25, 50 and 75 Years Ago

March 8, 2021

March 11, 1996

At a February 26 press conference, President William Clinton announced a new round of hostile measures against the socialist revolution in Cuba.

These moves followed by two days the action of Cuba’s Revolutionary Armed Forces in shooting down two Cessna aircraft that, despite unambiguous warnings by Cuban air traffic controllers, invaded Cuban airspace on a course toward the capital city of Havana. The planes were piloted by members of a group called Brothers to the Rescue, led by Cuban-American counterrevolutionaries, a number of them with long histories of armed action against the Cuban state.

The invasion on February 24 was the second hostile incursion that day and the tenth such violation over the past 20 months. Throughout this period, Washington had done nothing to stop these provocations organized from U.S. soil.

March 12, 1971

The Stalinist Polish bureaucracy announced that the price rises that sparked a massive workers’ uprising in December were being rescinded. This latest and far-reaching retreat was the direct result of a textile strike in Lodz, Poland’s second largest city. Eighty percent of the workers are women, and the majority of the 10,000 strikers were women.

The workers are among the lowest paid in Poland. Added to this are inadequate child-care centers, insufficient maternity leaves, and the low number of women managers. Initially, strikers were represented as “hysterical” and “unrealistic” females. The women won for every worker in Poland wage increases comparable to what they were demanding for themselves.

The Kremlin bureaucrats are worriedly watching the developments and fear repercussions among other East European and Russian workers.

March 9, 1946

PHILADELPHIA, Feb. 28 — In defiance of a court injunction, mass picket lines of CIO workers, determined to defend their right to picket and peaceably assemble, have fought bitter pitched battles on two successive days against motorized and mounted police near the strike-bound General Electric plant here. Over 5,000 men and women surrounded City Hall today in an angry demonstration against police brutality.

Police terror was instigated by the corporation and local capitalist press, after General Electric early this week obtained an injunction limiting the number of pickets to 10. Special target for the attack was a group of union veterans.

Veteran Richard Duane declared, “They’re taking it out on our vets because the company and the cops had expected the vets would serve as strikebreakers. Instead, they’re our best union defenders.”