An overflow crowd of about 20,000 family farmers filled the Hilton Coliseum in Ames, Iowa on February 27, 1985. They were protesting credit conditions that had led to ruin for hundreds of thousands of small farms in the preceding years and impoverished rural communities across the US Midwest.
Farmers were devastated by the high interest rates put in effect by Paul Volcker, President Carter’s selection to head the Federal Reserve Board. Volcker raised the federal funds rate to as high as 20 percent in 1981. As interest rates skyrocketed, farm debt compounded, doubling to $215 billion between 1978 and 1984.
By the mid-80s US farmers were collectively paying more to banks to service their debts than they realized in farm income. On top of this, agricultural prices had never recovered from the Carter administration’s grain embargo on the Soviet Union in response to its 1979 invasion of Afghanistan...
Responding to mounting farmer protests, President Ronald Reagan declared, “American taxpayers must not be asked to bail out every farmer hopelessly in debt.”
50 years ago: Civil Rights struggle in US South intensifies
African Americans’ struggle for equal civil rights in the US South intensified this week in 1960.
On February 22, 33 students were arrested at a downtown Richmond, Virginia department store for refusing to leave a segregated dining area. Sit-ins in Chattanooga and Nashville, Tennessee, on February 22 and February 27, resulted in violence when they were attacked by gangs of white youth. In Nashville, 70 blacks were arrested. In both cities, white students also joined the black protesters in the sit-ins.
75 years ago: Massive strike action by Cuban students
Up to 300,000 students took part in a massive strike action this week in Cuba in 1935. Students initially called for increased funding for schools and higher pay for teachers, but soon the strike declared opposition to the government of President Carlos Mendieta, who had been installed by General Fulgencio Batista following the coup of 1933. The protests demanded the end of military rule in Cuba.
100 years ago: Chinese army deposes the Dalai Lama
On February 23, 1910, the Dalai Lama, head of the Tibetan Buddhist religious hierarchy and ruler of Tibet, fled to India in the face of advancing Chinese soldiers of the Qing dynasty...The British in 1910 disregarded the Dalai Lama’s initial appeal for support. They had long suspected him of pro-Russian sympathies, and the Chinese government claimed that it was acting to protect British trade.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/feb2010/twih-f22.shtml#top "The past isn't dead...it isn't even past."
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