Patrick Reid (a.k.a. Larry; Jimmy; Billy; Matt)
Born: 1871, Derry, Ireland
Nationality: British
Ethnicity: Ulster-Scots
Occupation: Laborer
Migration: Immigrated to US c. 1890s
Affiliation: IWW
Worked as an itinerant laborer throughout the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Arrested in Centralia, Washington, in November 1919, he stated he was “ashamed to say” that he was not a dues-paying member of the IWW due to lack of funds, though he supported its ideology and declared that the only government he supported was that of Soviet Russia. Deported April 2, 1920.
Sources: INS file 54709/581; FBI file OG 378240.
Dimitry Remar
Born: 1896, Podolsk, Russia
Nationality: Russian
Ethnicity:
Occupation: Laborer
Migration: Immigrated to Canada 1915; then to US 1918
Affiliation: Communist Party of America
Became a member of Detroit’s Russian Branch No. 5 of the Communist Party. Arrested January 1920 and deported to Russia March 18, 1921.
Sources: INS file 54859/796.
Benjamin Repsys (or Repshys)
Born: 1894, Kovno, Russia (present-day Lithuania)
Nationality: Russian
Ethnicity: Lithuanian
Occupation: Autoworker
Migration: Immigrated to US 1913
Affiliation: Communist Party of America
Worked for the Ford Motor Company and in 1918 joined Detroit’s Branch No. 116 of the Lithuanian Socialist Federation, later transferring into the Communist Party. Arrested November 15, 1919, for receiving radical literature but released. Arrested again in January 1920 and deported to Russia March 18, 1921.
Sources: INS file 54859/658.
Manuel Rey y García (a.k.a. Louis G. Raymond)
Born: 1888, Castrofoya, Spain
Nationality: Spanish
Ethnicity: Galician
Occupation: Sailor; union organizer; house painter
Migration: Immigrated to US 1914
Affiliation: IWW
His father was killed in the Cuban War of Independence. Emigrated to Cuba in 1905; from 1909 to 1914 he worked as sailor throughout Atlantic.
Entered the United States without inspection in 1914. An anarchist, he joined the IWW around that same year and became secretary of its Marine Transport Workers Industrial Union in Philadelphia; in April 1917 he moved to Niagara Falls, New York, where he was elected secretary of the local IWW organization. Arrested three times within six months for failure to register for the draft and for antiwar speeches, he was a defendant in the 1917–1918 mass IWW trial in Chicago and was sentenced to twenty years and a $20,000 fine. While imprisoned he corresponded with anarchist Lilly Sarnoff, who became his lifelong companion. His sentence was commuted in December 1922 on condition of deportation, and he was deported to Spain March 22, 1923.
He illegally returned to the United States, was deported again in 1926, and returned once more under the name “Louis G. Raymond.” He continued to be active in the anarchist movemint, living in the Stelton, New Jersey anarchist community and coediting the newspaper Freedom (1933–1934). He died in New York in 1990 at age 101.
Sources: INS file 54297/18; FBI file OG 8000-160053′ Industrial Workers of the World Collection, Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University; Peter Cole, Wobblies on the Waterfront: Interracial Unionism in Progressive-Era Philadelphia; Bieito Alonso, “Spanish Anarchists and Maritime Workers in the IWW,” in Wobblies of the World: A Global History of the IWW; Bieito Alonso, Anarquistas galegos en América; Paul Avrich, Anarchist Voices: An Oral History of Anarchism in America.
Federico Ricci
Born: 1887, Cesenatico, Italy
Nationality: Italian
Ethnicity:
Occupation: Shoemaker
Migration: Immigrated to US 1905
Affiliation: Anarchist
Originally a socialist in Italy, he became an anarchist in the U.S. around 1910. Returned to Italy from 1911 to 1913. Arrested in Haverhill, Massachusetts, in January 1918 for failure to register for the draft, he was sentenced to a year in prison and declared, “I do not believe in any form of government, because the people have no liberty.” Deported May 22, 1919.
In 1920 he was arrested in Naples for desertion but released on probation. He returned to Cesenatico, where authorities reported he lived a solitary life. Emigrated to France in 1925 and returned to Italy in 1929, remaining under surveillance until 1941, though no further radical activity was noted.
Sources: INS files 54379/2 and 54379/3; CPC busta 4302.
Augusto Rigoni
Born: 1893, Afiago (Vicenza), Italy
Nationality: Italian
Ethnicity:
Occupation: Laborer
Migration:
Affiliation: Anarchist
Not politically radical in Italy, in the United States he joined the anarchist Circolo Studi Sociali in Kensington, Illinois, and supported Luigi Galleani’s Cronaca Sovversiva. He was deported December 20, 1919.
After returning to Italy, authorities reported he initially showed sympathy with socialism but withdrew from politics, married, had children, and devoted himself to farming with his brothers. In 1932 he developed symptoms described as “mental alienation” and was confined to a provincial psychiatric hospital in Vicenza, where he died that same year.
Sources: CPC busta 4329; Cronaca Sovversiva, July 15, 1916.
Thomas Rimmer
Born: 1886, England
Nationality: British
Ethnicity: English
Occupation: Sailor; miner
Migration: Immigrated to Canada 1912; then to US 1914
Affiliation: IWW
Emigrated to Canada in 1912, and from there entered the United States in 1914 without inspection. Radicalized in the U.S., he joined the Socialist Party of America and the Western Federation of Miners, then became an IWW member around. Helped organize the 1917 miners’ strike in Butte, Montana, served on the strikers’ publicity committee, and spoke at the funeral of organizer Frank Little. In 1918 he became an IWW delegate. Arrested May 6, 1918, during a police raid on an IWW hall in Seattle, he befriended fellow deportee Moses Baritz, beginning a lifelong political and personal friendship. Deported February 27, 1919, as a person deemed likely to become a public charge.
In Liverpool he joined the Merseyside IWW branch. In 1921 he joined the Socialist Party of Great Britain, and that was believed to travel frequently between England and Canada. After a lapse he rejoined the SPGB in 1933. He died in 1952.
Sources: INS file 54379/417; The Butte Miner, July 11 and July 29, 1917; San Francisco Examiner, August 6, 1917; Socialist Review (London), February 1, 1959; http://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2014/09/death-of-moses-baritz.html.
Louis Ristick
Born: 1896, Volynia, Russia
Nationality: Russian
Ethnicity:
Occupation: Machinist
Migration: Immigrated to US 1913
Affiliation: Union of Russian Workers
Worked for the Singer Sewing Machine Company in Elizabeth, New Jersey, and joined the Union of Russian Workers in 1919. Arrested in New York during the first Palmer Raids in November 1919, he was deported on the Buford on December 21, 1919.
Sources: INS file 54709/457.
Librado Rivera
Born: 1864, Rayón, San Luis Potosí, Mexico
Nationality: Mexican
Ethnicity:
Occupation: Laborer
Migration: Immigrated to US 1905
Affiliation: Partido Liberal Mexicano
In Mexico, became a teacher in 1888 and in 1900 cofounded a liberal political group in San Luis Potosí opposing Catholic influence on the government. Arrested in 1902 for political activities, he served a year in prison. In 1903 he collaborated with Ricardo Flores Magón and others on El hijo del Ahuizote and was arrested for “ridiculing public officials.”
After migrating to the United States in 1905, he cofounded the Partido Liberal Mexicano and soon adopted anarchism. Arrested in St. Louis in 1906, the US government attempted unsuccessfully to extradite him to Mexico. In 1907 he moved to Los Angeles, where he and other PLM leaders were arrested without warrants by private detectives acting for the Mexican government and convicted of violating US neutrality laws, though later released. In 1910 he became a founding editor of Regeneración. Arrested again in 1911 for neutrality violations related to organizing PLM fighters for the Mexican Revolution, he was imprisoned until 1914. In 1918 he was convicted under the Espionage Act for material published in Regeneración and sentenced to fifteen years. In 1920 he was transferred from McNeil Island to Leavenworth Penitentiary. His sentence was commuted in 1923 on condition of deportation to Mexico.
Back in Mexico he declined government posts offered in San Luis Potosí and continued publishing anarchist newspapers and supporting anarcho-syndicalist unionxsin Tampico, for which he was arrested repeatedly. He died in 1932 after being struck by a car in Mexico City.
Sources: Librado Rivera, ¡Viva Tierra y Libertad!; Alicia Perez Salazar, Librado Rivera, un soñador en llamas; Aurora Mónica Alcayaga Sasso, “Librado Rivera y los hermanos rojos en el movimiento social y cultural anarquista en Villa Cecilia y Tampico, Tamaulipas, 1915-1931” (PhD diss., Universidad Iberoamericano); http://www.libradorivera.com/; http://www.antorcha.net/biblioteca_virtual/politica/viva_tierra/libradoindice.html.
