Vol. 81/No. 4      January 23, 2017

 

25, 50, and 75 Years Ago

 

January 24, 1992

SEATTLE — The Washington Association of Churches (WAC) has initiated a Refugee Defense Committee to counter a government attack upon Central American refugees and church-sponsored refugee assistance programs here.

On August 14, heavily armed INS agents burst into the WAC Immigration and Refugee Program (IRP) offices in Seattle. They ordered staffers to leave and spent hours searching the premises before removing computers, files, rolodexes, even a Christmas party guest list.

The government then convened a federal grand jury and subpoenaed several IRP staffers and more than a dozen Salvadoran immigrants. At the same time, the court kept secret the INS affidavits justifying the investigation.

The August raid came amidst a growing number of INS roundups directed at immigrant workers in industry and working in the fields in Washington.

January 23, 1967

The savage character of the Pentagon’s war plans for south Vietnam is being vividly revealed in a series of New York Times dispatches on “Operation Cedar Falls,” the most massive U.S. campaign in the history of the war. “Operation Cedar Falls” began Jan. 8 and it involves over 16,000 combat troops, mainly from the First Infantry Division.

The campaign is designed to demolish every single hut, including four villages, in a 60 square mile area 30 miles northwest of Saigon known as the “Iron Triangle.” The area has been a “sanctuary” for the “enemy” for “more than 20(!) years,” according to the Jan. 13 Times.

The area has been bombarded by B-52s and it is saturation shelled by ground artillery. Troops murdered most of the men, removed the women and children to refugee concentration camps, and burned the villages to the ground.

January 24, 1942

The Jim Crow treatment of Negro soldiers in Southern training camps led to open riots last week in Alexandria, Louisiana. Ever since Negro draftees, mainly from the North, were sent into the heart of the deep South, where they faced insult, segregation and terrorism on a scale far greater than above the Mason and Dixon line, all indications have pointed to inevitable and bloody outbreaks.

Violence broke out in the heart of the local colored section, allegedly when a white M.P. arrested a Negro soldier on charges of not paying admission to a theatre. It is claimed that the M.P. started to beat the soldier, when several colored soldiers who were passing by, jumped into the fight.

State police were summoned by the M.P.’s and civilians of both races joined in the fighting. Guns, bricks, rocks, and finally tear gas were used in the battle.  
 
 
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