New York police arrest Benjamin Gitlow for distributing the Left Wing Manifesto calling for mass strikes, under the Criminal Anarchy Law of 1902

New York City police arrested Benjamin Gitlow, executive secretary of the Left Wing Section of the Socialist Party of America and former state assemblyman, on November 8, 1919, for distributing 16,000 copies of the Left Wing Manifesto — a pamphlet calling for mass strikes and proletarian revolution. New York's Criminal Anarchy Law of 1902 made it a felony to advocate the violent overthrow of organized government or to publish material urging such advocacy. Gitlow's arrest came during the height of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer's Red Scare crackdown and one day after the Palmer Raids swept up over 10,000 suspected radicals.