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Vol. 75/No. 46      December 19, 2011

 
25, 50 and 75 years ago
 
December 19, 1986
NEW ORLEANS—Jefferson Parish Sheriff Harry Lee’s announcement that his deputies were going to stop and question “suspicious looking” Blacks traveling through white neighborhoods provoked an angry response from civil liberties and civil rights groups.

Lee was forced to apologize, but still insisted that “suspects” will be stopped when deputies have probable cause. When asked by reporters to define “probable cause” Lee said, “You’ll have to ask a lawyer about that.” (Lee is a lawyer.) He also stated that he has conducted similar “selective” crackdowns in the past.

This admission was no surprise to Blacks and to many whites in the New Orleans area. There is a history here of police attacks on Blacks.  
 
December 18, 1961
Freedom of speech was strengthened when 214 faculty members of the City College of New York published an advertisement in the New York Times condemning the Administrative Council of the City University of New York for banning Communist Party speakers from municipal colleges.

The forthright stand of the teachers gives added strength to the student campaign at the five city colleges to “ban the ban.” Thousands of students have picketed and boycotted classes in protest against this curb on academic freedom.

Officials have justified the ban on the basis of Washington’s drive to outlaw the Communist Party. The government is demanding that the organization expose its members to persecution by registering them with the Justice Department as “agents of a foreign power.”  
 
December 19, 1936
Chiang Kai-shek, Kuomintang dictator, was made prisoner on December 12 at Sian, capital of Shensi province, by revolting soldiers who demanded an immediate declaration of war against Japanese imperialism.

All the experience of the past fifteen years in China has proved that a real anti-imperialist struggle will be organized by the revolutionary workers and peasants and sections of the petty bourgeoisie, without and against all these generals whose records, without exception, are records of capitulation to imperialism and terror against the masses.

The task of revolutionists today in China is to arouse the broadest possible mass movement in the army, in the factories, and in the field, for the struggle against the imperialist invader.  
 
 
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