The death knell of the shah’s regime began when the army found itself incapable of keeping exiled religious leader Ayatollah Khomeini out of the country. The February 1 arrival of Khomeini, who is a symbol of the nationalist struggle here, accelerated the upsurge.

Workers had already been on a general strike for nearly 100 days.

Peasants had seized farm machinery, livestock, and some land.

The police stations were vacated in the villages.

The event that directly led to the insurrection in Tehran was the February 8 demonstration of more than 1 million called by Khomeini to support Mehdi Bazargan, his appointed prime minister in the new provisional government.

Hundreds of airmen from the Doshan Tappeh air base marched in uniform in their own contingents.

In the face of continued protests by the airmen and rapidly crumbling discipline on the air base, the elite troops of the Royal Guard were sent to attack Doshan Tappeh February 9 and prevent the airmen’s example from spreading.

The battle of Doshan Tappeh began what developed into a nationwide uprising. Backed by the solidarity of the Tehran people, the airmen crushed the Royal Guard invasion.

While the airmen had been in the forefront of the opposition in the armed forces, the next three days revealed that the entire army was disintegrating. The horror of shooting one’s brothers and sisters, the powerful appeal of the mammoth demonstrations against the shah, and the nationwide general strike had all had an impact on the soldiers.  
 
February 22, 1954
The efforts of the Los Angeles Hearst press to incite lynch violence against the Mexican community must be stopped in its tracks. Their manufactured “crime wave” with smear headlines that scream of Mexican “Rat Pack Killers” is deliberately calculated to renew on an even bloodier scale the anti-Mexican riots instigated here in 1943.

With the rise of McCarthyism sending fresh inspiration to local Ku Klux Klan elements, as well as to the followers of Gerald L. K. Smith, the repeated attempts to make the Mexican people the subject of organized mob attacks assumes sinister new implications.

The Community Service Organization, which a few years ago spearheaded the movement that elected Edward Roybal, an independent Mexican representative, to the City Council, must assume the leadership in this fight.

The CSO has so far limited itself to calling for a boycott of the anti-Mexican papers. But such an action can be effective only if it is backed by the power of the union movement and by the city’s minority organizations.

At a recent CSO meeting a proposal was made to call a broad conference of unions and community organizations for united action on this issue. The proposal was resisted on the grounds that “reds” might infiltrate such a movement.

Organized terror against minority peoples is the inevitable outgrowth of the present “redhunting” hysteria. For the leadership of a minority group to yield to its pressure to any degree is to become powerless in the face of the Hearstlings and the McCarthys.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home