Vol. 78/No. 22 June 9, 2014
June 9, 1989
Every defender of democratic rights should speak out against the drive under way in New York State to reinstitute capital punishment.The New York State legislature is weighing a proposal to override Gov. Mario Cuomo’s March 20 veto of a death penalty measure. The last execution in New York State, one of 13 states where there is no death penalty, took place in 1963.
Capital punishment is a weapon of intimidation and terror in the hands of the exploiters. New York should follow the lead of the Nicaraguan government, which outlawed the death penalty 10 years ago when it came to power as the result of a popular revolution. The death penalty should be abolished and not reinstated in New York or anywhere else.
June 8, 1964
NEW YORK — Arnold Goldwag, Brooklyn CORE [Congress of Racial Equality] leader who last week got out of prison on appeal bond, described in detail at his press conference the treatment of prisoners at the Rikers Island penitentiary where he was held for a month.In the prison hospital, the inmate’s health is the last concern. “The attitude is ‘you’re not sick, you’re faking.’”
The prison officials, Goldwag added, are now getting ready for the increased number of prisoners expected after July 1. This is the date when the notorious “no-knock” and “stop-and-frisk” laws go into effect.
The vast majority of those sentenced to Rikers Island are the poor. Most of them had been advised by their lawyers to plead guilty in hope of clemency.
June 9, 1939
There are few more harrowing stories of anguish and persecution than that of more than 900 Jewish refugees from Germany — men, women and children — who are kept in the purgatory of the liner Saint Louis in Atlantic waters, between the inferno of fascist Germany, from which they were driven, and what they hoped was the paradise of Cuba, which has refused to admit them.The Daily Worker feels rather embarrassed by the whole incident. Not so much for the sake of the refugees, but because it puts the new Stalinist hero, Col. Fulgencio Batista, military dictator of the “Cuban democracy,” in a dastardly light.
Why? Because Batista is one of Roosevelt’s good boys. Why? Because Roosevelt is for a new War for Democracy and so are the Stalinists.
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