May 8, 2000
The widely presumed fact that the reactionary South Korean regime executed thousands of political prisoners and civilians without a trial during the years surrounding the 1950-53 Korean War have been verified through recently released “top secret” documents in Washington.
Several U.S. and South Korean military personnel have come forward with testimonies that match what South Korean victims’ families have been saying for years.
“The Americans cannot escape the charge that they condoned, if not supported, the massacres,” said U.S. National Archives researcher Lee Do-young. “After all, those soldiers killed these people with rifles and bullets the Americans gave them.” Reports of mass shootings were circulating routinely among the Army brass, researchers found. Even U.S. General Douglas MacArthur knew about them.
May 9, 1975
The following statement was adopted May 1 by the National Committee of the Socialist Workers Party.
The world working class is celebrating the victory of the Vietnamese rebels. The Socialist Workers Party hails this victory, which has come after heroic struggle against a succession of imperialist powers. It is a victory for all those throughout the world who are fighting oppression and exploitation.
The heroic resistance helped promote an international antiwar movement. The brutality of the Pentagon’s military onslaught revealed for the whole world the terrible lengths to which Wall Street will go in order to maintain and advance the capitalist system.
The American people’s opposition to imperialist military adventures is part of the internationalism of the exploited all over the globe who have a common interest in struggling against a common enemy.
May 8, 1950
May Day had its origin in the struggle of the American working class for the eight hour day. The world Socialist movement later proclaimed May 1 as an international workers holiday. The laboring classes rallied under Karl Marx’s unifying slogan to declare war to the death on their capitalist exploiters: “Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains.”
The governors of 40 states this year issued “Loyalty Day” proclamations contrived to besmirch the memory of those American working-class fighters in 1886 in Chicago who saw their leaders framed up and hung in a struggle that commanded the solidarity of their comrades abroad.
The SWP in meetings throughout the country is paying homage to our martyred dead and pledging anew to carry through to victory the glorious struggle begun by the early pioneers of the revolutionary socialist movement.