Vol. 78/No. 11 March 24, 2014
March 24, 1989
Under the guise of stepping up the fight against drug trafficking, government officials at all levels are pressing for greater use of the death penalty.There were 2,188 prisoners on death row at the start of this year. California, Florida, and Texas have more than 200 each. Since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated state death penalty laws in 1976, a total of 106 people have been executed.
The moves to step up the use of the death penalty and to strengthen repressive laws have nothing to do with fighting drug trafficking. In fact, many cops are up to their eyeballs in the drug trade, a lucrative business that exploits the capitalist-imposed misery of working people.
The aim of the death penalty and stiffer legislation is to intimidate working people, especially Black, Latino, and Asian workers — the main victims of the drug trade.
March 23, 1964
NEW YORK — Malcolm X is establishing a Muslim Mosque in Harlem that will be so organized as to permit Negroes who are not Muslims to participate in the political, economic and social programs it will carry on. The Mosque will take an active part in the civil-rights movement and in the political life of the community, he said. He hopes to see similar mosques opened in other parts of the country.Elaborating his plans at a jam-packed press conference at the Park Sheraton Hotel March 12, he said he was forced to leave the Nation of Islam by other high officials of the church, that he remained a devout Muslim, but would utilize his present situation to join in the Freedom Now struggle in a more direct and flexible way.
As one concrete form of political action, he proposed collaboration in eliminating New York’s recently adopted “stop-and-frisk” and “no-knock” laws.
March 24, 1939
Stalin is trying to balance himself on the razor edge of imperialist rivalries in Europe.He thinks he is going to save the Soviet Union in its hour of mortal peril by playing off Hitler-Mussolini against Chamberlain-Daladier.
That road, followed without basing the main defense of the Soviet Union on the bulwark of a revolutionary policy designed to arouse the working class of the entire world against its own masters, is the road to disaster.
The revolutionary might of the international working class is the only power in the world that can save the Soviet Union.
The Soviet Union is in mortal peril. Despite the ravages of the decadent Stalinist bureaucracy, the socialized means of production created as a result of the October Revolution remain the most precious possession of the international working class.
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