Establishment The People's Freedom Union was the organizational successor of the
People's Council of America, an anti-war organization established in New York City by
pacifist and
socialist political activists in an effort to end American participation in the European war. The group was headquartered at 138 West 13th Street, premises it shared with the
American Civil Liberties Union. The People's Freedom Union was organized in opposition to the expansion of
militarism and
imperialism in the post-war world. It declared in its literature that "imperialism is not dead, even though the
kaiser and the other emperors have gone" and postulated that the
empire-building foreign policy of Great Britain, France, Japan, the United States, and other nations was setting the table for a new round of war. The march was to be followed by a dispersal in groups of 10 to picket on behalf of prisoners outside churches throughout New York City in hopes of stirring attendees in support of the cause of freeing
prisoners of conscience jailed under the Espionage Act during the war. A critic of the organization later opined that this demonstration a "rather melodramatic", in which the participants paraded in single file, carrying banners in support of their cause. This criticism, contained in the report of the
Lusk Committee established in 1919 by the
New York State Senate, declared that marchers had been "led astray with respect to the great forces at play on the public opinion of the American people" and that: The persons who have participated in this movement, not necessarily familiar with the objects and the purposes which actuate it, are sowing the seeds of disorder and doing their part to imperil the structure of American institutions. Secretary of the Free Political Prisoners Committee of the People's Freedom Union was
Tracy Dickinson Mygatt. as well as sociologist
Winthrop D. Lane. ==Footnotes==