captors. A big crowd gathered, and it was necessary for our abductors to take us to the police station, and to rapidly manufacture a charge against us.”

The men were defended by Job Harriman, described by The Times as a Socialist agitator. De Lara said upon his arrest: “I am a student, a writer and, if need be, a martyr. I have written many books. I am now on a cycle of novels in which socialistic questions are discussed. Like Balzac or Zola, I have a mission. I am arrested and thrown into a dungeon. I care not for that, if they furnish me paper, ink and a light.”

To be continued.