Vol. 75/No. 24      July 4, 2011

July 4, 1986
White House and Pentagon officials are pushing legislation that would make it impossible for governors to keep National Guard units from their states out of military maneuvers in Central America. The controversy over the use of the Guard units surfaced in April when governors from Arizona, Kansas, Maine, Massachusetts, New York, Vermont, and Washington said that they were opposed to troops from their states being used in Honduras.

Since 1983 the Pentagon has staged constant military exercises in that country and practiced mock invasions of Nicaragua during the exercises.

Governors who expressed opposition to use of the Guard troops were responding to the deep-seated opposition of the majority of U.S. working people to another Vietnam-type war.  
 
July 3, 1961
On May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. Seven years after the decision only 6.9% of the South’s Negro students attend elementary and high schools along with white children. Public schools remain completely segregated by race in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and South Carolina. Less than one percent of Negro students in Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, North Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia attend integrated schools.

Negro students and their allies are determined to end discrimination not only in schools but at lunch counters, recreational facilities, public libraries, etc. And “unlikely to be undone” is this courageous fight of the new generation of Southern youth.  
 
November 28, 1936
The maritime strike of the Pacific Coast, now four weeks old, is still stalemated and is clearly becoming a test of strength and endurance. A good deal is said about strike “strategy”—and that has its uses within certain clearly defined limits—but this strike, like every other strike, is simply a bull-headed struggle between two forces whose interests are in constant and irreconcilable conflict. The partnership of capital and labor is a lie. The immediate issue in every case is decided by the relative strength of the opposing forces at the moment.

The problem of the strikers consists in estimating what their strength is, and then mobilizing it in full force and pressing against the enemy until something cracks and a settlement is achieved. That’s all there is to strike strategy.  
 
 
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