Portside

Nazis Parade in Manhattan 

85 YEARS AGO, on February 20, 1939, about 22,000 members and supporters of the pro-fascist German American Bund took part in a 3-hour "demonstration for true Americanism" in Madison Square Garden, which was then located at 8th Avenue and 50th Street in Manhattan. The Bund was the largest openly pro-fascist organization in the U.S. The speakers, who were repeatedly saluted in the Nazi style by the  entire audience, called for "a white, Gentile-ruled United States, and Gentile-controlled labor unions free from Jewish Moscow-directed domination" and for an end to "the Jew Deal." After Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, support for the Bund began to dwindle, and the organization withered away after the U.S. entered World War 2 in December 1941. "A Night at the Garden," a 7-minute documentary about the Madison Square Garden rally was produced in 2017, which you can watch here: https://anightatthegarden.com/-

Imperialism's Enforcers Fight Dirty

90 YEARS AGO, on February 21, 1934, Augusto Sandino, the leader of the fight to overthrow Nicaragua's neo-colonial government, and two Sandinista generals held a meeting with Nicaraguan officials under a flag of truce. After the meeting. Sandino and the generals were seized and executed by National Guard troops, all of whom had been trained by the United States. Soon afterwards, Anastasio Somoza, the head of the National Guard, took over the Nicaraguan government. He and his sons remained in power for more than 43 years. https://jacobin.com/2017/03/augusto-sandino-nicaragua-somoza-us-imperia…

Calling a Dangerous Fraud What It Is

35 YEARS AGO, on February 22, 1989, renowned physicist Stephen Hawking took the opportunity of receiving an award for his work by telling the truth about what Ronald Reagan liked to call the Strategic Defense Initiative. He said that it was purely a “deliberate fraud.” He added, “the most it SDI could do, if it works at all, is to give partial protection to the launch sites of ground-based intercontinental ballistic missiles,” Hawking said. “But it is not worth it for the other dangers it would bring.” Of course, Hawking was not the first scientist to sharply criticize SDI, but he was certainly the most famous to do so in such a plain-spoken manner. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1993-08-20-me-25495-story.html

Remember When Public Health Campaigns Weren't Demonized?  

70 YEARS AGO, on February 23, 1954, the first mass inoculation against polio with the new Salk vaccine began in two Pittsburgh schools. More than five thousand students were vaccinated by June, and the vaccine was quickly shown to be both safe and effective in preventing polio infections. By May 1955, more then 1.8 million U.S. children had been inoculated, and the incidence of polio infections fell by 85 percent. https://www.medicine.mcgill.ca/epidemiology/hanley/c622/salk_trial.pdf

Outlawing Child Labor Isn't Easy

105 YEARS AGO, on February 24, 1919, the U.S. enacted the Revenue Act of 1919. One of its  provisions was a federal tax of 10 percent on the price of anything that was produced by child labor. Congress was attempting to use its taxing authority to discourage the employment of children, because the Supreme Court had just ruled that any effort to outlaw child labor was unconstitutional. Unfortunately, in 1922 the Supreme Court decided that the tax on the products of child labor was also unconstitutional. The first federal law restricting child labor that passed the Supreme Court's muster was the Fair Labor Standards  Act of 1938. https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2015/article/labor-law-highlights-1915-201…

Keep Calm and Carry On

85 YEARS AGO, on February 25, 1939, the first of what eventually totalled more than three-and-a-half million family-sized bomb shelters was installed in a back yard near central London. It was the first so-called Anderson bomb shelter, designed to protect six people from anticipated German air raids. By the time the first bombs actually fell on London, some 1.5 million Anderson bomb shelters had been put in place. https://andersonshelters.org.uk/a-history-of-the-anderson-shelter/

Hitler Takes a Slap on the Wrist

100 YEARS AGO, on February 26, 1924, the treason trial of Adolf Hitler, for his role in a very serious but failed coup attempt in Munich three months earlier, began. Hitler and his co-defendants were convicted after a 5-week trial, and Hitler was sentenced to five years in prison. He only served seven months. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_Hall_Putsch