Biography
Don Cluster, also recorded as Donald Cluster, was a Young Communist League organizer arrested on July 27, 1934, after speaking at a Portland protest meeting about police raids and conditions at the county jail. On September 29 a grand jury indicted him with Dirk De Jonge, Edward Denny and Earl Stewart under Oregon's criminal-syndicalism law. Cluster was convicted and received a one-year sentence, which was suspended; contemporary reports also described him as paroled.
In its Oregon criminal-syndicalism roundup, the Daily Worker identified him as a Young Communist League organizer and reported a one-year sentence followed by parole because of his youth. This imposed term does not establish a year of actual confinement. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1935/v12-n049-Nat-feb-26-1935-DW-LOC.pdf#page=2
Daily Worker, January 4, 1935, page 3: The Portland roundup prints Donald Cluster, reports a one-year criminal-syndicalism sentence, and says he had been granted a new trial. This is a contemporary procedural report in the existing prosecution; it does not independently establish a release date or one year actually served, and is preserved alongside later reports of suspension or parole. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1935/v12-n004-Nat-jan-04-1935-DW-LOC.pdf
The October 25 Portland dispatch reports a criminal-syndicalism guilty verdict, with sentencing by Judge Robert Tucker still prospective. This stage does not supersede the later documented suspended one-year disposition.
Daily Worker, January 4, 1935; relevant page stated in the accompanying profile note.
