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Vol. 77/No. 12      April 1, 2013

 
25, 50 and 75 Years Ago
 
April 1, 1988
DES MOINES, Iowa—At a March 19 press conference here, Mark Curtis, an antiwar fighter, socialist, and union activist, denounced the Des Moines police for framing him up on attempted rape charges and brutally beating him in jail. He also made public files that had been kept on him by the FBI when he was an antiwar activist in Birmingham, Alabama, between 1981 and 1985.

In a page 3 article in the March 19 Des Moines Register headlined “Rape charge called frame,” Curtis is quoted as saying he has been a communist and a Socialist Workers Party member for 11 years, and has been active in civil rights and labor protests. “I know the police are involved in a frame-up when they claim they saw me doing something I didn’t do,” Curtis said. “I am not guilty of any charges, and I am going to fight back.”

April 1, 1963
PARIS, March 23—The coal miners’ strike that began three weeks ago triggered a struggle that has brought some 2,000,000 workers into action.

The movement swept through the coal fields, turning within a few days into an industry-wide battle. The feeling of solidarity among the rank and file proved so powerful that it brought rival unions into a strong united front.

Sympathy demonstrations by other unions flared into parallel strikes that have periodically halted or slowed down such key public services as the railways and the Paris subway system, electricity and gas on a nation-wide scale.

The strikes still remain centered on the economic demands with which the movement began. But the right to strike, a political question, at once became a key issue and the political overtones have grown stronger.

April 2, 1938
The war in China is a matter of vital concern to every American worker, for that war is only the prelude to the greater war for which this country is now being prepared.

It is primarily to dominate the Pacific and to become the unchallenged master of China’s wealth, of its market and its resources, that American imperialism is building up its great war machine.

That is why the battleships and planes of the American Navy are drilling within striking distance of Japan’s Pacific island possessions.

Japanese imperialism, America’s great Pacific rival, is engaged in a robber-invasion of China. We support the resistance that the Chinese people are offering to the invaders.

But this does not mean for a single instant that the American workers should support “their” government in a war against Japan.  
 
 
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