For four days up until the hour of the "cease-fire," U.S. bombers conducted the heaviest attacks against South Vietnam since June 1968. During the 24-hour "cease-fire" period the bombing continued against Laos. The hour the "cease-fire" ended, the bombers returned to South Vietnam. The Pentagon has indicated that this massive bombing campaign will be continued at least until President Nixon arrives in Peking.

It is hard to get a precise picture of the extent of the renewed heavy bombing. According to Associated Press correspondent George Esper, figures released by the U.S. military headquarters in Saigon indicated "that Navy and Air Force fighter-bombers flew 176 strikes in South Vietnam during the 24 hours before dawn. B-52 heavy bombers added another 27 missions, the most flown since June, 1968.

"This brought the total since Wednesday [Feb. 9] to 766 strikes, and informants said more raids between dawn and dusk today pushed the total past 800." (New York Post, Feb. 14,1972.)

New York Times correspondent Craig R. Whitney, present at the same military briefing, stated in the Feb. 15 Times that "The number of air strikes is the highest that the command has reported since it began keeping such statistics in June, 1968. During the height of the enemy's 1968 Tet offensive, B-52 missions flown inside South Vietnam were far fewer every day...." In other words, Nixon's renewed bombing of South Vietnam could be the heaviest in the history of the war.

February 22, 1947
In Nashville, Tennessee, some 2,500 white and Negro workers, representing every union affiliation from all parts of the state, united in a mass march on the state capitol building to fight against a threatened open shop bill and other anti-labor laws.

Never before has Nashville or any other state capitol of the labor-hating, Jim-Crow, Southern Bourbons witnessed such a scene.

A four-block-long column of AFL, CIO and Railroad Brotherhood members, with white and Negro workers standing shoulder to shoulder, marched four-abreast behind one big banner that read: "Opposed to the Open Shop."

From the backward South, with its tradition of anti- unionism and racial bigotry, has come a demonstration of labor militancy and solidarity that points the way for labor nationally. Tennessee workers have shown in action the way to combat the anti-labor offensive of Big Business and its Congress.

The deep significance of the march in Nashville must certainly alarm the cruel Southern ruling class of rich industrialists and landowners. It is evidence that their Jim-Crow system for dividing the workers is crumbling. It is a sign that a new progressive force is emerging right inside the citadel of American reaction, the South. That force is the awakening Southern working class.  
 
 
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