They were protesting Tucson Electric Power Company’s awarding of a $150 million contract for construction of a coal-fired power plant to a nonunion firm.

At the rally—reportedly the largest ever in Tucson—iron workers, carpenters, electricians, and other unionists carried signs saying, “Keep America Union,” and denouncing Brown & Root, the scab contractor.

A significant number of the participants were Chicano workers.

John Fitzpatrick, president of the Retail Clerks Union, Local 727 in Tucson, was cheered when he told the crowd, “open shop means scab shop or anti-union shop.”

Arizona is a “right-to-work” state.  
 
July 2, 1956
“I invite a debate with Eugene Dennis, general secretary of the American Communist Party,” declared Farrell Dobbs, national secretary of the Socialist Workers Party, at a symposium in Brooklyn.

The symposium was on Working Class Policy in the 1956 Elections and was sponsored by the Brooklyn Compass Club. Four speakers participated: David Goldway, executive secretary of the Jefferson School; Clifford T. McAvoy, former candidate of the American Labor Party (New York section of the Progressive Party); Dr. W. E. B. DuBois, distinguished historian and educator; and Farrell Dobbs, SWP presidential candidate. Second speaker was Dr. DuBois. “Big Business will nominate the candidates. Forget the presidential election of 1956.”

Dobbs called for support of the SWP ticket as the only vehicle for carrying forward the fight for socialism on election day.  
 
July 4, 1931
During the last two weeks the striking miners in Western Pennsylvania, Northern West Virginia, and the Eastern part of Ohio have gained thousands of new recruits. More mines were shut down, picketing activities and mass demonstrations increased.

Several miners have already been killed, fallen victims to this brutality many have been wounded and scores are held in the jails under almost prohibitive bail. Such is the heavy toll of this strike. Yet its powerful proportions testify eloquently not only to the terrible starvation conditions existing in these mine fields but also to what has become proverbial—the militancy of the miners.

It is worthy of note that it is particularly in this section of the bituminous coal fields that the mechanization of coal mining has reached its highest point. It naturally resulted in immensely increased speed-up and in the most heavy imaginable pressure of exploitation.  
 
 
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