1920 -- US: Sacco & Vanzetti learn of their comrade Salsedos death while in police custody yesterday & become scared they will be implicated in a bomb plot. They agree, with Mario Buda & Riccardo Orciani (another anarchist), to meet the following day at the Elm Square Garage in West Bridgewater (where Budas car was being repaired) & dispose of incriminating evidence. Sacco goes to Boston to obtain a passport. It was this month, three years ago, that Vanzetti & Sacco met in Boston at a meeting of Galleanist anarchists. One week later they left for Mexico with other Italian anarchists to avoid conscription. http://www.torremaggiore.com/saccoevanzetti/storia.html
1937 -- Spain: (Tuesday): Gun-battles throughout the night in Barcelona. Many barricades & violent clashes throughout the city. In the Sants barrio 400 Guards are stripped of their weapons. Companys asks the Valencia government for aircraft to bomb the CNT's premises & barracks. The CNT-controlled artillery on Montjuich & Tibidabo is trained on the Generalidad Palace. Abad de Santillan, Isgleas & Molina manage to halt in Lerida, "en route to Barcelona," the divisions dispatched by the CNT's Maximo Franco (anarchist Friends of Durruti member) & the POUM's Josi Rovira. At 7:00 P.M. in the Principal Palace in the Ramblas, which has been commandeered by the POUM, Jaime Balius, Pablo Ruiz, Eleuterio Roig & Martin, representing the Friends of Durruti, meet Gorkin, Nin & Andrade, representing the POUM's Executive Committee. Following an analysis of the situation, & in view of the stance adopted by the CNT, they come to an agreement to suggest an orderly armed withdrawal of combatants from the barricades. At 9:00 P.M. the Generalidad radio station issues an appeal from the leaders of the various organizations (Garcia Oliver representing the CNT) for an end to fighting. The POUM Executive Committee releases a manifesto. The Bolshevik-Leninist Section issues a handbill. On the night of May 4-5, the Friends of Durruti Group drafts & prints up a handbill. Anarchist chronology, Friends 1961 -- "Freedom Ride" (biracial) bus trips begin throughout American South, organized by James Farmer & Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) to desegregate bus terminals. Many northern civil rights activists join their southern compatriots in demonstrations for integration of public places, challenging non-compliance of 1957 & 1960 civil rights legislation. See May 14, when first bus is attacked. 1968 -- May '68 in France & Paris: Capitalism is discovering revolution is still a threat, even in first world industrial & consumer nations. 1970 -- US: Four Kent State University students murdered by Ohio National Guardsmen at a demonstration protesting the U.S. incursion into Cambodia (see 30 April). Despite warnings from advisors that invading Cambodia (Operation Duck Hook) would lead to domestic bloodshed, Kissinger & Nixon decided to invade to prove Nixon's toughness. Nixon was boozing heavily & repeatedly watching Patton to bolster himself. Many staffers worried he'd gone off the deep end mentally. He directed staffers to take a public hard-line posture toward critics/protestors: "Having drawn the sword, don't take it out -- stick it in hard." With the Kent State killings the White House was stunned, more worried about mushrooming protest than the deaths, which many blamed on students themselves; J. Edgar Hoover advised that one of the women killed had been "sleeping around" & was "nothing more than a whore." VP Spiro Agnew fulminated about "traitors & thieves & perverts & irrational & illogical people in our midst." [Sounds like the White House. --ed] America's campuses exploded, finally joined in the streets by middle America, by workers, & even dissidents within the government itself. http://www.cris.com/~Mppa/ethics.html http://www.kent.edu/sociology/lewis/LEWIHEN.htm 1970 -- US: 5,000 demonstrate at College Park, Washington, D.C. 450 policemen unable to disperse them, 600 National Guard sent in -- to protect them, right? 1970 -- US: Jackson State College woman's dorm, Mississippi, May 4/5: two black students killed, others wounded -- no media coverage 1989 -- China: 30,000 students march for democracy to Tienanmen Square, Beijing.
