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Reclaim Our History Dec. 1-15

Dec. 2, 1823: United States announces Monroe Doctrine: essentially, that the US is entitled to do whatever it wants in the Western Hemisphere. Later extended to include the entire planet. 1964: Sproul Hall sit-in, Berkeley, California. Joan Baez sings on Sproul Hall steps. Free Speech Movement holds an overnight sit-in protesting the disciplining of four students who took part in the October police car sit-in; 800 arrests result.

Dec. 3, 1946: Beginning of three-day general strike of more than 130,000 workers from 142 AFL unions in Alameda County (Oakland) CA, opposing police brutality and in support of striking Oakland department store workers. 1964: Police arrest 773 to end Free Speech Movement occupation of Sproul Hall on the University of California-Berkeley Campus. A student strike the next day closes the school.

Dec. 4, 1964: Nine hundred students boycott classes at Berkeley, during Free Speech Movement. A small movement is about to explode (in three days) on campus.

Dec. 6, 1918: US Dept. of War abolishes the practice of manacling defiant prisoners to the walls of their cells in solitary confinement, used to torture conscientious objectors in US prisons during World War I.

Dec. 7, 1931: One thousand national hunger marches arrive in Washington, DC. 1964: Mario Savio, leader of Berkeley Free Speech Movement, arrested. Univ. of California-Berkeley administration makes a presentation at the Greek Theatre to 18,000 students; followed by strike by 9,000 of the 27,000 students, and a faculty resolution (824 to 115) supporting the rapidly growing Free Speech Movement. 1995: Up to 1.75 million striking French workers demonstrate in marches shutting down the country as part of an escalating series of general strikes protesting government cutbacks and global exploitation of workers.

Dec. 9, 1958: Robert H. Welsh and 11 other men meet (including Fred C. Koch, father of the infamous Koch Brothers and founder of Koch Industries) in Indianapolis to form John Birch Society.

Dec. 11, 1984: Twenty thousand women turn out for anti-nuclear demonstration at Greenham Common, England. 1995: Forty thousand workers go on general strike in London, Ontario (pop. 300,000).

Dec. 12, 1983: Seventy people arrested in Boston outside a hotel where a “New Trends in Missiles” trade conference is being held. Inside the hotel, over 1,000 cockroaches are let loose to symbolize the likely survivors of nuclear war.

Dec. 13, 2001: In Brussels, 80,000 labor and anti-globalization activists begin several days of protests of a European Union summit. Despite a massive police presence, unlike other such recent protests events remain peaceful.

Dec. 14, 1917: US peace activist and suffragist Kate Richards O’Hare jailed five years for speech denouncing World War I, occupied a neighboring jail cell with Emma Goldman. O’Hare was one of a number of prisoners Eugene Debs cited in his “Canton Speech” for which he in turn would be imprisoned. 1992: Three hundred thousand Polish coal workers strike against “Solidarity” government.

Dec. 15, 1970: Poland: Youths and workers torch the Gdansk Communist Party HQ and quietly watch it burn.

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