Vol. 77/No. 45 December 16, 2013
December 16, 1988
December 7, Pearl Harbor Day, is an occasion for flag-waving by U.S. government and military figures. The Japanese military attack on a U.S. naval base in 1941 was used to whip up an anti-Japanese hysteria as part of Washington’s efforts to build domestic support for U.S. participation in the interimperialist slaughter known as World War II.Two months later the White House issued an order to intern 120,000 Japanese Americans in concentration camps, accusing them of being a potential fifth column.
More than 46 years after this mass incarceration on Aug. 10, 1988, President Ronald Reagan signed legislation apologizing for the forced relocation and establishing a $1.25 billion trust fund to pay reparations to the evacuees and their families.
December 16, 1963
FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover made an ominous speech in Washington, D.C., Dec. 4. He warned against “political radicalism” in the civil-rights movement and declared “devotion to race should not supersede devotion to established institutions.”Hoover’s statement raises the question of just what “established institutions” he means. Jim Crow is an established institution. And it rests on other established institutions like the Democratic Party machine in the South, the racist police, the racist state governments, the racist voter-registration system, segregation laws, etc. — to speak only of the South.
Hoover and his FBI have clearly established a record of devotion to, and refusal to challenge, these institutions even when they are clearly incompatible with the 13th and 14th Amendments.
December 17, 1938
NEW YORK — Two hundred working-class families, tired of the continual delay and red tape of the Home Relief Bureaus, have taken possession of two relief offices and are determined to remain on a sit-down strike until the necessary food and clothing for their children is provided.The relief officials have turned off the heat in the bureaus, locked the fire exits and wash rooms, and have refused to allow food to be sent into the strikers. A picket line has been thrown around both bureaus.
A recent reduction of 50 cents on the coal allowance for each unemployed family is an indication of the policy to be pursued by the LaGuardia administration. In homes dependent upon coal for heat this will mean further misery for the jobless.
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