25, 50 and 75 Years Ago

May 7, 2018

May 10, 1993

KENNETT SQUARE, Pennsylvania — Representing labor, church, student and community groups, 500 people marched through this town April 24 in support of striking mushroom workers. The march followed by a rally at a park next to the struck Kaolin mushroom farm, was called by the National Congress of Puerto Rican Rights.

The march led off with 75 strikers, who wore red caps with the initials of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union. The strikers decided to affiliate with the RWDSU.

The strikers are overwhelmingly Mexican immigrants. Labor contractors are bringing in Vietnamese and Cambodian immigrant workers to work as replacements. Describing the effort to reach these Asian workers, organizer Ventura Gutiérrez told the rally, “No working person is our enemy. We are all part of one working class.”

May 10, 1968

NEW YORK — The massive entrance of teen-agers into the antiwar movement was dramatically demonstrated at the march and rally staged here April 27.

High school students were the largest single section in the antiwar protest action, which drew some 200,000 people.

While the traditional adult peace groups turned out in somewhat smaller numbers than previously, this was more than compensated for by the young people who made it clear that even though some of their elders may be lulled by [President] Johnson’s “peace” talk, they are not.

In organizing the action, a major source of support was the Student Mobilization Committee whose school strike the day previous to the parade was the most successful ever staged in this country.

May 8, 1943

“Mission To Moscow” is being peddled to movie audiences as a documentary film of events from 1936 to date as allegedly seen through the eyes of ex-Ambassador Joseph Davies. Nothing could be further from the truth. “Mission To Moscow” is a 100% Stalinist lie.

The resources of Hollywood and of the press have been mobilized — with the blessing of the authorities in Washington — to present as the “truth” the GPU version of the Moscow trials. In the space of three years (1936, 1937, 1938) Stalin murdered the entire generation of Russian Bolsheviks, Lenin’s collaborators, lifelong revolutionists.

The stage for these monstrous crimes was set by the Moscow Trials, in which the chief defendants were Leon Trotsky and his son, Leon Sedov. In 1937 the Dewey Commission examined material evidence and documents and passed its verdict: NOT GUILTY!