As news of the Shah’s departure spread, New York Times correspondent Nicholas Gage reported, “hundreds of thousands of people poured out of their homes shouting ‘Shah raft!—The Shah is gone.’ The cacophony of celebration continued all afternoon and well into the evening.”

As a result of the revolution unfolding in Iran, the imperialist grip on the country has been greatly weakened. Washington has been forced to begin dismantling its top-secret equipment at bases along the Iranian-Soviet border, and the representatives of U.S. corporations that dominate Iran’s economy have been sent streaming out of the country.

Meanwhile, the mobilization of the masses has won the release of hundreds of political prisoners, has put an end to newspaper censorship, and placed the regime’s torturers and hangmen on the defensive.

Nor is the shah’s fall simply a victory for the Iranian people. Their gain is a victory for the oppressed and exploited throughout the world.

The anti-imperialist sentiment of the Iranian people has forced Bakhtiar to promise that no more oil will be sold to Israel and South Africa.

And the prospect of a continuing revolution in Iran has shaken pro-imperialist regimes in the Middle East and weakened Washington’s position in the entire region.

Meanwhile, the Iranian masses are continuing to push forward, demanding all the democratic rights that have been denied them for so long, and insisting on the establishment of a society that will ensure justice for the oppressed and exploited.  
 
January 25, 1954
The Washington State Legislature’s Interim Committee recently conducted a public hearing over television on a riot last summer in the Washington State Reformatory at Monroe.

The riot broke out August 20, 1953, at the close of “Yard Out,” the recreational period. The youths refused to return to their cells and began to throw rocks and any missile at hand. Windows were broken and fires set to several buildings.

The Monroe riot began over the disciplining of a Negro inmate, but was a protest in general against racial discrimination in the institution. The slogan was “Break Taylor out of Deadlock.”

Ernest Taylor, a Negro youth, was beaten over the head by a Captain Smith as the latter was forcing the protesting boy into “Deadlock” - a solitary-confinement type of punishment.

All that day [Taylor’s fellow prisoners] gathered in little groups, very agitated over the treatment given Taylor. Finally, the accumulated resentment burst out.

When the riot flared, the reformatory officials called the State Highway Patrol, Snohomish County deputies, the Snohomish County sheriff and a number of Everett police as well as 15 or 20 King County police officers.

As the demonstrating youthful inmates gathered in the center of the baseball diamond, they were caught in a cross fire from the north and south towers lasting about three minutes.

It was there that 21-year-old Walter T. Lyshall was killed and three others injured.

The riot involved about 200 of the younger inmates of Monroe, who demonstrated against one of the greatest injustices of the American capitalist system in or out of prisons—namely, Jim Crow. These young men felt the abomination of racial discrimination so keenly they could not restrain themselves from acting.  
 
 
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