Vol. 73/No. 22      June 8, 2009

The program opened with a film showing of “Malcolm X: Struggle for Freedom,” in which Malcolm explains the need for Black people to organize independent of the Democratic and Republican parties.

During the discussion period, one person said Blacks should support [Democrat Jesse] Jackson because his campaign “goes beyond” the Democratic and Republican parties. [Socialist Workers Party candidate Mel] Mason responded that this was exactly the problem—it doesn’t. Jackson supports the capitalist system, which is the root of the oppression of Blacks.  
 
June 8, 1959
“Disaster in Cuba.” That’s the headline Barron’s featured for the news about the law just passed by the Castro government reducing the legal maximum of estates to a pitiful 1,000 acres.

“So-Called Land Reform is Likely to Yield Bitter Fruit,” continues the national business and financial weekly that is a favorite among bankers, stockholders, and Wall Street gamblers.

What makes the reform law particularly “disastrous” in Barron’s opinion is that it “may do severe harm to foreign investments on the island, ranging upwards of a quarter-billion dollars, including those of such large U.S. concerns as the Cuban-American Sugar Co. and United Fruit.”

What is most outrageous about the “ugly brute,” it seems, is that instead of the Wall Street peasants who have been working the land up to now, “the veterans of Castro’s army, many of whom happen to be city-bred, also will enjoy a valid claim to the seized property.”  
 
June 9, 1934
OAKLAND, Calif.—The West Coast longshoremen’s strike is entering a new phase. Both the ship owners and the unions are preparing for a long and bitter struggle.

Recently new forces to augment the police have been recruited in almost all West Coast cities. These new additions to the forces of “law and order” are being used to drive the picket lines back from the waterfront, in an attempt to crush the strike.

The San Francisco Chamber of Commerce boldly declares that it is going to open the port to shipping.

So far the unions have answered all such statements by new and fresh walk-outs, by strengthening the picket lines and by tightening the strike generally.

Communists have played a leading role in this work and served to strengthen the militancy, the morale, and the organization of the strike.  
 
 
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