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began on the first day of the strike, October 26, 1990.

Delivery trucks were pelted with stones and bricks.  Other

trucks were blocked by strikers, and the truck drivers

were assaulted with baseball bats.  Carloads of strikers

pursued delivery trucks.  A striking union member was

arrested for transporting Molotov cocktails.  The violence

accelerated rapidly, and by the second day more than 50

delivery trucks had been burned.  Rarely did the strikers

act alone; they gathered in groups of up to several dozen.

The attacks failed to halt the delivery trucks, how-

ever.  Security guards with strike experience drove many

of the trucks.  Most trucks were accompanied by additional

guards in cars and equipped with video cameras documenting

the union violence.42   Indicating that the violence was

hardly spontaneous, a paper handler told a New York Times

reporter, "They may try to get the paper out, but they'll

never get it out to the streets.  And if they do, we'll

drag it off the newsstands."43

Although the Tribune Company could guard a few

trucks, it did not have the resources to guard all the

newsstands in metropolitan New York, and neither did the

newsstand owners.  So, the unions divided the newsstands

into territories and dispatched their promoters of union

"solidarity."  The union militants fanned out to each

newsstand to see if the Daily News was being sold.  If it

was, additional union activists followed and snatched away

any copies, which were tossed into the street, scattered

on subway platforms, or burned.  Each day thereafter a

union representative visited the newsstand to ensure that

it no longer took delivery of the News.  Sometimes the

strikers tracked the delivery trucks and picked up the

papers before the news dealer could.

On subsequent days, individuals and small groups of

union militants warned the news dealers that their stands

were flammable.  A vendor in Brooklyn reported that one

union representative threatened to "pour gasoline on the

newsstand, set the newsstand on fire, and burn him alive."

Another vendor watched as "some people came and took all

the Daily News and they made a fire outside.  There were

six people. . . . I don't sell the Daily News because I

have four kids and have to watch myself."44

The Tribune Company's own staff recorded over two

thousand possible legal violations by strikers.  The New

York City Police Department, which covers only a portion

of the paper's delivery area, recorded more than 500 inci-

dents.  Police arrested over 150 strikers and 40 nonstrik-

ing News employees.45