May 6, 1977
DETROIT--Nearly 2,000 women gathered here April 21–24 for the annual conference of the National Organization for Women. The conference celebrated NOW’s tenth anniversary, and a debate over political perspectives for the second decade worked its way to the surface.

Many members of NOW had come to the conference concerned that victories for women won during NOW’s first decade--the right to legal abortions, affirmative actions in hiring and promotions, child-care programs--were in danger of being lost.

Many of the 770 delegates and the 1,200 members (who had speaking but not voting rights) were in Detroit to discuss these problems, to exchange ideas, and to decide on a course to turn the tides against the enemies of women’s rights.

On the first day of the conference, before any political discussion had taken place, outgoing president Karen DeCrow told reporters that "every NOW member agrees on political action." She went on to describe that action, which included working to elect "pro-ERA" Democrats in 1978, urging President Carter to set an ERA blitz campaign, and launching an economic boycott of unratified states.

As early as February, more than eighty women from around the country had submitted a resolution for discussion at the conference that proposed a road for NOW in stark contrast to the one outlined by DeCrow.

This resolution would have NOW launch a drive, independent of the Democratic and Republican parties, to counter the right-wing attacks on women’s rights with a massive educational and action campaign.  
 
May 5, 1952
The swiftest steel shutdown in U.S. history proved last week that the steel workers are serious about their fight for higher pay and have been from the very beginning of the steel dispute almost six months ago. Within minutes after a federal judge in Washington signed an order telling the steel barons: "you are the boss," the owners of the industry found themselves with cooling furnaces and without workers to "boss." Angry steelworkers across the nation had full strike machinery in motion within eight hours after receiving word from their international union headquarters that the policy of the union was to cease work in the absence of a contract.

Meanwhile government officials, the federal courts, and the steel companies tangled in an ever thickening wrangle arising out of the "seizure" of the steel mills by the Federal government and the actions of the court one day "enjoining" the government and the next day "staying" the injunction.

Leading strategists of the capitalist class stewed over the problem of dealing with the great power of the American industrial unions to shut down basic production; a power which arises from the fact that all production depends upon the efforts of these workers, and from the further fact that these workers still retain the resolute determination to improve their condition that led them to organize into industrial unions in the Thirties.

The Truman administration thinks it has found a formula for holding the workers back by fake government "seizures" in which nothing gets seized and nothing is changed.  
 
 
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