[Tom Mooney Reprieved (in 1918), Oil Embargo Layoffs (1973),
Vaccine for Millions (1803), "Unrestrained, Indiscriminate Police
Violence" (1968), Monroe Doctrine is Too Old (1823), NYC Says No to
Lynch Law (1933), Slaverys Enemies Organize (1833)]
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THIS WEEK IN PEOPLE’S HISTORY, NOV 28-DEC 4  
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_ Tom Mooney Reprieved (in 1918), Oil Embargo Layoffs (1973), Vaccine
for Millions (1803), "Unrestrained, Indiscriminate Police Violence"
(1968), Monroe Doctrine is Too Old (1823), NYC Says 'No' to Lynch Law
(1933), Slavery's Enemies Organize (1833) _

New York City's Union Square crowded with supporters of frame-up
victim Tom Mooney on March 9, 1918.,

 

_TOM MOONEY REPRIEVED, SORT OF_

105 YEARS AGO, on November 28, 1918, the governor of California
commuted the death sentence faced by Tom Mooney, the charismatic
Socialist union organizer.

Mooney had been sentenced to die after a brazenly unfair trial in San
Francisco. Of all the leftists who had ever been railroaded to jail or
the executioner, Mooney stood out, because almost as soon as his trial
ended, the "evidence" used to convict him was revealed unequivocally
to have been such a tissue of lies that no unbiased person could have
considered him to be anything but the victim of a kangaroo court..

The outrageousness of Mooney's conviction and sentence provoked an
international outcry against his soon-to-occur execution, an outcry
that even had the support of President Woodrow Wilson and his Attorney
General and many others like them who  were certainly no leftists.
Huge, angry meetings demanding Mooney's freedom had taken place in all
major west coast cities as well as Chicago, Manhattan, Washington,
D.C., and London. A nationwide general strike to support Mooney,
scheduled to take place December 2, was called off when the governor
acted.

But with his sentence commuted, Mooney, who was 25 at the time, now
faced life in prison after having been convicted by infamously
perjured testimony and doctored evidence.  He eventually received the
full pardon he deserved and was released, but not until 1939, after 22
years in prison. He was a free man for only three years before dying.

This 1917 pamphlet makes clear why even Woodrow Wilson advocated
clemency:
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_1973 OIL EMBARGO COSTS AUTO WORKERS' JOBS_

50 YEARS AGO, on November 29, 1973, six weeks after the Organization
of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) put a total embargo on
U.S.-bound oil shipments, a critical shortage of gasoline in the U.S.
began to cause real pain. The Chrysler Corporation was one of the
first Fortune 500 companies to acknowledge the crisis. In the short
time since the embargo began, sales of gas-guzzling Chrysler cars had
fallen to near zero, so Chrysler announced that it was furloughing
some 38,000 auto workers and closing one of its biggest assembly
plants in order to convert the plant to compact-car production. It was
a bitter pill for Chrysler workers to swallow at the beginning of the
Christmas holiday season. It was also a harbinger of things to come as
Chrysler started to tailspin toward near-bankruptcy.
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_MILLIONS GET SMALLPOX VACCINE IN 1803. REALLY?_

220 YEARS AGO, on November 30, 1803, a truly heroic international
public health initiative to prevent smallpox got started, with funds
provided by King Charles IV of Spain. Over the course of the next ten
years, the Royal Philanthropic Vaccine Expedition successfully
vaccinated millions of people in China, the Philippines, Mexico,
Guatemala, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Cuba,
Puerto Rico, the Canary Islands -- and the territories that are now
California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas -- against what was then the
world's most deadly and feared infectious disease. It also established
scores of vaccine clinics, which continued to administer vaccine for
many years after the Expedition had departed. Its great success so
long ago, performed at no cost to vaccine recipients, remains a source
of wonder to this day. [link removed]

_"UNRESTRAINED, INDISCRIMINATE POLICE VIOLENCE" IN CHICAGO_

55 YEARS AGO, on December 1, 1968, the National Commission on the
Causes and Prevention of Violence, which had been appointed by Lyndon
Johnson after the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., and
Robert Kennedy released a report that was tangential to the
Commission's work, but caused a national sensation nevertheless. The
324-page report about the violence that had occurred during the
National Democratic in August 1968 was titled _Rights in Conflict_.

No summary can do _Rights in Conflict _justice. Its first three
paragraphs, quoted here verbatim, provide a sense of why it was page-1
news.

"During the week of the Democratic National Convention, the Chicago
police were the targets of mounting provocation by both word and act.
It took the form of obscene epithets, and of rocks, sticks, bathroom
titles, and even human feces hurled at police by demonstrators. Some
of these acts had been planned; others were spontaneous or were
themselves provoked by police action. Furthermore, the police had been
put on edge by widely published threats of attempts to disrupt both
the city and the Convention.

"That was the nature of the provocation. The nature of the response
was unrestrained and indiscriminate police violence on many occasions,
particularly at night.

"That violence was made all the more shocking by the fact that it was
often inflicted upon persons who had broken no law, disobeyed no
order, made no threat. These included peaceful demonstrators,
onlookers, and large numbers of residents who were simply passing
through, or happened to live in, the areas where confrontations were
occurring. Newsmen and photographers were singled out for assault, and
their equipment deliberately damaged. Fundamental police training was
ignored; and officers, when on the scene, were often unable to control
their men. As on police officer put it: 'What happened didn't have
anything to do with police work.'"

The link leads to complete text of _Rights in Conflict_
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_200 YEARS OF THE MONROE DOCTRINE IS 200 TOO MANY_

200 YEARS AGO, on December 2, 1823, U.S. President James Monroe
articulated the policy that came to be known as the Monroe Doctrine.
 According to Monroe, the United States rejected any European effort
to establish a colony west of the Atlantic Ocean or to interfere with
any independent government there. Monroe thereby set forth the U.S
claim to a sphere of influence covering everything from Alaska to
Patagonia, an area twice the size of the largest existing sphere of
influence, claimed by the Russian Empire. Monroe's unspoken corollary
was that the U.S. alone had the right to determine what was allowed in
the same area. Two decades later the U.S, went to war against Mexico
to enforce its claim that more than half of Mexico's territory -- what
is now California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas -- belonged to the
U.S. The list of similar enforcement actions is too long for this
space; it includes the separation of Cuba and Puerto Rico from Spain
in 1898, the invention of Panama, (a good place for a canal), in 1903,
the installation of a new, pro-U.S., Nicaraguan government in 1910,
the eight-year U.S. occupation of the Dominican Republic that ended in
1924 and the 19-year occupation of Haiti that ended in 1934, etc.,
etc., etc.
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_NEW YORKERS SAY 'NO' TO LYNCH LAW_

90 YEARS AGO, on December 3, 1933, more than 1500 people, the majority
of whom were Black, filled the Great Hall at New York's City College
to capacity to denounce a particularly infamous lynching, to demand
enactment of a federal law against lynching, and to demand that the
nine Black youths who had been convicted of rape in Scottsboro,
Alabama, receive due process from appellate courts.

The recent lynching, which took place six days earlier in San Jose,
Calif., had attracted a crowd of at least 5000 people, including
scores of newspaper reporters and photographers, plus a radio reporter
who described the event in a live broadcast. As a result, the lynching
-- whose victims were two white men accused of kidnapping and murder
-- was a major, multi-day news story all over the U.S. The result was
an outpouring of protest throughout the U.S., largely because the
lynching had the explicit approval of the Governor of California, who
said that if a lynching took place, he "would pardon the lynchers."
After the event, the governor said, "It is the best lesson California
has ever given the country."
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_SLAVERY'S ENEMIES GET ORGANIZED_

190 YEARS AGO, on December 4, 1833, the American Anti-Slavery Society
was founded at a 3-day convention in Philadelphia. Abolitionists of
many stripes rallied to the new organization, which soon attracted
250,000 members in 1350 local chapters. Beginning almost immediately,
the AASS and its supporters withstood wave after wave of racist
violence, starting with a full week of deadly attacks in Manhattan.
The Manhattan attack was just the beginning. During 25 years or
organizing, AASS supporters were the targets of murderers and
arsonists, including three days of unchecked racist rioting in
Philadelphia in 1834, the 1837 murder of abolitionist Elijah Lovejoy
in Illinois, and the 1851 abduction of abolitionist minister Calvin
Fairbank from Indiana by Kentucky racists who forced Fairbank to stand
trial in Kentucky where he was sentenced to 15 years hard labor.
Through it all, the AASS remained most effective anti-slavery
organization in the U.S. until the founding of the explicitly
anti-slavery Republican Party in 1854.
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* U.S. history
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* Labor Movement
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* OPEC
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* smallpox
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* 1968 Chicago police riot
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* U.S. imperialism
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* Monroe Doctrine
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* lynchings
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* abolitionism
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