March 29, 1999
The massive train crash in Illinois that killed 13 people was a disaster that could have been prevented. The main cause of the accident is known: throughout the United States, highway and rail traffic are forced to intersect at thousands of railroad crossings, causing a major safety hazard.
Railroads historically refused to run tracks through tunnels and over bridges in populated areas, nor did government regulatory agencies require it. Last year 422 people were killed in train-vehicle collisions.
The thousands of road crossings are not a necessity. The U.S. rail system is designed to make profits for the rail bosses, not to ensure safety. The labor movement, led by the rail unions, should demand a massive public works program to build the overpasses, bridges, and tunnels needed to provide safe transit in this country.
March 29, 1974
A Conference in Defense of Soviet Ukrainian Political Prisoners was held in New York the weekend of March 2. A panel of former Russian dissidents and Ukrainian political activists led a four-hour discussion of the national question as it affects the Ukraine. The internationalism was symbolized by the fact that the Russians spoke Russian and the Ukrainians spoke Ukrainian.
Dave Frankel, representing the Socialist Workers Party, explained that one of the most powerful components of an anti-bureaucratic revolution is the resentment of the oppressed nationalities against their Great Russian chauvinist overlords.
He noted that Leon Trotsky supported the right of self-determination for the Ukraine and considered the fight for Ukrainian independence to be of key importance to the world revolution. The SWP continues to advance this position.
March 21, 1949
DETROIT — George Novack, National Secretary of the Kutcher Civil Rights Committee, made a stirring appeal on “The Case of the Legless Veteran” to more than a hundred unionists and civil liberties defenders at a meeting here sponsored by the Greater Detroit and Wayne County Kutcher Civil Rights Committee.
Joining for the defense of Kutcher, who lost both his legs in action and was fired from his Veterans Administration job for membership in the Socialist Workers Party, were prominent speakers from labor, liberal and church groups.
Novack gave a statement of the facts in the case: “The cold war against government workers represented by the loyalty purges is a threat to all workers.” Tom Clampitt of the United Auto Workers said, “We must fight those responsible for the many victims of the loyalty purges through political action.”