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Reclaim Our History: December 1-15

Dec. 1, 1937: Marijuana made illegal in the United States. 1966: Comedian Dick Gregory convicted in Olympia, WA, for participation in Native American fishing rights protests. 1966: Seattle police shoot and kill black youth suspected of car theft.

Dec. 2, 1823: United States announces Monroe Doctrine: essentially, that the US is entitled to do whatever it wants in Western Hemisphere.

Dec. 3, 1984: Industrial accident at Union Carbide fertilizer plant in Bhopal, India, causes up to 10,000 deaths, 50,000 injuries. US blocks extradition of Union Carbide officials facing criminal prosecution in India.

Dec. 4, 1969: Black Panther activists Fred Hampton (21), Mark Clark (22), and two others murdered in their beds by Chicago police. This makes at least 19 Panther leaders (they claim 28) killed in the past 18 months.

1981: Pres. Ronald Reagan authorizes CIA to conduct domestic surveillance. CIA charter originally banned domestic surveillance.

Dec. 5, 1901: Birth of animator, amusement park builder, Nazi sympathizer Walt Disney. 1932: German physicist Albert Einstein fleeing Nazi Germany, granted visa. In later years, dismayed by lack of civil liberties and US cold war policies, calls his choice an enormous mistake. 1974: Monty Python’s final episode airs on BBC.

Dec. 6, 1933: US ban on James Joyce’s “Ulysses” lifted. 1956: Fidel Castro’s revolution begins.

Dec. 7, 1928: Birth of linguist and radical political analyst Noam Chomsky. 1964: Mario Savio, leader of Berkeley Free Speech Movement, arrested. Univ. of California-Berkeley administration makes presentation at the Greek Theatre to 18,000 students; followed by strike by 9,000 of 27,000 students, and faculty resolution (824 to 115) supporting rapidly growing Free Speech Movement.

Dec. 8, 1963: Ku Klux Klan members attack home of black voter-registration worker in Dawson, Georgia with small arms fire and at least one dynamite bomb. 1987: Reagan and Gorbachev meet in Washington, DC, and sign agreement calling for dismantling of all 1,752 US and 859 Soviet missiles with 300-3,400 mile (short) range.

Dec. 9, 1640: Settler Hugh Bewitt banished from colony of Massachusetts when he declares himself free of original sin. 1994: Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders resigns after her masturbation comments are criticized by jerk offs.

Dec. 10, 1921: Pacifist and socialist Albert Einstein receives Nobel Prize for Physics.

Dec. 11, 1971: Third retrial of Black Panther head, Huey Newton, ends in mistrial.

Dec. 12, 1964: Solidarity Bookstore opens, Chicago, Illinois, distributing anarchist, surrealist, Wobbly, and libertarian socialist literature to the nation.

Dec. 13, 1981: Poland: Dictatorship of the proletariat declares “state of war” against workers. Martial law declared, Solidarinosc suppressed. (Solidarity Day.)

Dec. 14, 1972: Pres. Nixon authorizes Christmas bombing of Hanoi. 1992: Three hundred thousand Polish coal workers strike against “Solidarity” government.

Dec. 15, 1966: Entertainer and fascist sympathizer Walt Disney dies. (He’s still in the fridge). 1970: Youths and workers torch Gdansk (Poland) Communist Party HQ and quietly watch it burn. 1986: CIA director William Casey suffers cerebral seizure, at work, before he can answer questions about Iran-Contra Affair. Mighty convenient it was for Bush the Elder.

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