Biography
John Metsäranta was a janitor at the San Francisco Finnish workers hall during the historic 1934 West Coast Waterfront Strike. After the longshoremen's strike escalated into a full-scale General Strike across the city the San Francisco Police Department, alongside corporate-backed vigilante groups, coordinated massive raids on centers associated with labor organizing, socialism, or communism across the Bay Area. Over 300 raids were conducted resulting in mass arrests. On the second day of the strike police attacked the Finnish Workers Hall where Metsäranta attempted to lock the doors of the building as police and vigilante mobs broke in and severely beat him. The hall was ransacked by police, with everything from its extensive library collections to its grand pianos completely destroyed. Since the actual circumstances of his arrest lacked legal justification Metsäranta was charged with disturbing the peace and assembling on a street corner.
