The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.60/No.22           June 3, 1996 
 
 
25 And 50 Years Ago  

June 4, 1971
CHICAGO - Five hundred women came out of the kitchens and into the streets of downtown Chicago Sat., May 15, in a march and rally for free abortion on demand, free 24-hour day-care centers, and equal opportunities in education and employment. The women were restaging a similar march their mothers and grandmothers made down Michigan Avenue in 1914 for women's suffrage.

In order to add a sense of history to the day, women in suffragist outfits led the march. Chants of "Join Us, It's Your Fight Too" and a special "Join Us" leaflet distributed along the march route brought many women from the sidewalks into the march. As women surged into the Civic Center, the site of the rally, the marshals from the stage and women already there led chants of "Free Abortion on Demand, Sisterhood is Powerful."

Kitty Cone of the Women's Day Coalition pointed out the need to unite women in struggle for repeal of all abortion laws. "Those few men who sit in their legislatures and courts, and make life- and-death decisions affecting millions of women have no right to that control, that power over us," she said, "and we must take it away from them."

June 1, 1946

May 27 - U.S. Army troops have been ordered out for strikebreaking duty against American workers.

As the 400,000 soft coal miners today resumed their bitter strike for health and safety conditions in defiance of Truman's "seizure" of the mines, an armored detachment of 150 soldiers from Camp Campbell moved into the Madisonville, Ky., mine fields to escort scabs and "protect" the nearby Pond River colliery.

For the first time since Roosevelt used troops to break the North American Aviation strike in 1941, the federal government and administration employed armed forces against workers fighting for their rights.

Despite United Mine Workers President John L. Lewis' declaration of a two-week strike truce on May 10, large numbers of the wrathful miners had refused to abandon their traditional policy of "No contract, no work." Incensed by Truman's strikebreaking "seizure" of the mines, the rank and file strike movement spread rapidly last week prior to the railroad strike. More than 200,000 miners were already out, when the rail strike brought a virtual halt to mining operations.

Every form of government pressure and intimidation is being brought to bear against the miners. Even the threat of armed force by the capitalist government failed to cow them. Up and down the coal fields, the slogan is: "You can't mine coal with bayonets."  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home