Vol. 75/No. 17      May 2, 2011

The pretext for the cuts is declining tax revenues, a result of the rapid decline—from $28 a barrel to $14 over the last three months—in world oil prices.

The government of Oklahoma has stopped purchasing medicines for Medicaid patients or aiding families where the breadwinner is suffering a serious illness. The state of Texas has abolished eye care for 110,000 people under Medicaid and placed a one-month cap on hospitalization.

These moves are intended to establish a pattern for bigger cuts to come: any budget problems are to be resolved at the expense of working people.  
 
May 1, 1961
The day after President Kennedy’s saber-rattling speech against Cuba before the convention of newspaper publishers, Dr. Raul Roa, Cuba’s Foreign Minister, read the following ironical telegram in the course of the UN debate on the invasion of his country. The sender was Robert F. Williams, militant Negro leader from North Carolina and a founder of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee.

“To Dr. Raul Roa, United Nations. Please convey to Mr. Adlai Stevenson this message: Now that the United States has proclaimed military support for people willing to rebel against oppression, oppressed Negroes in the South urgently request tanks, artillery, bombs, money, use of American air fields and white mercenaries to crush racist tyrants who have betrayed the American Revolution and Civil War. We also request prayers for this noble undertaking.”  
 
May 2, 1936
Celebrating the Fiftieth anniversary of May First, hundreds of thousands of workmen will march in the citadels of capitalism as this issue goes to press.

In New York, where [there is] a more inclusive united front of political and labor tendencies than has been seen for years, a monster parade will take place. New York will be decked in red, its streets will resound with the marching tread of labor’s legions.

In Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, San Francisco, and all the great industrial centers of the country, workers will march or demonstrate in meetings against capitalist oppression.

Shorter hours, more adequate relief, social insurance, freedom for class war prisoners, and struggle for a workers world will appear on thousands of banners and be shouted from thousands of proletarian throats.  
 
 
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