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   Vol.64/No.35            September 18, 2000 
 
 
25 and 50 years ago
 
 
September 19, 1975
LOS ANGELES--Elections in the fields have just begun to take place. And already California's wealthy growers have demonstrated they are preparing to use every trick in the book to deprive farm workers of the union of their choice--including the use of armed vigilantes. Initial returns show that the United Farm Workers won six of the first nine union representation elections under California's new farm labor law.

Meanwhile, the use of a right-wing gang of vigilantes to keep UFW organizers out of tomato ranches near Stockton underlined the hollowness of the assertion by Gov. Edmund Brown that the new farm labor law would bring "peace" to the fields.

When the state farm labor law went into effect August 28, the new labor board ruled that union organizers must have access to the fields and labor camps to discuss with the workers prior to an election.

But when UFW organizers approached a tomato ranch in Stockton September 1 to talk to the workers, they found an armed gang waiting for them.

Displaying self-bestowed sheriff's badges were members of the "Sheriff's Posse Comitatus," an ultrareactionary outfit that claims the "God-given" right to enforce--with guns--what they see as the law.  
 
September 18, 1950
The Nazi-like Kilgore bill, which was introduced by six "Fair Deal" Senators, is proof enough that whatever the Trumanites have against the so-called "Red Registration" bills, like Senator McCarran's, it is not that these bills violate constitutional rights.

McCarran's police-state bill at least pretends to preserve the right of trial by jury, habeas corpus, public hearings, confrontation of accusers, and other safeguards. The Kilgore concentration-camp bill, which Truman called an "improvement" over McCarran's, denies all these rights.

Under this "Fair Deal" bill, whenever the President and Congress declare a state of "internal security emergency," the Attorney General can throw into a concentration camp anyone he "suspects" "might" engage in "espionage or sabotage" or merely have "knowledge" of same.

A "detainee" tossed into a concentration camp because he "might" commit some crime some time in the future could be released only by appeal to an administration board. But the Attorney-General is required to show only "reasonable grounds." He does not have to present "evidence" that he claims may "endanger internal security" if disclosed.  
 
 
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