Vol. 79/No. 3 February 2, 2015
February 2, 1990
The attempt by the Soviet government to crush the Azerbaijani struggle against national oppression has sparked massive resistance as hundreds of thousands protest the occupation.On January 19 an estimated 29,000 Soviet army and interior ministry troops attacked Baku from three directions and shot at “everything that was moving,” an eyewitness told reporters. Troops used tanks to push through the barricades that had been erected throughout the city and met widespread resistance.
Mass protests against the military occupation of Baku and the killing of civilians started immediately after the assault. A general strike on January 22 brought Baku to a halt. On that day 1 million people mobilized to mourn the dead and demand an end to the military occupation of the city.
February 1, 1965
The jailing of the 19 officials of the striking welfare unions in New York City under provisions of the notorious Condon-Wadlin Act is coupled with threats of continued prosecution and indefinite jailing until the unionists call off the strike. This is pure and simple strikebreaking by liberal Democratic Mayor Robert F. Wagner.The penalty provisions of the Act — which outlaws strikes by public employees and fines strikers two days’ pay for each day on strike — are clearly unconstitutional. The law has rarely been invoked in the past and never until now to this extent. Yet the mayor, with no dissent from his fellow state Democratic leader, Senator Robert Kennedy, now invokes the law in full, insisting that he must because “the law is the law.”
February 3, 1940
On February 6th the Anti-Lynching Bill goes again to the Senate.Again and again this bill, or one with substantially the same provisions, has passed the House only to be blocked in the Senate by a Southern filibuster. The Southern contingent acts the direct role, calling on their confreres not to “sacrifice the virtue of Southern womanhood and mongrelize the race” (Representative Cox of Georgia in the recent debate). And others speak grandly of the necessity of maintaining “democracy” in these United States and refuse to apply the cloture rule to put a time limit to debate. “Democracy” in these United States consists, not in checking mob savagery with even a grossly inadequate law, but in allowing the representatives of Southern Bourbons to shout lies until their lungs give out.
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