Vol. 72/No. 20      May 19, 2008

Some Teamster members were probably happy to see this corrupt, overpaid union executive go. But this was no victory for the Teamsters union or its membership.

The court-FBI attack on the Teamsters is aimed at preparing to strike further blows at the union and at militants seeking to build a union free of corruption and sweetheart deals. The fight against this government intervention is part and parcel of the struggle to transform the Teamsters into a fighting instrument to defend the membership’s interests against the employers and their government.  
 
May 18, 1958
Washington responded to outbursts of anti-U.S. feeling on two continents. One thousand U.S. marines were air-lifted to bases in Cuba and Puerto Rico, May 13, in preparation for a quick trip south as thousands of Venezuelans demonstrated their hatred for U.S. economic and political domination in Latin America. The next day, 12 U.S. warships were swiftly dispatched toward the coast of Lebanon in the Mideast. Supplies of ammunition, gas, and gas masks were rushed by air to the Lebanese government, hit by six days of general strike and street fighting in opposition to the pro-West regime of Camille Chamoun, a foe of the Arab national independence revolution.

U.S. representatives in two nations simultaneously had to barricade themselves behind embassy doors.  
 
May 20, 1933
A broad united front protest movement of working-class organizations against the threatened destruction of Diego Rivera’s mural paintings at Radio City by the Rockefeller interests culminated Wednesday in an open-air mass meeting at Columbus Circle and in mass picketing at Radio City and later at the home of Rockefeller.

Comrade Rivera spoke in Spanish, with Bert Wolfe of the Lovestone group as translator. The revolutionary artist went on to appeal for the unity of the workers against capitalism and Fascism.

“Capitalist buildings here and in Mexico contain my works,” he said, “but if you will it, and unite, the day will come when those buildings and all that is in them will belong to the workers.”  
 
 
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