August 20, 2001
ALGIERS — The 15th World Festival of Youth and Students opened Aug. 8 here with some 6,000 delegates from over 100 countries around the world. At the opening ceremony delegates from each country marched into the stadium, many carrying flags and banners.
One of the largest delegations hails from Cuba with 750 participants, including 223 youth from 56 countries who are studying in Cuba. Among the participants was a U.S. delegation that carried signs reading, “U.S. Hands Off the Middle East,” “Free the Five Cuban Patriots in U.S. Prisons,” “U.S. Navy Out of Vieques,” and “Cancel the Third World Debt.”
The festival will end with a three-day anti-imperialist tribunal where delegates will make presentations about struggles against imperialism and present evidence of the brutality and crimes of the U.S., French, British and other imperialist powers.
August 27, 1976
The government is stepping up its enforcement of a new version of the Fugitive Slave Act — a law that punishes people for “harboring an illegal alien.” Two San Antonio Chicano activists have been charged with this crime.
Who are the “illegals”? The capitalists tell us “illegals” are dangerous. The source of all evils from unemployment to syphilis. But the undocumented workers are the victims — not the cause — of the ills of this society. They’re driven to this country by hunger, by the superexploitation of their homelands carried out by American corporations.
The capitalists treat them like cattle, letting them enter when unemployment is low, shipping them back when it is high. Since they’re “illegals,” these workers have no rights. They are exploited mercilessly. All working people have a stake in the fight to defend undocumented workers.
August 20, 1951
While President Harry Truman bemoans and tries to blame his Republican opponents, in particular Sen. Joseph McCarthy, for the spreading reign of terror in America, more repressions are being prepared in Congress to extend the witch-hunt deeper and deeper.
Sen. Patrick McCarran (Dem.) has introduced a bill, which, if passed, will spread the purge into every shop in the country. McCarran proposes to empower employers to fire “without liability” workers whose names appear on any Federal or state list of “subversives,” or who are charged with belonging to such groups.
Other open union-busting amendments will make it unlawful for any member of a communist or “front” group to hold office in a union. This widening of the attack on the labor unions and our democratic rights is still another warning to all sincere defenders of civil rights: Stop the witch-hunt now!