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PEEKSKILL OUTRAGE

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By MARY DOBBS

The little town of Peekskill,
N.Y., will long be remembered
as the scene of postwar Amer-
ica's first pogrom. Here the
warnings of rising fascism in

_ the U.S. came true in a violent
and bloody assault on hundreds
of men, women and children.

Significance of the attack on
the Paul Robeson concert can
hardly be over-estimated. In
those long, nightmarish after-
noon and evening hours of Sep-
tember. 4, thousands of Amer-
icang experienced personally the
nature of fascism. They learned
in pain and deep anger that fas-
Cists who try to kil] ideas end
up by trying to kill human be-
ings.

They learned that once the
Violence of fascism is unleash-
ed, it chooses its victims indis-
_criminately — babies and the
aged, Catholics ag well as Jews,

.. whites and Negroes, the inno-
cent passerby as well as the ac-
tive participant. They learned,
‘too, that fascist cowards rely on
the armed aid of “the law” to
help them fight progriess.

Success of the organized viol-
ence has eclipsed somewhtat the
fact that the fascists who over-
turned- cars and threw stones at
the brave men and women at-
tending the Robeson concert
were a small minority.

The extent of their brutality
has been used by the press to
obscure the fact that 30,000 Am-
ericans turned out at the con-
cert to pay tribute to a great
and courageous Negro leader
and to protest a similar, small-
er-scale attack the previous
“week,

It was not until the open-air
concert was over and cars leay-

‘ings the grounds were directed

up an isolatéd country road
through the connivance of the
police that the fascists — no
more than 1,000 in number —
were able to attack the cars,
one by one.

Eyewitness accounts of what
followed give overwhelming
proof of police complicity and
brutality. The most damning re-
“port came from a well-known
Negro newspaperman, James
Hicks, who himself only nar-

_vrowly escaped from the scene
without being hurt. Reported
Hicks in the Baltimore Afro-
American, leading Negro daily,
conservative in its politics: ,

* *

“J saw Jean Bullard, first col-
ored aviator in World War I
and holder of the French Croix
de Guerre, knocked down at-my
feet and brutally kicked and
beaten by state troopers (police)
as he lay on the ground. I saws
a colored man dragged from his
car, hit over the head while he
was being dragged out, beaten
on the ground as he attempted
to crawl under his car for pro-
tection. He was then dragged
from under the car and beaten
with clubs by four troopers ...

Where state troopers
‘aped storm troopers

“I saw a group of anti-Robe-
son veterans draw knives and
chase an Amsterdam News (an-
other conservative Negro paper)
representative along the high-
way, while state troopers stood
and laughed.

“J saw state troopers pull
white and colored men from
their. cars after the concert, beat
them over their hears and bod-
ies with clubs and then after
forcing them back into their.
cars, break out the windows and.
smash the tail lights ...

‘I saw state troopers beat and.
kick a group of unarmed Robe-
son supporters in full view of
their wi and children and I .
stood by while the women look-
ed on and screamed in wails
that made me sick in the pit of
my stomach.”

* * *«

For hours afterwards, mobs
roamed the countryside and
highways, stoning cars and
shouting ugly anti-Negro and
anti-Jewish epithets. A busload
of Negroes returning from the
Franklin D. Roosevelt memorial
library in Hyde Park was
caught in the melee and stoned.
Other cars which just happened
to be passing near the scene be-
came targets for rocks,

Literally hundreds of people
were bruised and cut by flying
glass. A small number were hos-
pitalized with critical injuries.
Only a miracle and the discip-
line of the Robeson supporters
averted a massacre.

Many of the Jewish families
living in summer homes in the
area have left. Those who re-
main behind keep 24 - hour
guards on duty and are boycott-
ing merchants in Peekskill,
where anti-Jewish and anti-
Negro sentiment has subsided
but is ready to erupt again at
the least signal from the Amer-
ican Legion and other veterans’
groups which have long been
recognized by progressives ag in-
cipient fascist organizations.

The fascists have received
great encouragement from Gov-
‘ernor Thomas E. Dewey, Repub-
lican party leader, whose state
troopers became storm troopers.
at the concert and who has not
even mildly rebuked them for
their actions, Dewey’s silence in
this case can only be interpreted
as approval.

On the positive side, however,

it can be said that the Peek-
skill incident has shocked all
but the most hardened red-bait-
ers who want their cold war at
any price. Even right-wing CIO
leaders were forced to speak
out against the attack, the first
time in recent years that they
shave publicly shared any senti-
ment with progressives.
The progressives themselves
found the Peekskill riot a test-
ing ground for their courage
‘and discipline, which they know
they will be called on to display’
many, many more times.

By CHARLES DANIELS
—MEXICO CITY
“One great vision unites us

though remote be the lands of our
birth.., .” Significant words, these.
How significant they really are,
I discovered today, when I took
part in a youth peace parade in
Mexico City, with young people
from the U.S. and the Latin
American countries.

and five cars packed with young
people composed the parade which
made its way through most of
the city’s main streets. The trucks
and cars bore young people of
many lands, singing and cheering
heartily “por las paz.” On the
first two trucks, girls clad in na-
tive costumes carried the flags
of all the countries represented
and a Mexican band plage songs
of peace.

The response of fie people on
the streets was tremendous. A
peace song had: been printed in
quantity to be handed to onlook-
‘ers.

These onlookers, however, did
not wait to be handed the song.
They came running up to the
trucks and cars often in the face
of serious traffic congestion, to
receive copies. Copies of the song
that were thrown from the trucks
would be caught eagerly by pe-
destrians. If some did not succeed
in \ catching the leaflets, they
would pause and stoop to pick
them off the ground.

Elderly men and womeh, a little
too timid to approach the trucks
and cars themselves, instructed
the youngsters to obtain copies
of the song for them. On reading
the song, the people smiled and
waved back to us. But enthusiasm
over the parade did not stop here.

Young children and teen-agers
followed the parade for blocks. At
one time when we were stopped by
‘traffic I noticed an old man, at
least .70 years of age, being helped

| onto the back of one of the trucks.

I later learned that until then
he had marched with the parade
(a distance of at least a mile and
a half).

At noon as we travelled up the
Calle Jaurez, Mexico City’s main

People thronged the streets and
crammed the balconies: to watch
the parade. As they read our song,
they waved and cheered us. Many
people came back for more songs
to take to their friends.

As our parade came to an end,
I reflected on the fact that a
peace parade in any city of Can-
ada, the U.S. and the Latin Amer-
ican countries would probably
evoke the same popular response,
so great is the desire for peace,
and that this alone is an obstacle
to those in the ruling circles of
the U.S. who are scheming and
preparing for war. Organized, it

is a force that can utterly defeat
the warmongers.

Bloc vote at British TUC meet
stifles wage freeze opposition

LONDON

- Delegates to the Trades Union
Congress at Bridlington voted to
approve government wage-freeze
Policies after Secretary General
_ Vincent Tewson told them this was
Necessary if British ministers now
in the U.S. were to succeed in
their mission of getting more
American aid. .

_ The wage-freeze proposal
Credited with 6,485,000 votes
against 1,048,000 opposed, in ac-
cordance with the traditional bloc
Vote computation. Under this sys-
tem, any resolution backed by the
Majority of delegates in its par-

was

ticular national union is credited
with the vote of every union mem-
ber at the annual congress, in
which unions never reveal internal
divisions.

Actual feeling among British un-
ionists is different from the pic-
ture revealed at the congress.

Although all the National !Union
of Railwaymen’s 450,000 votes were
cast in favor of the wage freeze,
the union itself is seething with
indignation over government re-
jection of its demand for a $2
weekly basic wage increase, for
which the railwaymen have ‘struck
several times in recent months.

Secretary General B. Roberts of
the National Union of Public Em-
ployees, an opponent of the wage
freeze, foresaw a split within all
unions as a result of the vote.

TUC President Sir William Law-
ther drew a loud retort of “only
from Wall Street” when he under-
took to defend government policies
as a whole and said the British
administration would “accept dic-
tation from no one.” Lawther pre-
viously said that “British unions
have found a better way of settl-
ing industrial disputes than by
using the strike weapon,’ and
advocated outlawing all walkouts
resulting from local initiative.

Three colorfully decorated trucks | %

street, business virtually stopped. |

LAZARO CARDENAS

ex-president of Mexico, was
among those who sent greetings
to the Continental Peace Congress

Italian job
Crisis grows

ROME

The Italian General Federation
of Labor (CGIL) last week called
a general strike in Milan, Italy’s
greatest industrial center, as a
result of a police attack on:.work-
ers of the Breda engineering plant
in which two are known to have
been killed and many wounded.

Police opened fire on a protest
meeting of Breda workers, 14,000
of whom had walked out earlier
to demonstrate against layoffs af-
fecting 2,500. The workers fought
back and one policeman is re-
ported to be dead. ;

A growing number of jobless,
together with government-employer
attempts to use the deteriorating
employment situation to destroy
previous gains made by labor, are
causing conflicts in other parts
of Italy. Bank workers throughout
the country have been on strike
for a week against an attempt
to lengthen their hours on the
job.

Unemployed workers in Rome
are restive as a result of sudden
notice from the government that
no more relief payments will be
made in the capital. The an- .
nouncement was made _ after
cheques for July and August
were held up without explana-
tion. These back payments will
not be made either.

One result of the suspension of
unemployment relief is a wave
of suicides, particularly among un-
organized white collar workers
who have no unions to back them
up. A spectacular case, in which
a@ young engineer leaped to his
death from the cupola of St. Peter’s
Cathedral in Rome, has drawn
nationwide attention to the in-
creasing number of suicides.

The leftward movement of Ital-
ian labor has been intensified by
the present situation. Communist
candidates received 76 percent of
the vote in the Rome Province
Farm Workers Congress two weeks
ago.

arley hits warmongers
in ‘plush office trenches’

—MEXICO CITY

“The fight for peace is an in-
tegral part of the fight for work-
ers’ rights,” Senator Salvador
Ocampo of Chile told the Inter-
American Congress of Partisans of
Peace here last week.

Speeches and messages from.
leadefs of various Latin-American
countries expressed a common fear
that ‘U\S.\plans for war against
Russia _ would drag them into a
new worldwide blood-bath. Send-
ers of messages included ex-Presi-
dent Lazaro Cardenas of Mexico,
ex-President: Fulgencio Batista of

| Cuba, and Brazilian Communist

leader Luis Carlos Prestes.

In opening the parley, organiz-
ing committee chairman Enrique

|Gonzales Martinez said that wars

were made by “imperialism, cray-
ing new lands and military bases;
political influence to gain shame-
ful ends; the conquest of rich
markets and profits; selfish mo-
tives of private interests and cri
inal politicians . . . cushioned in
the plush trenches of their of-
fices.”

Martinez said mankind must‘un-
mask the killer and cry to the four
corners of the universe that there
is not enough gold in the world
to pay for the sacrifice of one
single humble human life.”

“The cost of maintaining 100
soldiers and their officers would
be enough to maintain 40 doc-
tors, Atomic energy, which de-
Spite its enormous power cannot
win wars rapidly or decisively,
would render incalculable bene-
fits if constructively applied,”
Martinez said amid applause.

Nazi papers
to be revived

BERLIN

Nazi propaganda is being braz-
enly and openly revived in west-
ern Germany. Following coalition
of Allied controls, a number of
Nazi editors and publishers an-
nounced plans to resume activity.
Those who will put “out news-
papers include Max Willmay, for-
mer publisher of the anti-Semitic
Der Stuermer, whose editor was
the Julius Streicher, executed as
a war criminal; Hubert Cobaltzky,
undenazified wartime editor of the
Nazi Coburger Tageblatt; and Dr.
Othmar Best, who says his new
paper will aim to restore 'Hitler’s
reputation as a savior of Germany.

The French press is alarmed at
the revival of Hitlerism in western
Germany, resulting from the es-
tablishment of a new government
there under U.S.-British auspices.

A correspondent of the rightist
Figaro reported from the new
government’s capital at Bonn: “I
have visited the city of the wolves,
the seat of German nationalism
where a political program rooted
in Naziism is being drawn.”

..Franc-Tireur wrote editorially
the same day: “Powerful groups of
German Nationalists who inspired
and financed Goebbels’ propagan-
da are preparing a general offen-
sive to regain control of the Ger-
man press in the British zone.”
L’Aurore said: “Officially the Ger-
mans are denazified . .. They are
Socialists, Social Democrats, Con-
servatives, generally reputed to be
peaceful minded. . But we see
that, as soon as ‘he is given his
freedom, the new ‘democrat’ uses
this freedom to bring back the old
Nazi press.”

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — SEPTEMBER 16, 1949 — PAGE 3

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