March 27, 2000
At the Barakova Mine in Ukraine, 81 miners were killed March 11 in one of the republic’s deadliest mining disasters. In addition to those killed, four escaped and several more were injured. Some 200 others escaped other parts of the mine. Methane gas is believed to be the cause of the explosion.
The Ukrainian coal industry is the most dangerous in the world. Sixty-three miners died in an explosion in the nearby Donetsk region two years ago. There are some 400,000 coal miners in Ukraine. The number of miners killed on the job in 1998 was 360 and in 1999 it was 274.
Dmytro Kalitventsev, head of the Independent Miners Union local there, blamed mine officials for turning a blind eye to safety violations to increase production. Actual output at the mine exceeded capacity, according to Kalitventsev. “These extra tons are paid for with the miners’ lives.”
March 28, 1975
WASHINGTON — At a news conference here Political Rights Defense Fund National Secretary Syd Stapleton, pointing to the two-foot-high stack of documents, told reporters, “Here we have in J. Edgar Hoover’s own words the proof of a sweeping illegal campaign to destroy two legal organizations and to disrupt the civil rights, antiwar, and student movements.”
The FBI was ordered by a federal judge to release the documents as part of pretrial discovery in a suit filed by the SWP and YSA in 1973. The Cointelpro files offer the most detailed picture to date of the FBI “disruption” program, which was also aimed at the Black Panthers, “New Left,” Communist party, and others. The FBI claims this program was ended in 1971.
The documents received are so heavily censored that in some cases several entire pages of the reports have been blotted out.
March 27, 1950
The unemployed have every reason to expect the backing of the powerful organized labor movement. But instead of getting an effective program and a fighting leadership, the unemployed find themselves thrown completely on their own pitiful resources. The responsibility must be placed on the shoulders of the top official union leaders. They have failed even to fight for the demand for a 30-hour week with no reduction in take-home pay.
With unemployment already beyond the six-million mark, the need is urgent for the adoption of a social program. Coupled with the demand for the 30-hour week, an indicated part of such a program is the launching of large-scale public works and housing projects under the control of workers’ committees and with the payment of full union wage scales.
Such a program can be carried out only by mass action.