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THIS WEEK IN PEOPLE’S HISTORY, SEPT 25-OCT 1  
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_ Bill of Rights Birthday (1789), Nixon’s Nightmare (1969), Resist
Illegitimate Authority (1967), “Proletarians of All Countries,
Unite!” (1864), Fighting for Free Speech (1909), Racist Violence at
Its Worst (1919), When Students Fight, They Win (1964) _

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_THE BILL OF RIGHTS’ BIRTHDAY_

235 YEARS AGO, after nine weeks of debate, on Sept. 25, 1789, the U.S.
Congress approved 12 Constitutional Amendments and forwarded them to
the states for ratification. The required number of states ratified
ten (not 12) of them, thereby adding what is known as the Bill of
Rights to the Constitution. 

If you’re interested in learning more about the Bill of Rights, take
this very informative 10-question quiz, courtesy of the New York
Public Library:
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For extra credit, identify the speaker in the photo above. The answer
is at the very bottom of this page. 

_NIXON’S PHONY BRAVE FACE_

55 YEARS AGO, on Sept. 26, 1969, three weeks before what would be the
largest-ever anti-war protests in the U.S., including 250,000
demonstrators in Washington, D.C., streets. President Nixon was asked
at a White House press conference, “what is your view concerning the
demonstrations being planned for this fall against the Vietnam War?”
He replied, with a scowl, “under no circumstances will I be affected
by it.” 

He was lying; at the time he spoke, Nixon, Henry Kissinger, and
Nixon’s entire cabinet were desperately trying to stem the rising
tide of anti-war sentiment, the same opposition to the war that had
torpedoed the reelection chances of the previous president, Lyndon
Johnson.
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_RESIST ILLEGITIMATE AUTHORITY!_

57 YEARS AGO, on Sept. 27, 1967, a watershed moment in the movement to
stop the U.S. war against Vietnam occurred when a 9-point manifesto, A
Call to Resist Illegitimate Authority, with hundreds of signatures. 

It declared “the war is unconstitutional and illegal. Congress has
not declared a war as required by the Constitution.” Additionally,
“this war violates international agreements, treaties and principles
of law which the United States Government has solemnly endorsed.”
Click here to see the call’s full text:
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_“PROLETARIANS OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE!”_

160 YEARS AGO, on Sept. 28, 1864, a large and highly disparate group
of radical workers and intellectuals – including Owenites and
Chartists from England, Proudhonists and Blanquists from France,
nationalists from Ireland and Poland, Italian Mazzinists, and German
Socialists – packed into London’s St. Martin’s Hall where they
established the International Workingmen's Association, which was
later known as the First International. 

It was the first organization of its kind. Almost certainly the
best-remembered of the organizing group was 46-year-old Karl Marx, who
had been living in London exile for 15 years. After the founding
meeting, Marx was selected as a member of a committee that drafted the
organization’s program and constitution. Marx remained a dominant
figure in the First International until it ceased to exist in 1876.
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_FREE SPEECH IS WORTH FIGHTING FOR_

115 YEARS AGO, on Sept. 29, 1909, Industrial Workers of the World
(IWW) organizers in Missoula, Montana, unveiled a brand-new civil
disobedience tactic that was so effective that it quickly became a
trademark of IWW organizing campaigns. 

The tactic, which was to pick a free-speech fight with the police,
worked like this: a single IWW organizer would stand in a public space
and start to give a speech denouncing the bosses or the police or the
capitalist system or any contemporary issue. IWW organizers, who were
known as Wobblies, were good speakers, so a small crowd would gather
to listen. Before long, a police officer would order the speaker to be
quiet, either because a permit was required, or just because the cop
didn’t like what he or she was saying.  

When the speaker continued anyway, the cop would arrest the speaker
(for disorderly conduct or breaking a law against public speaking) and
take him or her to the police station. Immediately another Wobbly
would take the speaker’s place and continue the anti-capitalist
harangue. When speaker number two was arrested and taken away, speaker
number three would continue the speech and soon be arrested. And so it
would continue, as speaker after speaker was arrested and immediately
replaced.  

Free-speech fights were effective because passers-by wanted to listen
to people who got arrested for doing nothing more than speaking,
especially when one of the subjects of their speeches was freedom of
speech. Not only that, but the Wobblies had enough members to fill
every available jail cell. In Missoula, where the tactic was invented,
the city government called it quits after two weeks, dismissing all
the charges and calling a halt to more arrests.
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_RACIST VIOLENCE AT ITS WORST_

105 YEARS AGO, on Sept. 30, 1919, one of the bloodiest U.S. racist
massacres of the 20th or 21st centuries began near the Arkansas Delta
town of Elaine, about 80 miles southeast of Little Rock. Over the
course of three days, a very large number of Black farmers and members
of their families were murdered, and untold others were forced to flee
the region with nothing but the clothes on their backs, never to
return. The number of dead – 100 at the least and perhaps as many as
800 – is unknown, because the only eyewitnesses who could talk about
the events without forfeiting their lives were the white perpetrators
of the crimes, who had no interest in acknowledging the enormity of
what they had done.

Even though almost all of the victims were unarmed and defenseless,
not a single one of the many white killers was ever arrested or
charged with a crime. Even worse, more than 100 Black men were charged
with having killed five white men during the shooting, and 12 of those
charged were sentenced to death. 

The deadly violence was inflicted on the farmers, who were all
sharecroppers, because they dared to stand up for their rights by
joining the Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America. They
needed to organize, because, as sharecroppers, they were continually
victimized and exploited by the whites who owned the land they
farmed.  

The shooting started when three white lawmen attempted to force their
way into a church where some 200 farmers were holding a union meeting.
The farmers, fearing such an intervention, had posted armed guards
outside the church, who exchanged fire with the lawmen, killing one of
them. In response to the gunfire, hundreds of white men from the
region “began to hunt Negroes.” Visit
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several more detailed accounts of the Elaine Massacre.

_WHEN STUDENTS FIGHT, THEY WIN_

60 YEARS AGO, on Oct. 1, 1964, the Free Speech Movement at the
University of California at Berkeley burst forth onto the scene in an
epic confrontation. On one side were police attempting to enforce the
University’s rules against on-campus political activity; on the
other side were thousands of fire-up students, who were determined to
force the administration to stop interfering with the students’
exercise of the rights guaranteed by the First Amendment. After months
of struggle, the students achieved most of their objectives and
learned many valuable political lessons in the process.
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_ANSWER TO THE EXTRA-CREDIT QUESTION ABOUT THE PHOTO AT THE TOP OF
THIS PAGE.__ THE SPEAKER IS WILLIAM L. PATTERSON, WHO WAS NEW YORK’S
MOST WELL-KNOWN RADICAL LAWYER AND THE EXECUTIVE SECRETARY OF THE
CIVIL RIGHTS CONGRESS IN 1949 WHEN THE PHOTO WAS TAKEN. _  

For more People’s History, go to
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