This Week in People’s History, Dec 11–17
Is Torture Really in the Eye of the Beholder?
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 11, IS THE 10th ANNIVERSARY of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency doing its level best to justify the U.S. government’s use of torture on suspected terrorists by denying it ever happened, despite a trove of damning evidence to the contrary.
The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence had just released a 528-page report detailing the Bush administration’s policy of mistreating prisoners in Iraq to obtain information. In 2014 President Obama’s CIA director might have acknowledged the report’s accuracy and declared that Obama’s CIA had never used torture and never would, but John Brennan insisted that the CIA had never, ever, tortured anyone. Brennan admitted the CIA had one used “enhanced interrogation techniques,” but not torture.
Brennan’s version of what the Bush CIA had done was totally unconvincing, because anyone who cared could learn the truth from the Senate Committee’s report. https://humanrightsfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Enhanced-Interrogation-Fact-Sheet.pdf
Winning the Fight Against McCarthyism
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 13, IS THE 70th ANNIVERSARY of the conviction on a trumped-up sedition charge against white anti-racist activist Carl Braden in Louisville, Kentucky. Braden, whose legal troubles were a national news story in 1954 was a well-known Progressive Party activist, who had been arrested along with five other Progressive Party members, including Anne Braden, who was married to Carl.
The case against the six was initiated because they had arranged to sell a house owned by the Bradens to an Afro-American couple, despite the fact that the house was in one of Louisville’s lily-white neighborhoods. Days after the Afro-American family moved in, a cross had been burned in their yard, and then the house was bombed.
After the bombing, police raided the homes of the six who were later charged with sedition. Even though the police raids were alleged to have been part of an investigation of the bombing, the sedition indictments concerned only left-wing literature the police had seized from the activists’ homes.
Braden was convicted, and sentenced to 15 years in prison, after a trial that focused almost entirely on the radical books and pamphlets seized by the police and on Braden’s refusal to testify about his political beliefs. The injustice of Braden’s conviction provoked widespread outrage and a national fundraising effort to help post an appeal bond. After 25 weeks in prison, he was freed pending appeal. He never had to return to prison, because a year later, the Kentucky Court of Appeals quashed his indictment thereby voiding his conviction. https://spartacus-educational.com/Carl_Braden.htm
Hands Off Haiti!
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 14, IS THE 95th ANNIVERSARY of large demonstrations in both Manhattan and Washington, D.C., protesting a wave of attacks by U.S. Marines on strikers and protesters in several Haitian cities. Marines had attacked a group of protesters in Les Cayes with a machine-gun, killing at least 24 Haitians and wounding 51. The Marines were part of a 700-man force that had been occupying Haiti ever since 1915.
The 1929 demonstrations in New York and Washington were organized by the Communist Party USA, to express opposition to the Marines’ long, violent, occupation of Haiti and the Hoover administration’s decision to reinforce the occupation force by deploying another 600 Marines and two Navy warplanes to Port-au-Prince.
In addition to the CP, the NAACP denounced the continuing U.S. occupation of Haiti as "fourteen years of incompetence, misrule and oppression," adding that the U.S. was making "a hollow mockery" of freedom of the press in Haiti by the imprisonment of several journalists for months without trial.
The Manhattan demonstration by some thousand protesters was forcefully broken up by mounted police, who arrested 18. In Washington, police arrested 50 for demonstrating outside the White House. https://haitisolidarity.net/in-the-news/the-first-us-occupation-of-haiti-1915-1934/
The First Firefight Against King George
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 15, IS THE 250th ANNIVERSARY of a successful rebel attack on a British fort in Newcastle, New Hampshire, which is considered by many to be the opening shot in the Revolutionary War. In 1774 the attackers carried off about 100 barrels of the fort’s gunpowder and 16 cannons that were used against the Redcoats six months later in the Battle of Bunker Hill. https://archive.org/details/captureoffortwil00pars/page/1/mode/1up
The Second City’s Amazing Alumni
MONDAY, DECEMBER 16, IS THE 65th ANNIVERSARY of the opening of Second City’s comedic enterprise in Chicago. Over the years Second City has been the training ground and launch pad for an incredible list of players, including Alan Alda, Alan Arkin, Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, Aidy Bryant, John Candy, Steve Carell, Stephen Colbert, Chris Farley, Tina Fey, Keegan-Michael Key, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Tim Meadows, Bill Murray, Mike Myers, Catherine O'Hara, Jordan Peele, Amy Poehler, Gilda Radner, Harold Ramis, Amber Ruffin, Cecily Strong and Jason Sudeikis. https://cincyplay.com/blog-single-post/cinncinati-blog/2024/10/03/funny-influential-iconic
Wartime Hysteria at its Worst
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 17th IS THE 80th ANNIVERSARY of the U.S. government’s 1944 announcement that it had decided to abandon its 34-month-old policy of excluding everyone of Japanese descent from the West Coast. Of course, it would take months before more than 60,000 people, most of whom were U.S. citizens, would actually be able to return to their hometowns and try to recover the property and jobs they had lost since they had been shipped to concentration camps in 1942.
Nearly 40 years later, the Congressional Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians issued its final report which found that the incarceration of people of Japanese descent was based on "racial prejudice, wartime hysteria, and a failure of political leadership." "The record does not permit the conclusion that military necessity warranted the exclusion of ethnic Japanese from the West Coast." https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/personal_justice_denied/index.htm
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