Vol. 81/No. 18      May 8, 2017

 

25, 50 and 75 Years Ago

 

May 8, 1992

MIAMI — More than 200 people, mostly Cuban-Americans, called for an end to the U.S. embargo of Cuba in an April 16 protest here.

The Torricelli Bill, which is before Congress, would prohibit trade with Cuba by subsidiaries of U.S. corporations abroad, impose sanctions on other countries that do business with Cuba, and limit remittances from Cuban-Americans.

A representative of the Association of Workers in the Community, which together with the Antonio Maceo Brigade organized the picket line, said that the demonstrators oppose both the Torricelli Bill and any other restrictions on travel or exchange with Cuba.

Ricardo, a hotel worker, said his family lives in Villa Clara, Cuba. “I’m here because Cuba must belong to Cubans, not to the Americans,” he stated.

May 8, 1967

MAY 1 — In Atlanta yesterday, Martin Luther King delivered a strong rebuttal to General William C. Westmoreland’s attack on the antiwar movement. Speaking from the pulpit of the Ebenezer Baptist Church, King described Washington as “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.”

King declared, “there is a very dangerous development in the nation now to equate dissent with disloyalty. This was clearly pointed out by the fact that General Westmoreland was brought back to this country to develop a sentiment and consensus for the further escalation of the war and to further silence dissent.”

King reiterated that it was inconsistent for him to teach nonviolence in the civil rights movement, and support the violence of the United States “against little brown Vietnamese women and children.”

May 9, 1942

The government perspective of drawing 4,000,000 women into war industry by 1943 brings up questions concerning protection of working class rights. First consideration naturally falls upon equal pay for equal work.

The National Association of Manufacturers has declared itself in favor of equal pay for men and women on the same job.

Since almost the entire bulk of women now entering industry goes in as unskilled labor and hence, according to employer conceptions, is worth an absolute minimum in wage-rate, it is reasonable to assume that NAM will have only one objective: to scale the wage of the male worker down to that of the female.

These developments pose the problem of the unionization of women workers, an extremely crucial question for the whole union movement.  
 
 
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