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Vol. 77/No. 38      October 28, 2013

 
25, 50, and 75 Years Ago

October 28, 1988

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Thousands of people from across the country came to Washington the weekend of October 7-11 to mark the first anniversary of the National March for Lesbian and Gay Rights and to participate in actions demanding the government release more drugs for use by people with Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome.

The largest action was a rally and civil disobedience action on October 11 at the Food and Drug Administration office in Rockville, Md. More than 1,500 demonstrators blocked the entrance to the FDA building for more than nine hours.

Chanting “Shame, shame, shame” and “No more deaths,” protesters hung signs from flagpoles, burned Reagan in effigy, and lay down in the streets holding mock tombstones.

More than 350 police officers — in riot gear and many wearing rubber gloves — arrested 176 demonstrators.

October 28, 1963

Fidel Castro reported to the Cuban people over radio and TV Oct. 21 on the effects in Cuba of Hurricane Flora. It was a sober, but fighting and inspiring report. Describing the storm as the worst natural disaster ever to hit the island, the prime minister said Cuba had received “generous aid” from “socialist countries, and aid from capitalist countries as well.” Cuba had refused official aid, he said, from only “one single government, that of the United States, which the whole world knows is trying to destroy us.”

“What we demand is not aid from the United States,” said Castro, “what we demand is that they cease the blockade against our country. And we put the government of the United States on trial before world public opinion, to cease the criminal blockade which they maintain over our country, which has suffered a natural disaster.”

October 29, 1938

Under Kuomintang leadership more than 1,000,000 Chinese lives have been sacrificed. All the principal cities, railways and waterways of the country have been given up to the invader [Japan]. The defeatist tactics of the Chiang Kai-shek regime reached their logical conclusion at Canton. There through obvious and outright treachery, the most vital remaining center of Chinese communications was surrendered without a struggle.

Chiang’s tactic has been to hurl masses of ill-armed, unsupported soldiery in the path of the invaders. The sheer weight and courage of these unsung heroes and the magnitude of the operations themselves have lengthened the struggle for 15 months. But the treachery and ineptitude of the Kuomintang command, the refusal to mobilize the masses of the people, have finally borne their bitter fruit. Worse betrayals are yet to come.  
 
 
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