Today in Labor History June 21, 1982: John Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity for the attempted assassination of U.S. President Ronald Reagan in 1981. A Few years later (1990), Reagan was found not guilty by reason of dementia, when he said “I don’t recall,” 88 times during the Iran-Contra hearings, a rate of more than 10 per hour. (In 1994, he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s). Hinkley said he tried to assassinate Reagan to impress actress Jody Foster, who had played Iris, a twelve-year-old prostitute in the film Taxi Driver. In that film, Robert DeNiro’s character, Travis Bickle, tries to assassinate the president. And from all this came one of the more amusing band names from the classic era of Hardcore Punk, JFA, or Jody Foster’s Army.
Today in Labor History June 19, 1985: Gunmen opened fire on an outdoor restaurant in San Salvador’s upscale Zona Rosa, killing 13, including four U.S. Marines and two U.S. businessmen. A broadcast by Radio Venceremos, the FMLN’s pirate radio station, said: "If U.S. Army members and CIA agents died in San Salvador, it was because they came to attack our people. No one had summoned them; they died as a result of the interventionist policy carried out by President Reagan, whose intervention grows day by day. Reagan will have to assume full responsibility for his deeds." I was in El Salvador in 1993 and some of the bullet holes were still visible from the Zona Rosa attack. And, even though peace had been officially declared at this point, there were still sporadic death squad murder occurring, even while I was there. I remember going to a peace march in San Salvador that was patrolled by armed United Nations monitors. Buses had driven in from every corner of the country, displaying banners of the department or town from where they came, as well as others demanding an end to governmental impunity and assassinations.
Mark Danner wrote a really horrifying, but excellent article in the New Yorker, 1993, about the dirty war the Salvadoran government had waged against its own people. It includes the story of how guerillas pretended to allow the Radio Venceremos transmitter to get captured by the ruthless Colonel Monterosa, when in reality they had packed it full of explosive to destroy the colonel. You can read it here: http://markdanner.com/1993/12/06/the-truth-of-el-mozote/
Today in Labor History May 15, 1969: Police fought students in the Battle for People's Park at the University of California Berkeley, California. The battle was over a small strip of land that the students had claimed as community commons. Governor Ronald Reagan sent in National Guards to reclaim the Park. Police gunfire killed a bystander, James Rector, and wounded 60 others, including Alan Blanchard, who was blinded for life. Street fighting continued for 17 days. Another 150 demonstrators would be shot and wounded. The battle for the park has continued ever since, with the university continuing to claim ownership and threatening to turn the park into everything from units of student housing to a parking lot. The defenders of the park have done numerous direct actions over the past 50 years to defend the park, provide mutual aid, provide free food and clothes to unhoused folks, and offer community classes. As recently as 2024, the cops have attacked, beaten, and/or arrested park defenders.
Today in Labor History May 3. 1933: James Brown was born on this day. He was the Godfather of Soul. Mr. Dynamite. The funkiest man alive. His career began in the R&B and doo wop era of the 1950s, with the Famous Flames. In the mid- to late-60s, he was influential in the creation of soul and funk. He continued to produce some of the funkiest songs ever in the 1970s. Some of his songs were social commentaries, like “I’m Black and I’m Proud.” And he performed in civil rights benefit concerts as early as the mid-60s. However, he was politically conservative. He supported Humphrey, in ’68. And later, he supported Republican causes, including the Nixon presidency. In 1972, his concert was picketed by people with signs saying, “James Brown: Nixon’s Clown.” He also supported Reagan.
Today in labor history April 29, 1895: The U.S. sent warships to Nicaragua to "protect" US interests. This was the first of many military interventions in that country. President Taft ordered the overthrow of President Zelaya in 1909. The U.S. later invaded in 1910 and occupied the country in 1912. However, the original Sandinistas defeated that occupation in 1933. But Sandino’s victory was short-lived because Anastasio Somoza assassinated him in 1934. Somoza brutally ruled Nicaragua for the next forty years, until the new Sandinistas overthrew him in 1979. And then, again, the U.S. intervened. This time, by funding the right-wing Contras. Later, when Congress blocked aid to the Contras, Reagan secretly funded them with illegal arms shipments to Iran.
Not to mention several Amendments and a bunch of other founding flaws in the Constitution, including probably that it’s so damn hard to amend
We’re stuck with the framework of a 250 year old slave state trying to maintain its hold on world power with a very fragile fading democracy shattered by the return of a feudal #WealthInequality
Thank #Reagan for starting that. The most damaging President in living memory (Trump was just a result)
Today in Labor History March 28, 1977: AFSCME Local 1644 struck in Atlanta, Georgia, for a pay raise. This local of mostly African American sanitation workers saw labor and civil rights as part of the same struggle. They saw their fight as a continuation of the 1968 Memphis sanitation strike. For several years, they organized to get black civil rights leaders elected to public office. They succeeded in getting their man, Maynard Jackson, elected mayor of Atlanta. After all, as vice mayor, Jackson had supported their 1970 strike. Yet, in his first three years as mayor, he refused to give them a single raise. Consequently, their wages dropped below the poverty line for a family of four. Jackson accused AFSCME of attacking Black Power by challenging his authority. He fired over 900 workers by April 1 and crushed the strike by the end of April. Many believe this set the precedent for Reagan’s mass firing of 11,000 air traffic controllers during the PATCO strike, in 1981.
#UNRWA / How the Biden Administration Kneecapped the Most Essential Aid Group in Gaza and how the pause may become permanent
In January 2024, following accusations by Israel that 12 UNRWA employees were involved in a #Hamas attack, the #Biden administration paused contributions to UNRWA despite the agency's head firing the accused employees and initiating an independent investigation. Over a dozen U.S. allies followed suit, putting around $450 million in donations on hold and pushing UNRWA to its "breaking point," according to its leadership. At the same time, the U.S. has continued providing military aid to Israel, despite allegations of war crimes during its assault on Gaza.
With #Gaza is on the brink of famine, the move has imperiled UNRWA's unique capacity to deliver aid, as it operates schools, clinics, and food distribution networks serving millions of Palestinian refugees. Experts are warning that attempts to redirect funds through other organizations is not a viable solution given UNRWA's unparalleled infrastructure and institutional knowledge in the region.
He was to the right of #Reagan and #Bush when it came to unquestioning unwavering support for Israel.
He was willing to try to sink #Obama's efforts in the region, even when he was VP.
Why? Because Israel is an extension/proxy of US power in the region, as he explained back in the days when he was a younger senator and more willing to be open about his reasons.
"Why the US Continues to Fail in the Arab World" - Latest article by Dr. James J. Zogby, director of the #ArabAmericanInstitute, #MiddleEast scholar, researcher, and author.⬇️
Today in Labor History February 25, 1986: As a result of ongoing protests, Filipino dictator Ferdinand Marcos begged President Ronald Reagan for advice. Reagan told him to “cut and cut cleanly.” That evening, Marcos and his wife Imelda fled the nation aboard a U.S. air force plane, after 20 years of rule. He and his family, and an entourage of 90 people (mostly servants), arrived in Hawaii the next day. They brought 22 crates of cash valued at $717 million, 300 crates of jewelry of unknown value, $4 million worth of unset precious gems, $200,000 in gold bullion, $1 million in Philippine pesos and deposit slips for $124 million in banks in the Cayman Islands. Plus, countless crates of shoes. The Marcos’s hold the Guinness record for the largest ever theft from a government. Their son, Bong Bong Marcos, is the current president of the Philippines. His vice president is Sara Duterte, daughter of the Philippines last president, the violently repressive Rodrigo Duterte, who oversaw the assassinations of well over 1,000 street children and alleged drug dealers. Under Ferdinand Marcos, there were over 3,000 documented extrajudicial murders, 35,000 documented victims of torture and tens of thousands of people imprisoned.
"Historically, the antitax movement was steeped in racism and nativism. Cranky well-to-do white people resented having to pay more in taxes to underwrite welfare programs that tended to help people of color, or fund public schools attended in the main by children of immigrants."
"Ronald Reagan, who took an axe to income taxes in his first term, constantly played on these racist tropes. I was not yet eight years old during the 1980 campaign, and even I remember him blathering about a mythological welfare queen—a woman we knew to be Black even though he never said so, and who had gamed the system, and who presided over a fleet of Cadillacs."
" #Biden can pick up the phone and end the bombing of Gaza today" - Superb opinion piece, must read, on the #US ability to end the #genocide in #Gaza by #Israel, by Mehdi Hassan in today's #Guardian. (I have the greatest respect for him, moreso since he was fired by #MSNBC for being too good and honest a commentator and reporter). As Mehdi points out, #Reagan (of all people!) did exactly this when Israel was going to destroy #Lebanon in 1982. Reagan picked up the phone and the #Israeli bombing stopped 20 minutes later.
"Picture the scene. An Israeli prime minister launches airstrikes on an #Arab population. Civilians are killed in their thousands. An #American president, stunned and shocked by the scenes of carnage on his TV screen, makes a call to his Israeli counterpart. And … within minutes … the bombing is over.
Sound crazy? Or maybe simplistic? Perhaps naive, even?
Yet, the year was 1982. What was supposed to have been a limited incursion into southern Lebanon by the Israeli military over the summer, under the leadership of Ariel Sharon, then defense minister (remember him?), morphed into a months-long siege of Beirut and an all-out assault on the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Between June and August, the Israelis cut off food, water and power to the Lebanese capital in a brutal attempt to destroy the PLO, whose fighters were holed up inside a tunnel network below Beirut. (Sound familiar?)
On 12 August, in what would later be dubbed “Black Thursday”, Israeli jets bombed Beirut for 11 consecutive hours, killing more than 100 people. That same day, a horrified Ronald Reagan placed a phone call to Menachem Begin, then Israeli prime minister, to “express his outrage” and condemn the “needless destruction and bloodshed”.
“Menachem, this is a holocaust,” Reagan told Begin.
Yes, an American leader used the H-word in conversation with an Israeli leader. Begin responded with sarcasm, telling the US president that “I think I know what a holocaust is.” Reagan, however, didn’t budge, insisting on the “imperative” for a ceasefire in Beirut.
Twenty minutes. That’s all the time it took for Begin to call back and tell the president he had ordered Sharon to stop the bombing. It was over. “I didn’t know I had that kind of power,” a surprised Reagan told an aide, upon putting down the phone."