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Vol. 82/No. 19 May 14, 2018
25, 50 and 75 Years Ago
May 17, 1993
KAYENTA, Navajo Reservation, Arizona — United Mine Workers of America
Local 1924 president Eugenie Bodonie told the Militant that the local’s
membership voted unanimously to give eastern coal miners “full support
in the BCOA [Bituminous Coal Operators Association] negotiations, even
if it means going on strike.”
The February 9 vote took place in three local shift meetings attended by
more than 300 members, some 80 percent of the union, Bodonie said.
“Whatever they’ll do back east they’ll try to do to us in the future,”
Bodonie explained. “This is the first year of our five-year contract. We
are protecting ourselves from what Peabody will do four years down the
road.” Peabody mines east of the Mississippi River were the target of
the February strike. The massive Kayenta strip mine is Peabody’s largest
mine in the West.
May 17, 1968
Last month Oakland, Calif., police murdered one member of the Black
Panther Party and wounded two others. Now the cops have been exonerated
and eight Black Panther party members have been indicted on a trumped-up
charge of “attempted murder.” Once again the victim becomes the
“criminal” and the criminal the victim.
The eight Panthers were indicted April 25 on charges of attempted murder
and assault with a deadly weapon. The indictment grew out of the April 6
confrontation where the police killed Panther treasurer Bobby Hutton, 18.
The Alameda County grand jury which indicted the eight Panthers asserted
the cops acted “lawfully” when they shot Hutton because, they claim, “he
did not heed commands to halt.”
The cops did not order Hutton to “halt” but told him to run to a squad
car. As he was running, the cops shot him.
May 15, 1943
May 10 marked the tenth anniversary of the infamous book-burning night
when the Nazi party “cleansed” German culture of “subversive”
literature, including the works of Leon Trotsky. The Nazis and their
capitalist masters hoped that the burning of liberal and Marxist
literature would remove all anti-capitalist thoughts from the minds of
the workers.
What the Nazis failed to understand was that the workers’ struggles
against capitalism were not primarily the product of written words, but
the bankruptcy of the system itself. So long as the root cause of
poverty, unemployment and war remains, the workers will continue to
fight for their right to peace and bread — despite bonfire fed by
“subversive literature.”
The burning of “dangerous thoughts” cannot prop up this capitalist
system and its terror, hunger, and bloodshed.
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