September 18, 2000
WASHINGTON — They came from cities and towns around the country. Thousands of people converged on the nation’s capital August 26 to demand an end to cop brutality and harassment.
The march, which drew between 10,000 and 15,000 people, was the first nationwide protest against police brutality. A number of those marching, relatives of young people killed by cops, have been fighting for justice for years. Speakers included Abner Louima, who was sodomized and tortured by New York cops in 1997, and the parents of Amadou Diallo, gunned down last year in a barrage of 41 bullets by police in the Bronx.
“The unions should take more responsibility for actions like this. They have the numbers to really speak for the masses of people,” said Maureen Lewis, a lab technician who came on a bus organized by her union, Service Employees International Union Local 1199.
September 19, 1975
An estimated 5,000 persons, including 200 military police and troops from various army, navy, and air force units, marched in front of the presidential palace in Lisbon Sept. 1 to protest against sending more Portuguese troops to the African colony of Angola.
The protesting troops chanted with the other demonstrators, “No more troops to Angola!” “Bring our soldiers home!” and “No to a new colonial war!” A meeting of 500 soldiers of the Lisbon military police unit passed a resolution calling for a collective refusal to serve in Angola.
The government has also met with continued resistance from the Angolan nationalist organizations. The Movimento Popular de Libertacao de Angola (People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola) warned that the MPLA “will definitively assume total governmental responsibility on Nov. 11, 1975.”
September 18, 1950
No one with even a slight knowledge of military science would have considered it remarkable if American forces had quickly halted the North Korean army. What is considered “miraculous” by most military analysts is that the Koreans have been able to continue the offensive and reduce the U.S. beachhead by a third.
The question that has the specialists in the Pentagon burning the midnight oil, is: What is the mysterious source of power for this Korean army, composed largely of backward peasants, which by ordinary military standards should have been shattered weeks ago?
The answer is simple: The power is the Korean people. Nothing throws more light on the real nature of U.S. intervention than the fact that the people America is supposedly “defending from invasion” are supporting the “invaders” and look on their “defenders” as foreign destroyers.