Biography
Norman Mini was a defendant in the 1935 Sacramento criminal-syndicalism trial of the leaders of the Cannery and Agricultural Workers Industrial Union (CAWIU), the Communist-led farm-labor union that had led the great California field strikes of 1933. Prosecuted under the California Criminal Syndicalism Act — the growers' chief legal weapon against farm-worker organizing — he was convicted and sentenced to three years, the lightest of the terms handed down (co-defendants Pat Chambers, Caroline Decker, Martin Wilson, Jack Crane, and Nora Conklin each received five years, and Albert Hougardy three and a half).
