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Oneil and Adele Cannon were honored at a dinner in Los Angeles on April 17, celebrating fifty years of their activist marriage.
Oneil Cannon is the owner and operator of Fidelity Press, where he prints leaflets, journals and brochures for community organizations and churches -- especially those looking for a union printer. He fought to become the first African American member of the Printers Union in Los Angeles.
Adele Cannon is a Certified Public Accountant. She was long time State Treasurer of the Peace and Freedom Party and serves as an officer of its state central committee.
The Cannons were among the co-founders of The Paul Robeson Community Center in 1986. After starting to work together in South Los Angeles during the campaign to put Henry Wallace and the Independent Progressive Party (IPP) on the ballot in the late 1940s, they continued as a team when fighting to free the Rosenbergs and later Angela Davis.
One fight always led to another as they worked to force employers to hire African- and Mexican- Americans with the slogan "Don't bank or buy where you can't work!" As part of the South-East Inter-Racial Council, they fought segregated housing and restrictive covenants and to bring "Negro History Week" into the L.A. City Schools.
They gathered signatures to the Stockholm Peace Petition, fought and demonstrated against the wars in Korea and Vietnam and continue to fight for Middle East peace. As they raised their six kids, the Cannons fought to bring equal education to South Los Angeles, including the multi-year struggle to bring a junior college to South Los Angeles which culminated in the establishment of Southwest Community College.
In a low turnout city election on March 8, Peace and Freedom Party candidate John Crocker got 1,610 votes in the Republican stronghold of Clovis. There were roughly twice as many absentee votes as votes cast in precincts. John got votes from around 30% of voters who voted on election day and from just under 25% of those who voted absentee. Generally, more conservative voters cast absentee ballots. It is probably also because John's campaign was more active later than earlier. John came in third place in every precinct, but he did much better in some than in others. He received 40 to 50% of the vote in eight of the 30 precincts.
Although Clovis is a conservative town, issues such as mass evictions of tenants for condo conversion and destruction of small business by a massive WalMart have highlighted class divisions. Crocker had the endorsement of the Central Labor Council.
We had a special election in the 5th Congressional district due to the death of the recently reelected Congressman Robert Matsui. The Sacramento County Peace and Freedom Party has worked hard on the Congressional campaign of our candidate, John C. Reiger.
The Reiger campaign raised nearly $1,500 which was spent on literature, ads in weekly and monthly newspapers, and mailings to some of our registrants and other supporters.
The campaign was covered in the Sacramento Bee, Sacramento News & Review, television and radio (including FOX TV and FOX radio). John attended every public forum including one with all 12 candidates sponsored by the League of Women Voters (aired on the local government cable TV channel). John and three other candidates appeared on Soapbox, a progressive talk show on local cable TV. It has been a very busy campaign.
Unfortunately, Matsui's widow Doris Matsui won a first round victory with 69% of the vote. Her name recognition and massive campaign fund (most of it from out of the district) simply overwhelmed our efforts, despite her appearance at only three public events. One of Matsui's first acts in Congress was to vote for an $82 billion blank check for the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.
[The photograph with this story is by Jim Smith.]
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