June 14, 1999
HAVANA, Cuba — “We’re not veterans — we’re combatants,” Brig. Gen. Gustavo Chui affirmed. “As members of the Association of Combatants of the Cuban Revolution, we’re engaged in the day-to-day struggle for the unconditional defense of our socialist revolution.”
The association brings together revolutionary fighters of several generations. It has 300,000 members in 11,200 neighborhood committees throughout the island. Above all, the association focuses its political work on winning the young generations to a revolutionary working-class perspective — to do with their lives what many of these combatants have been doing for more than four decades.
Chui added, “I tell other combatants that the revolution is once again offering us a responsibility — to unite in order to help educate the new generation. We have an important, historic task to fulfill.”
June 21, 1974
OXNARD, Calif. — The militant strike here of strawberry pickers, mostly Chicanos, is 80 percent effective, despite police attacks and attempted intimidation.
The strike began May 24 when the entire crew at American Food Company left the fields in protest over low wages and poor working conditions. By June 7, the strike had spread to all 23 of the area’s strawberry ranches. When the first group walked out, they contacted the United Farm Workers to help them win a union contract.
The impetus for the strike came in part from a victory in Watsonville. A five-day strike there by strawberry pickers forced the American Food Company to sell its strawberry fields to Pik’d Rite, a company that already had a UFW contract. The new contract gave the workers a 20 percent wage increase, making them the highest paid farm workers in the area.
June 20, 1949
The American, British and Russian governments are all strikebreakers.
The Kremlin tried to crush the strike of Western Berlin railroad workers with violence. Last week, the Japanese railroad workers went on strike against mass firings and British workers continued their strikes for higher wages.
Douglas MacArthur, U.S. military dictator in Japan, ordered the union heads to end the strike and the government to suspend collective bargaining. The British Labor government broadcast radio demands that the railroad and dock strikers return to work.
The Kremlin commits its crimes against labor in the name of “communism,” the British government in the name of “socialism,” American imperialism in the name of capitalist “democracy.” All three are brutal despoilers of working people — enemies alike of socialism, communism and democratic rights.