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Vol. 77/No. 30      August 19, 2013

 
25, 50, and 75 Years Ago

August 12, 1988

“With what will we carry forward the revolution, with what will we rectify, with what will we solve our problems? Basically with the pride and honor of Cubans, with their patriotism and awareness!” Cuban President Fidel Castro told a congress of the National Union of Construction Workers in Havana.

Castro described some of the conditions that had developed in the construction industry that are beginning to be corrected. They included, “indiscriminate start of projects to give the impression that a lot was being done in terms of value, but they were never finished, in contrast to other periods when schools, highways, and factories had been built.”

The minibrigades, made up of volunteer workers, were first organized in the early years of the Cuban revolution, but were permitted to decline in the 1970s and early ’80s. Today they are being organized again to build housing, child-care centers, clinics, and other badly needed social facilities.

August 19, 1963

NEW YORK — “Freedom Now” — the rallying cry in the struggle for first-class citizenship across the nation — is a central plank in a campaign to elect a Negro City Council member from Brooklyn.

Independent nominating petitions are being circulated for Clifton DeBerry, a Negro union man and socialist for councilman-at-large. He will be the only Negro candidate in Brooklyn. DeBerry, 39, is the nominee of the Socialist Workers Party. DeBerry’s platform is based squarely on the issue of Negro rights.

Other proposals of DeBerry’s to create more jobs and to help the unemployed are a call for a $2 per hour minimum wage, unemployment checks for the entire period of unemployment, instead of a fixed limit of 26 weeks and a 30 hour week at 40 hours pay. This last would spread the existing work among more people with no reduction of wages.

August 20, 1938

For the workers of Spain, for the workers of the whole world, there is nothing more important at the present moment than to defeat the Spanish, German, and Italian fascists. For that not only is necessary to have the utmost unity of the working class but also correct policies. There are those who do not see the overwhelming importance of correct policy but demand unity. We ask them to consider: who is responsible for breaking the unity of the working class in the face of fascist attack?

To jail the most valiant fighters against fascism, those who drove the fascists out of Barcelona in July, 1936; to accuse them of being fascist spies is to break the unity of the working masses, to bring demoralization into their ranks and to prepare the ground for the victory of the fascists.

That is what the Loyalist government, under the prodding of the Stalinists, has done. To defeat the fascists we must fight for the liberation of the anti-fascists.  
 
 
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