April 5, 1999
NEW YORK CITY — The daily demonstrations here against the police killing of Amadou Diallo have provoked a crisis for the administration of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. Tens of thousands of working people have taken part.
Picket lines have grown to 500 or more a day. Workers join in on their lunch break; others take a day off to participate. While demonstrators had been overwhelmingly Black in the earlier actions, the protests recently have become more multinational. For example, more than 200 people identifying themselves as Jewish joined the March 24 action — many carrying signs in Hebrew.
“The New York Socialist Workers Party,” reads a statement, “joins with the thousands who are protesting this brutal and racist killing. The determination to stand in solidarity with the Diallo family makes it harder for the city administration to cover up this crime.”
April 5, 1974
The Coalition of Labor Union Women conference in Chicago was a memorable event. Nothing quite like it has happened before. Three thousand two hundred union women came together to discuss the special problems they face.
The women came from all across the country, from many different unions and a wide range of experience. Some had been through the labor struggles of the ’30s and ’40s; others were recently out of college. There were women who barely made the minimum wage and others with high-paying jobs. Some came with their unions footing the bill. Others took up collections in their shops. Still others paid their own way.
The conference was composed in its majority of rank-and-file union women. The women were inspired by the conference, identify with its goals and are interested in ongoing activity. The challenge is to keep that momentum going.
April 4, 1949
NEW YORK — “The encroachments on civil rights are one of the most dangerous threats to the American people today,” said James P. Cannon, National Secretary of the Socialist Workers Party, in a statement issued here.
He cited the continued mistreatment of the Negro people and the rejection by Congress of promised civil rights laws, purges among government employees, the firing of college professors, the persecution of conscientious objectors, the harassment of liberal-minded religious leaders, the attacks on the public school system, the thought-control trials of minority political parties, etc.
But the means must be found, he said, to bring together the defenders of civil liberties. “The need is for cooperation and coordination in a broad front of action. The SWP urges and would welcome such a development and give wholehearted support to it.”