Vol. 80/No. 3      January 25, 2016

 

25, 50, and 75 Years Ago

 

January 25, 1991

In the final weeks leading up to the opening of a brutal war against Iraq, the U.S. government initiated a series of steps aimed at harassing and intimidating immigrants from the Middle East.

Under the guise of “security” against “terrorism,” FBI agents began interviewing some 200 Arab-Americans throughout the United States. According to the Washington Post, Deputy Attorney General William Barr said the interrogations are intended to “solicit information about potential terrorist activity and to request the future assistance of these individuals.”

On January 10, the U.S. Justice Department directed immigration authorities to start photographing and fingerprinting anyone entering the United States with an Iraqi or Kuwaiti passport.

January 24, 1966

NEW YORK, Jan. 18 — The 13-day transit strike was of great significance for organized labor even though the Transport Workers Union new two-year contract falls far short of rank and file worker demands. It was the most effective demonstration of the latent power of American workers in many years, and its lessons will surely be absorbed by union militants across the country. The unity and fighting spirit of the 36,000 transit workers in the face of injunction, jailing and press attack was like a fresh breeze in the union movement.

Opposition to the strike by both the Democrats and Republicans ran counter to the illusion still held by many workers that they had any friends in either capitalist party.

January 25, 1941

Those who are interested in the struggle of the Negro people for full equality have special reason to remember Lenin on this anniversary of his death.

Lenin taught that the workers must take power away from the bosses: take away their power to hire and fire, their power to control the factories and discriminate against Negroes in hiring and classification of work; take away their control of the armed forces through their mercenary hirelings, the officer caste, whom they train to Jim Crow the Negro; take away their control of the press, the schools, the church, the movies, all of which they use to perpetuate the system of “white supremacy,” and thus keep white and colored workers divided and the bosses in power.  
 
 
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