50
Years Ago
After 38 days of stalemate the strike at the Independent-Journal discovered on Saturday – Valentine’s day – a perilous new detour around the impasse. Demonstration and riot.
It was no Chicago or Berkeley, but for a town unaccustomed to passionate outburst it was frightening enough. As many as 17 were injured, most of them police and NorCal security cops inside the I-J building. There were a dozen arrests. Every window on the first floor of the newspaper plant was smashed, paint was splashed on the walls, a truck was burned.
…There weren’t two forces in confrontation at A and Julia on Saturday but three: the police, the union men, and the young street radicals.
…[Union activist Jack] Goldberger saw the cops as a legitimate force to contend with (and also maybe to some day organize in that old Teamster dream). The street kids saw them as a visible extension of a hated structure. “What struck me was the way they didn’t seem to care about the I-J,” said one observer. “They acted like the police WERE the I-J. Beat the police and they’d beaten the paper.”
… the paper’s unwillingness to submit the dispute to arbitration causes concern among organized labor everywhere.
“This is a crucial strike,” says the ITU’s [George] Duncan somberly. “If we lose this one, we’re apt to lose a lot more. It would mean that one whole segment of the labor movement is going backwards for the first time.”
—Don Stanley, 2/18/70
40
Years Ago
Looking tired and a bit confused, the first shift of Southeast Asian refugees reached Hamilton Air Force Base last Sunday. About 550 refugees were first processed at Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield and then bussed to Hamilton for an overnight stay before proceeding to permanent homes that sponsors have arranged for them. Another 560 refugees, primarily from the Mong (mountain) tribes in Laos, arrived at Hamilton on Tuesday. The U.S. State Department expects about 120,000 immigrants to make such stopovers at Hamilton this year. A spokesman for the International Committee for European Migration, which is administering the Hamilton reugee
Center, says volunteers as well as donations of food and clothing are needed. If you have help to offer, call 883-1287.
—Newsgram, 2/15/80
30
Years Ago
Marin and Sonoma gun dealers, instructors and shooting range owners say more women than ever before are taking an interest in handguns. In some local training courses, women account for 70 percent of the students. In fact, the female gun market has grown dramatically in recent years.
…It’s a small wonder gun manufacturers are targeting women buyers. The Florida-based FIE Corporation entered the female arms race last year with the “Titan Tigress,” a gold-plated .25 caliber handgun with gold lame carrying purse and a faux ivory handle inscribed with a red rose. At the Connecticut-based Charter Arms Corporation, handgun sales to women have risen steadily in the past three years and now account for 40 percent of all purchases.
—Greg Cahill, 2/16/90
20
Years Ago
Do you realize there is still NINE MORE MONTHS left until the presidential race is over? A person could get pregnant and have a baby in that time—especially a woman. Nine more months of name-calling, negative ads and each candidate trying to portray himself as more of an outsider than his opponents. We’re already sick of them all—except John McCain, who we’ll be sick of as soon as voters realise he’s spent years in the Senate, is chairman of a committee and actually has those two dreaded words: Washington experience. If it’s one thing we can’t stand in our presidential candidates, it’s job training.
—Stan Sinberg, 2/16/00
—Compiled by Alex T. Randolph
