The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.61/No.9           March 3, 1997 
 
 
25 And 50 Years Ago  
March 3, 1972
LOS ANGELES - The acquittal Feb. 16 of Chicano activist Rosalio Muņoz on charges stemming from his refusal to be drafted may possibly open the door for review of the cases of other draft resisters who - like Muņoz - may have been denied their proper rights in the Selective Service process.

Muņoz, former chairman of the National Chicano Moratorium Committee, had been indicted for refusal to report for induction Nov. 18, 1969. His acquittal was ordered by Federal Judge Warren J. Ferguson during the second day of the trial while the government was still arguing its case.

The trial was, in many respects, a dramatic one. It was to begin last year but was postponed after the then presiding judge and the government prosecutor agreed that Muņoz' attorney, Michael Tiger, was "unqualified" because he had not been admitted to the California bar. Last month the U.S. Supreme Court overturned this ruling and the trial began again.

The defense based its case on two essential points. The first was that Muņoz had not been accorded due process within the Selective Service system.

The second was Muņoz' belief that we are living under a social system that oppresses the Chicano people, and that as victims of cultural, political, and physical genocide, the Chicano people cannot participate in wars waged by this system.

March 1, 1947
LONDON, Feb. 14 - Trinidad workers in the oil fields, waterfronts and public works have been engaged in recent months in a series of bitter struggles for decent wages, conditions and elementary freedom. The Governor of Trinidad, Sir Bede Clifford, has vainly denied and tried to conceal the labor struggles, but despite this and outright suppression of news, the facts have seeped through and the British Minister for the colonies has been forced to demand a report in London.

An account of a brutal attack upon unarmed and sleeping men and women oil workers has been published here by the Feb. 5 Daily Mirror from its correspondent John Walters: "The attack started at 1 p.m. on January 22 last, when (Police Commissioner) Muller's men armed with tear bombs and truncheons descended upon the hall belong to Uriah Butler's oilworkers union.

"Five hundred men and women who were sleeping in the hall had marched from the oilfields of southern Trinidad to the capital to protest against the State of Emergency proclaimed there by the Governor, Sir Bede Clifford, because of the strike."  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home