January 8, 2001
Working people and all defenders of democratic rights have a stake in joining the fight led by the NAACP to defend voting rights. The NAACP says it has 486 separate reports of problems faced by U.S.-born Blacks, Haitians and other members of oppressed nationalities, mostly working people.
Winning and extending the right to vote has been a hard-fought struggle by working people since the founding of the U.S. The fight for universal suffrage has strengthened the working class.
The violations are only part of the efforts to disenfranchise working people. In addition, a growing number of states deny all voting rights for people convicted of felony offenses — including those who have already served out their sentences. In Florida and Alabama, for example, 31 percent of all Black men are permanently barred from voting because of felony convictions.
January 16, 1976
PITTSBURGH — Almost all members of the Pittsburgh Federation of Teachers are continuing their strike, now in its sixth week, in defiance of a court injunction issued Jan. 3. “Let me state unequivocally,” PFT President Albert Finjunction said in response to the court order, “that the strike will not end as a result of this. It will only end when we have negotiated and ratified new contracts.”
In a show of strength and solidarity, some 1,800 teachers walked the picket lines in nine-degree weather starting at seven o’clock this morning. Three thousand gathered for a rally later in the morning.
The PFT is seeking salary increases, a limited cost-of-living escalator clause, a guarantee against layoffs and a limit on class size. The teachers have won support on the picket lines from students, parents groups and other unions.
January 8, 1951
The “great debate” over foreign policy is without precedent in Twentieth Century America. The American people feel the nation drifting rudderless in a swift tide toward military and economic disasters.
Under the impact of the Korean defeat, the American people — who previously left such matters to the professionals in the business of settling world policy — have entered the debate. They want no global war which augurs only a calamitous future of indefinite duration and little hope of ultimate success.
As American workers break the bonds which tie them to the bankrupt political machines of the old capitalist parties, they will forge new bonds of solidarity with the oppressed of all lands. Together they will find the only real solution to the crisis into which our country and theirs have been plunged — the program of world socialism.