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   Vol. 70/No. 8           February 27, 2006  
 
 
25, 50 and 75 years ago
 
February 27, 1981
CHICAGO—In a major victory for democratic rights, hundreds of people showed up here at a February 13 court hearing and blocked a deal that would cripple the fight against secret police crimes.

The hearing was held before Federal Judge Susan Getzendanner to determine if there were any objections to the proposed settlement of a lawsuit against the FBI and CIA.

Liberals and government lawyers alike got an unpleasant surprise when 300 people, most of them Black, showed up and strongly objected to the deal. One young man held up a sign reading “Stop FBI Crimes” until federal marshals forced him to discard it.  
 
February 27, 1956
FEB. 22—Deputy sheriffs moved into the Negro community of Montgomery, Ala., today to arrest 115 leaders and supporters of the anti-Jim Crow bus boycott in that city. Among the first arrested was the Rev. Ralph D. Abernathy, one of the chief leaders of the 80-day old boycott movement.

A Montgomery County grand jury indicted the boycott movement under an anti-union state law which declares illegal a “conspiracy, combination or agreement to interfere with or hinder business.”

The 100% effective bus boycott was originally intended as a one-day protest against the arrest and fining of Mrs. Rosa Parks for refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger.  
 
February 13, 1931
Some 140,000 South Wales miners have just returned to work after a strike to enforce the seven and a half hour workday act. The operators were willing to concede recognition of this act only on the basis of a demanded 6 percent wage cut. The miners terminated their strike on the promise of arbitration which has since resulted in the signing of a new three year agreement [that] failed to decide the question of a subsistence wage.

At the present moment the officially registered unemployed workers in Great Britain number over two and a half million. The bosses now have no need of what was called Mondism, i.e. the British form of class collaboration. They are directly on the offensive.  
 
 
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