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    Vol.63/No.10           March 15, 1999 
 
 
25 And 50 Years Ago  

March 15, 1974
ST. PAUL, Minn. - Support for the Wounded Knee defendants is growing despite the attempts of the federal government to isolate the American Indian Movement (AIM) through the fame- up trial now in progress here. Some 1,500 people jammed a meeting hall at the University of Minnesota Feb. 27 in a rally for Wounded Knee defendants Dennis Banks and Russell Means. Enthusiasm ran high. The theme of the rally was "Drop the Charges" against all Wounded Knee defendants.

Banks and Means are on trial for their leadership role in the seizure of Wounded Knee. Banks told the rally that while he and Means are charged with burglary, "The real burglars are in Washington." He likened the AIM cause to the fight being waged by the Attica defendants. Dennis Banks told The Militant the rally was "tremendous."

"It shows that there's an incredible amount of unity among a lot of people - Blacks, whites, Chicanos, and Indians - pulling together against corruption," Banks said. "I think that the Watergate indictments that came down last week were because of rallies like this."

March 14, 1949
An event of great revolutionary significance, with an extremely ominous culmination, took place in China during the week ended Feb. 19 when railroad and bus transportation workers at Shanghai - the country's greatest industrial city and port - went out on strike and suffered brutal repression by troops of the local garrison commander, Gen. Tang En-po, one of Chiang Kai-shek's henchmen. Though hemmed in by martial law, and an edict against strikes which carries the penalty of death for disobedience, these workers nevertheless walked off the job demonstrating once again the fighting courage of the proletariat and its tremendous power as a revolutionary striking force. But the Communist Party, the only supposedly revolutionary party widely known to the masses, holds the workers in check, tells them to preserve order (which means submission to Kuomintang-military rule and to maintain production) which is for the benefit of the capitalist exploiters). The Stalinists have made themselves the protectors of bourgeois property. Thus the proletariat, for the time being, is politically disarmed in the face of its mortal foes.

 
 
 
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