A spirited picket line of about 150 circled in front of the White House for about two hours. Two days before the Paris conference to "guarantee the peace" in Vietnam, the demonstrators listed the many ways in which the U.S. remains in Southeast Asia to back up regimes acceptable to Washington: 10,000 civilian advisers in Vietnam, economic and military aid to the Thieu regime, air bases in Thailand, the Seventh Fleet off the coast of Vietnam. Each example was followed with the chant of "Out Now!"

Fran Froehle, who drove 19 hours to get to Washington from Minneapolis, seemed to sum up the feeling of most of the demonstrators. "I don't believe the U.S. is really getting out," she said. "The U.S. is still deeply involved in Vietnam, and we need to keep on having actions like this and educational work."

Abe Bloom and Chuck Petrin were elected as additional national co-coordinators of NPAC. The meeting also sent a telegram to the striking Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, solidarizing with them as victims of war-caused cutbacks in funds for decent education.

March 8, 1948
LOS ANGELES - The long struggle of California farm laborers to achieve organization is being renewed in the heroic strike in Kern County at the Di Giorgio farm corporation, a 20,000-acre fruit ranch. A 19+ mile picket line has been maintained for five months, since last Oct. 1 by 1,100 members of the APL National Farm Laborers Union Local 218 and 125 truck drivers of AFL Teamsters Local 87.

In addition to the solidarity and fighting spirit of the strikers, has been the aid and assistance given by the AFL, which has brought the help of the city workers to the farm workers. This help reached a high point on Feb. 6 when the AFL brought a Friendship Train of its own to the strikers, a caravan of some 250 cars and trucks bearing 1,000 AFL members $20,000 worth of food and $6,000 in cash.

The landowners know what is at stake. The example of successful struggle being waged at the Di Giorgio ranch through the unity of the farm and city workers opens the gates to organization of some 350,000 California agricultural workers.

Some were drawn into the city during the war and afterwards returned to the fields. Most had no previous trade union experience. A few did, however, and they play an important part in the union.  
 
 
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