Vol. 73/No. 27      July 20, 2009

Mark Curtis, Socialist Workers Party candidate for Congress in Alabama’s 6th C.D., condemned the terrorist campaign: “The events in Birmingham, Huntsville, and Pensacola are part of a nationwide campaign of violence fostered by the anti-abortion, anti-women’s rights words and deeds of the Democratic and Republican parties.”

July 20, 1959
The steel strike is on! After exhausting every reasonable means to avoid a showdown, over 500,000 steel workers have been forced on strike to preserve the gains made in several decades of struggle. From the beginning the steel magnates merely went through the motions of negotiating a new contract. They talked peace but prepared for war.

While the steel workers are the immediate target, the union-hating corporations and their flunkies, in and out of public office, have rallied around the steel tycoons who are spearheading an attack aimed at the entire labor movement. In addition, the current campaign against “labor racketeering” sparked by the anti-labor, anti-Negro McClellan Committee is tailored to smear and discredit the unions in an effort to enlist “public” support.  
 
July 21, 1934
Minneapolis, July 20 (By wire)—Thirty-three [Teamster] pickets were shot with sawed-off shotguns by police who began firing volleys of slugs into groups of pickets.

One attack took place in front of the Slocum Bergen Grocery Company, from which convoys of police cars were preparing to move a merchandise truck. As the scab truck began to move, swaddled around by police cars, a truckload of pickets drew alongside. Without warning, the police fired volley after volley into the tightly packed strikers.

While men fell like flies, the rest courageously advanced on the scab truck. Their defiant advance probably saved the lives of many, for in hand-to-hand fighting with the bloodthirsty police, they prevented them from continuing their gunfire.  
 
 
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