SWP and YSA members, along with other supporters of Marroquín’s right to asylum, have begun to establish Héctor Marroquín Defense Committees and started work to build his national speaking tour.
A member of the SWP and YSA, Marroquín has been falsely accused of murder and "subversion" by the Mexican government. The U.S. government is seeking to deport him.
The SWP and YSA in New York City organized a special blitz week January 23-29. " The point was to make Héctor’s case the center of our activities for the week," said Linda Jenness, SWP local organizer.
"We set out with the idea that every one in the SWP and YSA--whether through their union local, their chapter of the National Organization for Women, on their campus, or in their community--would focus on winning support for the case.
"This approach proved successful in kicking off our Marroquín defense work--which will remain a top priority."
Two New York branches of the SWP combined their forces for a forum Friday, January 27. The featured speaker was Margaret Winter, Marroquín’s attorney. Winter explained the background of the case and noted the importance of a united defense.
Also speaking was Chinese activist Ken Chin. Entertainment was provided by the Aztlán Players. A collection raised seventy dollars for the defense committee.
February 9, 1953
Eisenhower’s State of the Union message to Congress Feb. 2, whatever its immediate aims, has given the world a glimpse of the Republican administration’s projected course of strategy abroad. And the world has drawn back in horror. Through the carefully couched phrases about "peace," every politically alert person can see that the real intention is to smash the Chinese revolution that drove capitalist warlord Chiang Kai-shek off China’s mainland and restore the old boundaries in Europe by destroying the non-capitalist states in Eastern Europe.
This is the clear meaning of the general’s two key foreign policy statements: (1) that he is "issuing instructions that the Seventh Fleet no longer be employed to shield Communist China"; and (2) that "this government recognizes no kind of commitment contained in secret understandings of the past with foreign governments which permit...enslavement."
The first formally repudiates that part of Truman’s executive order, at the start of the Korean war, which stated that the U.S. Seventh Fleet would be sent to Formosa to prevent attacks from the mainland on Formosa. Eisenhower’s policy now openly sanctions and supports military assault on China by Chiang.
The second statement is obviously aimed at the wartime Yalta and Potsdam agreements between the U.S., British, and Soviet governments to carve up Europe and Asia, assigning Eastern Germany, Eastern Europe including Poland, and Southern Sakhalin Island and the Kuriles north of Japan to the Kremlin’s sphere of influence.