The shooting came as a strike against cantaloupe melon farms in Starr County spread to this and other parts of the Rio Grande Valley, an important agricultural area adjacent to Mexico in the southernmost part of Texas.

We were there to encourage the several thousand Mexicans who cross over each day to respect the UFW strike, which had been under way since May 19 against growers in Starr County, just west of Hidalgo. They were excited to learn that something was being done about the miserable condition they face.

After discussions were held they decided to strike all the farms in the area. Over a period of several hours, 3,000 workers gathered by the bridge and none had gone to the fields.

Then suddenly we saw Miller coming toward us very fast in a pickup truck. Without any warning, he began firing, wounding eleven workers. When the police arrived, they refused to arrest Miller.

That night the union had a news conference, which drew 300 people. So far, the receptivity to the UFW has been tremendous. Many have signed union cards. Mexican workers have been the backbone of the strike, making up about three-fourths of the total number of strikers.

 
 
June 5, 1950
Truman's Secretary of Commerce, Charles Sawyer, has demanded the resignation of two Department of Commerce employees, Willam W. Remington and Michael Lee, who are being harried by the McCarthyite witch-hunters, although both were previously acquitted of "disloyalty" charges by the government's top Loyalty Review Board.

Senator McCarthy, spearhead of the "communist" smear campaign against the Truman administration, renewed his attacks on the basis of Sawyer's own action in attempting to force Lee and Remington to resign while under "disloyalty" fire.

Truman himself launched the gigantic "loyalty" purge and smear system that McCarthy and the other Republicans are now using to such advantage against the Trumanites.

By tossing two sacrificial offerings to McCarthyism, Truman hoped to appease the Republicans and get them to quiet down their witch-hunt and smear tactics on the Democratic administration. But it has only whetted the appetites of the McCarthyites. Their cases show that no matter how "pure" a person is found, how often he is acquitted of disloyalty charges, that is no protection against the witch-hunters. The witch-hunt demands endless blood-sacrifices and grows more voracious with every innocent victim.  
 
 
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