March March 12, 1993
BOONVILLE, Indiana — The strike by the United Mine Workers of America against Peabody Coal entered its fourth week with the company bringing busloads of scabs across UMWA picket lines at the Lynnville and Squaw Creek mines here February 22. This action escalated the stakes in an already important strike.
“This is a bitter pill for union members to swallow,” striker Dave Hadley from Squaw Creek said. But the well-publicized company attack on the strike has increased support for the miners.
UMWA members delivering a trainload of coal to a power plant here were ordered to bring empty Squaw Creek railcars back to the struck mine. However, they refused to cross the UMWA picket lines and left the train outside the mine. Local carpenters union members have built picket shacks. Peabody with 7,000 UMWA miners, is the largest coal company in the United States.
March 11, 1968
The last few weeks have seen a sharp intensification of the struggle taking place in the Soviet Union between dissident intellectuals and the Soviet bureaucracy.
Twelve leading Soviet intellectuals took the very courageous action of airmailing a document to the conference of Communist parties in Budapest. The document appealed to the conference “to consider the peril caused by the trampling on man in our country.”
The document was sent in defiance of heavy pressure from the KGB (secret political police), which has threatened the intellectuals with imprisonment if they persist in criticizing violations of Soviet law in trying and condemning citizens for holding views that do not meet with official approval.
The document protested the “series of political trials” in recent years and the imprisonment of individuals solely “for their beliefs.”
March 13, 1943
Immediately after learning of Postmaster General Walker’s order revoking the second-class mailing privileges of the Militant, we issued a statement to the press announcing our intention of contesting the order in the courts.
We take this step because we know that the only “crime” which our paper has committed is to tell the truth, soberly and consistently, about the great social, political and economic questions that concern the working people. There are powerful forces in the ruling circles of this country who consider it “seditious” to speak the truth about their activities, and there are bureaucrats in the administration who want to use the war for the purpose of stifling all criticism of their policies. Against them and all their weapons of persecution, we are prepared to fight to the very end to prevent the truth from being suppressed.