Vol. 75/No. 35      October 3, 2011

October 3, 1986
MEXICO CITY—A river of torches lit the night as 50,000 people poured into the Zócalo square here to mark the anniversary of the earthquake that devastated this capital city on Sept. 19, 1985.

Most of the demonstrators were working people left homeless by the quake. No one knows exactly how many were killed in the disaster; estimates range from the official 6,000 to 45,000.

The angry demonstrators came to demand that the government build more housing for the homeless and that it expropriate housing lots from landlords to provide additional housing to needy families.

One year after the quake only 10,000 out of 110,000 families left homeless had been given permanent housing. Some 30,000 families are still in temporary camps throughout the city, living in subhuman conditions.  
 
October 2, 1961
The U.S. State Department once again is mounting its campaign to keep China, which has one-third more people than the entire Western Hemisphere, from being represented in the United Nations.

This time, after ten years of blocking even a debate on China’s admission, the State Department has been forced by the pressure of the newly independent Asian and African nations to yield.

It must now permit the question to be put on the General Assembly’s agenda. But the U.S. delegation plans to continue its obstruction by trying to get the question sidetracked from the floor to a committee for “further study.” By this stratagem, Adlai Stevenson hopes too keep the UN from voting on the issue for yet another year.

Washington has cynically maintained that diplomatically the Chinese government doesn’t exist.  
 
December 5, 1936
Farmers who voted for Roosevelt on the implication—not the promise—that he was their “friend,” and that relief would NOT be cut, are receiving the same rude awakening from their blissful trust that the American unemployed workers are experiencing.

On December 15 an executive WPA order goes into effect smashing at over 100,000 farmers in seven northwestern states. Farmers on WPA farm relief projects, now receiving $40-$50 a month, will be placed on the Resettlement Administration projects where their pay will be cut to $20 per month. Because this latter administration has much less funds to operate with, it is expected that not over 60,000 of the “neediest” can be cared for, as compared with the peak WPA relief load of 324,295 in this area.

Local unemployed organizations are waging a vigorous protest against this unconscionable order.  
 
 
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