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    Vol.60/No.43           December 2, 1996 
 
 
25 & 50 Years Ago  
December 3, 1971
WASHINGTON, D.C. - On November 20, over 3,000 women and men marched here in the first feminist march on Washington since 5,000 women demonstrated for the right to vote in 1913.

The march down Pennsylvania Avenue was loud and spirited, with chants of "Our bodies, our lives, our right to decide," "One, two, three, four, we want abortions, not the war."

The largest demonstration for the right to abortion on November 20 took place in Paris, where, according to an Agence France-Presse dispatch, "Four to five thousand Parisians demonstrated Saturday against `the condition of women in society' and against the abortion law. The demonstration was organized by the Mouvement pour la Liberté de L'avortement (Movement for the Right to Abortion), Femmes en Lutte (Women in Struggle), and the Mouvement de la Libération des Femmes (Women's Liberation Movement).

Chants included "Work, family, country - enough!' and of `Free abortion and contraception on demand." November 30, 1946
With another disastrous winter facing the German working class, expected to be far worse than the last, military governments in the four zones are disturbed by mounting signs of mass discontent. Its sharpest manifestation this month was a protest action by the organized Ruhr coal miners. On November 16 at a meeting in Bochum, the miners overwhelmingly rejected the proposal, agreed to by their union leaders, to work an extra shift of one voluntary Sunday a month.

The miners refused to work the extra shift because their food rations and wages are insufficient. They accused their union leaders of having agreed to this proposal of the British occupation forces without previously consulting them. (The French Stalinists, in their desire to obtain coal for French capitalism and to aid the Soviet government to participate in the exploitation of the Ruhr, denounced the miners for this action.)

According to the November 18 New York Times, the reserves of food and clothing are used up, fuel is almost impossible to get, transportation is broken down, spare parts and raw materials exhausted, and nothing has been replenished.

Workers at three big motor works in Cologne downed tools last week in protest against inadequate food rations. The workers were getting only 1,000 calories daily.  
 
 
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