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THIS WEEK IN PEOPLE’S HISTORY, DEC 11–17  
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_ Is Torture Really in the Eye of the Beholder? (2014), Winning the
Fight Against McCarthyism (1954), Hands Off Haiti! (1929), The First
Firefight Against King George (1774), Second City’s Amazing Alumni
(1959), Wartime Hysteria at its Worst (1944) _

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_IS TORTURE REALLY IN THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER? _

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 11, IS THE 10TH ANNIVERSARY OF the U.S. Central
Intelligence Agency doing its level best to justify the U.S.
government’s use of torture on suspected terrorists by denying it
ever happened, despite a trove of damning evidence to the contrary.

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence had just released a
528-page report detailing the Bush administration’s policy of
mistreating prisoners in Iraq to obtain information. In 2014 President
Obama’s CIA director might have acknowledged the report’s accuracy
and declared that Obama’s CIA had never used torture and never
would, but John Brennan insisted that the CIA had never, ever,
tortured anyone. Brennan admitted the CIA had one used “enhanced
interrogation techniques,” but not torture. 

Brennan’s version of what the Bush CIA had done was totally
unconvincing, because anyone who cared could learn the truth from the
Senate Committee’s report.
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_WINNING THE FIGHT AGAINST MCCARTHYISM_

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 13, IS THE 70TH ANNIVERSARY of the conviction on a
trumped-up sedition charge against white anti-racist activist Carl
Braden in Louisville, Kentucky. Braden, whose legal troubles were a
national news story in 1954 was a well-known Progressive Party
activist, who had been arrested along with five other Progressive
Party members, including Anne Braden, who was married to Carl.

The case against the six was initiated because they had arranged to
sell a house owned by the Bradens to an Afro-American couple, despite
the fact that the house was in one of Louisville’s lily-white
neighborhoods. Days after the Afro-American family moved in, a cross
had been burned in their yard, and then the house was bombed.

After the bombing, police raided the homes of the six who were later
charged with sedition. Even though the police raids were alleged to
have been part of an investigation of the bombing, the sedition
indictments concerned only left-wing literature the police had seized
from the activists’ homes. 

Braden was convicted, and sentenced to 15 years in prison, after a
trial that focused almost entirely on the radical books and pamphlets
seized by the police and on Braden’s refusal to testify about his
political beliefs. The injustice of Braden’s conviction provoked
widespread outrage and a national fundraising effort to help post an
appeal bond. After 25 weeks in prison, he was freed pending appeal. He
never had to return to prison, because a year later, the Kentucky
Court of Appeals quashed his indictment thereby voiding his
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_HANDS OFF HAITI! _

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 14, IS THE 95TH ANNIVERSARY of large demonstrations
in both Manhattan and Washington, D.C., protesting a wave of attacks
by U.S. Marines on strikers and protesters in several Haitian cities.
Marines had attacked a group of protesters in Les Cayes with a
machine-gun, killing at least 24 Haitians and wounding 51. The Marines
were part of a 700-man force that had been occupying Haiti ever since
1915. 

The 1929 demonstrations in New York and Washington were organized by
the Communist Party USA, to express opposition to the Marines’ long,
violent, occupation of Haiti and the Hoover administration’s
decision to reinforce the occupation force by deploying another 600
Marines and two Navy warplanes to Port-au-Prince. 

In Manhattan the demonstration by some thousand protesters was
forcefully broken up by mounted police, who arrested 18. In
Washington, police arrested 50 for demonstrating outside the White
House.
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_THE FIRST FIREFIGHT AGAINST KING GEORGE_

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 15, IS THE 250TH ANNIVERSARY of a successful rebel
attack on a British fort in Newcastle, New Hampshire, which is
considered by many to be the opening shot in the Revolutionary War. In
1774 the attackers carried off about 100 barrels of the fort’s
gunpowder and 16 cannons that were used against the Redcoats six
months later in the Battle of Bunker Hill.
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_THE SECOND CITY’S AMAZING ALUMNI_

MONDAY, DECEMBER 16, IS THE 65TH ANNIVERSARY of the opening of 
Second City’s comedic enterprise in Chicago. Over the years Second
City has been the training ground and launch pad for an incredible
list of players, including Alan Alda, Alan Arkin, Dan Aykroyd, John
Belushi, Aidy Bryant, John Candy, Steve Carell, Stephen Colbert, Chris
Farley, Tina Fey, Keegan-Michael Key, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Tim
Meadows, Bill Murray, Mike Myers, Catherine O'Hara, Jordan Peele, Amy
Poehler, Gilda Radner, Harold Ramis, Amber Ruffin, Cecily Strong and
Jason Sudeikis.
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_WARTIME HYSTERIA AT ITS WORST_

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 17TH IS THE 80TH ANNIVERSARY of the U.S.
government’s 1944 announcement that it had decided to abandon its
34-month-old policy of excluding everyone of Japanese descent from the
West Coast. Of course, it would take months before more than 60,000
people, most of whom were U.S. citizens, would actually be able to
return to their hometowns and try to recover the property and jobs
they had lost since they had been shipped to concentration camps in
1942. 

Nearly 40 years later, the Congressional Commission on Wartime
Relocation and Internment of Civilians issued its final report which
found that the incarceration of people of Japanese descent was based
on "racial prejudice, wartime hysteria, and a failure of political
leadership." "The record does not permit the conclusion that military
necessity warranted the exclusion of ethnic Japanese from the West
Coast."
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