May 20, 1977
SEATTLE--More than 500 women gathered at the University of Washington campus in Seattle April 30–May 1 for the Northwest Women’s Action Conference.

"One gets the impression that things are not so rosy in the fight for women’s rights," said Rita Shaw in her remarks opening the conference. Shaw is a member of Seattle-King County NOW and a founding member of the Washington ERA Coalition.

Shaw outlined the attacks women are facing: the widening gap in pay between men and women, cutbacks in affirmative action and child care, restrictions on the right to choose abortion, and the right-wing opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment.

"We must deal realistically with the fact that our gains are being eroded," Shaw continued. "And even though the battles seem insurmountable, we must acknowledge that any whittling away of the rights of any woman is a loss for all women."

One proposal supported by the conference calls for a demonstration and rally on August 26--women’s equality day--in downtown Seattle. It also urges similar actions in other cities in Washington and Oregon.

There was considerable debate over this resolution, especially around what the central demands of the actions would be.

The conference decided to focus the protest’s demands around the ERA, abortion rights, no forced sterilization, and child care.  
 
May 19, 1952
The new Smith "union seizure" bill now before Congress would make it possible for the government to break a strike, smash the union that called it, and then force the union to pay for this "government service."

The bill opens a new stage in government anti-labor legislation. Previous laws mask their strike-breaking intentions under the "cloak" of settlement clauses. They pretend to provide machinery for the settlement of capital-labor disputes.

This is true even of the Taft-Hartley "slave-labor" law, which provides for a government board that is supposed to try to bring about an agreement. This new bill, on the contrary, specifically forbids the government from making any recommendation towards a settlement, and specially provides powers for strikebreaking, and for that alone.

Further, the bill would make it unlawful to either strike or encourage a strike while the plants were in the government’s hands, or to contribute funds for the strike or for strike benefits, or to give "direction or guidance" to such a strike.

The new Smith bill reveals the close connection between the witch hunt hysteria and the anti-labor drive. It uses the same patriotic cover used for the witch hunt against "communists." The words "national emergency" and "national defense" are repeatedly inserted in the bill.  
 
 
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