December 18, 1970
DEC. 9 - The outrageous jailing of César Chávez, head
of the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee (UFWOC), has
focused greater national attention on the struggle of
California's lettuce workers for union contracts with the
lettuce growers.
Chávez was jailed indefinitely on Dec. 4 by a California judge in Monterey County because he refused to call off a nationwide lettuce boycott as arbitrarily ordered by the court. The UFWOC was fined $1,000 for refusing to obey the court injunction against the boycott.
On Oct. 8, Bud Antle, Inc., which grows about 8 percent of the Salinas Valley lettuce, got Superior Court judge Gordon Campbell to issue an injunction against the UFWOC lettuce boycott. Campbell refused to stay the injunction pending appeal unless UFWOC posted $2.75-million bond to protect Antle against damages. Earlier, on Sept. 14, the Superior Court had ordered the union to halt a strike of lettuce workers, which the union did.
While the lettuce workers, nearly all Chicanos, struggle for a union contract, higher wages, better working conditions, and exercise their elementary democratic right to urge wholesalers and retailers not to buy non-union lettuce, the courts of California stand shoulder to shoulder with the wealthy corporate farmers.
Bud Antle, Inc., for example, is a subsidiary of Dow and is charged by the farm workers with using a "most deadly bug killer," Dow 24D, also used by U.S. forces in Vietnam.
December 15, 1945
"The Philippines today are a powder keg," reports an
October 29 dispatch to the N.Y. Times. "The Hukbalahaps
(People's Anti-Japanese Army) and other `unrecognized
guerrillas' roam the land with rifles on their shoulders and
ideas for government in their heads and with hatred of the
landed aristocracy in their hearts."
A secret U.S. Army intelligence report, made public during the trial of General Yamashita, declares that the Hukbalahaps' "policy is definitely Communistic and...its plans include the establishment of a Communistic government in the Philippines after the war, on the early Russian model."
American officials hate and fear the Hukbalahaps because their program calls for the breaking up of the widespread feudal farming system inherited from the Spanish dons.
Although the Hukbalahap is the largest and most powerful organization of Filipinos who are fighting against imperialist rule, other similar groups likewise retain their arms. PM correspondent, David Boguslav, states that all guerrillas including the Huks may number as many as 600,000 and cannot be less than 200,000.