Vol. 78/No. 19 May 19, 2014
May 19, 1989
The decision of prison authorities at the Iowa State Men’s Reformatory in Anamosa to bar literature of every language except the one they are capable of censoring — English — is an outrageous violation of human and constitutional rights and should be vigorously protested by all supporters of free speech and human dignity.Unionist and political activist Mark Curtis, who is serving a 25-year jail sentence in Anamosa on phony charges of rape and burglary, sent a letter to the New York business office of the Spanish-language monthly Perspectiva Mundial. Curtis informed them that he would no longer be able to receive his subscription to PM because prison authorities had arbitrarily decided to ban for “security” reasons all literature that is not in English.
The censorship order aims to restrict the ability of Curtis — and his fellow prisoners — to have a serious political relationship with the outside world.
May 18, 1964
LOS ANGELES — About 2,500 men from the almost all-Negro 53rd Assembly District met at Wrigley Field here May 7 in an “unemployed conference.” The very force of the turnout made the conference a demonstration against unemployment — the first this city has seen since the depression years of the 1930s.The unemployed men who spoke before the conference included a welder and a concrete worker, both in their 40s, a radio-TV technician and an untrained man, both in their 20s. They spoke of racial discrimination, lack of training and the lack of enough jobs to go around. One father of ten children — a skilled electrician — had exhausted all his unemployment compensation, which means he had been out of work more than 39 weeks.
A reoccurring comment from the jobless men was “We’ve got to stick together.”
May 19, 1939
Up until Feb. 21, 1934, the day he achieved international notoriety by murdering Sandino, the agrarian leader of Nicaragua’s independence movement, the career of the present guest of honor at the White House, Anastasio Somoza, alias “El General,” was of a shady and prison-record type. A series of crimes and betrayals since that time have brought him to power, the first [time] through a puppet president and finally through his own installation in the presidency (for an indefinite period, he thinks) as the absolute lord of the lives and property of the Nicaraguans.This post he enjoys today to the greater glory of Mr. Roosevelt’s Democracy and Good Neighbor policy. Two months before he shook the friendly hand of the “democrat” F.D.R., he re-elected himself supreme potentate for nine more years through a faked “Constitutional Congress.” Hence his boss in Washington can count for a certain period on a loyal henchman.
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