July 31, 2000
UNITED NATIONS — The United Nations Special Committee on Decolonization held hearings here July 12 on the colonial status of Puerto Rico and approved a resolution that “reaffirms the inalienable right of the people of Puerto Rico to self-determination and independence” from the United States. The resolution was sponsored by the revolutionary government of Cuba.
Speaker after speaker pointed to the fact that when a U.S. warplane dropped two “stray” bombs on Vieques, killing David Sanes, it detonated a sustained wave of protests that has not stopped. Over 30 people testified, the big majority in favor of independence. They included longtime independence fighters Juan Mari Bras and Lolita Lebrón, representatives of the Puerto Rican Independence Party and the Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico, as well as James Harris, the Socialist Workers Party’s presidential candidate.
August 1, 1975
The practice of forced sterilization of poor women is becoming a nationwide scandal. In South Carolina Dr. Clovis Pierce refuses to deliver babies for women on welfare who already have three children, unless they agree to be sterilized.
Two suits have been filed against the University of Southern California Medical Center. The women charge that the center performed sterilizations without their knowledge or by means of coercion, pressure and deception. On June 18, eleven Chicanas filed a federal class-action civil rights suit charging they were the victims of involuntary sterilization. The principal attorney, Antonia Hernandez, explained that in the eyes of many of the doctors there, they are “illegal” entrants from Mexico and/or on welfare.
Many of the doctors rationalize what they’re doing with the arguments of overpopulation and diminishing resources.
July 31, 1950
A letter to the President and Members of Congress by James P. Cannon
Gentlemen:
I disagree with your actions in Korea and in my capacity as a private citizen I petition you to change your policy fundamentally, as follows: Withdraw the American troops!
Before opening the argument, I beg your permission to tell you what I think of you. You are traitors to the human race. I hate your rudeness and your brutality. The whole of the Korean people have a mortal hatred of the Wall Street “liberator.”
This is more than a fight for unification and national liberation. It is a civil war. On the one side are the workers, peasants and student youth. On the other are the landlords, usurers, capitalists and their police and political agents.
The American people well remember the War of Independence that brought this nation its freedom from British tyranny.