January 29, 2001
HAVANA — “The Association of Combatants of the Cuban Revolution (ACRC) was created during the most difficult moment Cuba has yet seen,” Brig. Gen. Harry Villegas pointed out. The ACRC brings together in a single mass organization more than 330,000 Cubans who have been on the front lines of revolutionary battles from the 1930s to today.
Villegas, a brigadier general of the Cuban armed forces, spoke of the efforts to pass that legacy of struggle on to new generations. In doing so “we link together the youngest and the not-so-young.”
April 2001 will mark the 40th anniversary of the victory over the U.S.-organized invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. In neighborhoods and schools across the country, those who fought in the historic battle of Playa Girón, as it is known here, will make that triumph over U.S. imperialism come alive.
January 30, 1976
Haunted for years by prospects of Dixie justice, Robert F. Williams, who turned himself over to North Carolina authorities to face a trumped-up 1961 kidnapping indictment, was freed of all charges Jan. 16 when the prosecution said its witness was too ill to testify. “They’ve never had a case,” Williams remarked on the decision to drop charges.
In its decision to unstrap the fourteen-year burden from the Black rights fighter, the court removed a torment under which the Williams family was forced out of their home into exile abroad and under which Williams was stigmatized as a fugitive from justice.
The charges grew out of Williams’s leadership role in the Monroe community during the early days of the civil rights movement. Williams was instrumental in organizing many of the struggles of Monroe Blacks against segregated public facilities.
January 29, 1951
The President of the United States, members of the Congress and the State Department are violating the will of the American people by refusing to stop the Korean war now.
The Gallup poll of Jan. 23 reports that two thirds of the American people want to “pull our troops out of Korea as fast as possible.” Almost one half are sure it was a mistake to send troops to Korea in the first place. The American people want an end to the Korean atrocity, but the President and Congress scorn their pleas.
Let every man and woman 18 years and over vote on war and peace. The people have the right not only to vote for officials, but to vote on the issues of life and death.
Consult the people! Consult those who have to do the fighting. They are the ones who suffer. They are forced to kill and be killed. LET THE PEOPLE DECIDE!