Vol. 79/No. 45      December 14, 2015

 

25, 50, and 75 Years Ago

 

December 14, 1990

Stepped-up solidarity with striking New York Daily News workers can now help win the battle against the newspaper’s union-busting drive.

For months the owners of the Daily News prepared with almost military precision to bust the newspaper unions. They thought locking out the workers, herding scabs, violence-baiting the unions, and threatening the strikers with goons and thugs would quickly allow them to run the newspaper as a nonunion operation.

They ran into a force that had not been factored into their calculations — the determination of the strikers and the solidarity of working people across New York City. Today it is rare to find even a single copy of the Daily News on the stands. Circulation of the paper has dropped 80 percent.

December 13, 1965

In flagrant abuse of their authority, at least two state selective service directors (Michigan and Delaware) have decided that students can be put into 1-A for participating in protests against the Vietnam war.

Four students in Michigan have lost their deferments for being arrested in a demonstration at a local draft board. Col. Arthur Holmes, an old Army man who heads the state selective service, says “people accuse me of being a Hitler.”

Army induction centers may not be too happy about this move by the draft boards. The induction centers have shown a marked aversion to drafting outspoken opponents of the war, obviously in fear that their views might prove contagious within the armed forces.

December 14, 1940

A joint campaign to aid political refugees is now being conducted by the International Relief Association and the New World Resettlement Fund.

Almost all these refugees have no other organization to help them. They are the ordinary humble people, penniless, unknown, but the most courageous fighters against reaction. The International Relief Association takes pride in helping these brave men and women whose records in their native lands and in emigration entitle them to more than a concentration camp in France or Germany.

This campaign is endorsed and supported by many leading trade unions, including the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, ILGWU, and by fraternal organizations such as the Workmen’s Benefit Fund.  
 
 
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