Vol.64/No.8 February 28, 2000
25 and 50 years ago
February 28, 1975
SAN FRANCISCO--Budget cuts by the school board have generated angry resistance among students, teachers, and parents here. Offers of charitable donations that have been made by local individuals will hardly be able to make up for an estimated $4-million to cutbacks this year, and an estimated $16-million budget deficit next year."To assume these programs can continue on charity is idiotic...as well as irresponsible," said one 15-year-old student, Katherine Cisinski.
About 75 students held a spirited picket line outside of the board of education meeting Feb. 11, chanting, "Education is our right!" and "Stop the cutbacks now!" Eric Harvison, one of the leaders of the action, told the board meeting, "We're not a charity. Education is a constitutional guarantee."
Leslee Clement from Lowell High added, "The school district is not a charitable organization. It is the responsibility of the government to take care of our needs."
February 27, 1950
With magnificent endurance and courage, the 370,000 soft coal miners are holding out against two Taft-Hartley injunctions invoked by the Truman administration. They have defied the back-to-work injunction issued by Federal Judge Keech. At this writing, the United Mine Workers stands cited for civil and criminal "contempt," facing the threat of ruinous fines and even imprisonment of its leaders. The workers are keeping the pits closed in the coldest part of the year. The operators are anxiously watching the winter days trickle past, and with them their best chances for profits.And so Truman is being forced to consider more drastic and harsher measures. Shall he send troops? Bayonets can't dig coal. And the political cost of sending troops against American workers comes high.
His only other course, if hunger and injunctions fail to beat the miners down, is to seize the mines as was done three times in 1943 and again in 1946.
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