Civil defense committees and people’s action committees were formed before the insurrection, when we saw the need to organize people to prepare them for the eventuality of war.

We needed people who could offer medicine and food, and we needed to instruct people to produce shelters in their homes for protection against the bombing and shelling. We needed committees for civil defense, supplies, and health, and also vigilance committees to detect Somocista groups that might be on the loose.

With the victory of the insurrection, we have initiated the task of organizing ourselves to defend our Sandinista revolution. So the civil defense committees became Sandinista Defense Committees (CDS).

We also have militias in each neighborhood. They are independent of the neighborhood committees, and are tied directly to the army. They handle problems of a military nature, for example, leftovers from the Somocista forces that might be around.

We are on a campaign footing to carry out this revolution in an organized way—block by block, neighborhood by neighborhood, city by city, province by province—until we have an organization that will ensure the triumph of the revolution.  
 
September 6, 1954
DETROIT—In a full front-page attack on the policy of accepting wage cuts to “enhance” each individual company’s “competitive position,” Ford Local 600’s newspaper Ford Facts today declared: “NO WAGE CUTS AT FORD’S—WILL FIGHT FOR INCREASE IN ’55.”

Without directly attacking CIO and United Auto Workers President Walter Reuther, the officers of the country’s largest union local take issue with the course set by Reuther when he approved the pay slash by Studebaker corporation.

“Approximately 20,000 Kaiser, Studebaker and Nash workers are forced by their employers under the threat of losing their jobs, to accept pay cuts—which trend, if followed to its ultimate conclusion, could eventually jeopardize the wage and job security of more than one million Ford, General Motors, Chrysler and other workers,” states Ford Facts.

Only three days before this statement, the danger it warns against was emphasized by what the press described as the “dramatic, unprecedented action” of Chrysler Corp. president L .L. Colbert appearing as the main speaker at a closed session of the UAW’s Chrysler Council.

According to “leaks” to the Detroit Free Press, Colbert threatened the secret session—about which the UAW leaders have kept silent—that it would be “bad” for the Chrysler workers if they did not “get going” and improve the “poor competitive position” of Chrysler corporation.  
 
 
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