Vol. 74/No. 34      September 6, 2010

This Labor Day, for sure, the focus of international solidarity should be South Africa and Central America.

South Africa, where the oppressed Black population is fighting to smash the hated apartheid system.

Central America, where the workers and farmers of El Salvador are fighting to end a U.S.-sponsored dictatorship and Nicaraguans are resisting a U.S.-organized military aggression.

And at home, solidarity is urgently needed by those striking unionists who are in the forefront of the fight against employer takebacks.  
 
September 5, 1960
NEW YORK, Aug. 20—Farrell Dobbs, SWP presidential candidate, today made the following statement on the Cuban situation:

“The foreign ministers at the OAS conference in Costa Rica aimed at the wrong target. Instead of censuring Cuba, they should have condemned the U.S. for its attempts to embargo Cuba’s economy and limit its sovereign powers as an independent nation.

“The Cuban government has the same right to reject the OAS dictates that it break relations with the Soviet Union and China as an embattled trade union has to ignore demands from an employers’ association that it accept no outside aid.

“Those who profess to see virtues in Kennedy over Nixon should note his jingoistic speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars this week branding the Castro government as an enemy and a Soviet satellite plotting the downfall of the U.S.”  
 
September 7, 1935
Eight young men and women, organizers of the exploited agricultural workers of California, have been railroaded to the prison hells of San Quentin and Tehachapi for terms of up to fourteen years. In the terrorist, anti-labor atmosphere built up by the California bosses after the San Francisco general strike, a handpicked middle-class jury convicted these eight under the notorious Criminal Syndicalism law. These workers’ sole “crime”—despite the legal terminology of this instrument of capitalist reaction—is that they courageously organized farm workers and led them in successful struggles for higher wages.

The Sacramento prisoners will be but the forerunners of a host of labor victims to this law, unless the Sacramento convictions are reversed.

The Sacramento convictions are a most important opportunity to rally the labor movement against the criminal syndicalism laws.  
 
 
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