Media
On this day, 15 October 1987, socialist president of Burkina Faso, Thomas Sankara, was assassinated, aged 37. He was killed in a military coup that is suspected to have been backed by France, the former colonial power. In just four years, his government attracted mass public support by implementing numerous radical reforms to improve the quality-of-life for poor, working-class people and women. In particular millions of children were vaccinated against meningitis, yellow fever and measles, schools and hospitals were constructed, millions of trees planted to fight desertification, and the country became food sufficient. He reduced his own salary to just $450 per month, and the government reduced wages and perks for senior government officials, implemented quotas to increase the numbers of women in public life, combated female genital mutilation and forced marriages, and nationalised land and mineral resources.The coup was orchestrated by Sankara’s former colleague, Blaise Compaoré, who established a dictatorship which would rule the country for the next 27 years, and undo many of the previous changes, by privatising public property. His government was backed by the US and France, and received funding from the International Monetary Fund, until it was overthrown in 2014 after a popular uprising.

Working Class History

#Sankara
#Revolution
#BurkinaFaso
#Socialism
#AntiImperialism
#RadicalReforms
#Assassination
#ThomasSankara
#AntiColonial
#Compaore

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Media
On this day, 15 October 1944, Danish resistance fighter Jørgen Haagen Schmidt was killed in a gun battle with Nazis.Schmidt, codename Citronen (“the lemon”, because he worked at a Citroen factory), was Denmark’s most famous saboteur. He would sabotage German cars sent for repair at the factory, pouring sugar into petrol tanks, and adding standing powder into carriage bearings. His group also bombed the factory, and other key buildings.Citronen often wore disguises, including Danish police and German army uniforms, and helped transport refugees to Sweden. On one occasion, he was captured and shot by the Germans, but managed to escape.Eventually, the Nazis caught up with Schmidt again, and on October 15, the Gestapo attempted to storm a house where he was staying. He fought back, and the house caught fire. Neighbours saw a man in striped pyjamas with a machine-gun emerging from the burning house being shot multiple times. In the exchange of fire, he killed eight Germans and wounded four.

Working Class History

#History #Citronen #Resistance #Denmark #Saboteur #Antifascist #October15 #WWII #Sacrifice #Courage

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On this day in 1968, US Olympic athletes John Carlos and Tommie Smith made the Black Power salute at the medal ceremony in Mexico.
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The athletes were protesting the ongoing racial injustice in the US. They wore a black glove to represent Black power, socks instead of shoes to represent poverty, and a black scarf around the neck to symbolize the lynching of Black people.⁠
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The images were seen worldwide and became symbolic for the Black struggle for emancipation in the US that was heating up in the 60s. In their own country, they were criticized, attacked, and received death threats.⁠ They were suspended from the Olympic team and immediately sent home.
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Regarding all the difficulties he endured, Carlos said: “I have no regrets. The people who have regrets are the ones who were there in 1968 and did nothing.”

theredstream

#BlackPower #1968Olympics #JohnCarlos #TommieSmith #RacialJustice #BlackHistory #Protest #CivilRights #BlackStruggle #OlympicProtest #HumanRights #OnThisDay

@Communism

Ten Days That Shook the World
John Reed
First published by Boni & Liveright, New York, 1919

With the greatest interest and with never slackening attention I read John Reed’s book, Ten Days that Shook the World.
Unreservedly do I recommend it to the workers of the world.
Here is a book which I should like to see published in millions of copies and translated into all languages.
It gives a truthful and most vivid exposition of the events so significant to the comprehension of what really is the Proletarian Revolution and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.
These problems are widely discussed, but before one can accept or reject these ideas, he must understand the full significance of his decision.
John Reed’s book will undoubtedly help to clear this question, which is the fundamental problem of the international labor movement.

Nikolai Lenin
(Vladimir Ilyitch Ulianov)
End of 1919

#TenDaysThatShookTheWorld #JohnReed #ProletarianRevolution #Lenin #DictatorshipOfTheProletariat #PDF #Book

@Communism

People always have been and they always will be the stupid victims of deceit and self-deception in politics, until they learn behind every kind of moral, religious, political, social phrase, declaration and promise to seek out the interests of this or that class or classes. The partisans of reform and betterment will always be fooled by the defenders of the old régime, until they understand that every old institution, no matter how savage and rotten it may seem, is sustained by the forces of this or that dominant class or classes. And there is only one way to break the resistance of these classes, namely, to find in the very society surrounding us, to find and educate and organize for the struggle, those forces which can – and owing to their social situation must – form a power capable of sweeping away the old and creating the new.

#Lenin

@Communism

The democratic petty bourgeois, far from desiring to overturn the whole of society for the revolutionary proletarian, strives for a change in social conditions which will make the existing society as endurable and comfortable as possible for him.

#Marx

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History Will Absolve Me! -- Fidel Castro's iconic speech, October 16, 1953

On October 16, 1953 Fidel Castro gave his iconic History Will Absolve Me speech before a Cuban court. He was on trial for his leading role in the attack on the Moncada Barracks in Santiago de Cuba on July 26, 1953 -- an event seen as the beginning of the Cuban Revolution that would culminate in the overthrow of the Batista dictatorship and the liberation of Cuba from imperialist domination in 1959.


The speech was two hours long and though a guilty verdict for Castro was preordained, it became a manifesto and rallying cry of the revolutionary 26th of July Movement. Copies of it were secretly printed and distributed.


Castro was convicted and sentenced to 15 years in prison though he was released in 1955 due a general amnesty.


Critical parts of the speech included Castro's proclamation of the "five revolutionary laws" as well as his long and brilliant defense of the people's right to rebel against -- including in armed uprisings -- tyranny and oppression citing, among other examples, the American Revolution and Cuba's own constitution at the time.


You can read the full speech at:

https://www.marxists.org/history/cuba/archive/castro/1953/10/16.htm

It culminated with the immortal line "Condemn me. It does not matter. History will absolve me."

#Cuba #FidelCastro #Castro

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An aspiring engineering designer Chinese Young Pioneer constructs a mechanical aircraft model at a Pioneer summer camp, People's Republic of #China, 1951

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#Lenin Centennial #Poster, #Denmark 1970

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#Lenin Centennial #Poster, #Sudan 1970

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#Lenin Centennial #Poster, Communist Party of #Uruguay, 1970

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