Biography
Joe Tash was a labor organizer arrested during July 1930 raids associated with the Pennsylvania anthracite strike and charged with sedition. The Daily Worker of July 8 describes police raids on labor and Communist offices in Scranton following a miners’ meeting in Dunmore. Tash was a National Miners Union executive-board member arrested after speaking to miners in Dunmore on July1. The article reports a disorderly-conduct conviction before Burgess Webber and release on July7 on $2,000 bail while the sedition accusation remained.
Bill Gebert’s December 1931 account names Tash among miners’ organizers arrested at a Carlinville meeting, with Zip Kochinski and Joe Lednicky, in the Illinois criminal-syndicalism prosecution linked to the Orient mine strike. This describes an Illinois prosecution after his Pennsylvania union-organizing work, without establishing exact individual custody endpoints. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1931/v08-n297-NY-dec-11-1931-DW-LOC.pdf#page=3
The July 26, 1930 Militant reports him with four other Scranton sedition defendants still jailed for a fall grand jury. It describes Tash’s Dunmore-speech arrest and the following raid on the union and ILD offices, with fingerprinting and ten hours before charges. This conflicts with earlier July bail releases already documented in his case. Those earlier dates are preserved, while the full custody total remains uncertain; the vague later report does not prove a rearrest or twenty years actually served. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/themilitant/1930/28jul1930.pdf#page=8
The July 3 dispatch describes the July 2 Scranton sedition raid and $1,000 bail and recalls an earlier Sunday Pittston meeting arrest. Five July defendants are not all individually named in this report. The Sunday arrests of Slinger, Little and Pollack were followed by release before the July raid; those earlier detentions are distinct from the sedition rearrests. Tash and Frankfeld are not assumed to share identical arrest circumstances. Daily Worker, July 4, 1930, page 1. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1930/v07-n160-NY-jul-04-1930-DW-LOC.pdf
The November 27, 1931 Daily Worker names Bill Gebert, Communist district organizer, and Joe Tash, National Miners Union national organizer, as arrested and indicted with six unnamed comrades under Illinois criminal-syndicalism law. The original image clearly prints Gebert, despite OCR reading Gibert. This corroborates the existing Illinois cases; it gives no additional exact intake, discharge or completed term. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1931/v08-n285-NY-nov-27-1931-DW-LOC.pdf#page=1
The July 5, 1930 report says Tash had received a thirty-day punishment on a minor charge and would then be held for a sedition trial. This is nominal sentence and prospective continued detention, not proof he served thirty days. The later individually documented July 7 bail release is not replaced. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1930/v07-n161-NY-jul-05-1930-DW-LOC.pdf#page=1
The November 25 Chicago dispatch names Tash in the Franklin County criminal-syndicalism indictment roster. This is the Illinois organizing prosecution, not his Pennsylvania case.
