[[link removed]]

THIS WEEK IN PEOPLE’S HISTORY, JUN 4–10, 2025  
[[link removed]]


 

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ Farmworkers’ Unions Win a Big One (1975), The Nixon Gang Gets
Down to Business (1970), A Deportation that Backfired (1950), Popular
Justice Is No Crime (2020), Whitewashing the CIA Isn’t Easy (1975) _


,

 

_FARMWORKERS’ UNIONS WIN A BIG ONE_

JUNE 4 IS THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY of the enactment of the California
Agricultural Labor Relations Act, the first U.S. law to establish the
collective bargaining rights of farmworkers. 

California’s 1975 law to give farmworkers’ unions legal status
came more than four decades after passage of the National Labor
Relations Act (NLRA), which specifically denied its protections to
agricultural workers and to domestic workers. 

Perhaps not everyone knows that the NLRA’s exclusion of agricultural
workers and domestic workers was solely due to racist prejudice. In
1935 Congress was not ready to give two majority-black groups of
workers any rights they could assert against their employers, most of
whom were white.  

Every effort to correct that result of racist prejudice during the
Civil Rights Movement’s legislative heyday came to nothing.

In 50 years since California acted, 13 more states have given legal
status to agricultural workers’ unions. They are Arizona, Colorado,
Hawaii, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New
Jersey, New York, Oregon, Washington, and Wisconsin. It is interesting
(but hardly surprising) that Louisiana is the only former Confederate
state that has legalized farm-workers’ unions.
[link removed]
[[link removed]]

 

_THE NIXON GANG GETS DOWN TO BUSINESS_

JUNE 5 IS THE 55TH ANNIVERSARY of one of the decisive moments on the
road to the Watergate scandal, the secret first meeting of the so
called Interagency Committee on Intelligence, the members of which
were President Nixon, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, CIA Director
Richard Helms, National Security Agency Director Admiral Noel Gaynor,
Defense Intelligence Agency Director General Donald Bennett, White
House Chief of Staff Bob Haldeman, and White House aide Tom Charles
Huston.

The seven men agreed that the nation was in a crisis that could only
be resolved by a coordinated attack on the antiwar movement, the
counter-cultural movement and the political left. They agreed that the
federal government needed to systematically ignore the Fourth
Amendment’s prohibition on illegal searches and wiretaps and to
establish concentration camps to imprison dissidents, leftists and
anti-war activists. They put White House aide Huston in charge of
producing a written plan for implementing that program.
[link removed]
[[link removed]]

 

_A DEPORTATION THAT BACKFIRED_

JUNE 6 IS THE 75TH ANNIVERSARY of a moment that echoes loudly in the
current Age of Xenophobic Authoritarianism, when the U.S. government
took the first step in the shameful process of deporting an immigrant
worker for no good reason. 

On June 6, 1950, the U.S. Army revoked the security clearance of one
of its own officers, Col. Qian Xuesen, who had been a founder of the
Jet Propulsion Laboratory at California Institute of Technology and
was a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the U.S. Air Force. 

At the time of the Army’s action, Qian, who had studied and worked
in the U.S. for 15 years, was Professor of Jet Propulsion at Caltech
and the director of Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Center. In addition to
his being a leader in the fields of aerospace engineering and
cybernetics, he had also originated the field of engineering
cybernetics. 

Qian, who was never charged with a crime, lost his security clearance
when he refused to testify in the loyalty-related trial of friend and
colleague Sidney Weinbaum. Soon after that, Qian was arrested on
suspicion he was involved in espionage. He was released after an FBI
investigation found no evidence Qian had ever broken the law. The
simple fact of his arrest led to the order that he be deported to
China.

When he arrived in China, Qian, who was by far the most experienced
rocket scientist in that country, quickly became director of the
country’s ballistic missile and nuclear weapons development, a
position he held until he retired in 1991.
[link removed]
[[link removed]]

 

_POPULAR JUSTICE IS NO CRIME_

JUNE 7 IS THE FIFTH ANNIVERSARY of a successful protest demonstration
in Bristol, England, in support of the mushrooming protests concerning
the murder of George Floyd. 

Located on England’s west coast, Bristol had been a major hub for
the trans-Atlantic slave trade.  As a result it continues to be the
home of many buildings that were once part of the slave trade’s
infrastructure and contains numerous monuments to major slave
traders.  

One of those monuments was a larger-than-life bronze statue of slave
trader Edward Colston standing atop a 10-foot limestone base in the
center of Bristol. On June 7, 2020, demonstrators pulled the statue
off its base and dumped it into Bristol Harbor.

Three men and a woman were arrested and charged with criminal
vandalism. At their trial they did not deny having toppled the statute
but did deny that doing so was a crime. All of them were acquitted and
released. [link removed]
[[link removed]]

 

_WHITEWASHING THE CIA ISN’T EASY_

JUNE 10 IS THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY of the release of the final report of
the President’s Commission on CIA Activities Within the United
States. 

The President’s Commission had been created at the same time both
the Senate and the House of Representatives began full-scale
investigations of extensive disclosures that the CIA had for years
been heavily involved in spying on dissident individuals and
organizations inside the U.S., despite the legal prohibition on
domestic CIA operations. 

As expected, the White House-led investigation in 1975 painted a much
prettier picture of illegal CIA activities than did either of the
Congressional efforts. The presidential study could not even bring
itself to characterize the CIA’s domestic spying as illegal,
preferring to describe it as having “exceeded statutory
authority.”

More than 35 years after the release of the Presidential
Commission’s report, it was disclosed that it had been heavily
edited by Dick Cheney, who was then the White House Chief of Staff and
had no official role in the report’s drafting.  Among Cheney’s
edits was the complete omission of an 86-page section entitled “CIA
Assassination Plots.”
[link removed]
[[link removed]] 

For more People's History, visit
[link removed]
[[link removed]]

* Farm Workers
[[link removed]]
* Watergate scandal
[[link removed]]
* Deportation
[[link removed]]
* George Floyd Protests
[[link removed]]
* Central Intelligence Agency
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]
Manage subscription
[[link removed]]
Visit xxxxxx.org
[[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 




[link removed]

To unsubscribe, click the following link:
[link removed]