Vol. 73/No. 38      October 5, 2009

But as is to be expected from an administration that has responded with stony indifference to the demands of tens of thousands of protesting farmers for relief from high debts, skyrocketing interest, and farm foreclosures, Reagan’s election campaign initiatives offer precious little to working farmers.

These measures are too little, too late for working farmers. Thousands have already been foreclosed and forced off their farms. The scope of the mortgage debt owed by many farmers is so great that Reagan’s remedy will not have much effect.  
 
October 5, 1959
An eyewitness account of a typical case of police brutality in Detroit has aroused wide sympathy for the victim.

On September 10 at 16th and Magnolia some police saw a group of teenagers sitting in a car, which belongs to the mother of one. Not liking their looks, the cops ordered them out of the car and started to search and arrest them. When one of them tried to get away, the cops got rough and—to their surprise—got as good as they gave.

John W. Coury, assistant prosecutor, tried to exaggerate the situation when he said “there might have been a couple of dead officers” if several other scout cars hadn’t arrived.

In the police garage, Thaddeus Steel, 16, accused of hitting one of the cops with a chair, was dragged out of a scout car by his neck.  
 
October 6, 1934
The Spanish working class has answered a threat of fascist rule by the declaration of a revolutionary general strike.

The political crisis, long developing, came to a climax this week when the Samper government presented its resignation at the opening session of the [legislature]. A new government has been formed under the “radical republican” Lerroux, representing a coalition of the blackest reactionary elements of the country, with the inclusion of Fascists (Popular Action) in three ministries.

Everything is tied up throughout Spain, armed clashes have taken place, the country is being placed under martial law. As this issue of the Militant goes to press, the death toll has reached 50. Workers of every tendency in the labor movement are fighting side by side in the streets against the fascist danger now clothed in the vestments of governmental authority.  
 
 
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