The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.61/No.16           April 21, 1997 
 
 
25 And 50 Years Ago  
 April 21, 1972
NEW YORK - A rally of about 300 people was held outside of the Bronx County courthouse on April 10, the day Puerto Rican nationalist Carlos Feliciano was to have been sentenced. (The sentencing has been postponed until May 3) The gathering reflected the interest the case has generated, especially in the wake of the deal that has been offered by Bronx district attorney Burton Roberts to drop all charges relating to the use or possession of bombs or weapons.

Feliciano was charged in both Bronx and Manhattan courts in May 1970 with bombing or burning buildings. A two-year campaign to free him has been waged by militants in the Puerto Rican freedom struggle and civil libertarians.

At the rally Feliciano and his lawyer, William Kunstler, further explained the legal situation. Feliciano said he would go to trial on the Bronx charges if the Manhattan court doesn't accept the reckless endangerment plea in exchange for dropping their charges.

Kunstler predicted that the Manhattan prosecutors office would not go along with the Bronx deal. Even if the deal is accepted by both courts, Feliciano will withdraw the guilty plea and stand trial on the original charges if he is sentenced to serve more time for reckless endangerment than the nearly two years he spent in jail awaiting trial.

April 19, 1947
COLOMBO, Ceylon, Apr. 8 - While Bombay and Calcutta and other cities in India are in the throes of communal clashes, the class struggle in Madras reached a new dramatic height today when over 100,000 workers downed tools in protest against the congress Government's arrest and detention of Comrade Antonypillai, Trotskyist President of the Madras Labor Union. Comrade Antonypillai, who is a member of the Central Committee of the BLPI, is also a member of the General Council of the All-India Trade Union Congress.

Monday, March 31, the day of the General Strike, was quite reminiscent of the August 1942 days. Armed police at every ten yards, Gurkha troops and motorcycles with machine guns, armed trolleys, patrolling railway lines. This was the Congress answer to a protest of the masses.

The protest strike raised a hue and cry in the Congress press. The Conservative "Hindu" called for special legislation to illegalize strikes of this nature. There was not a single bourgeois paper in Madras that did not denounce the strike. This howling found a feeble echo across the Palk Strait, in Ceylon where the imperialist Times of Ceylon traced the source of all trouble to "the export of Ceylonese Bolsheviks to India!"  
 
 
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