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Vol. 75/No. 41      November 14, 2011

 
25, 50 and 75 years ago
 
November 14, 1986
Municipal elections were held throughout Greece on October 12 and 19 in one of the calmest atmospheres in the history of Greek elections. In a country where voting is compulsory, large numbers of registered voters stayed away from the polls—28 percent in the main cities and 25 percent in the countryside.

The elections were held one year after the PASOK (Panhellenic Socialist Movement) government instituted far-ranging austerity measures that reduced wages and social benefits by an estimated 10-15 percent while greatly increasing the cost of public services.

Workers have also suffered under the government’s attacks on democratic rights, including curtailment of the right to strike.  
 
November 13, 1961
Jim Crow justice is functioning as usual in Monroe, North Carolina. Two all-white juries barely complied with the formality of leaving the box for deliberation before handing down verdicts Nov. 2 convicting a 17-year-old Negro youth of shooting a policeman in the leg and acquitting a white man of raping a Negro woman.

Sentenced to three-to-five years was Albert Rorie, who had been active in the anti-segregation picketing which led to the white-supremacist rioting and shooting on Aug. 27. Rorie denied having a gun or shooting his accuser.

Acquitted of the rape charge was Henry J. Phifer, identified by Rosa Funderburk, 22, as one of two white men who had chased her into a wheat field and raped her.  
 
December 12, 1936
MINNEAPOLIS—When the Pacific Coast longshoremen were having their first round with the bosses in the late summer of 1934, the Minneapolis General Drivers Union Local 574 was in the midst of its third strike within the year; a strike which, like the San Francisco general strike, made national labor history, and which won a victory two years ago, it may truthfully be said that the turmoil generated by the drivers’ strike has not ceased to this day.

The General Drivers Union Local 574 was expelled from the International Teamsters Union (in April 1935). Fifteen months later the outlaw union made labor history by winning reinstatement in the International on the most honorable terms.  
 
 
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