February 26, 1971
NEW YORK, Feb. 15 - Rallies, teach-ins, marches, and
picket lines protesting the U.S. incursion into Laos exploded
from one end of the country to the other last week.
Demonstrations called by SMC [Student Mobilization Committee] and other groups took place on Feb. 10 in New York; Boston; Washington, D.C.; Philadelphia; Seattle; San Francisco; Newark; Chicago; Detroit; Cleveland; Ann Arbor; Denver; Boulder, Colo.; Dayton, Ohio, Minneapolis; DeKalb, Ill.; New Haven, Conn.; and other cities.
Considering the short notice on which they were called, in some areas the actions were very large. In Ann Arbor, 4,000 University of Michigan students followed their rally with a mass meeting that voted to launch an antiwar strike of the school. In Boston, feeder marches from MIT, Harvard, Boston University, and Northeastern University swelled the antiwar crowd on Boston Common to 10,000. Students from the University of Washington organized a demonstration of 2,000 in Seattle. In New York, the SMC, New York Peace Action Coalition, Vietnam Peace Parade Committee, and other groups built a massive picket line of 3,000 in Times Square. More than 1,000 marched in San Francisco.
High school students figured prominently in the Laos invasion protests in New York and other cities. Feb. 9 walkouts at Washington Irving, F.D.R., and Stuyvesant high schools led to an organized strike at Stuyvesant Feb. 11, which the principal described as 80 percent effective. A high school Student Mobilization Committee was formed in the city Feb. 12 at a meeting of 50 representatives from 16 high schools.
February 23, 1946
Throughout India, British imperialist troops and police
are murdering demonstrators who protest the imprisonment of
Indian National Army men. Hundreds of unarmed Indians have
fallen under withering machine-gun fire.
Wave after wave of mass protests, aroused by the British imperialist trial of Indian National Army men, has swept the country since last November.
But the deep-rooted cause of the demonstrations lies in the unbearable conditions of poverty, disease and near starvation of the Indian masses. Each new outburst against ruthless British rule has exhibited the mounting fury of the Indian masses.
The largest demonstrations have occurred in Calcutta and Bombay. But assemblies of Indians in Madura, Lahore, Delhi, Lucknow and Amritsar have been attacked by police and British troops armed with machine-guns and lathis (long bamboo clubs used by the Indian police.)
The immediate cause of the demonstrations was the imprisonment and court martial of soldiers of the Indian National Army. This Army was formed under the leadership of Subhas Chandra Bose, who accepted aid in the fight for India's liberation from the Japanese.
The INA was uncompromisingly anti-British. The Indians regard its soldiers and officers as heroes in their struggle for independence.
Leaders of the All India Congress Party and the Moslem League toured the cities together recently "trying to restore order." According to a February 14 Associated Press dispatch Communist Party (Stalinist) leaders joined these "peace squads."
But the angry masses attacked and stoned the automobile carrying the treacherous "peacemakers."