September 18, 1970
LOS ANGELES -- The reaction of the Chicano population of Los Angeles to the government-sponsored attack on their community and to the brutal police murders of Ruben Salazar and Gilberto Diaz has continued to deepen and has drawn other social layers into protest action.
Five days after the killing of the noted Chicano journalist, Ruben Salazar, by sheriff's deputies, a newspaper of the Chicano community, La Raza, came out in an edition of 100,000 copies, carrying photos and two eyewitness accounts of Salazar's murder. Unable to ignore this, the Los Angeles Times ran the pictures on its front page Sept. 4.
The response of Sheriff Peter J. Pitchess, whose men carried out Salazar's murder, was to say: "The photographs...in and of themselves...offer no evidence of improper procedure on the part of the officers present."
In a mass meeting of 600 people on Sept. 3, it was voted to finish the interrupted antiwar demonstration on the 16th. The following additional demands were added: end the police occupation of the Chicano community; free all those arrested and drop all charges against them stemming from the police attack; and for an investigation of the police murder of Ruben Salazar by a body which would include representatives elected from the Chicano community.
September 1, 1945
CHICAGO, Ill., Aug. 21 -- Over 7,000 unemployed CIO
workers demonstrated in the Coliseum auditorium and the
streets of Chicago's Loop last night, demanding jobs,
severance pay and adequate unemployment insurance. Layoffs
here are expected within a few months to exceed 500,000.
Climaxing the demonstration was an impressive and dramatic torch-light parade through the busiest streets of the Loop. This was the first workers' demonstration held in the streets of Chicago for many years.
Marching in the parade were large contingents of workers from Dodge, Buick, Studebaker, Bendix, Amertorp, Foote Bros., Pressed Steel Car Co., Pullman Standard and other war plants which had closed their doors, turning close to 100,000 workers into the streets with only a few hours notice in many cases.
Tens of thousands of spectators lined the streets as the demonstrators marched by shouting "WE WANT JOBS!" and holding aloft hundreds of banners bearing militant slogans and demands such as "THERE WILL BE NO PEACE WITHOUT JOBS!" "WORK OR FIGHT!" "IT HAPPENED IN ENGLAND, IT CAN HAPPEN HERE," "THE LITTLE STEEL FORMULA BE DAMMED," "NEGRO AND WHITE UNITE FOR JOBS!"