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Fight Back News Service
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Reagan's Legacy of Poverty and War
by Fight Back editors
While the corporate-controlled media is singing praises of Ronald Reagan for "restoring confidence to America," millions of Americans and millions more around the world have been forced into poverty and war as a result of his policies.
Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1980, at a time when the U.S. empire was reeling from blows abroad and here at home. The 1970s saw an Arab oil boycott to protest U.S. support for Israel; the liberation of Angola, Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique from U.S. supported Portuguese colonial rule and, most significantly, the victory of the Vietnamese people against the world's greatest military power in 1975.
Here in the United States, the economy was plagued by high inflation and unemployment. Workers hit the picket lines and oppressed nationality communities organized to defend and expand the victories of the 1960s. A new generation of revolutionaries arose from the African American, Asian American, Chicano, Latino and Native American people's struggles, as well as a student movement that challenged U.S. imperialism.
The monopoly capitalists had already begun a turn to the right under President Carter by bringing back registration for the draft, beginning the deregulation of industries and putting limits on the affirmative action programs - programs which were originally designed to reduce inequality in education between oppressed nationalities and whites. Under Reagan, the United States made a bid to restore the economic and military power of its heyday after World War II.
EDITED BY ADMIN: COPYRIGHT
http://www.fightbacknews.org/2004/02spring/reagan.htm