The Militant (logo)  
   Vol. 69/No. 31           August 15, 2005  
 
 
25, 50 and 75 years ago
 
August 8, 1980
Two Puerto Rican nationalists, Alicia Rodríguez and Luis Rosa, were convicted on July 9 of armed robbery and conspiracy, in connection with an April 4 robbery at a car rental agency in the Chicago suburb of Evanston, Illinois. Sentencing is set for August 4.

The two nationalists, alleged to be members of the Armed Forces of National Liberation (FALN), were found guilty by an all-white jury that deliberated for only fifty-four minutes. For protesting the proceedings, the two defendants were forced to sit bound and gagged in the courtroom. Spectators were barred. Lawyers who had been acting as advisers to Rodríguez and Rosa (they refused the court-appointed attorneys) were thrown out of the court or harassed by the judge.

On the last day of the trial about 100 people marched outside to protest the exclusion of spectators, and a press conference was held by the National Committee to Free Puerto Rican Prisoners of War.  
 
August 15, 1955
At the Texas Instrument plant in Dallas a woman worker now assembles seven booklets in the time she used to do one. Weavers at the Schwarzenbach Huber Co. in Altoona, Pa., now weave synthetic fabrics three and one-half times as fast as they did in 1950; a worker there who tended 24 machines five years ago now tends 65.

This is how an article on the tremendous increase in U.S. workers’ productivity starts off in the Aug. 9 Wall Street Journal. “This productivity jump of American industry is based on introduction of new machinery, a certain amount of automation, which, however, is just beginning, reorganization of work methods (time-motion studies), speed-up and bonus plans.”

This increased productivity of their workers is bringing fabulous profits to the bosses. The Wall Street Journal in the midst of its rejoicing is compelled to note a fly in the ointment. U.S. workers have some ideas about their increased productivity. They want wages to be increased as productivity increases.  
 
August 15, 1930
In a few days the third anniversary of the cold-blooded murder of Sacco and Vanzetti will be reached. Their memory, ever green in the heart of the world proletariat, remains a burning appeal for the struggle against class justice and persecution.

While the workers everywhere gather to commemorate their judicial assassination the pledge must be renewed for the fight to release all the class war prisoners who continue to fill the penitentiaries of the bloated plutocracy of this country. At this very moment, a cynical, farcical “hearing” is being held again on the case of Tom Mooney and Warren Billings. At the hearings, the prosecutors boldly declare that irrespective of the evidence relating to the alleged crime proper, they favor the imprisonment of Mooney and Billings because they were labor agitators!

Hearing or no hearing, we have learned the bitter lesson sufficiently that no dependence can be put upon the capitalist hyenas.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home