December 18, 2000
The assault on working people by the U.S. government over the past two decades has hit working-class women particularly hard. From the federal legislation that ended Aid to Families with Dependent Children in 1996, working women and their children have been eliminated from the kind of protection that Social Security had guaranteed for children, women, workers injured or thrown out of a job, and others.
AFDC and related programs were part of a social safety net won through the mass labor upsurge in the 1930s and extended through the battles for civil rights and women’s rights in the 1960s and 1970s.
The labor movement needs to defend every single gain the working class has made as part of the fight against the devastating conditions being imposed by the employers, their government, and the normal workings of the capitalist system.
December 19, 1975
BOSTON — Racist vigilantes invaded the Black community this morning Dec. 10, firebombing the headquarters of the NAACP. The home of a Black minister was also firebombed. Black students in South Boston High School were assaulted. Yesterday, bomb threats compelled the evacuation of the National Center for Afro-American Artists.
The wave of terrorist attacks followed the announcement by U.S. District Court Judge Arthur Garrity that he was placing South Boston High School in receivership.
At a news conference, Maceo Dixon, a coordinator of the National Student Coalition Against Racism, urged a readiness “to picket and march, to demonstrate and rally, to demand that these lawbreakers — from the corridor gangs of young racist toughs to their adult backers and the politicians who egg them on — be dealt the full force of the law.”
December 18, 1950
AKRON, Ohio — More than 100 mothers of GIs in Korea have signed a petition to President Truman, pleading for him to withdraw all troops from Korea. The idea is reported to be spreading from Akron to other communities.
The petition was drawn up by Mrs. Richard Abicht, mother of two and sister-in-law of a 17-year-old Marine. After the newspapers announced it, she was flooded with telephone calls of support from wives and relatives of men in the service.
“They take our boys to fight and die in a land unbeknown to the majority of the people until it was invaded. … They battled their way to the 38th parallel, which to our boys meant ‘home again.’ But, no. They had to fight on — objective the Manchurian border. And why?
“Next the Chinese. … It develops now into a battle where young men must fight, die and suffer the pangs of Hell.”