Vol. 80/No. 45      November 28, 2016

 

25, 50, and 75 Years Ago

November 29, 1991
The November 15 plunge in the stock market followed a string of announcements indicating serious economic problems: retail sales are down, average earnings fell in the previous period, while the number of people applying for unemployment rose and auto sales declined.

The news is particularly bad for working people. One out of 10 people living in the United States now relies on food stamps to put food on the table. This meager allowance is a mere 65 cents per meal for a person eating three meals a day. Families with young children now make up at least one third of all workers who are homeless.

The relentless employer offensive against the standard of living and union organization begun during the 1974-75 recession has driven many working people one paycheck away from being able to provide for themselves or their families.

November 28, 1966
NEW YORK — Demonstrators attempted to present petitions today to the Peruvian Mission to the United Nations, demanding amnesty for Hugo Blanco, jailed Peruvian peasant leader now facing the threat of execution.

Hugo Blanco, a revolutionary Marxist, became a legendary figure in Peru after organizing the fiercely oppressed, landless peasants in the remote Cuzco region of the country. The peasants established a militant union that fought with the battle cry, Tierra o Muerte! Land or Death!

Blanco was captured by the Peruvian government a little over three years ago, when severe illness compelled him to come down from the mountains to seek medical treatment. Along with 28 others, he was charged with murder. The charge was based on the death of three rural policemen who died during an attack on Blanco and his supporters.

November 29, 1941
December 12 is the date set for the execution of Odell Waller, 24 years old Negro sharecropper sentenced to die for the self-defense shooting of his white landlord.

A stay of execution is being asked so that the defense may have time to file a petition for habeas corpus on sworn evidence that nonpayers of poll tax are systematically excluded from Jury duty in Pittsylvania County, Virginia, where Waller was tried. Waller was deprived of a jury of his peers because of the poll tax.

Waller felt himself involved in a web of oppression, unjustly evicted from his home and deprived of his family’s share in the crop which they had worked to raise.

All workers organizations should get behind the movement to free Waller, abolish the poll tax and end the system of Jim Crowism, which is the real guilty party in this case.  
 
 
 
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