25, 50 and 75 Years Ago

June 15, 2020

June 19, 1995

MONTREAL — Protests involving thousands of working people are being organized almost every day since the Quebec government announced plans May 11 to close nine hospitals in the Montreal area. Close to 1,600 beds are slated to be lost in the coming year. More than 9,500 workers will be affected by these cuts, with several thousands losing their jobs altogether.

Coalitions of trade unions, community organizations and hospital workers are springing up to organize against these drastic cuts.

More than 800 hospital workers went to the Montreal Expos baseball game May 31 to publicize their fight to keep the hospitals open. The next day, some 400 people participated in a vigil against the closing down of the Queen Elizabeth hospital. Hundreds of health care workers also participated in the Women’s March Against Poverty in Quebec City June 4.

June 19, 1970

A significant recent development has been the growing organization of nationalist sentiment in the Mexican-American, or Chicano, community.

The first annual Chicano Youth Liberation Conference of Aztlan held in March 1969 adopted a program [that] calls for the formation of an independent Chicano party. The conference also raised the concept of Aztlan, which includes all of the southwest United States, which originally belonged to Mexico: Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado and California.

The development of a Chicano party has gone the furthest in Texas. There the successes of La Raza Unida Party mark the first electoral victories for an independent Chicano party. Its candidates were overwhelmingly elected to the Crystal City school board on April 4 and to the city councils of Crystal City, Cotulla and Carrizo Springs on April 7.

June 16, 1945

More than a million war workers are seeking jobs. By the end of October, 4,800,000 war workers and returned veterans will be on the “no longer required” list.

The question of jobs, of adequate compensation during unemployment is posed squarely before the entire American labor movement. Nobody but the organized workers themselves are capable, ready and willing to fight for a bold and radical program of  JOBS FOR ALL which will brush aside the profit and monopoly interests of a handful of ruling profiteers and compel the government to operate the plants at full capacity.

Precisely at this crucial juncture the leadership of the labor movement has shown itself least capable or willing to offer an adequate program and to mobilize the forces of labor for the type of all-out fight, on the economic and political field, which can achieve it.