Vol.64/No.10 March 13, 2000
25 and 50 years ago
March 14, 1975
PASADENA, Calif., March 1-- Outrage is growing in the Black community here over the cops' latest racist offensive, known as "Operation BAD" (Burglary Abatement Detail). More than 240 Blacks were stopped by the Pasadena police in the first four days of the new campaign."Operation BAD" consists of intensified patrolling of the predominantly Black and Chicano Northwest Pasadena community, with cops arbitrarily stopping and photographing residents for permanent police files.
Field interrogation cards are filled out and, along with the photographs, become permanent police records, whether or not the person was doing anything illegal.
The racist procedure in Pasadena has been met with community protests, and the local American Civil Liberties Union is seeking an immediate restraining order against the racist dragnet.
According to the cops, "Operation BAD" quadruples the number of police in the Black community. This means that almost half of all on-duty cops in Pasadena at any given time will be in Northwest Pasadena.
This campaign follows closely on the heels of "Operation Sweep," aimed supposedly at picking up truants, but in reality directed against all young people in Pasadena.
March 13, 1950
The militant soft coal miners once more have proved there is no substitute for fighting mass action to win gains for labor. By reliance on their own organized strength against the combined powers of the strike-breaking government and the coal operators, the miners have won one of American labor's greatest victories.Their triumph is two-fold. They smashed through the wage-freeze "pattern" which Truman attempted to impose on the basis of the formula cooked up by this steel "fact-finding" board last September and which was accepted by Philip Murray and Walter Reuther for the CIO steel and auto workers. And they dealt a damaging blow to the Taft-Hartley Act with their bold and successful defiance of Truman's injunction.
The miners' example may well inspire a new upsurge in the class struggle, after the almost steady succession of retreats led by the top union leaders since passage of the Taft-Hartley Law in June 1947. It will undoubtedly hearten the Chrysler strikers and spur the General Motors workers to a more aggressive fight for their new demands. The miners have shown the kind of methods that will win and the kind of demands that can be won.
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