March 9, 1998
NEW YORK — The theme of “100 Years of Struggle Against U.S. Imperialism: Africa, Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines” drew 200 here Feb. 19.
Félix Wilson, first secretary of the Cuban Interests Section in Washington, explained that the war of 1898 was actually the Spanish-Cuban-American War, and that the invading U.S. forces snatched victory away from Cuba’s liberation army. Today, the rulers of the United States “can’t forgive us for the fact we made a revolution in 1959.”
Socialist Workers Party leader Mary-Alice Waters noted, “Washington is marching working people in the U.S. and the world into a war, that is not our war, against the people of Iraq.”
“In 1898 the imperialists invaded Puerto Rico and saved us from ourselves — they always come to save you from yourself,” Puerto Rican independence fighter Rafael Cancel Miranda said to laughter and applause.
March 9, 1973
FEB. 27 — Today President Nixon threatened to stop the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Vietnam. Nixon’s threat was in response to an announcement by the North Vietnamese government that it would release no more American prisoners until the U.S. government and the Saigon regime stopped violating the Vietnam cease-fire agreement.
Saigon claims to have killed 10,000 rebel soldiers since the “truce” began. The New York Times estimated 200,000 people were made homeless in just the two previous days of fighting. The Washington Post reported Saigon’s President Thieu “is continuing to run South Vietnam almost as if the Paris cease-fire agreement had never been signed, with the army and the police as his principal instruments of statecraft.”
U.S. officials bluntly admit their backing of Thieu’s attempts to chip away at territory held by the liberation forces.
March 8, 1948
LOS ANGELES — The long struggle of California farm laborers to achieve organization is being renewed in the heroic strike at the Di Giorgio farm corporation, a 20,000-acre ranch. An outstanding feature of the strike has been the aid and assistance given by the AFL. This help reached a high point when the AFL brought a caravan of some 250 cars and trucks bearing 1,000 AFL members, $20,000 worth of food and $6,000 in cash.
The landowners know what is at stake. The example of a successful struggle being waged through the unity of the farm and city workers opens the gates to organization of some 350,000 California agricultural workers.
Di Giorgio tried to bust the union with a three-day lockout, but only made the workers more determined. They won widespread sympathy and support. Committees have worked to spread organizations to other farms.