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In the U.S.
Testimony at a hearing on Dec. 8 by the U.S. House Committee on Financial
Services documented how the foreclosure crisis is getting worse.
Laurie Goodman, senior managing director at Amherst Securities, a leading
broker/dealer specializing in trading mortgage-backed securities, testified
that in the third quarter of 2009, 14.1 percent of borrowers — or 7.9
million homeowners — did not make their mortgage payments. She estimated
that 7 million of these 7.9 million homeowners will lose their homes....
Posted Dec 23, 2009
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Chants of “Jobs, not war!” echoed off the buildings at Broad and Market streets in downtown Newark, N.J., on Dec. 19. Activists withstood freezing cold to
demand a massive public works program with direct government employment at
prevailing wages....
Posted Dec 23, 2009
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On Dec. 19, despite snow, more than 40 protesters gathered at the home of
Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson picketing, chanting and singing “We Shall
Not Be Moved!” The rally was called by the Imperial Women, a diverse
group of women formed to press for a militant response in the wake of the
October discovery of 11 bodies of Black women in Anthony Sowell’s home on
Imperial Avenue on Cleveland’s east side....
Posted Dec 23, 2009
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On Dec. 15, federal prosecutors charged a police chief and two officers with
orchestrating a cover-up in the racially motivated fatal beating of 25-year-old
Luis Ramírez, a Mexican immigrant, by white teenagers in Shenandoah,
Pa....
Posted Dec 23, 2009
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Houstonians took to the streets for several days in mid-December in strong
actions to support immigrant rights and immigration reform....
Posted Dec 23, 2009
|
On March 4, students and workers from all around the country will take action
to defend education against increased privatization of K-12 schools and budget
cuts, layoffs, furloughs and tuition increases at the college and university
level—especially the public institutions....
Posted Dec 23, 2009
|
Chanting “MTA, we won’t pay!” hundreds of youth
protested on Dec. 21 at the Metropolitan Transit Authority headquarters in New
York City. Signs at this Day of Outrage protest read, “Save the Students,
not the Bankers.”...
Posted Dec 23, 2009
|
A Dec. 16 Detroit News article confirms what most working people in Detroit
have been saying for some time: The official employment figures issued by the
federal government do not give an accurate description of the depth of the
economic crisis in the city. According to the article, the actual unemployment
rate in Detroit is closer to 50 percent, rather than the nearly 28 percent
reported over the last several months....
Posted Dec 23, 2009
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The past decade has seen a flurry of promising breakthroughs in medicine. The
HPV vaccine, targeted cancer therapy, human genome mapping, natural orifice
surgery, and drug-eluting stents are among the biggest breakthroughs of the
21st century. Many of these developments hold the potential to prolong and
improve life....
Posted Dec 23, 2009
|
The day after he went to Wall Street to say that bankers’ salaries are
“rather low,” Gov. David Paterson signed a bill Dec. 10 taking $30
to $50 billion away from the pensions of new state and municipal hires. This is
the biggest change to New York’s pension system in 25 years....
Posted Dec 23, 2009
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“They say gentrify, we say unify!” shouted
protesters on Dec. 16 in East Harlem, New York City....
Posted Dec 23, 2009
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New York’s billionaire Mayor Mike Bloomberg and his friends at The
Related Companies L.P. were upset Dec. 21 by a 49-1 override of
Bloomberg’s veto of an earlier vote by the New York City Council, which
had rejected Related Companies’ attempt to create a monster-mall out of
the 560,000-square-foot Kingsbridge Armory in the Bronx, N.Y....
Posted Dec 23, 2009
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|
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Across New York state and Pennsylvania dozens of environmental activist groups
are working to ban or limit the practice of hydraulic fracturing, or
“fracking.” Green Guerrillas’ Youth Media Tech Collective consists of youth of color
ages 15 through 19, who plan to create an online movie to expose the issues of
natural gas exploitation. Workers World spoke with members of the collective about their activities....
Posted Dec 20, 2009
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Several dozen unemployed youth rallied here on Dec. 4 at the Employment
Security Commission headquarters, demanding “A jobs program at a living
wage, not war and prisons!”...
Posted Dec 20, 2009
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Demanding relief from the jobs crisis and record foreclosures, activists
in Los Angeles led a militant trail of protest on Dec. 12 from a
state park to the streets to inside Bank of America. ...
Posted Dec 20, 2009
|
The Cleveland Bail Out the People Movement chapter held its first March
for Jobs on Dec. 12....
Posted Dec 20, 2009
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The myth of upward mobility through education is the basis of the so-called
“American Dream.” But college education has become a financial
Mount Everest that the majority of the working class cannot climb....
Posted Dec 20, 2009
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Text of a talk given Dec. 11 to a meeting of the New York branch
of Workers World Party by Naomi Cohen....
Posted Dec 20, 2009
|
The United States is one of a small number of countries that allow the sale of
human blood plasma for profits. Across the country, countless workers are
selling the yellowy substance found in their blood to the pharmaceutical giants
of Wall Street....
Posted Dec 19, 2009
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Excerpts from a talk by Martha Grevatt of Cleveland at the WWP
National Conference, Nov. 14....
Posted Dec 19, 2009
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Support arrived quickly for long-time Baltimore community activists Sharon
Black-Ceci and Steven Ceci, who were arrested and dragged from their home by
cops on Dec. 9. As of Dec. 14 more than 1,000 people had sent in messages or
signed a petition demanding their release from all charges, an inquiry into
police surveillance of Baltimore progressives and that police stop all attacks
on movement activists....
Posted Dec 17, 2009
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On Dec. 9, supporters of political journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal marked the 28th
year of his incarceration on Pennsylvania’s death row, more determined
than ever to fight for his exoneration....
Posted Dec 17, 2009
|
Workers World Party and Fight Imperialism, Stand Together
(FIST) held a public forum Dec. 11 at the Solidarity Center in a tribute
to martyred Black Panther Party leader Fred Hampton....
Posted Dec 17, 2009
|
At a national assembly of U.S. Labor Against the War held in Chicago Dec. 4-6,
a resolution was passed unanimously that called for “an immediate end to
the wars and occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan and military attacks in
Pakistan.” The resolution also declared that “USLAW calls for the
immediate and complete withdrawal of all U.S. military forces and contractors
from Iraq and Afghanistan and the closing of all U.S. military bases in both
countries.”...
Posted Dec 17, 2009
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|
Over 100 University of Massachusetts students and community supporters came out
on Dec. 1 to protest the appearance near the UMass campus of the white
supremacist, anti-gay, anti-Semitic Fred Phelps and members of his Westboro
Church in Kansas....
Posted Dec 13, 2009
|
On the evening of Nov. 30, scores of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and
queer activists packed Cleveland City Council chambers in anticipation of a
tremendous victory for the transgender community. That night the Council
revised the city charter to prohibit discrimination based on gender identity
and gender expression....
Posted Dec 13, 2009
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An overflow crowd heard Larry Holmes, keynote speaker at Springfield, Mass., Technical
Community College’s 5th annual Rosa Parks Day observance on Dec. 1....
Posted Dec 13, 2009
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Protesters converged on the White House on Dec. 3—the day President
Barack Obama was holding his “jobs summit”—to demand a
comprehensive jobs program, not more war....
Posted Dec 13, 2009
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Fighting to reverse 40 years of progressive change in the Wake County School
Board, North Carolina Republican Party candidate John Tedesco was successfully
elected to a District 2 School Board position in the Nov. 3 elections. Tedesco,
a staunch segregationist and champion of “neighborhood schools,”
and three other school board members joined incumbent Ron Margiotta to secure a
pro-segregationist majority on the nine-member board....
Posted Dec 13, 2009
|
Excerpts from a talk given by Ellen Catalinotto at the WWP National
Conference, Nov. 14....
Posted Dec 13, 2009
|
People gathered at the Southern Workers School in Raleigh, N.C.,
Dec. 5 to exchange experiences in organizing and to fight for collective
bargaining and social and economic justice. The one-day conference included
workers from North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Georgia and
Tennessee....
Posted Dec 11, 2009
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Dec. 4 marked the 40th anniversary of the targeted assassinations of Fred
Hampton and Mark Clark, two leading members of the Illinois Chapter of the
Black Panther Party. These young revolutionary activists were killed in a
Panther residence on Chicago’s West Side in a neighborhood where the
organization ran free breakfast programs and was in the process of establishing
a free medical clinic....
Posted Dec 11, 2009
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Visiting a prisoner is not easy, for either a family member or a political
activist. Often the only way is to take a special bus round trip to one of the
many prisons located, like Auburn, in a rural setting. A prison bus from New
York City to Auburn takes six hours each way and leaves in the middle of the
night from Lexington Avenue and 125th Street for a 9 a.m. visit.
After corresponding with Jalil Muntaqim for more than four years, it was
exciting to finally meet him this fall. Happily, he turned out to be exactly
the same person as he is in his letters....
Posted Dec 11, 2009
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Sam Marcy, the founding chairperson of Workers World Party and a farseeing
contributor to the Marxist-Leninist tradition, foretold in his 1986 book
“High Tech Low Pay” that women and people of color would soon gain
ascendancy in the U.S. working class. Now a scholarly study, “The
Changing Face of Labor, 1983-2008,” published by the Center for Economic
and Policy Research, verifies just that in the organized labor movement....
Posted Dec 11, 2009
|
Excerpts from a talk by Sandra Hines, an
organizer with Michigan’s Moratorium NOW! Coalition, at the WWP National
Conference, Nov. 14....
Posted Dec 11, 2009
|
Imagine finding methane and metals in your drinking water or having your water
well explode or catch on fire. Imagine getting thrown out of bed one morning as
your entire house is lifted off the ground from an explosion due to methane gas
build-up. These nightmares are a reality for a growing number of families whose
homes are located near natural gas drilling sites in New York, Pennsylvania,
Ohio and other states across the U.S....
Posted Dec 10, 2009
|
On the morning of Dec. 9, long-time Baltimore Community
activists Sharon Black-Ceci and Steven Ceci were dragged from their home by
Baltimore police. The two, long-time leaders in the anti-racist, and poor
people’s rights struggle, had been under police surveillance for their
political activism....
Posted Dec 10, 2009
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Anti-war activists across the United States took to the streets in response to
President Barack Obama’s Dec. 1 announcement that an additional 30,000
U.S. troops will be sent to Afghanistan in a major escalation of the war on
that central Asian country.<...
Posted Dec 9, 2009
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Twenty years ago, six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her 15-year-old
daughter were viciously murdered in El Salvador by military forces trained at
the School of the Americas, located at Fort Benning in Columbus, Ga. They are
just a few of the many tens of thousands of victims killed, tortured, beaten
and “disappeared” in countries from Argentina to Chile to Colombia
to Honduras, in military coups and massacres carried out by the graduates of
this U.S. training school....
Posted Dec 6, 2009
|
Excerpts from a talk given by Fight Imperialism, Stand
Together organizer LeiLani Dowell, at the WWP National Conference, Nov. 14....
Posted Dec 6, 2009
|
Hundreds of students rallied at Wayne State University in Detroit Nov. 23 to
protest the elimination of the Michigan Promise Scholarship and other education
cuts by the state legislature....
Posted Dec 5, 2009
|
On Nov. 19, thousands of students, workers and faculty on campuses across the
University of California system protested and blockaded a meeting of the U.C.
Regents, where the regents approved 32 percent tuition and fee increases,
furloughs of campus workers and continued budget cuts. Several days of huge
protests, seen throughout the media, ended with nearly 60 arrests and showed
the potential of opposition to the “business as usual” attacks on
jobs and education by the U.C. administrators....
Posted Dec 5, 2009
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Undaunted by pouring rain, hundreds of community residents, students and United
Steelworker union retirees in Pittsburgh blocked the street in front of the
Braddock hospital on Nov. 19 to declare that the struggle to keep the facility
open was only the beginning....
Posted Dec 5, 2009
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Hotel workers rolling strikes | Native farmers charge USDA with loan discrimination | CLUW defends women’s reproductive freedom | S.F. Labor Council condemns Honduran election...
Posted Dec 5, 2009
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The shootings at Fort Hood, Texas, on Nov. 5, which left 13 people dead, have
brought into bold relief the terrible strains on soldiers and their families as
we enter the eighth year of the alleged “war on terror.”...
Posted Dec 5, 2009
|
Talk given by John Catalinotto at the WWP National
Conference, Nov. 14....
Posted Dec 5, 2009
|
“When billionaire developers are accepting tens of millions of dollars in
tax benefits to build in our communities,” said Bronx Borough President
Rubén Díaz Jr., “it is not a radical idea to ask that the jobs
they create be good jobs.”...
Posted Dec 5, 2009
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Some 100 people gathered at the town square in Lumpkin, Ga., on Nov. 20 to
protest the conditions at the nearby Stewart Detention Center, a privately
owned prison that holds 1,800 immigrants awaiting deportation....
Posted Dec 3, 2009
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Coalitions are forming in several Cleveland communities to address the murders
of 11 Black women whose bodies were found in and around a house on Imperial
Avenue in late October. Activists are holding rallies and vigils, meeting with
public officials to present demands, developing better resources for women and
the families of missing persons, and taking care of all the funeral
arrangements for the 10 women whose remains have been identified....
Posted Dec 3, 2009
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Despite seven civilian complaints investigated by Internal Affairs, including
some from his neighbors, Sgt. Frank Tepper was never brought up on any charges
by the Philadelphia Police Department, where he worked for 13 years. On Nov. 21
the department's inaction turned deadly when Tepper shot and killed a young
neighbor, 21-year-old William Panas Jr....
Posted Dec 3, 2009
|
Dec. 9 marks the 28th anniversary of the imprisonment of political prisoner and
journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal for the murder of a Philadelphia police officer. To
observe this important anniversary and support ongoing efforts to free Mumia,
the Philadelphia International Action Center will host a showing of the 2008
documentary, “In Prison My Whole Life.”...
Posted Dec 3, 2009
|
Depression. The present crisis is the worst since the Great
Depression. But it is not only the worst crisis since the Depression. It has
the same fundamental elements as the Depression....
Posted Dec 3, 2009
|
Several hundred Native people and their supporters gathered in Plymouth, Mass.,
for the 40th annual National Day of Mourning, which is a protest of the U.S.
Thanksgiving holiday and a day of mourning for Native ancestors who died as a
result of the European invasion of the Americas....
Posted Dec 2, 2009
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Statement from Leonard Peltier read by Bert Waters at the 40th
National Day of Mourning, Nov. 26, in Plymouth, Mass....
Posted Dec 2, 2009
|
Two significant events have occurred in Detroit, a majority African-American
city, that warrant the attention of people concerned about the plight and
future of U.S. urban centers. Democratic Gov. Jennifer Granholm’s
appointment of an emergency financial manager to oversee the affairs of the
public school system represents a direct attack on the people of
Detroit’s right to self-determination.
The other was the re-election of Mayor Dave Bing, who ran on a theme of
reducing the budget deficit through cutting jobs, salaries and city services....
Posted Dec 2, 2009
|
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder was the keynote speaker in downtown Detroit
on Nov. 19 at the first awards dinner for the Advocates and Leaders for Police
and Community Trust, an organization that consists of 50 groups representing
the Arab, Muslim, African-American, Asian and civil-rights constituencies along
with 50 officials from local, state and federal law-enforcement agencies....
Posted Nov 29, 2009
|
Picture the Homeless held a fundraising public meeting at Judson Memorial
Church in New York City on Nov. 17, PTH’s 10th anniversary. Hundreds of
supporters came out to support this dynamic grassroots organization....
Posted Nov 29, 2009
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As if the “cash-for-kids” scandal that has two former Luzerne
County judges under indictment on racketeering charges wasn’t enough, now
reports of another pay-back scheme are surfacing—this one elsewhere in
northeastern Pennsylvania’s coal region, where prospective teachers were
forced to shell out up to $5,000 to secure a job....
Posted Nov 29, 2009
|
At a Nov. 18 news conference called by the disabled rights organization
Warriors on Wheels, members of the group spoke out against the Detroit
Department of Transportation using unsafe transportation providers for seniors
and disabled residents....
Posted Nov 29, 2009
|
A famous U.S. patriot of the Revolutionary War against Britain, Thomas Paine,
is quoted as saying, “These are the times that try men’s
souls.” But for millions of oppressed people in the U.S. and globally,
these times are also a continuation of the realities of their lives that have
existed for eons. Today’s economic crisis and political situation are
just another chapter in the history of their injuries....
Posted Nov 29, 2009
|
Two-day strike of grad teaching assistants wins in Ill. | Part-time faculty win historic first contract in Md. | Workers protest Bissell firing after voting union | Anti-sweatshop movement wins fight for Honduran workers...
Posted Nov 29, 2009
|
In the early hours of the afternoon of Nov. 19, more than 2,000 students stood
outside the office of the University of California’s Board of Regents. As
it became clear that a motion to raise UC tuition by 32 percent had passed, the
students screamed in outrage. Outside the meeting and all across the state,
students began to fight back....
Posted Nov 25, 2009
|
On Nov. 19, longtime civil rights attorney Lynne Stewart was ordered by Judge
John G. Koeltl to turn herself in to begin serving a prison sentence for her
2006 conviction for conspiracy and providing material support to
terrorists. Amidst a backdrop of chants of “Free Lynne Stewart!” and “We
love you Lynne!” and swarmed by supporters, friends and family members,
Stewart issued a statement outside the U.S. District Court in New York before
being taken into custody....
Posted Nov 25, 2009
|
Excerpts from a talk
given by WWP Secretariat member Monica Moorehead at the WWP National Conference Nov. 14.....
Posted Nov 24, 2009
|
Excerpts from a talk by Sharon Black at the WWP National Conference,
Nov. 14....
Posted Nov 24, 2009
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Excerpts from a talk by John Parker from Los Angeles to the WWP
National Conference, Nov. 14....
Posted Nov 24, 2009
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Excerpts from a talk by Phebe Eckfeldt from Boston at the WWP National Conference, Nov. 14....
Posted Nov 24, 2009
|
Excerpts are from a talk given by Fight Imperialism,
Stand Together organizer, David Hoskins, at the WWP National Conference, Nov.
14....
Posted Nov 24, 2009
|
Federal agents moved on Nov. 12 to seize four mosques and an Islamic
charity, the Alavi Foundation, using phony claims that they were channeling
money to fund an Iranian nuclear weapons program....
Posted Nov 22, 2009
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On Nov. 12, the Center for Constitutional Rights brought a lawsuit against the
U.S. government on behalf of the Association of Community Organizations for
Reform Now. CCR charged Congress with violating the U.S. Constitution when it
recently voted to strip ACORN, its affiliates and allies of funding....
Posted Nov 20, 2009
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The televised scenes and photos from Fort Hood, Texas, following the Nov. 5
shooting at the “Soldier Readiness Center” that left 13 dead,
brought back memories of another time when that enormous military base was a
center of political struggle....
Posted Nov 20, 2009
|
Excerpts from a talk by Larry Holmes to the Workers World Party National Conference: Our biggest problem is that our class has been untaught how to fight. It is a
legacy of class collaborationist trade union leaders that feel they have some
partnership with the Democratic Party and now with the government, which is an
illusion in their own mind....
Posted Nov 19, 2009
|
Excerpts from a talk by Teresa Gutierrez to the
WWP National Conference, Nov. 14: To add to the long list of crimes against humanity perpetrated by imperialism,
we can include today’s unprecedented wave of human migration. I speak not
only of the millions of undocumented migrants forced to leave their countries
in hazardous boats or sweltering windowless trucks, transport that too often
becomes the coffins for too many....
Posted Nov 19, 2009
|
Excerpts from a talk by Fred Goldstein to the Workers World Party National Conference Nov. 14: We are a party of fighters, but we also must carefully analyze what is
going on around us and what direction things are taking.
Using Marxism is the surest guide....
Posted Nov 19, 2009
|
Excerpts from a talk by youth organization FIST leader Larry Hales to
the WWP National Conference, Nov. 14: According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, for people between the ages of 16
and 24, unemployment is 18.5 percent, the highest it has been since after the
Second World War. For Black youth it is 32 percent, 22 percent for Latino/a
youth and the percentage for Indigenous youth is hard to come by, but according
to an ABC News report, on some reservations the general unemployment rate is 80
percent....
Posted Nov 19, 2009
|
Excerpts from a talk by Elena Everett of Durham, N.C., to the WWP
National Conference, Nov. 14: Thank you for the opportunity to help open this beautiful conference where
we have come together to celebrate 50 years of organizing and struggling for
justice....
Posted Nov 19, 2009
|
Excerpted from a talk by Sara Flounders at the Workers World Party National Conference in New York: The U.S. military budget is larger than the rest of the world’s put
together. This is a superprofit subsidy to the wealthiest CEOs and stockholders
of the military corporations....
Posted Nov 19, 2009
|
Over 25,000 letters calling on U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to conduct a
civil rights investigation of the 28-year conspiracy to execute death row
political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal were delivered to the doors of the
Department of Justice in Washington at the end of a spirited march and rally on
Nov. 12....
Posted Nov 18, 2009
|
After seven months of working without a contract, Southeastern Pennsylvania
Transportation Authority (SEPTA) workers in Transport Workers Union Local 234
voted to go on strike one week before baseball’s World Series, when
national attention was focused on Philadelphia....
Posted Nov 18, 2009
|
Two main themes ran through the 2009 Workers World Party National Conference:
the revival of serious class struggle in the United States as the capitalist
crisis brutally strips the workers and oppressed of their jobs, homes and
health, and the need to strengthen international workers’ solidarity in
the face of corporate globalization and increasing militarism and war....
Posted Nov 18, 2009
|
A highlight of the Workers World Party national conference on Nov. 14 was an
address by Armando Robles, president of United Electrical Workers Local 1110.
In December 2008, Robles led his members in the historic occupation of Republic
Window and Doors in Chicago after the company tried to close shop without
providing vacation or severance pay for workers....
Posted Nov 18, 2009
|
Mayor Michael Bloomberg spent at least
$100 million of his $16 billion fortune to get re-elected on Nov. 3.
That’s capitalist democracy for you. Under the Stars and Stripes,
billionaires are guaranteed the same right to become mayors as, supposedly,
homeless people....
Posted Nov 15, 2009
|
On Nov. 2 the United Auto Workers announced that its Ford hourly members had
rejected contract concessions similar to those obtained by Chrysler and General
Motors earlier this year. The final vote was nearly 3-to-1 against the
givebacks; at several plants more than 90 percent voted “no.”...
Posted Nov 13, 2009
|
The unemployment report produced by the Bureau of Labor Statistics at the start
of every month has a political goal: Present the economy in the best possible
light....
Posted Nov 13, 2009
|
A demonstration was held outside the McNamara Federal Building in downtown
Detroit on Nov. 5 in response to the recent murder by FBI agents of Imam Luqman
Ameen Abdullah. Over 250 people gathered for a rally and speak-out demanding an
independent investigation into the Islamic leader’s killing, and the
release of 11 people being held in connection with the case. Abdullah, 53, was
shot 18 times by FBI agents on Oct. 28 after he and several followers were
lured to a warehouse in nearby Dearborn....
Posted Nov 12, 2009
|
In April the Fort Dix Five were given sentences of life plus 30 years for
allegedly plotting to attack Fort Dix in New Jersey. These Muslim defendants
were prosecuted and tried even when there was no crime, a practice known as
pre-emptive prosecution. Lejla Duka, the 11-year-old daughter of Fort Dix Five defendant Dritan Duka,
has been a courageous spokesperson on her father’s and uncles’
behalf. Lejla and her grandmother, Zurata Duka, spoke with Workers World about
the arrests and what they have meant to their family....
Posted Nov 12, 2009
|
The Michigan Moratorium NOW! Coalition to Stop Foreclosures, Evictions and
Utility Shutoffs has recently scored important victories in the fight against
home foreclosures and evictions.
After a one-year battle, the coalition, along with neighborhood activists,
stopped the eviction of Belva Davis and forced Ocwen Loan Servicing to modify
her mortgage....
Posted Nov 12, 2009
|
The Black is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations, called
for by the International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement led by Omali
Yeshitela and made up of organizations and leaders on the left in the Black
community, held its first major mobilization on Nov. 7.
The Black is Back Coalition’s demands call for the end of the wars in
Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan and of U.S. support for the Zionist settler
state of Israel and repressive regimes around the world. The coalition also
calls for reparations, the release of Mumia Abu-Jamal, Jamil Al-Amin and all
political prisoners from incarceration, and an end to police brutality, home
foreclosures, gentrification and the prison-industrial complex. In all, there
are 10 progressive demands directed at U.S. imperialism and the repressive
state apparatus....
Posted Nov 11, 2009
|
After working for months without a contract, Transport Workers Local 234 hit
the bricks at 3 a.m. on Nov. 3 to drive home their demands for decent wages,
health care, workplace rights and fully funded pensions....
Posted Nov 11, 2009
|
A few hundred hotel workers walked off the job Nov. 5 at the Grand Hyatt hotel
in San Francisco’s Union Square, beginning a three-day strike against
Hyatt Hotels Corporation....
Posted Nov 11, 2009
|
Excerpts from a document written by Workers World Party
secretariat member Larry Holmes in preparation for the Nov. 14-15 WWP national conference in New York City. ‘Our founders formed Workers World Party in 1959 in order to embrace and defend
all the parts of what they called “the global class camp of the working
class,” including the socialist camp and the national liberation
movements, and to advance the position that the U.S. working class and its
advanced organizations could not have a revolutionary policy and program at
home or abroad if they cut themselves off from world struggle in order to make
life a little easier. The party’s founders decided to name their new
party “Workers World Party” as a way of driving home this
fundamental principle.’...
Posted Nov 11, 2009
|
Excerpted from a document submitted by Workers World
Party secretariat member Fred Goldstein in preparation for the Nov. 14-15 WWP
national conference in New York City. ‘As a starting point to approach the present economic crisis, I would like to
begin with the theoretical framework of Marxism in order to stimulate
discussion of an assessment of the period we are entering. In this regard, it
is appropriate to go back to Karl Marx.’...
Posted Nov 11, 2009
|
The Pentagon brass and corporate media’s reports and interpretations
of the stunning attack at the massive U.S. Army base at Fort Hood, Texas,
have omitted the most telling point. Far from an aberration, these deaths of
ordinary soldiers and officers are an integral part of the last eight years of
brutal wars of conquest and occupation that the U.S. imperialist war machine
has waged against the populations of Iraq, Afghanistan and now Pakistan....
Posted Nov 9, 2009
|
On Oct. 28, President Barack Obama signed the 2010 Defense Authorization Act,
the largest military budget in U.S. history.
It is not only the world’s largest military budget but is larger than the
military expenditures of the whole rest of the world combined. And it is
growing nonstop....
Posted Nov 7, 2009
|
Some 400 to 500 faculty, staff and students from the City University of New
York and the State University of New York marched and rallied against midyear
budget cuts on Oct. 27....
Posted Nov 7, 2009
|
The school system in California was once considered a global model for what a
public higher education system should look like. Now it is quickly being
dismantled by a political system that values repression over education, prisons
over schools. The statewide protests that started last spring, following the
passage of severe cuts in the California state education budget, are continuing
and growing....
Posted Nov 7, 2009
|
“Bloomberg, you can’t hide, you’re on the
bosses’ side!” rang out on a crowded stretch of Broadway in New York City....
Posted Nov 7, 2009
|
Losing a job is a scary thing for any worker to contemplate.
It’s certainly scary for any worker lucky enough to still have a job with
union wages and benefits. The fear of job loss has for several years led
members of the once-mighty United Auto Workers to accept drastic concessions
they normally wouldn’t consider.
Nevertheless, UAW Ford workers have overwhelmingly voted down the latest
package of contract modifications, sending a powerful message to their bosses....
Posted Nov 5, 2009
|
On Saturday, Nov. 14 and Sunday, Nov. 15, Workers World Party will hold its
annual party conference in the public school at 127 E. 22nd St. in New York
City. The theme of this year’s conference will be “Preparing and
Organizing for the Future.”
As part of the conference, the youth group Fight Imperialism, Stand Together
(FIST) will host a workshop on Saturday in the school cafeteria. The workshop
will focus on the importance of young people fighting for a better world and
the obstacles they face....
Posted Nov 5, 2009
|
For three days, from Oct. 25 to 27, thousands of poor and working people from
across the U.S. were in Chicago to directly challenge the criminal bankers and bosses
at an American Bankers Association conference....
Posted Nov 5, 2009
|
At Baldwin-Wallace College, the FBI announced it was planning to hold a
recruitment workshop....
Posted Nov 5, 2009
|
NYC transit workers on the move | Hotel workers prepared to strike...
Posted Nov 5, 2009
|
As a plethora of “health care reform” bills circulate through the
halls of Congress, a new movement is emerging on the streets—taking the
fight for health care reform directly to the doors of the health insurance
industry giants who, for all too long, have put their profits before
people’s care....
Posted Nov 4, 2009
|
Fred Goldstein, author of “Low-Wage Capitalism,” was the featured
speaker at two recent New York events: a Brecht Forum meeting and a conference
of the Union of Radical Political Economists (URPE) in Brooklyn. He was also
interviewed on radio station WBAI-FM in New York and KFAI-FM in Minneapolis.
These activities were part of the launching of the new book....
Posted Nov 4, 2009
|
Trying to hide behind the transparent ruse of “free speech,”
anti-Islamic Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders attempted to bring his hate-speech
tour to Temple University on Oct. 21. He was met with student
resistance....
Posted Nov 4, 2009
|
Funeral services for Imam Luqman Ameen Abdullah were held Oct. 31 at the Muslim
Center on Detroit’s west side. More than a thousand people attended the
memorial from the Detroit area and around the United States. The Muslim leader
had been gunned down by FBI agents on Oct. 28. In response to the assassination of Imam Abdullah, the Michigan Emergency
Committee Against War & Injustice (MECAWI) has called for a mass
demonstration outside the federal building in downtown Detroit on Nov. 5, from
4:30 to 6:00 p.m....
Posted Nov 2, 2009
|
On Oct. 24, International Climate Action Day, activists in 181 countries around
the world participated in over 5,200 events in an attempt to raise awareness
about the threats of climate change....
Posted Oct 30, 2009
|
On Oct. 22, over 3,000 members of UNITE-HERE Local 2 voted
overwhelmingly—by 92.3 percent—to authorize a strike against 31
upscale hotels in San Francisco....
Posted Oct 30, 2009
|
Members of United Steelworkers Local 12934-02 and their labor-community
supporters walked a picket line for more than three hours and then held a rally
here on Oct. 22 to protest the lockout of 70 union workers by Carquest, a chain
of auto supply stores. Bay City, with 36,000 people, is about 100 miles
northwest of Detroit....
Posted Oct 30, 2009
|
“Hey Goldman Sachs, we want our money back!” chanted about 60
mainly young protesters from the Bronx in front of the posh home of Goldman
Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein on the morning of Oct 25....
Posted Oct 30, 2009
|
Cafeteria workers at Hunter College in New York City won a contract with AVI
Foodsystems Inc. on Oct. 23 that includes free family health benefits....
Posted Oct 30, 2009
|
More than 1,000 people attended funeral services for Imam Luqman Ameen Abdullah
on Oct. 31 at the Muslim Center on Detroit’s West Side. The
African-American Muslim leader had been gunned down by FBI agents three days
earlier....
Posted Oct 29, 2009
|
Electricity was in the air Oct. 24 as hundreds of people filled the south steps
of the Texas Capitol in Austin to shout loud and clear: “Todd Willingham
was innocent!”
Gathering for the 10th Annual March to Abolish the Death Penalty, abolitionists
from all over Texas, around the country, and a few from overseas turned out in
record numbers to demand that Texas Gov. Rick Perry immediately stop all
executions in Texas....
Posted Oct 29, 2009
|
The Workers World Party 50th anniversary conference will take place in New
York City Nov. 14-15. A major focus of the gathering will be the global
capitalist economic crisis and the great need to intensify the prosecution of
the worldwide class struggle....
Posted Oct 29, 2009
|
On Dec. 8, 2003, former President George W. Bush signed into law the misnamed
Medicare Prescription Drug Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003. The evidence demonstrates that, in reality, this legislation has been a
corporate giveaway to the same insurance and pharmaceutical companies that make
billions of dollars by denying care to those who cannot afford it and
overcharging those lucky enough to have health insurance....
Posted Oct 29, 2009
|
The highest court in New York state held Oct. 22 that Tishman-Speyer, a big
landlord that controls 11,277 apartments in one major Manhattan apartment
complex alone, must significantly lower the rents on over 4,000 apartments that
it leases at “market rate” and put them back under rent
regulation....
Posted Oct 29, 2009
|
The International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal (ICFFMAJ)
coalition convened an urgent meeting on Oct. 17. Mumia supporters from
Philadelphia, New York and Washington, D.C., were in attendance. It was a
fightback strategy meeting of critical importance. Mumia, who has been on death
row for over 27 years, is now, more than ever, faced with having his life
snuffed out by the political powers that be....
Posted Oct 28, 2009
|
On Oct. 16, Alameda County (California) Superior Court Judge Morris Jacobson
granted a change of venue for Johannes Mehserle’s murder trial.
Mehserle is the former Bay Area Rapid Transit cop who, on Jan. 1, shot Oscar
Grant III in his back at point-blank range. Grant was subdued and lying on his
stomach when he was shot. The killing was captured on cell phone cameras and broadcast via the Internet,
causing a national outcry, as the cold-blooded shooting of Grant looked exactly
like an execution....
Posted Oct 28, 2009
|
A fired-up action took place in New York City on Oct. 22 as part of the
“National day of protest to stop police brutality, repression and the
criminalization of a generation.” It was led by oppressed and militant
youth....
Posted Oct 28, 2009
|
“Essex County has the highest rate of foreclosures in the entire
East Coast,” said Larry Hamm, chair of the People’s Organization
for Progress, at their first protest against foreclosures at Bank of America in
downtown Newark on Oct. 24....
Posted Oct 28, 2009
|
An article by Sara Flounders on the Palestinian people’s resistance to
the Israeli siege of Gaza has been recognized by Project Censored and included
in its list of the year’s top 25 most-censored stories....
Posted Oct 28, 2009
|
Coordinated anti-war demonstrations took place around the U.S. on Oct. 17 to
mark the eighth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and to demand
an end to the U.S.-led war and occupation there as well as in Iraq....
Posted Oct 25, 2009
|
When the workers at Republic Windows and Doors in Chicago seized the factory
last winter, their heroism in defying both their boss and the Bank of America
electrified workers and progressive people all over the country and even around
the world.
When they walked out of the factory in victory—with their demands for
severance pay, wages and other benefits agreed to by BOA—they had
accomplished what seemed impossible. Some 250 or more workers, mostly
immigrants, had forced a giant financial behemoth, which controls hundreds of
billions of dollars through its banking empire, to back up and meet their
demands. Revealed in that struggle was an important relationship that all
class-conscious workers should take to heart. The capitalist boss of Republic
Windows and Doors, the exploiter of the workers in his factory, was just a
dependent of his giant creditor....
Posted Oct 24, 2009
|
|
On Oct. 14 Lance Inc. and their Brynwood Partners were thwarted at 8 a.m.
by protesters, including Stella D’Oro workers and their supporters, with
unexpected help from nearby elevated subway tracks, when the bosses tried to
remove equipment from the Stella D’Oro plant in Bronx, N.Y. Following a
hard-won, 11-month-long strike by the unionized workers, Brynwood recently
announced that it was closing the Bronx factory and Lance would reopen it in
Ashland, Ohio, as a non-union plant....
Posted Oct 22, 2009
|
On Oct. 13, a 21-year-plus-10-month prison term was imposed on Antonio Guerrero
Rodríguez by the same Florida U.S. District Court that initially condemned
him to a life sentence plus 10 years. The steadfast support of the Cuban people
and government, amplified with worldwide solidarity, forced the U.S. government
to back off some of the unjust and wildly excessive life sentences imposed on
Guerrero, one of the revolutionary heroes known as the Cuban Five....
Posted Oct 22, 2009
|
A small group organized by Kansas-based fascist Fred Phelps appeared in San
Diego on Oct. 16 to spread their message of racism, anti-Semitism and
homohatred. An outpouring of hundreds of counterprotesters gathered in front of the San
Diego City High School...
Posted Oct 22, 2009
|
Fifty-four activists and health care workers were arrested Oct. 15 during
sit-ins at health insurance company offices in New York, Washington, Phoenix,
Palm Beach, Boston, Cleveland, Los Angeles, Reno and Portland, Ore....
Posted Oct 22, 2009
|
On Oct. 5 workers, faculty and students from both Hunter and Sarah
Lawrence colleges were joined by union representatives and New York activists
for a rally in front of Manhattan’s Hunter College against AVIFresh, an
anti-union dining service corporation....
Posted Oct 22, 2009
|
Students, faculty and community supporters protested at the
Department of Education Oct. 15 to demand an immediate rollback of tuition
hikes and budget cuts at the City University of New York....
Posted Oct 22, 2009
|
̵Teachers rally against layoffs in D.C.| 6;No contract, no peace!’ | Carhauler jobs in jeopardy...
Posted Oct 22, 2009
|
In 1959 Workers World Party was founded by Sam Marcy, Dorothy Ballan,
Vince Copeland and other U.S. working-class leaders based on the
teachings of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin. This Nov. 14-15 Workers World Party
will hold a national conference in New York City marking its 50th
anniversary....
Posted Oct 21, 2009
|
Oct. 16 is one of the most important dates in U.S.
history. On that day, 150 years ago, was the raid on the U.S. Army arsenal at Harper’s Ferry,
Va. This military assault by an armed, well-trained, united band of Black and
white militants was intended to be the opening battle in what would then
develop into a widespread guerrilla war that would topple the system of chattel
slavery....
Posted Oct 21, 2009
|
A monument in Oberlin, Ohio, honors the three Black town residents who
fought with John Brown at Harper’s Ferry. The accompanying plaque
explains....
Posted Oct 21, 2009
|
Mildred Loving, a civil rights pioneer, passed away on May 2, 2008.
She and her spouse, Richard Loving, were the plaintiffs in the landmark legal
case Loving v. Virginia, which challenged Virginia’s Jim Crow
miscegenation laws. In 1967 the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously decided to
strike down not only Virginia’s racist law but to prohibit all states
from barring interracial marriages. Mildred Loving provided this statement to a commemoration of the 40th
anniversary of the Loving v. Virginia decision, which was held on June 12,
2007....
Posted Oct 21, 2009
|
Downtown Atlanta was the backdrop to a demonstration of hundreds of disabled
people demanding equality and the freedom to choose to live in their
communities instead of nursing homes....
Posted Oct 16, 2009
|
A standing-room-only crowd of close to 500 people packed the Langston Hughes
Auditorium at the Schomberg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem,
N.Y., on Oct. 10 to commemorate the 75th birthday of legendary poet, playwright
and activist, Amiri Baraka....
Posted Oct 16, 2009
|
An estimated 65,000 people snatched up applications for federal assistance on
Oct. 6 and 7 in Detroit. They were applying for emergency funds to aid those
facing imminent eviction and/or utility shutoffs. They hoped to receive some of
the $15.2 million in federal stimulus money earmarked for Detroit under the
Homeless Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing Program....
Posted Oct 15, 2009
|
On Oct. 3, hundreds attended a conference in Chicago on the
deepening economic crisis in the United States. The event, whose theme was
“They Say Cut Back, We Say Fight Back,” was held at the Teamster
City building on the city’s West Side...
Posted Oct 15, 2009
|
Stella D’Oro, owned by the vulture private equity company Brynwood
Partners, closed its Bronx, N.Y., biscuit plant and fired 136 workers.
Management refused to pay the full amount of severance and other benefits to
the workers although their union contract spells it out explicitly. Many of the
workers have over 30 years of service...
Posted Oct 15, 2009
|
Amidst the national debate about health care, a Chicago factory boss has cut
workers and their families off from their health insurance coverage. The 70
workers at the SK Hand Tools factory, which is on 47th Street in Chicago, have
been on strike since Aug. 25....
Posted Oct 15, 2009
|
On Sept. 24 in Chicago, 16-year-old honor student Derrion Albert, apparently
heading to a school bus to go home, was caught in the middle of a fight between
other students.
Albert was killed in a scuffle witnesses say he was trying to avoid. The
videoed altercation has been seen around the country and the world, with shock
reverberating from the Roseland community on the far South Side of Chicago to
inner cities across the U.S....
Posted Oct 14, 2009
|
Over 150,000 strong and overwhelmingly young, the sea of marchers demanded
full equality for lesbian, gay, bi and trans people in the National Equality
March on Washington, D.C. on Oct. 11....
Posted Oct 14, 2009
|
Over 1,000 unionized and laid-off workers came from across New England for a
massive march for jobs here on Oct. 1. With unemployment at record levels and
no end in sight, organized labor in Massachusetts stirred the local movement
for economic justice to a new height....
Posted Oct 12, 2009
|
A Wall Street investment fund run by Wells Fargo rushed to foreclose on Belva
Davis’ home last December. Neighbors and supporters braved snow and
frigid weather to come out and show support as Davis began a long struggle to
save her home....
Posted Oct 12, 2009
|
President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela took advantage of his recent visit to
the United Nations to meet a group of workers in New York City on Sept. 23. A
large group of labor unionists came, including a five-person delegation
representing workers at the Stella D’Oro Co., who have been fighting for
their jobs for more than a year....
Posted Oct 10, 2009
|
How many feature Hollywood movies can you name with the hero a rank-and-file
woman worker who leads a successful union organizing drive against a powerful
union-busting corporation?...
Posted Oct 10, 2009
|
Fired janitors demand justice | Locked out workers need support...
Posted Oct 10, 2009
|
People from across the country set up a Tent City in Pittsburgh dedicated to
the millions who are unemployed and homeless. The gathering took place from
Sept. 20 to 25 during the week of the G-20 summit when banking and finance
officials from 19 countries and the European Union met to discuss how to
protect their profits....
Posted Oct 10, 2009
|
The Tent City—organized by the Bail Out the People Movement during
the G-20 summit—fed hundreds of people three meals a day for almost a
week....
Posted Oct 10, 2009
|
When the words “capitalism” and “socialism” appear in
newspapers and magazines in the United States it’s a sure bet that we are
in the midst of some sort of economic crisis....
Posted Oct 10, 2009
|
When the AFL-CIO convention met in Pittsburgh Sept. 13-17, a sign of
fundamental change in organized labor was that 43 percent of the 1,000
delegates were women and people of color. On the agenda were a series of
progressive resolutions that ranged from promoting diversity, empowering young
workers and supporting single-payer health care, to ending attacks on
immigrants...
Posted Oct 10, 2009
|
Texas Gov. Rick Perry not only executed an innocent Cameron Todd Willingham in
2004, Perry is now scrambling to cover it up until after his bid for
reelection....
Posted Oct 8, 2009
|
When Janice
Langbehn’s partner of 18 years, Lisa Pond, was dying of a brain aneurysm,
Langbehn and the couple’s three children were not allowed to visit her.
Pond died in her hospital bed at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, alone....
Posted Oct 8, 2009
|
Charges of racial discrimination by parents of 56 African-American and Latino/a
children against an all-white swim club in a Philadelphia suburb were backed up
in a report by the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission....
Posted Oct 8, 2009
|
Sixty years ago Paul Robeson—fearless civil rights advocate, renowned
actor and magnificent singer—came to Peekskill, N.Y., to give a concert.
The event became historic in the struggle against racism and fascism when
concertgoers were attacked by a racist mob....
Posted Oct 8, 2009
|
The renowned film director Roman Polanski is being held in a Swiss jail,
awaiting possible extradition to the United States. He was arrested on a
31-year-old warrant while traveling to the Zurich Film Festival to receive an
award. He faces charges for sexually assaulting a child in 1977 in Los
Angeles....
Posted Oct 8, 2009
|
The grim numbers are in. In September, 263,000 more jobs were lost. Official
unemployment edged closer to 10 percent, going from 9.7 to 9.8. This was larger
than predicted by capitalist economists and is the result of 21 consecutive
months of economic downturn, the longest streak in 70 years....
Posted Oct 7, 2009
|
More than 1,000 young people gathered in Arsenal Park in Pittsburgh on Sept. 24
to resist the G-20 meeting taking place in the David L. Lawrence Convention
Center. The effort was coordinated by the Pittsburgh G-20 Resistance
Project....
Posted Oct 1, 2009
|
The leaders of the big imperialist powers met in Pittsburgh in September to
argue over how to protect capital. They didn’t put forward one credible
proposal to solve the crisis of the hundreds of millions of unemployed and
underemployed workers around the world....
Posted Oct 1, 2009
|
While capitalist world leaders attending the G-20 Summit in Pittsburgh slept in
luxury hotels, unemployed, poor and working people from across the U.S.
gathered at the Bail Out the Jobless Tent City next to the Monumental Baptist
Church in the Hill District in the heart of the city’s Black community
for six days and nights from Sept. 20-25....
Posted Oct 1, 2009
|
People from across the country who set up a Tent City in Pittsburgh the week of
the G-20 summit marched to the headquarters of Mellon Corp. on Sept. 22 to
demand a national moratorium on foreclosures and evictions....
Posted Oct 1, 2009
|
A major struggle against DTE Energy and absentee landlords has reached a
conclusion in Highland Park, Mich., a municipality surrounded by the city of
Detroit. DTE Energy shut off the electricity at an apartment building on Aug.
31, leaving more than 150 residents in the dark....
Posted Oct 1, 2009
|
“As God is my witness, it is hard to
believe that we still have modern-day lynchings in this country. We’re
paying state officials to kill our children. They are dogs, these people. The
same cocktail that cannot be used to kill animals because it is too cruel, they
want to use it to kill my son,” cried Anna Terrell, mother of Reginald
Blanton, scheduled to be executed in Texas on Oct. 27....
Posted Oct 1, 2009
|
Vickie White was well-respected and loved by all who knew her for being a tireless
community and political activist in northern New Jersey....
Posted Oct 1, 2009
|
Former President Bill Clinton ran for president in 1992 with health care reform
as a key part of his domestic platform. It seemed then that the time was right
for comprehensive reform....
Posted Oct 1, 2009
|
Workers at Stella D’Oro Biscuit Co. are still fighting to keep their
plant and jobs in the Bronx, even after a hard-fought, 11-month strike ended in
victory and a favorable National Labor Relations Board ruling....
Posted Sep 30, 2009
|
More than 500 workers at Chrysler/Fiat’s Sterling Heights Assembly Plant,
along with labor, community and student allies, protested Sept. 25 against the
planned shutdown of their workplace....
Posted Sep 30, 2009
|
Hotel workers protest coast to coast | One-day strike on 10 U.C. campuses...
Posted Sep 30, 2009
|
Protesters marched through the streets of Pittsburgh on Sept. 20
demanding a real jobs program, like the public works program the Roosevelt
administration enacted during the Great Depression of the 1930s.
It was the first demonstration related to the G-20 summit....
Posted Sep 23, 2009
|
The recent mass mobilization of racists and right-wingers of all stripes in
Washington, D.C., and in cities around the country requires the attention of
the working class, white workers especially. In the face of mounting racism and
efforts to divide the workers during an economic crisis, the struggle for class
unity is more pressing than ever. While these right-wing demonstrations are numerically small, and may eventually
die down, they are politically significant because they represent a de facto
bloc between important sections of big business and the racist ultra-right,
based upon an immediate common objective: to push back the program of the Obama
administration....
Posted Sep 23, 2009
|
More than 100 patients, their family members, doctors, other health workers and
community activists packed into the board room at Grady Hospital on Sept. 14 to
press for the continued operation of the outpatient dialysis clinic, a function
of the once-public hospital for 62 years....
Posted Sep 23, 2009
|
The real estate crisis is far from over....
Posted Sep 23, 2009
|
The spring and summer of 2009 was the 75th anniversary of three mighty strikes....
Posted Sep 23, 2009
|
|
On Sept. 14, 1,800 teachers from the working-class Kent School District in
Washington state overwhelmingly ratified a new contract, ending their strong
18-day strike....
Posted Sep 23, 2009
|
|
Wayne County Circuit Court Judge Kathleen MacDonald on Sept. 11 ordered DTE
Energy to turn the power back on at Highland Towers apartments. The building is
located in Highland Park on Woodward Avenue near Glendale. The decision is
valid for one week when another court hearing will be held on the status of the
situation at Highland Towers....
Posted Sep 21, 2009
|
|
The days when the conservative labor leadership has been able to hold the
working class in check are numbered. Its base is shrinking with each round of
concessions it makes to the bosses, with each sweetheart contract it signs. As
Sam Marcy noted, at the beginning of each crisis the workers are thrown back onto
the defensive. But sooner or later they will cry “Enough is
enough!” Then the tide will turn....
Posted Sep 18, 2009
|
Chanting, “Whose factory? Our factory!” a strong contingent of
Stella D’Oro workers and hundreds of supporters transformed the annual
New York City Labor Day celebration on Sept. 12 into a militant march....
Posted Sep 18, 2009
|
Hilton hotel workers’ contract fight | Fla. tomato grower signs with CIW | 500 groups demand end to immigration police program | NWU denounces Google’s violation of writers’ rights...
Posted Sep 18, 2009
|
The Tattered Cover Bookstore in Denver hosted author Fred Goldstein on
Sept. 3 for a reading and discussion of his book, “Low Wage
Capitalism.”...
Posted Sep 18, 2009
|
Monica Moorehead and Larry Holmes, Workers World Party secretariat members, and
Larry Hales, a national leader of Fight Imperialism, Stand Together (FIST),
traveled to Waynesburg, Pa., Sept. 13 to visit political prisoner and
revolutionary journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal, who is on death row at the State
Correctional Institution-Greene Unit....
Posted Sep 17, 2009
|
oud shouts of “Racists go home!” greeted Arizona’s
Maricopa County sheriff, Joe Arpaio, and his cronies as he entered the Marriott
Hotel in Houston for an event to promote his new book....
Posted Sep 17, 2009
|
A strong, multinational, anti-racist picket of Harvard University workers,
students and community supporters took place Sept. 3 outside of the Harvard-MIT
Data Center. The 40 pickets were assembled to show support for Ravi Raj, a
worker there who has been under racist attack by his bosses for several years....
Posted Sep 17, 2009
|
Students face a devastating new reality. Along with the usual back-to-school
jitters, students across the country must cope with massive budget cuts, higher
tuition rates and decreased financial aid. Those students who manage to scrape
together the extra funds necessary to graduate face a terribly bleak job market
when they leave their campuses....
Posted Sep 17, 2009
|
After five days on strike, the 600-member chapter of the American Association
of University Professors at Oakland University agreed to a tentative settlement
on Sept. 10. OU has approximately 18,000 enrolled undergraduate and graduate
students and is located about 25 miles north of Detroit....
Posted Sep 17, 2009
|
Community organizers, trade unionists and activists from all over the country
are going to Pittsburgh for a week of demonstrations Sept. 20 through Sept. 26.
They’ll be protesting the gathering of the G-20 governments, who are
convening to discuss how best to bolster the profits of global capital.
The G-20 meeting takes place against a backdrop of growing unemployment,
poverty and homelessness, a mounting U.S. health care crisis, escalation of the
U.S.-NATO aggression in Afghanistan and corporate devastation of the
environment. Protests throughout the week will target the economic crisis, the
environmental crisis, war, health care and other issues....
Posted Sep 16, 2009
|
Around 70 protesters from dozens of groups on the East Coast took on the Army
Experience Center at the Franklin Mills Mall in Philadelphia on Sept. 12, with determination to
shut it down. For a few hours, at least, they did. The center closed during the
action and several arrests were made....
Posted Sep 16, 2009
|
With the Sept. 4 announcement that unemployment in the U.S. has hit an official
high of 9.7 percent, organizing for the National March for Jobs on Sept. 20 in
Pittsburgh and the Tent City in Solidarity with the Unemployed has reached a
critical stage. Unemployed workers and their allies will be in Pittsburgh at
the same time the G-20 Group of major capitalist countries will be holding
their summit in that city....
Posted Sep 13, 2009
|
Four years after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, survivors living in Houston
are still fighting to keep a roof over their heads. On Aug. 31, three women
spoke at a news conference at the Kensington Club II townhome apartments to
expose the owner’s corruption and the squalid living conditions he
allows....
Posted Sep 11, 2009
|
It was a small group, no more than 50 people, but the chants could be
heard up and down the block: “El Barrio unido, jamas sera vencido! El
Barrio united will never be defeated!”
In the spirit of the Zapatistas, the organization Movimiento por Justicia del
Barrio (Movement for Justice in El Barrio) continued its fight against
gentrification in an Aug. 30 protest at 116th Street and Lexington Avenue, in
the heart of El Barrio in New York....
Posted Sep 11, 2009
|
As the G-20 gathers again, they assemble amidst the wreckage of their own
creation....
Posted Sep 11, 2009
|
In 1925 U.S. Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon praised Italian dictator Benito
Mussolini as “a strong man with sound ideas and the force to make these
ideas effective.” Mellon liked the way Mussolini used fascist thugs to
break strikes of Italian workers and to assassinate their leaders. That’s
what Pennsylvania millionaires like Mellon had been doing for decades with
their Coal and Iron police....
Posted Sep 11, 2009
|
The workers at Stella D’Oro bakery in the Bronx, who won an 11-month
strike in July only to face a vicious threat by the company’s hedge fund
owners to sell off or shut the plant this October, got a strong show of support
at a major union meeting on Aug. 31 in New York City....
Posted Sep 10, 2009
|
American Association of University Professors faculty, students and
labor/community supporters took to the picket line at Oakland University in
Rochester, Mich., on Sept. 4. There are about 18,000 students at OU, an
undergraduate and graduate university 25 miles north of Detroit....
Posted Sep 10, 2009
|
|
Women workers, employed or employed, don’t need statistics to know how
bad things are....
Posted Sep 10, 2009
|
Tenants of the Highland Towers apartment building, as well as adjoining
businesses, have been living without electricity and water since Aug. 31.
That’s when DTE Energy cut off services to the hundreds of people living
in this building in Highland Park, a separate municipality surrounded by
Detroit....
Posted Sep 9, 2009
|
The 60th birthday of Workers World newspaper’s managing editor,
Leslie Feinberg, was celebrated at an event on Sept. 5 in Syracuse, N.Y., that
also served to launch Feinberg’s latest book, “Rainbow Solidarity
in Defense of Cuba” (available at leftbooks.com)....
Posted Sep 9, 2009
|
After mass outrage throughout Detroit, the corporate-backed administration of
Mayor Dave Bing has suspended plans to make large-scale cuts in public
transportation. Several thousand workers, youth, people with disabilities and
seniors attended a series of eight public hearings held Aug. 24-27 on the
proposed cuts in bus services. Two hearings, sponsored by the Detroit
Department of Transportation, were held each day at various locations
throughout the city....
Posted Sep 7, 2009
|
Activists and neighborhood families gathered together in Northeast Houston
on Aug. 29 to hold a powerful rally for immigrant rights despite a
counterprotest by the right-wing Minutemen....
Posted Sep 7, 2009
|
“There ain’t no power like NUMMI power, cuz NUMMI power won’t
stop!” could be heard for blocks in downtown San Francisco when several
hundred autoworkers from the Fremont New United Motor Manufacturing Inc.
(NUMMI) plant picketed the offices of Senator Dianne Feinstein on Aug. 29. The
workers have been protesting recent actions by General Motors and Toyota that
will lead to the closure of the NUMMI plant by March 2010....
Posted Sep 7, 2009
|
There’s a comic strip character called Superman. His battle cry is
“Truth, Justice and the American Way!” Unfortunately, however,
“the American way” too often does not encompass the values of truth
and justice....
Posted Sep 7, 2009
|
The resistance of conscientious objector Dustin “Che” Stevens has
sparked a national petition campaign to free Stevens and the 50-plus other GIs
currently held in the 82nd Holdover Unit at Fort Bragg, N.C., awaiting absent
without leave and desertion charges....
Posted Sep 7, 2009
|
Boycott TV4 in D.C. area | Support Rite Aid workers | Bloomberg charged in bias suit | 17,000 AT&T workers win contracts | Labor Day: Demand jobs...
Posted Sep 7, 2009
|
The New York Coalition in Solidarity with Hurricane Katrina-Rita Survivors
sponsored a Katrina 4th anniversary event on Aug. 29 at the Solidarity Center.
Gulf Coast survivors and their supporters reflected on the 2005 hurricanes and
flood disaster....
Posted Sep 4, 2009
|
Guess what? There is a slight rise in some corporate profits. The corporations
and biggest banks are doing a bit better. So the experts see a
“recovery.” No big surprise, however. If the government spent $10 or $12 trillion to buy up the workers’
unpayable debts and guaranteed their loans, the way they have done for Wall
Street, workers would still be exploited and underpaid, but things would not be
quite so bad. Instead there are 30 million workers either unemployed or underemployed, with
depression-level rates of joblessness in the African-American and Latino/a
communities, and things are getting worse for them and their families, not
better....
Posted Sep 3, 2009
|
The 1960s was a decade of worker mobilization, youth and student
radicalization, and revolutionary struggle inside the United States and around
the world. The 1959 Cuban revolution, on the eve of the new decade, was a sign
of the struggles to come....
Posted Sep 3, 2009
|
More than 3,000 mostly union members marched from different points in New
York City and rallied in Times Square on Aug. 29 to support health care reform....
Posted Sep 3, 2009
|
|
At a time when millions are laid off and unemployed throughout the country
during the worst economic crisis since the depression of the 1930s, the Boston
School Bus Union—Steelworkers Local 8751—has succeeded in round one
of a long fight to protect jobs and vital services to the communities the union
serves....
Posted Sep 2, 2009
|
Momentum is building for the National March for Jobs and Tent City from Sept.
20-25 that will confront the leading finance ministers and bankers of the
world’s wealthiest nations who will be meeting in Pittsburgh for the G-20
Summit. In a major development, both the Steelworkers union and the United Electrical
union—the only two international unions with national headquarters in
Pittsburgh—have endorsed the Sept. 20 March for Jobs....
Posted Sep 2, 2009
|
In 2007 Alcoa’s top boss, Alain Belda, got $25,646,420– nearly a
half-million dollars a week. That year the aluminum giant racked up $2.8
billion in profits.
In 2005 workers at Alcoa’s plants in Honduras were making between 68 to
87 cents per hour, according to the International Metalworkers Federation.
Alcoa fired all its workers in Honduras when the automotive market plunged in
2008....
Posted Sep 2, 2009
|
The two wars now underway in Iraq and Afghanistan are draining the coffers of
U.S. imperialism. Overall militarization has largely been accomplished. New
rounds of military development are technology intensive, such as laser-guided
bombs, satellite-guided missiles, Predator drones, high-tech missile ships and
fighter planes. Current imperialist wars are limited and heavily dependent on
air power. The hundreds of billions of dollars spent annually on militarism are
essential to the system, but, at best, military spending can only help to slow
down the economic crisis. It cannot restart the capitalist economy and generate
prosperity....
Posted Sep 2, 2009
|
Several hundred people packed an East Harlem church on Aug. 22 to
commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Young Lords Party....
Posted Sep 2, 2009
|
Several hundred rank-and-file United Auto Workers, family members, union
leaders and a handful of local and state elected officials, community and
business people rallied Aug. 20 outside the UAW Local 2244 hall in Fremont, Calif.
Directly across a busy highway was the sprawling, 380-acre plant of New United
Motors Manufacturing Inc., a joint venture between General Motors and Toyota.
Some 4,700 autoworkers are fighting to save their jobs and their plant....
Posted Aug 31, 2009
|
In 1932 Sir Arthur Newsholme, former principal medical officer of the Local
Government Board of England and Wales, and John Adams Kingsbury, former
commissioner of public charities for the City of New York, traveled to the
Soviet Union to examine firsthand that country’s socialist health care
system. Their observations were published in 1933 as “Red Medicine:
Socialized Health in Soviet Russia.”...
Posted Aug 31, 2009
|
The Mellon fortune drips with blood and oil from every pore....
Posted Aug 30, 2009
|
Many comparisons are made between the present crisis and the Great Depression.
But while the depression of the 1930s is fully known, the present crisis is in
its early stages and has yet to be played out. Many specifics cannot be known
at this point. It is best from a Marxist point of view, i.e., from a
materialist standpoint, to focus on what can be studied right now....
Posted Aug 30, 2009
|
The corporate media is doing another disservice to real socialists and
communists by mislabeling Lyndon Larouche as a “communist” or
“socialist,” as his followers attack and disrupt health care reform
meetings. These activities add a new chapter to this group’s reactionary
history, abetted by misrepresentation in the corporate media....
Posted Aug 30, 2009
|
The struggle to stop foreclosures and evictions is heating up as a sit-in to
prevent the eviction of a Minneapolis homeowner and activist entered its 19th
day on Aug. 25....
Posted Aug 28, 2009
|
It was 10:30 p.m. on Aug. 16 when the ceiling finally collapsed at the 181st
Street subway station on New York’s 1 line. Bricks fell 35 feet onto the
tracks, hitting and severely damaging a train that was in the station.
Fortunately, nobody was injured.
While the human drama of being in a subway while tons of bricks crashed down on
it is clear, none of the New York press interviewed any passengers or the
train’s crew. They followed the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s
approach of treating this Sunday evening near-tragedy as a mere interruption of
service....
Posted Aug 28, 2009
|
A wave of outrage swept the progressive community worldwide at the news that
Native political prisoner Leonard Peltier was denied parole on Aug. 21. The
U.S. government said Peltier will not be eligible for another parole hearing
until 2024, when he will be 79 years old.
Peltier, framed up by the FBI for the 1975 shooting of two FBI agents at Pine
Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, has been unjustly imprisoned since 1976. He
is an international symbol of the U.S. government’s refusal to respect
Native nations and sovereignty and a symbol of the corruption of the U.S. criminal “justice” system....
Posted Aug 27, 2009
|
On Aug. 21 the Solidarity Center in New York City was filled with five
hours of inspiring sounds: music and spoken word from talented artists (photo
above) brought together to support the case of political prisoner Mumia
Abu-Jamal, known worldwide as the “voice of the voiceless.”...
Posted Aug 27, 2009
|
Texas already had a reputation for executing death row prisoners at a rate
unparalleled anywhere else in the United States.
But progressive activists, attorneys, judges and legal ethicists did a
double-take on Sept. 25, 2007, when Texas’ highest criminal judge
responded to a plea for 20 extra minutes to file an appeal for a prisoner set
for execution at 6 p.m. that evening with “Tell them we close at
5.”...
Posted Aug 27, 2009
|
Hundreds of city employees and community residents gathered Aug. 19 outside
City Hall in Detroit to protest budget cuts. Newly elected interim Mayor Dave Bing
has already placed over 300 workers on indefinite layoff and is preparing the
public for the idling of another 1,000 employees....
Posted Aug 26, 2009
|
On Sunday, Sept. 20, a National March for Jobs will step off from the historic
Hill District in Pittsburgh, declaring that the unemployed, the homeless, the
hungry and the poor must no longer be invisible and silent. The march is set
for just prior to a summit of the G-20, the Group of Twenty finance ministers
and central bank governors, being held in Pittsburgh Sept. 24-25....
Posted Aug 23, 2009
|
Resolutions of support for the the March for Jobs and Global Week in Solidarity with the
Unemployed–Pittsburgh, Sept 20-26 were adopted by delegates of the San Francisco
Labor Council on Aug. 10, the International Longshore Warehouse
Union Local 10 executive board on Aug. 11, and by the Golden Gate Branch #214, National Association of
Letter Carriers on Aug. 5....
Posted Aug 23, 2009
|
Pittsburgh made the Mellons rich. The city was hell for workers.
A 12-hour day was standard in the steel mills....
Posted Aug 23, 2009
|
The unwillingness and inability of the federal government to enforce the few
programs it has initiated to help homeowners and renters speak to the need for
independent, militant, direct action by victims of banks and
lenders—supported by their communities—to defend their homes....
Posted Aug 21, 2009
|
The meaning of the crisis and its ultimate direction are questions for the
ruling class and for the working class, from diametrically opposed points of
view. The bourgeoisie has no theoretical framework within which to begin to
approach the question. Their system is anarchic. Even government intervention
and some limited planning cannot eradicate the anarchy imposed on a system
based on private profit....
Posted Aug 21, 2009
|
Revolutionary and radical activists have called for a mass demonstration on
Friday, Aug. 21, the anniversary of King’s legendary “I Have a
Dream” speech at the March on Washington in 1963. The march will begin at
noon at West 6th Street and Superior Avenue in downtown Cleveland....
Posted Aug 21, 2009
|
A mood of working-class pride was in the air on Aug. 15 as hundreds crowded in
front of the Stella D’Oro Biscuit Company plant gates for a two-hour
rally. The occasion was the one-year anniversary of the strike of Bakery
Workers Local 50 members against barbaric concessions that were being demanded
by the owners, the vulture capitalist Brynwood Partners....
Posted Aug 21, 2009
|
Protect postal workers’ bargaining rights! | Rite Aid workers demand contract | CWA contract with AT&T West | Court OKs use of company e-mail for union business | Immigrant groups demand action now...
Posted Aug 21, 2009
|
Some 50 million people in the U.S. have no health care insurance and
25 million more are underinsured. Existing programs such as Medicare, Medicaid
and Children’s Insurance, each state administered, are under attack. In
California, where budget cuts have drastically reduced access, 8,000 people
lined up when a volunteer health group recently offered free service.
WW reporter Gavrielle Gemma interviewed Ajamu Sankofa a Harlem
attorney who is also former national organizer for Healthcare-NOW....
Posted Aug 21, 2009
|
The Pentagon and Congress are trading in their aging clunker C-20 jets for
newer $200 million C-37 jets....
Posted Aug 21, 2009
|
Capitalist economists, experts and stock market gamblers cannot make up their
minds as to whether or not there is a “recovery.”
For workers who are losing their jobs, their homes, their health care, their
wages and are deeply in debt, there is no ambiguity. There is no recovery.
However, at the slightest hint of less-bad news—news that is not as bad
as the news from the period before—the well-paid experts are quick to
declare that a recovery is in sight....
Posted Aug 19, 2009
|
Troy Davis, 40, who has been imprisoned for half his life, may finally have a
chance to prove his innocence.
The Supreme Court, in a highly unusual ruling, on Aug. 17 ordered a federal
judge in Georgia to hold a hearing at which Davis could present evidence to
disprove that he killed an Atlanta police officer in 1989....
Posted Aug 19, 2009
|
On Nov. 19, 1945—just three months after the brutal atomic bombings of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan—President Harry Truman became the first
sitting U.S. president to propose a national health insurance program.
Truman unveiled his five-point plan for universal health care in a special
message to Congress. He emphasized that “everyone should have ready
access to all necessary medical, hospital and related services.”...
Posted Aug 19, 2009
|
The new era of low-wage capitalism, worldwide wage competition and slowing
capitalist economic growth has put workers under pressure even during times of
capitalist upturn. The booms have weakened, benefiting only the bosses, with
not even relative gain for the workers....
Posted Aug 17, 2009
|
“You could not run a coal company without machine guns,” sums up
the Mellon style of labor relations....
Posted Aug 17, 2009
|
Iraq War veteran Victor Agosto was sentenced to 30 days in jail on Aug. 5 for
refusing to deploy to Afghanistan after the Army extended his enlistment.
Agosto returned from a 13-month combat tour in Iraq in late 2007. Victor told
the court martial in Fort Hood, Texas, he believes the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan violate international law....
Posted Aug 17, 2009
|
A victory in the fight to end immigrant family detention was won when the Obama
administration announced on Aug. 6 that the T. Don Hutto immigrant detention
center, located 35 miles north of Austin, Texas, would stop incarcerating
families. “Today’s announcement is not just a victory for our Campaign to End
Immigrant Family Detention, but for an entire movement for justice that has
come together to close Hutto and to end immigrant family detention,” said
Bob Libal and Luissana Santibañez, Grassroots Leadership activists in
Austin....
Posted Aug 14, 2009
|
“Professor Henry Gates is right; racial profiling and police
brutality are wrong” was the topic of a Workers World Party forum in New
York City on Aug. 8....
Posted Aug 14, 2009
|
If the arrest, humiliation and resultant brouhaha over the case of Harvard
scholar Dr. Henry Louis Gates has taught us anything, it is that we still dwell
in separate worlds; ones which rarely meet....
Posted Aug 14, 2009
|
Manhattan’s New Museum has received recognition in the New York
Times and Mother Jones magazine for its current exhibits of “Emory
Douglas: Black Panther!” and “The Deeper They Bury Me, The Louder
My Voice Becomes.” The political history and power of these unique shows
by artists Emory Douglas and Rigo 23 will be on view through Oct. 11....
Posted Aug 14, 2009
|
About 50 years ago a new scheme was launched in the U.S. to ensure that bankers
and mega-investors had an annual, tax-exempt, legal way to get taxpayer money
transferred to them–debt service. Fifty years ago California paid most
bills out of general revenue cash. Then they started selling bonds to
investment banks and stock brokerages. Each year interest was due on these
tax-exempt bonds. And every year new bonds were sold and the interest due (debt
service) grew and grew....
Posted Aug 14, 2009
|
Supporters of the San Francisco 8 rallied Aug. 10 to demand that all charges be dropped against the last remaining
defendant in this case, Francisco Torres....
Posted Aug 13, 2009
|
“When I was 15, my friends started going to jail,” says Victoria
Law, a native New Yorker. “Chinatown’s gangs were recruiting in the
high schools in Queens, and faced with the choice of stultifying days learning
nothing in overcrowded classrooms or easy money, many of my friends dropped out
to join a gang.”...
Posted Aug 13, 2009
|
On July 9 workers and many community supporters staged a militant street rally
in Rock Island, Ill., in front of a Wells Fargo bank to protest the closing of
the Quad City Die Casting plant in Moline, Ill.
Putting their bodies on the line to challenge the bank’s business as
usual, the rally moved into the street to blockade traffic. Nearly a dozen QCDC
workers and other workers refused to leave and were arrested in defiance. When
asked by local FOX 18 News why she took such bold action and got arrested, QCDC
worker Deb Johann stated, “Because I wanna save my job!”...
Posted Aug 12, 2009
|
Over 150 protesters marched and chanted alongside Albany, N.Y., rush-hour
traffic on Aug. 4, waving signs and banners against the FBI campaign of
entrapping innocent Muslims....
Posted Aug 12, 2009
|
On July 27 seven young Muslim men were arrested in Wake County and indicted in
the Eastern District of North Carolina’s federal court on terrorism
charges. An eighth man is currently being hunted in Pakistan. All were charged
with conspiring to provide support to terrorists and conspiring to murder,
kidnap, maim and injure people abroad. Sensational media hype and anti-Muslim post-9/11 hysteria swarm around this
case, making a fair trial for the eight men impossible. WRAL, News 14 and other
local media have interviewed random neighbors of the Boyds and aired racist and
anti-Muslim assumptions. One neighbor said he heard Arab-sounding music coming
from the home, as if this were relevant evidence to the charge of supporting
terrorism. The media took the racism so far as to draw out Boyd’s past relationship
to historically Black Shaw University....
Posted Aug 9, 2009
|
As far back as 1847, in “Wage Labor and Capital,” Marx discussed
the question of the workers and the business cycle. Traditionally, during a capitalist boom the workers can regain some of the
positions they lost during the previous bust phase. As the scientific-technological revolution was progressing “at breakneck
speed,” there occurred a change in the historic pattern
of the business cycle. After the recession of 1990-1991, U.S. capitalism
entered the era of “jobless recoveries.” For the first time,
employment either continued to decline or remained flat long after the economy
began to recover....
Posted Aug 8, 2009
|
World View Forum is reissuing “High Tech, Low Pay,” the
classic by Workers World Party founder Sam Marcy, on the party’s 50th
anniversary. The first edition, published in 1986, soon sold out due to demand
from workers and activists around the country. Now, requests for the book are
increasing as the economic crisis worsens....
Posted Aug 8, 2009
|
The Rockefeller and Du Pont billionaire dynasties are hated around the world.
Outside of Pennsylvania the super rich Mellon family isn’t as well
known.
They should be....
Posted Aug 8, 2009
|
It’s been two and a half years since the San Francisco 8— eight
former members of the Black Panther Party—were cast into California jails
and threatened with life sentences stemming from the 1971 shooting of a
cop....
Posted Aug 8, 2009
|
On July 31 Judge Robert Drain of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York approved
a plan for Delphi to emerge from bankruptcy by the end of August. Delphi is the
former parts division of General Motors that was spun off as a separate entity
in 1999. The judge’s ruling comes nearly four years after Delphi
introduced the pattern of contract busting through bankruptcy to the auto
industry....
Posted Aug 6, 2009
|
The push for meaningful health care reform is in peril. Congressional Democrats
have advanced flawed legislation that fails to live up to their campaign pledge
of universal health care reform. Republicans allied with right-wing “Blue
Dog” Democrats have worked overtime to derail any attempt at reform.
Congress adjourned for the August recess without a floor vote on health reform,
leaving many observers to speculate that the plan is doomed to repeat past
failed health-reform attempts....
Posted Aug 6, 2009
|
Celebrate year of struggle at Stella D’Oro | Farm Workers demand heat safety | Latina/o worker deaths up 76 percent since 1992 | CIW targets Chipotle | Minimum wage raised—not enough...
Posted Aug 6, 2009
|
Due to the economic crisis hitting California so acutely, state legislators are
dealing with what they say will be a $60-billion revenue loss projected through
June 2010.
However, instead of trying to tap into many possible rich sources of funds,
both the Democrats and Republicans came up with a budget that targets social
services and the working class but not super-rich monopolies like the oil
companies or the banks....
Posted Aug 5, 2009
|
A community/labor picket line and news conference were held in front of
Cambridge City Hall on July 29 to launch a campaign against racial profiling.
Organized by the Bail Out the People Movement, Boston chapter, the actions
expressed solidarity with Harvard professor Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr., whose
arrest in his Cambridge house on July 16 has reopened a national debate on
police brutality....
Posted Aug 5, 2009
|
The New York branch of Workers World Party will be holding a public forum
on “Professor Henry Gates was right—Racial profiling and police
brutality are wrong”, Sat., Aug. 8, 3 p.m. at the Solidarity Center....
Posted Aug 5, 2009
|
Protesters from throughout southeastern Michigan and beyond, including
Lansing, converged on the brand-new multimillion-dollar DTE Energy building in
downtown Detroit July 24 to demand justice for the Reed-Owens family and an
immediate moratorium on utility shutoffs....
Posted Aug 3, 2009
|
More than 300 members from four major unions, joined by supporters from
around the city, marched on July 21 through the Old City District of
Philadelphia to Constitution Center, where a conference of state legislators
were meeting....
Posted Aug 3, 2009
|
Solidarity got the workers at the Stella D’oro bakery in the Bronx, N.Y.,
through a 325-day strike to protect and maintain their contract. Solidarity is
still needed as these mainly immigrant workers face other maneuvers by the
bosses to break their union and deny their right to their jobs....
Posted Aug 3, 2009
|
Just a month after the U.S. Supreme Court struck a racist blow against civil
rights in a New Haven, Conn., firefighters’ case, Black and Latina/o
firefighters and candidates won an important victory in New York City. Federal
Judge Nicholas G. Garaufis ruled July 22 that two versions of a written hiring
exam used by the Fire Department of New York unfairly excluded more than 1,000
candidates of color....
Posted Aug 3, 2009
|
The first great upsurge of the U.S. working class erupted in 1877. Hundreds of
thousands of workers revolted against pay cuts in the fourth year of an
economic depression. One out of four workers was unemployed....
Posted Aug 3, 2009
|
BART workers vote to strike | CWA Midwest agreement with AT&T | Midwest teaching staff win rights | SF Labor Council shows international solidarity...
Posted Aug 3, 2009
|
Newspaper headlines, radio talk show hosts and cable news commentators have all
spent the better part of the last month warning the Obama administration of a
possible repeat of the 1993 failed Clinton health care proposal. Senate
Majority Leader Harry Reid bolstered this sentiment when he announced that the
Senate would not vote on the bill before the August recess as President Obama
had initially requested....
Posted Jul 30, 2009
|
The economic crisis in California spells hardship at the state’s public
universities as budgets are balanced through a combination of tuition hikes and
pay cuts for faculty and other workers....
Posted Jul 30, 2009
|
The arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr.—a prominent African-American Harvard
University professor—in his own home by Cambridge police on July 16 has
shone a brilliant national and international spotlight on racial profiling in
the U.S....
Posted Jul 29, 2009
|
The July 16 arrest of Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. in his own home in
Cambridge, Mass., is but the latest glaring incident in the long history of
racism permeating Boston, going back to the 1970s desegregation battles and
before....
Posted Jul 29, 2009
|
The greed of DTE Energy Co. led to the July 16 deaths of four members of an
African-American family in Detroit. The Reed-Owens family had their electricity
cut off on July 15 by DTE for nonpayment....
Posted Jul 27, 2009
|
Charging that city computers were used by on- and off-duty white police
officers to post blatantly racist and offensive comments to a Web site, the
Guardian Civic League, an association of Black Philadelphia police, filed a
federal lawsuit against the department on July 16....
Posted Jul 27, 2009
|
The Stella D’Oro Support Committee is asking allies in the labor
movement and other supporters to sign on to a petition asking for an injunction
to stop the sale of the Stella D’Oro company...
Posted Jul 27, 2009
|
Benton Harbor community leader Rev. Edward Pinkney has won an appeal of his
revocation of probation sentence which was handed down in June 2008. Pinkney,
the leader of the Black Autonomy Network of Community Organizers (BANCO), was
ordered to prison for three to 10 years after a Berrien County judge ruled that
he had threatened the life of another jurist by quoting scriptures in an
article published in December 2007....
Posted Jul 27, 2009
|
Mumia Abu-Jamal: Michael Jackson was many things in his 50 years of life....
Posted Jul 27, 2009
|
Leonard Peltier, like Mumia Abu-Jamal, has become known around the world as a
symbol of U.S. government injustice toward the peoples it has abused and
betrayed over centuries.
Peltier has a full parole hearing coming up on July 28—the first one
since 1993. It is important that all those fighting racism and injustice let
the government know that they support Peltier’s release from prison....
Posted Jul 23, 2009
|
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics published a report on July 2 confirming the
growing economic disaster facing the working class. In June 14.7 million people
were unemployed and the unemployment rate was 9.5 percent. Since the start of
the recession in December 2007, the number of unemployed workers has increased
by 7.2 million and the unemployment rate has risen by 4.6 percentage points....
Posted Jul 22, 2009
|
Advocates for a moratorium on foreclosures, evictions and utility shutoffs
joined environmentalists and supporters of single-payer health care on July 14
when President Barack Obama visited metro Detroit. ...
Posted Jul 22, 2009
|
Pennsylvania state employees facing “payless paydays” took their
message that this is “totally unacceptable” straight to Gov. Ed
Rendell’s house in the East Falls section of the city on July 17. Workers
had just received only 70 percent of their normal pay in what likely will be
their last pay until the state’s budget crisis is solved....
Posted Jul 22, 2009
|
Six Democrats in the Senate announced July 16 that they will drop the card
check provision in the Employee Free Choice Act, a bill designed to force
bosses to acknowledge a union if a majority of workers sign cards to join the
union.
Capitalist media, Republicans, bankers and bosses from all sectors have come
out in support of this compromise, since dropping the card check provision
greatly weakens EFCA and stunts workers’ ability to organize against the
millions of layoffs now occurring and for better wages and benefits....
Posted Jul 22, 2009
|
When 4,000 unionized workers at 40 Acme supermarkets, who had been working
under a contract extension since February 2008, received notice in late June
that the company planned to terminate existing benefits and impose draconian
cuts, the workers made their struggle public. Finally, on July 16, the unionized workers overwhelmingly approved
a new contract that includes the equivalent of a 2-percent raise, preserves
health and pension benefits, and protects union jobs....
Posted Jul 22, 2009
|
Goldman Sachs reported quarterly earnings of $3.4 billion on July 14. JP Morgan
Chase reported $2.7 billion in profits on July 16. The next day Bank of America
reported a quarterly profit of $3.2 billion and Citigroup $4.3 billion....
Posted Jul 22, 2009
|
GM’s Chapter 11 filing, and its exit a record-breaking 40 days later, has
been called a “surgical” or “quick rinse” bankruptcy.
For workers and retirees, however, the damage can hardly be compared to having
an appendix removed or to cleaning soiled linens. Workers represented by the United Auto Workers took huge wage and benefit cuts.
Wages for newly hired workers are frozen at $14 an hour—one-and-a-half
times the poverty level for a family of four—for the next six years.
Retirees lost vision and dental coverage....
Posted Jul 17, 2009
|
The chant “La lucha continua!” (the struggle goes on) resonated on
July 2 as an elevated train rumbled high above a large crowd of Stella
D’Oro workers and their supporters. The workers, members of Local 50 of
the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers union, were
returning to their jobs after a strike of nearly 11 months....
Posted Jul 17, 2009
|
The Barillas family just won a big victory against the war on immigrants. They
had faced imminent deportation and family separation this month from the
repressive federal agency, Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Due to a
barrage of support messages to government officials and two public protests,
five family members who had been detained won release....
Posted Jul 17, 2009
|
The first in a series of Immigrants’ Art Exhibits opened July 10 at the
Rio II Gallery in Harlem, in a beautiful ceremony complete with music,
refreshments and opportunities to meet the artists. The show will be open there
until July 24. It will then move to Arts Horizons LeRoy Neiman Art Center, also
in Harlem, for another two weeks....
Posted Jul 17, 2009
|
Union victory at Smithfield | BART workers to hold strike vote | Hawai`i workers contest furloughs | N.J. workers ratify no-layoffs contract | Unions swarm U.S. Capitol demanding health care | NYC supermarkets forced to pay back wages...
Posted Jul 17, 2009
|
Residents of the Wellington Commons on Detroit’s west side have won the
right to remain in their apartments for another month....
Posted Jul 16, 2009
|
On June 22, when temperatures soared into the mid 90s during a heat wave,
Atlanta’s water department turned off the water at the city’s
largest homeless shelter....
Posted Jul 16, 2009
|
A three-day summer celebration of the Cuban Revolution’s 50th anniversary
here in Detroit also welcomed the 20th Pastors for Peace Friendshipment
Caravan. The message carried by this caravan is: “The time is now!
President Barack Obama: free the Cuban Five, end the blockade of Cuba, end the
travel ban and normalize relations.”...
Posted Jul 16, 2009
|
The International Action Center in New York will host a memorial for
people’s artist Irving Fierstein on July 19 from 3-6 p.m....
Posted Jul 16, 2009
|
The racist treatment and rejection of 65 Black and Latina/o summer camp youth
at a predominantly white, private swim club in Philadelphia in late June has unleashed a
storm of outrage from around the region and across the country, forcing the
club to reverse its stance....
Posted Jul 15, 2009
|
The New York Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition organized a press conference
across the street from the national NAACP conference held in mid-town Manhattan
on the morning of July 13.
According to the coalition’s press release, the main goal of the picket
line was to call on the NAACP “to fulfill a promise it made in 2004, in a
resolution that passed unanimously, to the international community for a
‘new and fair trial’” for Mumia....
Posted Jul 15, 2009
|
The opinion rendered by Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy on June 29
upholding a firefighter promotion test in New Haven, Conn., that prolongs the
racist status quo never mentioned a noose. That’s what Black firefighter
Abdul Lanaird Granger found draped across his boots in his Brooklyn firehouse
in 2005....
Posted Jul 15, 2009
|
Behind the scenes of the elaborate July 7 memorial service here for Michael
Jackson were the thousands of fans who had come from all over the world.
Without a ticket or a hope of attending the service, held at Staples Arena in
Los Angeles, they came from every continent to pay tribute to an artist who had
personally touched their lives. ...
Posted Jul 15, 2009
|
As politicians rush resolutions through Congress supporting the protesters in
Tehran, defending the principle of freedom to protest, their hypocrisy is even
more blinding than their own myopia....
Posted Jul 15, 2009
|
After Bernard Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in prison for his Ponzi scheme,
one of his victims was interviewed by a local television reporter while leaving
the courtroom. She spoke about how justice was finally served; that he got what
he deserved. And, she stated, “It was important that the damage be
repaired.”...
Posted Jul 15, 2009
|
The first delegation of Viva Palestina USA flew with British MP
George Galloway on July 4 to Cairo, Egypt, where 200 people and a convoy of trucks
carrying millions of dollars worth of medical supplies will drive to the border
of Gaza. The delegation will demand entry into that territory, whose people
have been denied basic necessities due to the Israeli blockade....
Posted Jul 8, 2009
|
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On April 6, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to consider an appeal from death-row
journalist and former Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal, who was convicted of
first-degree murder in the shooting death of white Philadelphia police officer
Daniel Faulkner at a 1982 trial deemed unfair by Amnesty International, the EuropeanParliament, the
Japanese Diet, Nelson Mandela, and numerous others....
Posted Jul 8, 2009
|
The following June 19 letter was sent by former Congressperson Cynthia
McKinney to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to request that the Justice
Department conduct a civil rights investigation of the case of death-row
political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal....
Posted Jul 8, 2009
|
The U.S. Supreme Court released a much-anticipated announcement on June 29
about the appeal of death-row prisoner Troy Anthony Davis. A short statement
said the Court had not reached a decision....
Posted Jul 8, 2009
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Hundreds of African Americans and their allies marched through the streets
of Providence, R.I., on June 28 to demand “Life, Unity, Freedom,
Equality, Peace, Jobs & Human Needs.”...
Posted Jul 8, 2009
|
When looking at Black culture years from now, though there may be many artists
who were political and whose music spoke to and of the actual struggle for
Black liberation, Michael Jackson—who passed on June 25 at the age of 50
from alleged cardiac arrest—will shine forever brightly....
Posted Jul 8, 2009
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Organizers from the Bail Out the People Movement and the Million Worker March
Movement held a news conference here on June 26 at the United Nations Church
Center, along with other community organizers and some of the participants at
the U.N. Economic Summit. They announced plans for protests at the next G20
summit scheduled in Pittsburgh on Sept. 24-25....
Posted Jul 6, 2009
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“Wells Fargo got bailed out, the workers got sold out!” was the
message delivered by UE members and allies in more than 20 cities from Boston
to Los Angeles on June 26 in coordinated, nationwide protests....
Posted Jul 6, 2009
|
“The Great Crash” collects 23 articles that originally appeared in
Workers World weekly newspaper from 2006 to 2009. This 47-page booklet should
be read by everyone grappling with the current world capitalist crisis....
Posted Jul 6, 2009
|
International Longshore and Warehouse Union members from Alaska, California,
Hawaii, Oregon, Washington and Vancouver, British Columbia, gathered in Seattle
for the 34th ILWU Convention from June 8 to 12. The delegates adopted
resolutions introduced by Local 10 calling for freedom for the Cuban 5 and by
Local 34 to end the U.S. blockade of Cuba....
Posted Jul 6, 2009
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Bob Herbert, who is an op-ed columnist for the New York Times and also an
African American, wrote in a recent piece: “There are now five unemployed
workers for every job opening in the United States. The ranks of the poor are
growing, welfare rolls are rising” and young male workers over a broad
front “are falling into an abyss of joblessness.”...
Posted Jul 3, 2009
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Chanting “They say cut back, we say fight back!” over 400 disabled
activists and their supporters took over the street in front of the State
Office Building in San Francisco June 23 to “Stop the governor from
slashing programs for people with disabilities, kids, and poor people.”
Seventeen people both in and out of wheelchairs were arrested in a civil
disobedience action....
Posted Jul 3, 2009
|
Take Back Our Union “is excited and pleased over such overwhelming support from our
membership,” TBOU spokesperson Charles Jenkins told Workers World.
“Our members made an outcry for change after 8-and-a-half years of
misdirection. They seemed to agree with our program.”...
Posted Jul 3, 2009
|
Four thousand workers at Acme supermarkets in Philadelphia and its suburbs have
worked under a contract extension since February 2008 while their union, Food
and Commercial Workers Local 1776, bargained with the company....
Posted Jul 3, 2009
|
June is Black Music Month, proclaimed so by former President Jimmy Carter. In
honor of Black Music Month, there was a film series showing in New York at the
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture based in Harlem.
One of the films, “Strange Fruit,” is the first documentary
exploring the history and legacy of the famous Black singer, Billie Holiday,
who popularized the song “Strange Fruit.”...
Posted Jul 3, 2009
|
There is a war going on inside this country—a war against immigrants,
especially undocumented immigrants. This war is escalating, and like most wars,
it is taking many casualties. The casualties are innocent children, women and
men whose only crime is the need to survive, to find a way to live and work in
the United States....
Posted Jul 2, 2009
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Relatives of the Newburgh 4 spoke on June 18 at a forum in White Plains, N.Y.
Everything they said reinforced charges by the Islamic community that the FBI
is entrapping innocent Muslim men for political reasons....
Posted Jul 2, 2009
|
A press conference and vigil were held at the San Francisco federal building June 26
to support Leonard Peltier and his upcoming parole effort on July 28.
Supporters are being asked to write letters on behalf of Peltier, a leader of
the American Indian Movement and one of the longest-held political prisoners in
the U.S....
Posted Jul 2, 2009
|
Marches and rallies were held in state capitals and other cities June 27 to
mark the National Day of Action for the Wrongly Convicted. Organizers of the
actions, including families whose loved ones were put to death or died in
prison, said that up to 10 percent of the 2.3 million-strong U.S. prison
population may be wrongfully convicted....
Posted Jul 2, 2009
|
Pride weekend kicked off in New York City on June 26 with
a militant march for trans and gender non-conforming (TGNC) peoples’
rights. The Trans Day of Action marched from Union Square past New York’s
Human Resources Administration to demand that all people receiving public
assistance, including TGNC people of color, be treated with respect and
dignity....
Posted Jul 1, 2009
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This year’s LGBT parade on June 28 was led by a contingent of veteran
activists from the early years of the Gay Liberation Front. In the spirit of
Stonewall and to mark the 40th anniversary of the early struggle for LGBT
liberation, two exciting actions were held along the LGBT parade march
route....
Posted Jul 1, 2009
|
The nightmare that has haunted thousands of Katrina survivors since storms and
decrepit levees destroyed a significant portion of the Gulf Coast during the
late summer of 2005 continues in large part today. Since hurricanes Katrina and
Rita took place, hundreds of thousands of people, mainly Black and poor, have
been forced to relocate to other cities due to the racist negligence of the
U.S. government....
Posted Jun 29, 2009
|
Letter to WW: The article on the assassination of Dr. Tiller (June 11) was
excellent.
I appreciate that the writer avoided the phrase “late-term
abortion.”...
Posted Jun 29, 2009
|
Some 100 people, many of them movement activists, gathered for a rally
called by the Coalition to Take Back WBAI outside the station’s Wall
Street offices on June 17 to protest the ongoing purge of some of the
station’s most progressive voices. ...
Posted Jun 29, 2009
|
U.S. Iraq war resister Cliff Cornell was sentenced last week to 12 months hard
labor and a bad conduct discharge for refusing to participate in the war in
Iraq and for going to Canada in 2005. He was forced out of Canada in January by
the Bushite government of Stephen Harper....
Posted Jun 29, 2009
|
On June 4 President Barack Obama addressed the Muslim world while visiting
Cairo, Egypt. His speech covered seven major sources of tension between the
U.S. and Muslims worldwide. He stated that “we should not ignore sources
of tension,” but “we must face these tensions squarely.”
Overall, however, Obama’s speech contained a good deal of rhetoric,
contradiction and hypocrisy....
Posted Jun 29, 2009
|
The local New York City government led by its mayor, billionaire Michael
Bloomberg, deepened its economic assault on all city workers and their unions
when it announced proposed layoffs of upwards of 2,600 members of American
Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees union Local 372....
Posted Jun 29, 2009
|
More than a thousand Philadelphia municipal union workers, many coming straight from work,
rallied in the rain in Love Park on June 18 to fight for their rights.
Contracts for American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees
District Councils 33 and 47, as well as for the city’s fire and police
unions, expire on June 30....
Posted Jun 29, 2009
|
Martina Davis-Correia, the sister of Georgia death row prisoner Troy Anthony
Davis, addressed the delegates at the 34th International Longshore
and Warehouse Union Convention in Seattle on June 10. She called for support of
a resolution entitled “Racist Oppression and the Death
Penalty.”...
Posted Jun 29, 2009
|
LeiLani Dowell says: The People’s Summit and Tent City in Detroit was by
far one of the most amazing experiences I’ve ever had....
Posted Jun 25, 2009
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The People’s Summit and Tent City was convened June 14-17 by a broad
coalition of activists, many of whom were organizing under the banner of the
Moratorium NOW! Coalition to Stop Foreclosures and Evictions....
Posted Jun 25, 2009
|
Grand Circus Park is a small park in downtown Detroit bisected by Woodward
Avenue. For four days and three nights, people stayed in that park for the
People’s Summit and Tent City.
A wide variety of people attended. Differences in national origin and
ethnicity, age, economic status, sexual orientation, gender, location and other
differences served to unite people. They came from all around the country,
including Ohio, Illinois, Minnesota, Indiana, Maryland, Georgia, Florida, North
Carolina, Massachusetts, New York and New Jersey....
Posted Jun 25, 2009
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Andrea Egypt writes: The camaraderie and solidarity that was felt throughout the People’s
Summit was an example of what is possible and necessary to fuel the type of
resistance needed to effectuate a much-needed systemic change by those who have
been left out of the so-called economic recovery....
Posted Jun 25, 2009
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A lone man sat on a bench in Central Park on the edge of a mock beach holding a
sign reading, “When do we Jews notice that Israel is insane?”
Police told him that he must leave, as that area of the public park belonged to
Israel for the day. But more protesters came, and they refused to be
silenced....
Posted Jun 25, 2009
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At a press conference on the steps of New York’s City Hall June 22,
City Councilor Charles Barron announced that he will join British Member of
Parliament George Galloway and anti-war Vietnam vet Ron Kovic on their
humanitarian aid convoy to Gaza in Palestine....
Posted Jun 25, 2009
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On May 30, three members of the local reactionary Minutemen organization
invaded the home of Raul Flores in Arivaca, Ariz., murdering him and his
9-year-old daughter, Brisenia Flores, and wounding his spouse Gina Maria
Gonzalez. The racists were dressed in military fatigues. They told the family
that they were with the Border Patrol before they ransacked the house and shot
them....
Posted Jun 25, 2009
|
Hundreds of activists, including infants and great grandmothers, held a
spirited march and rally in Taylor, Texas, on June 20 to protest the
incarceration of men, women and their children at the T. Don Hutto detention
center....
Posted Jun 25, 2009
|
LGBT federal employees gain some rights | CWA locals hound AT&T | SAG signs new contract | Report slams U.S. over immigration raids...
Posted Jun 25, 2009
|
In the latest face-off in the growing struggle between workers and banks, more
than 100 workers at Quad City Die Casting in Moline, Ill., are now being told
that their plant will close on July 12 if Wells Fargo does not extend the
company’s loan. These workers are members of United Electrical Workers
Local 1174....
Posted Jun 24, 2009
|
Shelley Ettinger says: When I volunteered to speak about Workers World Party’s history with
regard to the party’s role in the lesbian, gay, bi and trans struggle, I
didn’t realize what an enormous task I was taking on. The party’s
contribution to this struggle is, in fact, a huge topic....
Posted Jun 24, 2009
|
Members of the Boston LGBT Community marked the 40th anniversary of the
Stonewall Rebellion by participating in a vibrant and passionate forum on June
20 with the theme “Stonewall 1969 ... LGBT Liberation 2009: Fighting for
our Lives and Liberation in the Global Capitalist Crisis.”...
Posted Jun 24, 2009
|
This year’s Pride march in Buffalo on June 7 was one of the best-attended
lesbian, gay, bi and trans celebrations in this city’s history....
Posted Jun 24, 2009
|
UE is calling for a national day of action on Tuesday, June 23 to bring
pressure on Wells Fargo and Wachovia—which Wells Fargo recently
acquired—to extend the loan to keep the Quad City Die Casting plant
open.
The union plans actions in front of Wells Fargo and Wachovia offices in cities
across the country including Atlanta; Baltimore; Boston; Cedar Rapids, Iowa;
Charleston, W. Va.; Chicago; Denver; La Crosse, Wis.; New Haven, Conn.;
Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Erie, Pa. Also, protests are planned for Portland,
Ore.; Raleigh, N.C.; Washington, D.C.; Salt Lake City and in Southern
California. For more information about these demonstrations, see
www.ueillinois.org....
Posted Jun 21, 2009
|
“A Black man’s life is still not worth a white man’s life in
Paris, Texas,” said activist Anthony Bond. “I am 55 years old and I
know racism when I see it. Paris, Texas, is eaten up with racism.”
Bond was among 300 people who protested June 8 at the courthouse in Paris after
the special prosecutor suddenly dropped murder charges against two white men
accused of murdering a Black youth last September...
Posted Jun 21, 2009
|
A new episode has opened in the defense campaign for Rev. Edward Pinkney, a
Benton Harbor, Mich., clergyman and leader of the Black Autonomy Network
Community Organization (BANCO). Pinkney had been sentenced to three-to-10 years
in prison for quoting Bible scriptures....
Posted Jun 21, 2009
|
More than 300 protesters crammed the steps of the San Francisco Court House
June 8 demanding that bogus charges, manufactured over 36 years ago against
eight former Black Panthers, be dropped. ...
Posted Jun 21, 2009
|
Kari Ann Cowan, Peltier's niece, reported on July 19
from the prison at Lewisburg that Leonard may have suffered a heart attack. She
stated, "He had a hard time breathing. He was in his cell and had an ache
in his chest. He was kinda scared he was having a heart attack. He raised his
hands, breathed slowly and finally felt better."
...
Posted Jun 20, 2009
|
The Tea Partiers are at it again. Having failed on tax day to mobilize
“grassroots” support for cutting taxes on the wealthy, Rush
Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Newt Gingrich and company have found a new
reason for existence. They’re bound and determined to unravel what
they’re calling—believe it or not—another Teapot Dome
scandal. What’s the latest scandal? The United Auto Workers union has given a
substantial amount of money to the Democratic Party and its candidates....
Posted Jun 19, 2009
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Having entered bankruptcy court (even a so-called ‘structural’
bankruptcy), General Motors is making history. It was once the titanic behemoth
of American business, making more money than any other business....
Posted Jun 19, 2009
|
On May 7 and 8, African-American reporter Kathy Wray Coleman was tried in
Municipal Court in Cleveland on trumped-up charges of resisting arrest, sounding a
false alarm, disrupting court proceedings and aggravated disorderly conduct. A
jury found her not guilty on all except the resisting charge.
The charges arose from an incident after a tense foreclosure hearing on
Coleman’s home on Aug. 7, 2008....
Posted Jun 19, 2009
|
Holding a banner calling for “Jobs & Human Needs, Freedom,
Equality, Peace,” a multinational group of women led a spirited march
through downtown Providence, R.I., on June 12 to the site of the National
Mayors Conference....
Posted Jun 19, 2009
|
The Supreme Court has confirmed the U.S. legal system’s ongoing hypocrisy
in the treatment of the Cuban Five. The court on June 15 made public a list of
what cases it will hear during its coming term—and the appeal of the
Cuban Five was left off the list, with no explanation....
Posted Jun 18, 2009
|
It was a coup. Even the New York Times, one of the most influential and
authoritative voices of the ruling class in the United States, used this word
to describe how the Republican Party, with two disaffected Democrats, tried to
seize control of the New York State Senate on June 8....
Posted Jun 18, 2009
|
Hundreds of poor and working people have gathered at the National
People’s Summit and Tent City in downtown Detroit to put forward the
people’s vision of a future with guaranteed jobs and income, universal
health care, housing and utilities, and all rights that working class people
are currently denied under the capitalist system...
Posted Jun 17, 2009
|
Against a background of epidemic police brutality across the country, the
Philadelphia Chapter of the National Action Network convened a Community Public
Hearing on Sunday, June 7, to examine the conduct of Philadelphia police and
the Office of the District Attorney. For more than seven hours, individuals and even entire families gave accounts
of their experiences at the hands of police that frequently turned deadly. The
picture that emerged was one of systematic violation of human and civil rights
by Philadelphia police, particularly in five police districts with a heavy
concentration of Black residents....
Posted Jun 17, 2009
|
On June 10 there was a fascist attack on the United States Holocaust Memorial
Museum in Washington. African-American security guard Stephen Johns was shot
and killed by long-time Hitler worshipper James von Brunn, who was wounded and
then disarmed by another guard as schoolchildren visiting the museum scattered
in terror.
The atrocity follows the May 31 assassination of abortion provider Dr. George
Tiller in Kansas after a long campaign in the right-wing media against the
doctor....
Posted Jun 17, 2009
|
Leonard Peltier, a fighter for the liberation of the Indigenous peoples of
North America and the world, has been locked away in federal prison for more
than three decades....
Posted Jun 17, 2009
|
It has been five years since the Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights was
first introduced in the New York state legislature. Finally, after over 70
years of being excluded from labor laws, the 200,000 nannies, housekeepers and
elder caregivers are gearing up for the final weeks before passage during this
legislative session....
Posted Jun 14, 2009
|
On June 4, during Commencement Day 2009 at Harvard University—the richest
university in the world—graduating students held up signs spelling
“N-O L-A-Y-O-F-F-S” inside, while workers on the outside held up
the same signs.
For months leading up to commencement, a loose coalition of Harvard students
and unions has been protesting layoffs at the university....
Posted Jun 14, 2009
|
A. Philip Randolph, a great union and civil rights leader, met Franklin D.
Roosevelt and told him he had the power to take action against racism.
Roosevelt told Randolph, “Make me do it.” And it is said that
Roosevelt told CIO head John L. Lewis, “Make me,” when Lewis
demanded jobs for the unemployed. If a progressive, class-consciousness movement of workers and activists does
not try to intervene to fight for real jobs, then the right wing will take
advantage of unemployment....
Posted Jun 13, 2009
|
Under a canopied “tent city” in the Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza
across from the United Nations, more than 200 individuals and 35 organizations
gathered for the People’s Economic Summit on May 31. The gathering was
called by the Bail Out the People Movement to discuss the theme “Another
World is Urgently Needed ... But We Must Fight for It!”...
Posted Jun 13, 2009
|
CWA locals go after AT&T | Mich. State nontenured faculty vote union | Immokalee Workers win in Fla. tomato fields | Workers win card check victory in Calif....
Posted Jun 13, 2009
|
Chanting, “Perry says death row, we say hell no!” activists
gathered in Austin, Huntsville and Houston on June 2 to protest Texas Gov.
Rick Perry’s 200th execution since he was elected in December 2001. Perry
has surpassed the previous record of 152 executions set by former Governor
George W. Bush....
Posted Jun 13, 2009
|
Fighting the insurance companies and their moves to buy off Congress and
the Obama administration, 5,000 to 10,000 people marched in a Seattle rally
demanding health care for all....
Posted Jun 13, 2009
|
On June 3, a strong demonstration of some 300 parents, teachers, students,
school bus drivers and community activists stormed a meeting of the Boston
School Committee, forcing the committee to backpedal on its City-Hall-authored
“5 zone” plan for school resegregation. The demonstration was
organized by the Coalition for Equal Quality Education, whose organizing has
caused the School Committee to put off a planned vote three times now....
Posted Jun 11, 2009
|
Over 300 members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans community, along
with their supporters, rallied in front of the 77th precinct in Brooklyn, N.Y.,
June 6 to demand justice for two lesbians of color who were brutally beaten and
arrested by the police on May 17. The 77th Precinct, particularly notorious for
police brutality, is also responsible for the June 2007 beatings and arrests of
human right attorneys Michael Tarif Warren and Evelyn Warren, who are African
American....
Posted Jun 11, 2009
|
Over 100 people gathered on Detroit’s west side at Euclid and Holmur on
May 31 to protest the shootings of three African-American youths earlier in the
month. Community residents and relatives of the victims say the shootings were
unprovoked....
Posted Jun 11, 2009
|
When asked why he continued to provide midpregnancy abortions after decades of
the most brutal attacks by the right wing, Dr. George Tiller replied, “Where
else can women go?” Indeed, the loss of Dr. Tiller means there are less
than a half-dozen doctors left in the U.S. who specialize in the vital,
life-saving services he provided....
Posted Jun 11, 2009
|
For decades, New Yorkers have relied on WBAI 99.5 FM, in the Pacifica
Radio Network, for radio broadcasting that provides real news and perspectives
not filtered by corporate media. Now, the station is under attack....
Posted Jun 11, 2009
|
For the better part of the last 75 years, revolutionary peoples’ artist
Irving Fierstein used his immense talent to depict the many struggles of
working and oppressed people for social and economic justice and against
imperialism. In the early 1980s Fierstein created a unique genre of
art—striking full-color revolutionary banners thoughtfully composed and
painstakingly painted by hand....
Posted Jun 11, 2009
|
More than a million and a half workers in the United States have lost their
jobs since last December. Some 345,000 lost their jobs in May. Unemployment is
at 9.4 percent and headed up to more than 10 percent.
Well over 25 million workers are out of work or underemployed. Long-term
unemployment is at a record.
Nevertheless, Washington has given General Motors and Chrysler $17 billion as a
reward for shutting down 22 plants, tearing up union contracts and closing
3,000 dealerships. And the government has promised billions more to the auto
barons.
These cruel measures will sharply aggravate the unemployment crisis across the
country and bring further hardship to those still working.
They must be stopped....
Posted Jun 10, 2009
|
Not so long ago General Motors, Ford and Chrysler were known as the Big Three
automakers. Now that they’re not so big, they’re called the Detroit
Three, but they’re still called automakers. Hyundai, Nissan, Tata, Fiat,
Opel, Volkswagen, etc., are all called automakers.
Why? When is the last time any CEO or executive actually made an automobile? In
fact Michael Moore documented the inability of industry executives to even
perform an oil change.
So who are the automakers?...
Posted Jun 10, 2009
|
The Bail Out the People Movement’s call for an emergency protest
against a June 7 foreclosure auction demanded that “the City of New York,
the Grand Hyatt and the Real Estate Disposition Corporation (REDC) cancel the
auction, set up to allow financial predators to profit from throwing people out
on the street.”...
Posted Jun 10, 2009
|
An interview with Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke aired June 7 on the CBS
television program “60 Minutes.” The Fed head talked about the
multi-trillion-dollar bailout of the U.S. economy that has propped up financial
institutions, banks, and corporations such as insurance giant AIG. Bernanke
glibly stated he was prepared to double the amount if necessary in order to
stave off a collapse of the system.
Any worker or poor person watching this interview probably could not help but
wonder: How come the federal government, which so easily handed over trillions
of dollars to banks and corporations, does practically nothing on behalf of
working people? Where is the bailout for them?...
Posted Jun 10, 2009
|
The home foreclosure crisis in the United States continues to grow in scope and
size. Workers are losing their homes at record rates as mass layoffs and plant
closings affect millions.
A new twist has been added to the foreclosure disaster, one that accelerates
the overall capitalist economic crisis even further.
What started out as a racist, sexist ploy by bankers and lenders to lure poor
and working people into usurious subprime loans has now grown into an avalanche
of foreclosures on homeowners with prime mortgage loans, mostly workers who
have lost their jobs....
Posted Jun 7, 2009
|
A militant demonstration on May 29 outside Bank of America in downtown Detroit
stopped the scheduled June 1 eviction of Michelle Hart and her elderly mother.
Countrywide Home Loans, which is owned by Bank of America, refused to modify
Hart’s subprime, adjustable rate mortgage as required by federal law. The
demonstration, as well as phone calls from around the country to BOA president
Kenneth Lewis at the bank’s headquarters in Charlotte, N.C., forced the
lender to adjourn the eviction....
Posted Jun 7, 2009
|
Hundreds of people took to the streets of Detroit on May 21 demanding justice for Robert
Mitchell, 16, who died after being tased by Warren police. Mitchell, who had
fled from a police stop in Warren, was chased into Detroit, where he was
apprehended, tased and later died on April 10....
Posted Jun 7, 2009
|
Gathering under a banner stating, “Another World is Urgently
Needed—But We Must Fight for It!” more than 200 community, labor,
youth, immigrant rights, housing, health care and social justice activists met
on May 31 in Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza for the People’s Economic
Summit....
Posted Jun 7, 2009
|
Several hundred people crowded around the building housing the California
Supreme Court on the morning of May 26. The six-to-one decision upholding Prop
8, the ban on same-sex marriage passed by California voters in November,
immediately set the crowd in motion....
Posted Jun 6, 2009
|
Only eight hours after the announcement of the California Supreme Court’s
prejudice-based ruling supporting Prop 8 on May 26, 5,000 disappointed, sad,
but mostly angry San Diegans stormed out of Balboa Park onto Sixth Avenue and
chanted their way to the heart of downtown. ...
Posted Jun 6, 2009
|
More than 150 lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youth poured into the
Community Church of Boston May 20 for an historic event in both Massachusetts
HIV organizing and youth leadership....
Posted Jun 6, 2009
|
The cops were surprised when, at the end of the solidarity march to support
Stella D’oro workers, protesters slipped past their barricades and
charged the plant gates....
Posted Jun 6, 2009
|
Domestic workers are excluded from the protection of almost every major
labor law....
Posted Jun 6, 2009
|
U.S. Representatives John Lewis and Hank Johnson, accompanied by NAACP National
President Ben Jealous, visited Georgia death row prisoner Troy Anthony Davis
for close to two hours on May 29.
Speaking to a crowd of Davis’ supporters outside the prison walls in
Jackson, Ga., the three leaders, convinced of his innocence, pledged to pursue
other means to bring justice in Davis’ case....
Posted Jun 4, 2009
|
Local Native activists and their supporters demonstrated May 25 against the
Atlanta Braves baseball team outside AT&T Park, home of the San Francisco
Giants.
Tony Gonzales, spokesperson for the local American Indian Movement-West
chapter, stated that the misuse of the term “braves” and the
“tomahawk chop” gesture “are offensive to American Indian
people.”...
Posted Jun 4, 2009
|
A small article in the local newspaper announcing a DeKalb County Board of
Education decision to open a public high school as a Marine Institute this fall
ignited an immediate response from anti-war groups, veterans’
organizations, parents, teachers and youth....
Posted Jun 4, 2009
|
The police are majority white in the U.S. but there exists a significant number
of Black, Latina/o and Asian police officers. Racism and national oppression
permeate every social institution in U.S. capitalist society, including the
police. Officers of color have issued complaints against white officers for
racist behavior, along with having to live under the constant fear of being
“mistakenly” shot.
This reality was brought home once again within the notorious New York Police
Department....
Posted Jun 4, 2009
|
On June 1 General Motors—a hundred-year-old company that for decades was
the world’s largest—filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. This follows
months of speculation, where “possible” became “50-50,”
which then became “more probable than not.” Now the world is
witnessing the downfall of a giant that still employs a quarter-million
workers....
Posted Jun 3, 2009
|
The response of reproductive rights organizations was swift and unequivocal
when women’s health care provider Dr. George R. Tiller was assassinated
in Wichita, Kan., May 31. All the national women’s rights and
women’s health care groups denounced the murder and hailed Dr. Tiller as
a hero in the fight for reproductive justice. ...
Posted Jun 3, 2009
|
Statement on the assassination of Dr. George Tiller issued June 1 by the National Women’s Fightback Network....
Posted Jun 3, 2009
|
Organizers of the People’s Summit and Tent City taking place June 14-17
in downtown Detroit have announced several demonstrations and other events as
part of its four-day agenda. The People’s Summit will counter the
National Summit, known until recently as the National Business Summit,
occurring June 15-17 at the GM Renaissance Center....
Posted May 31, 2009
|
A diverse coalition of poor and working people across the U.S. will actively
resist a big-business National Summit which will gather in Detroit June 15-17
at the Renaissance Center, site of General Motors’ world
headquarters. Here’s a short list of the business summit participants....
Posted May 31, 2009
|
When North Carolina Gov. Beverly Perdue announced that all state workers would
be mandated to take 10 unpaid hours off to help balance the budget, many
workers began discussing how they could collectively withhold their labor by
organizing to take the same time periods off.
Then the state legislature began discussing furloughs of up to 20 days for all
state workers. But that plan was soon taken off the table after seeing the mass
outrage it caused....
Posted May 31, 2009
|
Thirteen doctors, nurses and activists were arrested in Washington, D.C.,
throughout the month of May. The protesters were detained on different days for
interrupting the Senate Finance Committee roundtable on health care to protest
the exclusion of single-payer advocates from the hearings on reform....
Posted May 31, 2009
|
On May 22 hundreds of laid-off Chrysler workers rallied in front of their plant
in Twinsburg, Ohio. “The people have spoken, keep the plant open!”
they chanted. Workers believe they were double-crossed when, two days after
voting to grant Chrysler sweeping concessions, they read in the news media that
Chrysler’s restructuring includes the closing of their plant and seven
others....
Posted May 29, 2009
|
Hundreds of UAW members from Local 1700 rallied on May 21 demanding their
Sterling Heights Assembly plant stay open and operating in Michigan....
Posted May 29, 2009
|
AT&T’s corporate greed exposed | Grocery workers fighting back in Colorado | Black farmers demand settlement | Statistics confirms need for EFCA...
Posted May 29, 2009
|
On May 18, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a stunning blow to women workers,
overturned lower courts’ decisions and ruled that AT&T, the
seventh-largest corporation in the world, could exclude maternity leaves when
calculating pension benefits....
Posted May 29, 2009
|
El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, better known as Malcolm X, was born Malcolm Little in
Omaha, Neb., on May 19, 1925. The names he held reflected both his personal
journey and that of oppressed people for whom he gave his life. The racism
experienced by his family in the 1930s was routine—from verbal harassment
to being burned out of their home, to surviving, as a child, the lynching of
his father....
Posted May 29, 2009
|
In real life Travis Bishop is best known for his acoustic
country music CD, “So Here We Go.” He is also known as Sgt. Bishop,
currently AWOL from Fort Hood after refusing to deploy with the 57th Elite
Service Battalion to Afghanistan....
Posted May 29, 2009
|
On May 20 at 6:20 a.m., a number of early morning trolley riders, including
students on their way to school, were stopped and questioned by Border Patrol
and Transit Security Administration officers at the Old Town trolley stop in
San Diego.
In a blatant act of racial profiling, people appearing to be Latina/o were
singled out, and all were asked for citizenship documents. Twenty-one people,
including three students under the age of 18, were arrested, handcuffed and
quickly deported....
Posted May 28, 2009
|
Prisoners began a hunger strike May 2 to protest the degrading and inhumane
conditions they endure in the jails run by the notoriously racist Maricopa
County Sheriff Joe Arpaio. The crimes of Arpaio are well documented: housing
inmates in sweltering tent-cities, parading them through the streets of Phoenix
like slaves on their way to the auction block, serving spoiled food referred to
as “slop” by the inmates, and denying adequate medical treatment.
Arpaio has continued to try to whip up anti-immigrant hysteria in any way
possible....
Posted May 28, 2009
|
Immigrants and their supporters have marched, rallied, picketed and even met
with the mayor’s staff to express their opposition to the enforcing of
immigration laws by Houston cops.
At a May 20 press conference and picket line outside of the Houston Police
Officers Union, activists made it clear that immigrants were a large part of
the Houston population and must be treated with respect by all city
agencies....
Posted May 28, 2009
|
Carlyle Group, the world’s second largest private equity corporation,
agreed on May 14 to pay $20 million as part of an out-of-court settlement for
its role in the “pay-to-play” corruption scandal involving public
pension funds. The out-of-court settlement shields all Carlyle executives from
any criminal liability....
Posted May 28, 2009
|
“Immigrant,” a bilingual community event on immigrant rights in
Syracuse, N.Y., held in the Blodgett High School cafeteria, drew a
standing-room-only, multinational crowd of more than 110 people on May 14. Some
participants traveled from as far as Buffalo, Rochester, Binghamton and
Manhattan....
Posted May 28, 2009
|
Mark D. Fussner died May 22 after an hours-long shoot-out with police following
the bailiff’s unsuccessful attempt to evict the 44-year-old homeowner.
Two 24th District Court officers had come to Fussner’s home on Anne
Street, in the working-class downriver Detroit suburb of Allen Park, to carry
out a writ of eviction after foreclosure....
Posted May 27, 2009
|
The People’s Economic Summit WILL go ahead on schedule Sunday,
May 31 - Under Tents in Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza outside the United Nations headquarters in New York....
Posted May 27, 2009
|
Demonstrators blocked traffic in San Francisco to protest the
California Supreme Court's decision May 26 to uphold Prop 8, the law
banning same-sex marriage in that state. There were demonstrations in 100
cities across the U.S., some numbering in the thousands....
Posted May 27, 2009
|
More than 100 vigils, rallies, marches and other actions were held across the
U.S. and in other countries worldwide on May 19 in support of Troy Anthony
Davis, the Georgia man facing execution for a crime he has always denied
committing....
Posted May 27, 2009
|
As with all the other so-called “homegrown terror plots,” this case
is being revealed for what it really is: entrapment. It is one more incident of
an FBI informant going fishing, baiting, in particular, Black men and enticing
them with money and other favors, directing their conversations and playing
upon their anger against their oppression....
Posted May 27, 2009
|
Home foreclosures soared in April to a record-high rate. One of every 374
homes, or 342,000 homes in the United States, received a foreclosure filing: a
notice of default, auction or sale notice, or bank repossession. Filings were
up 32 percent from April 2008....
Posted May 25, 2009
|
The cruelty of capitalism is clear as more than 5.7 million people in the U.S.
have lost their jobs in the last 18 months and hundreds of thousands of homes
are foreclosed every month. Now New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has come
up with a new form of ruthlessness for those suffering the most.
His administration recently started charging rent to homeless people....
Posted May 25, 2009
|
Once again the military budget is rising, dashing hopes that the new
administration would reverse the course of the Bush years. As many as 100,000
troops are being added to the military, with 22,000 slated to go to
Afghanistan.
The annual budget of the Department of Defense will go from $487.7 billion to
$527.7 billion this year. However, the cost of the Iraq/Afghanistan invasions
and occupations, which is counted separately, will come to at least another
$150 billion for the fiscal year....
Posted May 22, 2009
|
About 200 parents, teachers, students and community activists participated in a
spirited community summit at Roxbury Community College in Boston May 14. They
said no to Mayor Thomas Menino and the Boston School Committee’s racist
plan to return the city to segregated, “neighborhood” schools....
Posted May 21, 2009
|
“Jailhouse Lawyers: Prisoners Defending Prisoners v. the USA.” Wow!
Before I say what it is, let me say where it belongs: right next to Howard
Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States.”...
Posted May 21, 2009
|
The crisis in the auto industry is spreading like wildfire. Beside the 25,000 workers laid off because of the latest wave of plant closings
at General Motors and Chrysler, many others are impacted. Notices have gone out
to 800 Chrysler and 1,100 GM dealers that their franchise agreements will not
be renewed. A total of 103,000 mechanics, salespeople and other workers could lose their
jobs....
Posted May 20, 2009
|
Lucia Paz spent the last 17 years working for the Food City division of
Bashas’ grocery store chain in Tucson. During that time, she diligently
performed her job duties: stocking shelves, running the cash register and
assisting customers. She was a conscientious worker and was never considered a
“troublemaker.” On May 11 Paz was terminated for “failing to
follow policy and procedures.” What she failed to follow was never
revealed to her, and Bashas’/Food City management refused to comment on
the reasons for the firing, even to the mainstream media....
Posted May 20, 2009
|
Organizers of the People’s Summit, including a tent city, in downtown
Detroit June 14-17 report momentum is building for the event. It’s billed
as “four days of active resistance” to counter the National
Business Summit held June 15-17 at the GM Renaissance Center....
Posted May 17, 2009
|
On May 9, three members of the Georgia Detention Watch made a second solidarity
trip to the Etowah Detention Center in Gadsden, Ala., to deliver hundreds of
pairs of cotton underwear to women immigrant detainees....
Posted May 17, 2009
|
Seven demonstrators were arrested May 2 at the “Army Experience
Center” at the Franklin Mills Mall in north Philadelphia in the struggle
against the latest U.S. crime against humanity: the recruiting of 13-year-olds....
Posted May 17, 2009
|
Capitalism is a system of exploitation of workers for profit. An example of
what it does is going on in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court. What capitalism is doing
to 27,000 Chrysler workers, along with 82,000 retirees, has ramifications for
our whole class. In fact, a spokesperson for Moody’s Investor Services
stated, “The Chrysler bankruptcy is historic and may become either a
template or a warning sign for future bankruptcies, such as that of General
Motors.”...
Posted May 16, 2009
|
In the midst of a national housing crisis, the Federal Emergency Management
Agency has announced the eviction of all Hurricane Katrina survivors from the
government trailers they have been living in since they were left homeless
following the 2005 disaster. FEMA officials plan to repossess and sell for
scrap metal the 4,600 trailers remaining in Mississippi and Louisiana by May
30....
Posted May 16, 2009
|
Robert King, Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace are known as the “Angola
Three,” a trio of political prisoners whose supporters include Amnesty
International, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Congressman John Conyers and the ACLU.
Kgalema Mothlante, the President of South Africa, says their case “has
the potential of laying bare, exposing the shortcomings, in the entire U.S.
system.”...
Posted May 16, 2009
|
It’s often been said that the Senate is a millionaire’s club; but
it’s more. It’s one of the most exclusive clubs on earth.
It’s only 100 men and women, who are essentially princes and princesses
of power....
Posted May 16, 2009
|
Army GI refuses to serve in Afghanistan | Iraq vets rally against stop-loss at Ft. Lewis | Cliff Cornell sentenced to 12 months for desertion | Case dropped against Lt. Ehren Watada...
Posted May 16, 2009
|
The struggle to free death-row political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal is heating up
in New York City. On May 8, an emergency, militant street meeting took place in
front of Harlem’s Adam Clayton Powell Jr. State Office Building to demand
that elected officials call upon U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and the
Justice Department to conduct a civil rights investigation into constitutional rights
violations against Mumia. Congressperson Charles Rangel, who represents the
Harlem community, has come out in support of the call for the
investigation....
Posted May 14, 2009
|
On May 19, from Alaska to West Virginia and from Argentina to Uganda, high
school and college students, faith-based groups and progressive community
organizations are organizing vigils, rallies and petition drives as well as the
vital means of communication to bring worldwide pressure on Georgia Gov. Sonny
Perdue and the Pardons and Parole Board to stop the execution of Troy Anthony
Davis....
Posted May 14, 2009
|
On June 9 the Michigan Court of Appeals will hear defense arguments in the case
of Rev. Edward Pinkney, leader of the Benton Harbor Black Autonomy Network of
Community Organizers (BANCO). Pinkney was convicted by an all-white Berrien
County jury in March 2007 on trumped-up charges related to false allegations of
voter fraud....
Posted May 14, 2009
|
In Houston in April a Black firefighter saw a noose in the locker room at
Fire Station No. 41, where he worked, and reported it to his supervisor. A
white captain had hung it at his locker.
Despite pleas to the mayor for an investigation, nothing has been done to the
fire captain except being given a letter of reprimand. But the Black
firefighter who reported this racist act was disciplined and also given a
letter of reprimand....
Posted May 14, 2009
|
Workers to AT&T: No concessions! | NYC transit workers protest pending layoffs | Will grocery workers strike in Colorado? | Scholars, academics support EFCA...
Posted May 14, 2009
|
The bosses are using the crisis to lower wages, shorten hours, reduce or take
away benefits and worsen working conditions. Workers everywhere are made to
swallow concessions out of fear of losing their jobs and having to compete
against masses of other jobless workers.
Where there is no union, the bosses are all-powerful. For the unorganized
workers, from Wal-Mart to Starbucks to Home Depot, their only defense in this
crisis of mass unemployment is to have a union....
Posted May 13, 2009
|
Over 200 people attended a May 9 teach-in and mass action organizing meeting in
San Francisco to “Bail Out Working People, Not the Banks!” The
event was initiated and supported by the San Francisco Labor Council, the South
Bay Labor Council, the Alameda County Central Labor Council and the Workers
Emergency Recovery Campaign. The organizing committee was comprised of
progressive trade unionists and labor council delegates....
Posted May 13, 2009
|
Over 400 members of UAW Local 122 came together May 11 to try to stop
the closing of Chrysler’s Twinsburg Stamping Plant in Twinsburg, Ohio....
Posted May 13, 2009
|
On May 11, some 500 workers at the Chicago-based apparel firm Hart Schaffner
Marx, or Hartmarx, held a rally and historic “sit-in” vote to fight
for their jobs. Many held signs reading, “Bail Out People, Not
Banks.” Wells Fargo, a Troubled Assets Relief Fund recipient, has pushed
for a bankruptcy shuttering of the facility....
Posted May 13, 2009
|
Dear Brother Fred,
Early in December I received your autographed copy of “Low-Wage
Capitalism.” I wanted to personally thank you for this very informative
book....
Posted May 13, 2009
|
Economic activity in the United States shrank by 6.1 percent in the first
quarter of 2009. That made this the worst recession in 50 years, with three
consecutive quarters of sharp economic decline. The decline was worse than
predicted by economists, who had projected 4.7 percent.
Yet the stock market continued to surge right past this news. Why?...
Posted May 10, 2009
|
Award-winning journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal’s sixth book, “Jailhouse
Lawyers: Prisoners Defending Prisoners v. the U.S.A.,” written from death
row, pays tribute to prisoners who became self-taught lawyers to help defend
the rights of other prisoners who would otherwise be denied legal
representation. On April 24 and 25, the book was presented in over a dozen cities across the
U.S. to open a new stage in the battle for Abu-Jamal’s life and freedom....
Posted May 10, 2009
|
Freelance journalist Diane Bukowski, whose byline appears frequently in The
Michigan Citizen newspaper, was convicted May 1 on two felony charges stemming
from her involvement as a reporter on the scene of a deadly police chase in
Detroit on Nov. 4. She will be sentenced on June 1, and faces a possible
four-year prison term....
Posted May 10, 2009
|
More than 70 people, mostly students, participated in the founding conference
of Connecticut Students Against the War on April 25 at Wesleyan University...
Posted May 10, 2009
|
WBAI radio supporters and listeners, many of them activists in
anti-racism, workers’ and pro-liberation movement organizations in the
New York area, gathered April 29 on just two days’ notice outside the
station’s Wall Street offices. They were there to protest recent proposed
changes in the station’s management and support WBAI general manager Tony
Riddle and program director Bernard White, both Black men threatened with
firing....
Posted May 10, 2009
|
The current economic depression will send the numbers of homeless in New York City soaring. These numbers are due to the systematic, deliberate capitalist displacement of
tenants in New York’s working-class neighborhoods, especially people of
color communities. It’s called gentrification—workers out,
parasites with luxury apartments in....
Posted May 10, 2009
|
The Fort Dix 5 defendants—Mohamed Shnewer, Serdar Tatar, and Eljvir,
Dritan and Shain Duka—were unjustly sentenced to staggering prison terms
for allegedly conspiring to kill soldiers at the Fort Dix, N.J., military base
in 2007....
Posted May 10, 2009
|
Workers across the United States turned out in mass numbers in cities large and
small on International Workers’ Day to march and rally for workers’
and immigrants’ rights. Inclement weather in many cities and fear of
swine flu was not enough to keep workers off the streets. This year’s May
Day occurred in the midst of a deepening global economic crisis that has fueled
widespread anger against the banks and government bailouts....
Posted May 7, 2009
|
Latina/o workers, along with workers originally from Asia, Africa, the Americas
and Europe, marched united on Broadway in New York on May Day 2009, in an event
organized by the May 1st Coalition for Worker and Immigrant Rights....
Posted May 7, 2009
|
While immigrants and their supporters celebrated May Day elsewhere in the U.S.,
an all-white jury in Pottsville, Pa., approved the lynching of Luis
Ramirez....
Posted May 7, 2009
|
2009 began with a rebellion. On Jan. 7, seven days after Oscar Grant III had
been shot in the back and killed by Bay Area Rapid Transit cop Johannes
Mehserle, the people of Oakland, Calif., rose up and rebelled....
Posted May 7, 2009
|
It’s still too soon to predict how widespread and deadly this new
variation of influenza virus will be. Meanwhile, controversy is growing about
how the new virus got started....
Posted May 6, 2009
|
In an atmosphere of fear and intimidation, Chrysler workers represented by the
United Auto Workers voted four-to-one on April 29 to take major contract
concessions. Yet not even 24 hours after the ballots had been counted, Chrysler
double-crossed the workers and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. On May 4 nearly
every U.S. Chrysler employee was put on layoff....
Posted May 6, 2009
|
Activists fighting the capitalist economic crisis have three important events
this summer in which to participate....
Posted May 6, 2009
|
General Motors has announced new mass layoffs, plant closings and the closing
of dealerships. If this restructuring is allowed to go through, it means a
deepening of the economic crisis for the working class. It shows the need to
fight against the capitalist system, which is at the root of the crisis....
Posted May 3, 2009
|
Students, labor and community activists gathered to hear Fred Goldstein, author
of “Low-Wage Capitalism: Colossus with Feet of Clay,” when he spoke
on a recent three-city tour in California....
Posted May 3, 2009
|
There are so many people eager, desperate, to find work. And we’ve all
heard about the trillions of dollars given to Wall Street to pep up the
economy—which hasn’t worked. Trillions! Who ever heard of such huge
numbers before this crisis!...
Posted May 3, 2009
|
Every petty politician is bum-rushing the mike to spout off on how pirates are
“thugs,” “criminals,” or the latest Western curse,
“terrorists.”...
Posted May 3, 2009
|
Over the last several months, a series of dramatic cases involving police
killings of civilians has brought to light the essential role of law
enforcement within capitalist societies. Numerous cities throughout the United
States have seen a dramatic increase in the murder of African Americans by cops
as well as the escalation of raids and deportations against immigrants both
documented and undocumented....
Posted May 1, 2009
|
To commemorate the 55th birthday of African-American political prisoner
Mumia Abu-Jamal, local meetings were held around the country to help publicize
the recent release of his sixth book, “Jailhouse Lawyers—Prisoners
Defending Prisoners v. the U.S.A.”...
Posted May 1, 2009
|
People of color have been all too aware of police brutality in our
neighborhoods. We have all too often seen police used as an occupying force to
terrorize communities of color. Yet another example is the killing of Annette Garcia....
Posted May 1, 2009
|
Survivors of Hurricane Katrina are finally getting their day in court. In a
trial currently under way in New Orleans, a group of residents is holding the
Army Corps of Engineers responsible for the flooding that occurred in the wake
of Katrina....
Posted May 1, 2009
|
Revolutionary priest and professor Luis Barrios has been subjected to abuse and
solitary confinement at Manhattan Correction Center since March 9. The Rev.
Barrios is serving a 60-day sentence there for “trespassing on government
property” during a protest last fall at the School of the Americas,
located at Fort Benning, Ga....
Posted May 1, 2009
|
Once more, just as every year since 2006, there will be May Day demonstrations
around the United States on May 1.
May Day actions, large and small, already signal an enormous political and
social development. Large ones will have more impact, but no matter the size of
the actions, these yearly marches have revived May Day in the U.S. ...
Posted Apr 30, 2009
|
The May 1st Coalition for Worker and Immigrant Rights held a press conference
on April 27 to announce plans for the May Day rally and march scheduled for
Union Square in New York on May 1. One of the main messages raised at the press
conference is the demand that President Barack Obama pass fair and humane
immigration reform which would include the elimination of deportations and
raids against immigrant workers and their families....
Posted Apr 30, 2009
|
Hundreds of City College of New York students and faculty supporters
walked out in protest of a $300-per-semester tuition hike and faculty cutbacks
on April 22. The CCNY protest was lively and linked the struggle for student
rights with solidarity for striking Stella D’oro workers from Bakery,
Confectionary, Tobacco Local 50 in the Bronx....
Posted Apr 30, 2009
|
Resolution in support of striking Stella
D’Oro workers passed by the New York State United Teachers on April
4....
Posted Apr 30, 2009
|
Organizing for the June 14-17 People’s Summit and Tent City in Detroit is
building fast. A planning meeting April 25 was attended by representatives from
a broad base of progressive organizations. They included the Autoworkers
Caravan, which has been in the forefront of challenging the massive attacks on
auto workers’ wages and benefits; the Moratorium NOW! Coalition to Stop
Foreclosures and Evictions; disabled activists from Warriors on Wheels; Call
’Em Out; the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization; the Detroit Coalition
Against Police Brutality; and the National Lawyers Guild. Two UAW members from
Toledo, Ohio, also attended....
Posted Apr 30, 2009
|
Another success has been achieved in the campaign to make emergency
contraceptive (EC) available to all women who need it...
Posted Apr 30, 2009
|
In a Brookings Institute study released April 6, Detroit topped the list of
urban areas suffering from “job sprawl.” In the Detroit
metropolitan region, encompassing the area within a 35-mile radius drawn from
the city’s center, more than 77 percent of the jobs are located at least
10 miles away. Only 7 percent of the jobs are within three miles of the
core. Not only in Detroit but in all of the 98 largest urban areas studied, the
“job sprawl” trend is leading to greater impoverishment in the
cities and a huge income and employment gap between white workers and workers
of color....
Posted Apr 30, 2009
|
AT&T workers fighting back | SAG to vote on new contract | May Day work stoppage in Puerto Rico | Commemorate workers on April 28 | New unemployment resource | Stella D’Oro strike support...
Posted Apr 30, 2009
|
On April 14, right-wing racist and anti-immigrant bigot Tom Tancredo came to
the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill to speak. While Tancredo’s racist speeches have been challenged by students before,
nothing in the ex-congressperson’s career could have prepared him for the
fiercely loud and principled stand taken by UNC students on April 14. More than
300 protesters from various student organizations showed up at Bingham Hall to
give a strong denunciation of Tancredo and everything that these
xenophobic reactionaries stand for....
Posted Apr 29, 2009
|
Another tragedy has occurred in Baltimore as a result of a utility shut-off.
The community has once again felt the pain and loss from another house fire.
This fire has taken the life of a 7-year-old girl and her grandmother in East
Baltimore. The blaze resulted from candle use after the family’s gas and
electricity had been shut off. Similar to Betty Godfrey, a 61-year-old woman in
West Baltimore who lost her life to a house fire, their utilities were off for
close to a year....
Posted Apr 29, 2009
|
A new coalition of parents, teachers, students and community activists has come
together in Boston to defend the right to equal, quality education for the
city’s African-American, Latino/a and Asian communities. The Coalition
for Equal, Quality Education came together in response to plans by the school
department to change Boston’s student assignment plan in a way that would
reduce community access to the best educational resources....
Posted Apr 29, 2009
|
Georgia Detention Watch members are in the final stages of planning a second
solidarity visit to women detainees held in the Etowah Detention Center in
Gadsden, Ala., on May 9.
Organizers chose the Mother’s Day weekend to highlight the cruel
separation of families caused by the immigration policies carried out by
Immigration and Customs Enforcement....
Posted Apr 29, 2009
|
An estimated 200 immigrant detainees at the Port Isabel Detention Center
in Los Fresnos, Texas, are staging a hunger strike to protest physical and
verbal abuse by guards, a lack of medical care and legal assistance, unsanitary
living conditions and other violations of due process...
Posted Apr 29, 2009
|
Since the Bush administration made the initial loans to Chrysler and GM, the
government has brazenly interfered in the collective bargaining process. The “deeper” restructuring of the auto companies the ruling class insists on is forcing
workers to pay the cost with yet another round of
layoffs. The question no one in the capitalist media is asking is this: How did the auto
companies become so mired in debt to begin with? Hint. The answer can be found on Wall Street....
Posted Apr 26, 2009
|
If an unemployed worker steals a loaf of bread, she or he goes to jail. Bankers
who have stolen New York City, however, go home to their mansions. The
banks’ “legal” robbery is responsible for unemployment,
poverty and the deprivation of our children. Their culpability needs to be
exposed and challenged....
Posted Apr 26, 2009
|
Where fatalities have occurred on the job, OSHA is supposed to oversee the
enforcement of its rules. However, an audit of OSHA’s program for
employers with fatalities, released March 31, found that those who qualified
for the Enhanced Enforcement Program were almost always overlooked—97
percent of the time....
Posted Apr 26, 2009
|
Delegates to the San Francisco Labor Council on April 13, by a vote of 45 to
40, defeated a right-wing attempt to revoke a previously passed resolution that
demanded justice for the San Francisco 8....
Posted Apr 26, 2009
|
|
Many worldwide know that U.S. use of torture, as serious as this is, was
only one part of the Bush administration’s criminal conspiracy to carry
out the illegal and unjustifiable invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and
Iraq. These
criminal adventures resulted in the deaths of over a million Iraqis, tens of
thousands of Afghans and thousands of U.S. troops.
There would be widespread support here and worldwide for prosecuting Bush,
Cheney, Rumsfeld and company for their many war crimes, including the torture
of prisoners....
Posted Apr 24, 2009
|
The struggle for lesbian, gay, bi and trans (LGBT) equal rights under bourgeois
marriage law won back-to-back victories this month with the extension of full
marriage rights to same-sex couples in Vermont and Iowa. These two states
joined Massachusetts and Connecticut as the only states to perform same-sex
marriages....
Posted Apr 24, 2009
|
The Southern California Immigration Coalition Conference, a coalition of
several dozen organizations, successfully gathered nearly 400 people from
across the region on April 11 with the objective of “building unity
between different sectors of the community to unite around this
struggle—from elected officials, to students, to workers, to
professionals, to leaders from the LGBT community, to teachers and parents, to
community leaders, to union leaders, to intellectuals and to many
more.”...
Posted Apr 24, 2009
|
“Innocence matters.” These two words express the mantra of the
international movement to stop the execution of Troy Anthony Davis.
Davis’s conviction in the killing of off-duty Savannah policeman Mark
McPhail in August 1989 is solely based on tainted eyewitness testimony. Davis
has consistently and repeatedly asserted his innocence....
Posted Apr 22, 2009
|
Political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal will be 55 on April 24. His family, friends
and supporters are observing the day with a worldwide “Honk for
Mumia” and other displays of resistance to demand freedom for this
world-famous African-American journalist held on Pennsylvania’s death
row....
Posted Apr 22, 2009
|
An e-mail campaign launched on April 15 by
the New York Free Mumia Coalition, International Concerned Family and Friends
of Mumia Abu-Jamal, Millions for Mumia and the International Action Center to
demand that the Justice Department initiate a civil rights investigation
addressing a 27-year history of prosecutorial and judicial violations of
Mumia’s constitutional rights....
Posted Apr 22, 2009
|
Over 50 protesters braved stormy weather and a reign of terror on April 20 to
gather outside the headquarters of the Fraternal Order of Police and take a
stand against police brutality in the Black community. Rally organizers charged
that in the Philadelphia area 36 unarmed Black men were killed by police
between May 2008 and April 2009....
Posted Apr 22, 2009
|
Robert Mitchell, 16, affectionately known as “Tazzy” by his family
and friends, has become one of the latest victims of tasing by law
enforcement....
Posted Apr 22, 2009
|
|
A stunning one-third of the more than 800 bird species in the U.S. are
endangered, threatened or in decline, due primarily to climate change and
habitat loss....
Posted Apr 18, 2009
|
Gary Schaefer came to Youth Against War & Fascism, the youth group of
Workers World Party, in 1968, a tumultuous time when the Black liberation and
anti-imperialist struggles were on the rise. Born into a union family, Gary was a shop steward in Teamsters Local 10 at RCA Communications. What stood out in the 1960s was that he was an anti-racist worker....
Posted Apr 18, 2009
|
A resolution adopted by the San Francisco Labor Council....
Posted Apr 18, 2009
|
A debate is heating up in the ruling class over whether or not an economic
recovery is coming. Workers should be aware of two important points: first, the
global picture of the capitalist crisis points in very drastic directions; and
second, whatever recovery the bosses are talking about is a recovery for the
profit makers and not the workers....
Posted Apr 16, 2009
|
Power 4 the People, a committee of the Bail Out the People
Movement—which marched April 3-4 against the big banks on Wall
Street—along with the Coalition to Re-regulate BGE and the Network to
Stop Foreclosures & Evictions marched on the lavish Baltimore home of
Constellation/BGE (Baltimore Gas & Electric) CEO Mayo Shattuck on April
6....
Posted Apr 16, 2009
|
Since 1996 mothers on public assistance have been subject to a
five-year limit on benefits. In Ohio the state limit is only three years,
during which time recipients must work 30 hours per week for a below-minimum
wage. Prisscilla Cooper, CEO and President of Family Connection Center, is
leading a fight for a moratorium on time limits....
Posted Apr 16, 2009
|
A step forward in giving legal protection to women accessing essential
reproductive health services at New York City clinics and to their staff
occurred on April 2 when the City Council overwhelmingly passed the Clinic
Access Bill....
Posted Apr 16, 2009
|
AT&T workers vote to strike * National Labor Coordinating Committee established * Actors reach deal about commercials * Two unions to jointly organize hospital workers * AFL-CIO says nix Prop 8 * Support Parsons’ fine arts faculty...
Posted Apr 16, 2009
|
Reaction to the Supreme Court’s denial on April 6 of a new trial for
Mumia Abu-Jamal based on charges of racism in his 1982 court proceedings was
swift and wide-spread. Members of International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal and
their supporters quickly took to the internet and airwaves to get out word
about the impact of this decision and call for meetings to organize the next
stage in the struggle to win justice for this world-renowned political prisoner
still sitting on Pennsylvania’s death row....
Posted Apr 15, 2009
|
Instead of bailing out mega-corporations that have sucked the life blood from
the community, endorsed slavery, raided pensions, decimated savings, created
the perfect environment for scams and put homeowners, renters and their
families out on the street—FREE MUMIA!...
Posted Apr 15, 2009
|
On April 10, approximately 60 students occupied the New School ’s Albert
List Academic Building in New York. They demanded the resignation of both
President Bob Kerrey and Executive Vice-President James Murtha and an end to
tuition hikes. Kerrey has come under fire since his 2001 appointment as president of the New
School because of his role in the February 1969 Thanh Phong massacre in
Vietnam. Eyewitnesses have reported that Kerrey participated in the
cold-blooded murder of civilians, including women, children, and the elderly,
while leading a SEAL team mission....
Posted Apr 15, 2009
|
According to a Louisiana American Civil Liberties Union complaint, Russell
Mills, the white police chief of Homer, La., a small town of 3,800 people 50
miles northeast of Shreveport, said to the Chicago Tribune: “If I see
three or four young black men walking down the street, I have to stop them and
check their names. I want them to be afraid every time they see the police that
they might get arrested.”...
Posted Apr 15, 2009
|
“Job Loss/Homelessness Up - Capitalism’s Latest Crisis”
is the theme of a meeting at SEIU Local 721 in Los Angeles on Thursday, April 23,
from 7 p.m. to 9:30 pm....
Posted Apr 15, 2009
|
Workers on the shop floor know what is in store when they hear “lean,
mean and competitive.” It was the bosses, now crying poverty, who paid
auto workers to attend compulsory classes on “lean manufacturing.”
What they call lean—which is supposed to mean less fat—in reality
means tearing out the heart of shop floor operations: the hourly worker....
Posted Apr 12, 2009
|
An effort to tank any attempts at health care reform under consideration in
Congress was recently launched by Richard Scott, the disgraced former CEO of
Columbia/HCA. Scott has been making his rounds with lawmakers, and formed a new
group to oppose changes in the country’s broken health care system....
Posted Apr 12, 2009
|
Immigrant small shop owners are coming forward with disturbingly similar
accounts of police drug raids that began with the destruction of private
surveillance cameras and ended with the looting of cash and merchandise from
their shops by members of the department’s undercover Narcotics Field
Unit....
Posted Apr 12, 2009
|
The period of the 1950s to the late 1960s saw the rise of many
organizations of the nationally oppressed that used violence as a means of
self-defense.
Not only did these organizations protect their people from racist violence,
including police brutality, but they also defended the culture of the oppressed
group....
Posted Apr 12, 2009
|
While May Day has historically been a day of workers’ solidarity and
a celebration of labor power, this is not a day or year like any other.
That’s because many nations are in the midst of economic recession and
financial failure, and it is workers worldwide who are suffering from layoffs
and mass firings in almost every sector of the global economy....
Posted Apr 12, 2009
|
Black Workers For Justice holds regular Sunday “activist
brunches” for its members and allies in Raleigh, N.C. to discuss broader
political developments and issues relevant to local anti-racist and pro-worker
campaigns.
On April 5, Fred Goldstein, author of the new book, “Low-Wage
Capitalism,” and a leader of Workers World Party, co-led a discussion on
the current global economic crisis....
Posted Apr 11, 2009
|
For the past 26 years, Black Workers For Justice has held its annual Dr.
Martin Luther King Jr. Support for Labor Banquet to help reaffirm the
commitment to the ongoing struggle for Black liberation and for full
workers’ rights especially in the U.S. South....
Posted Apr 11, 2009
|
Mohamed Shnewer is one of the Fort Dix 5, accused and convicted along with
Serdar Tatar and Dritan, Eljivir and Shain Duka of conspiring to kill soldiers
at Fort Dix, N.J. Shnewer’s sentencing hearing is scheduled before a
federal judge at the end of April. His family contacted Workers World to get
out the truth about his case....
Posted Apr 11, 2009
|
While talk about signs of a possible economic recovery drove the stock market
up for four weeks in a row, beginning March 10, it is clear that the recovery
being talked about was a recovery of the bosses and bankers, not the
workers. Three quarters of a million workers lost their jobs during those four weeks....
Posted Apr 9, 2009
|
From March 25 to 27, community, labor and student activists in Cleveland joined
Fred Goldstein, author of “Low-Wage Capitalism: Colossus with Feet of
Clay,” in discussions on the current economic crisis and prospects for
working-class resistance....
Posted Apr 9, 2009
|
Fred Goldstein, author of the recently published book, “Low-Wage
Capitalism,” is on tour in California....
Posted Apr 9, 2009
|
|
Their chants echoing off the tall buildings of New York’s financial
district, a thousand people marched and rallied at Wall Street April 3 to
demand a bailout of the people, not the banks. Protesters called for a real
jobs program and a moratorium on foreclosures and evictions....
Posted Apr 8, 2009
|
Students and youth from campuses and towns all over the region rallied on April
3 in front of the Bank of America and Wachovia financial centers to demand,
“Bail out the students, not banks!” Both banks are headquartered in
North Carolina and are the recipients of billions of dollars of federal bailout
money and the two biggest holders of student loan debt....
Posted Apr 8, 2009
|
At the Bank of America Plaza in Los Angeles spirited demonstrators echoed
chants off the towering Bank of America corporate building calling for an end
to bank bailouts and foreclosures and evictions....
Posted Apr 8, 2009
|
Demonstrators marched through downtown Seattle on April 4 with signs
saying “Bail out people, not the banks!”...
Posted Apr 8, 2009
|
Over the last year, the Bush and Obama administrations have committed almost
$10 TRILLION to bailing out banks and other financial institutions that finally
crashed after years of raking in extravagant profits. There is still no accounting of where all this money has been going. The fact that the government can even think of promising the money sharks the
mind-boggling sum of $10 trillion shows how tremendously productive U.S.
workers have been—and could be again if jobs were available producing
what people need....
Posted Apr 5, 2009
|
Women’s unemployment rate is rising quickly. ...
Posted Apr 5, 2009
|
Nearly 200 delegates and observers from five U.S. cities packed the UCLA Labor
Center on March 29 for the third congress of BAYAN-USA and the founding
congress of GABRIELA-USA. ...
Posted Apr 5, 2009
|
A short course on the current economic crisis....
Posted Apr 5, 2009
|
The Moratorium NOW! Coalition to Stop Foreclosures and Evictions has announced
plans for a People’s Summit in Detroit June 14-17....
Posted Apr 4, 2009
|
The prospect of deep budget cuts throughout the University of North Carolina system brought workers, students and faculty members out in Chapel Hill March 26 to rally
against layoffs, cuts in student services, and other cuts the university is
proposing to make on the backs of workers and students....
Posted Apr 4, 2009
|
Low-wage workers are vulnerable to wage theft by bosses over and above the
“normal” capitalist theft of the vast surplus value created by
workers....
Posted Apr 4, 2009
|
Activists from around the country and especially the Southwest met in San
Antonio to participate in the Border Peoples Movement Assembly on March
19-23....
Posted Apr 4, 2009
|
Fired R.I. workers demand pay * Auto parts workers choose dignity * NYC restaurant owner to eat $3.3 million...
Posted Apr 4, 2009
|
Protesters marched in Melbourne, Fla., on March 28 to demand
an end to war and occupation from Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan to Palestine....
Posted Apr 4, 2009
|
The latest trillion-dollar handout to Wall Street banks and the recent assault
on workers in the auto industry clearly demonstrate why the workers and
oppressed in this country must break the chains of capitalist priorities and
mobilize to change things around so that workers come before banks and
corporations....
Posted Apr 2, 2009
|
As the economic and financial crisis circles the globe, youth and students are
increasingly caught in its net. What is outrageous is that these terrible
hardships and the bleak outlook that youth face are inherent to the system we
all live under....
Posted Apr 2, 2009
|
During a jailhouse interview in 1978 a Philadelphia radical awaiting trial for
a policeman’s death advanced a salient observation about a fundamental
flaw in America’s legal system.
The “system just makes and breaks laws as it sees fit!” noted this
radical, who for years had battled Philadelphia authorities arbitrarily bending
and breaking laws to brutally assault his organization....
Posted Apr 2, 2009
|
Charles Barron and Chris Silvera say: We will be amongst the many speakers at the “Bail Out People, Not Banks” rally on Wall Street on April 3....
Posted Apr 1, 2009
|
April 4 marks the 41st anniversary of the martyrdom of the Rev. Dr. Martin
Luther King Jr. in Memphis, Tenn....
Posted Apr 1, 2009
|
On March 21, Lovelle Mixon, a young Black man, was pulled over by two
motorcycle cops in Oakland, Calif. According to the Oakland Police Department,
the stop was “routine” and was for a “traffic
violation.” Other than that the details of the stop remain shady. But
such routine stops involving racial profiling occur frequently in oppressed
communities....
Posted Apr 1, 2009
|
Workers at the Moncure Plywood LLC factory have been on strike since last July
20 for their basic right to a decent job with safe work conditions. In the past
eight months, the striking union members have been confronted with the racist
hanging of a noose, replacement by permanent strikebreakers, and a virtual
media whiteout of their heroic actions....
Posted Apr 1, 2009
|
There is nothing like the smell of a trillion-dollar bonanza to send the stock
market through the roof. Wall Street has struck it rich with the Obama
administration’s blatantly pro-banker, pro-investor program to revive the
capitalist economy....
Posted Mar 29, 2009
|
Statement issued by members of the December 12th
Movement, who held a press conference on March 21 in Harlem on the U.S.
government’s refusal to attend the United Nations World Conference
against Racism-Durban Review in April....
Posted Mar 27, 2009
|
The City of New York threw in the towel and agreed to pay $1.1 million to the
families of Anthony Rosario and Hilton Vega. The two young Puerto Rican men
were killed, shot 22 times—11 in the back—in the Bronx on Jan. 12,
1995, by police detectives Patrick Brosnan and James Crowe....
Posted Mar 27, 2009
|
|
A recent court case in Elgin, Ill., gives the lie to those who profess that
women are “better off” in the U.S. than elsewhere in the world.
The Rev. Daryl Bujak, a former preacher at the First Missionary Baptist Church
in Elgin, was recently convicted of a horrific crime for which he was only
given a few hours of community service and a small fine....
Posted Mar 27, 2009
|
|
The executives at the Washington office of American International Group are
reportedly afraid to go to work for fear of their lives. In New York City, they
are told not to wear their ID badges outside the building....
Posted Mar 26, 2009
|
The Illinois budget is in a shambles, both because of the recession and because
lawmakers are never willing to tax the rich. Meanwhile, the city
government’s priorities are entirely focused on attracting the 2016
Olympic games, which would mean a bonanza for whichever well-connected land
speculators have managed to displace the residents from the parts of the South
Side that would be developed for the events....
Posted Mar 26, 2009
|
From a March 15 speech played at protest rallies marking the sixth
anniversary of the U.S. war on Iraq....
Posted Mar 26, 2009
|
Protests across the country on March 19 and 21 marked the sixth anniversary of
the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan in varied ways.
Clearly the charge that “Occupation is a crime—from Iraq to
Palestine” will not stop until the U.S. troops are withdrawn, regardless
of the economic crisis or any change in the political administration of the
U.S. government....
Posted Mar 25, 2009
|
Commentary by a member of the Raleigh chapter of
the youth group FIST—Fight Imperialism, Stand Together: On March 21, Raleigh FIST traveled to the march in D.C. Eight of us went,
driving in a 1980s family van....
Posted Mar 25, 2009
|
Although President Barack Obama has created mandatory and voluntary directives
to mortgage lenders that they negotiate loan modifications with homeowners in
default or foreclosure or in jeopardy of either, many have refused to do even
what is minimally necessary to stop evicting renters and foreclosing on
homeowners....
Posted Mar 25, 2009
|
March 7 was the 77th anniversary of one of the bloodiest chapters in Detroit
labor history: the Ford Hunger March of 1932....
Posted Mar 25, 2009
|
For millions of workers and oppressed people, there is no time to wait for a
stimulus plan to “trickle down” through the economy. For them,
survival is hanging in the balance. In cities and towns across the country, the
multinational working class is becoming painfully aware of the fact that there
is no band-aid solution to this gaping economic wound. That is why workers and activists from across the country are preparing to
converge on Wall Street, the nerve center of finance capital, on April 3 in
order to directly confront the billionaire bankers and financiers.
Demonstrators will demand an immediate moratorium on all foreclosures and
evictions, and money for jobs, health care and education, not bank bailouts and
war....
Posted Mar 22, 2009
|
On the sixth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, support is growing for war
resisters in the United States and Canada in the wake of new deportations and
repression....
Posted Mar 21, 2009
|
The May 1st Coalition for Worker and Immigrant Rights held a news
conference on March 17 at Union Square to announce the upcoming May Day rally
in New York City, which has been held there each year since 2005. ...
Posted Mar 21, 2009
|
The debate over ceding local control of Detroit’s Cobo Hall to a
five-person authority in exchange for funds to renovate and minimally expand
the convention center unleashed a torrent of racist media abuse on the City
Council after they rejected the proposal on March 1....
Posted Mar 21, 2009
|
EFCA introduced in Congress * $1.25 million nurses’ settlement * Singing for royalties * >AT&T Mobility workers negotiate contract * U.S. unions defend labor in Colombia...
Posted Mar 21, 2009
|
Detroit residents will be able to clearly demand the implementation of a Water
Affordability Plan if 10,000 signatures are gathered by May 18. ...
Posted Mar 21, 2009
|
With Washington carrying out war, occupation and intervention on expanding
fronts, the anti-war movement is more necessary than ever. It is needed by the
workers and oppressed people abroad who are the direct targets of the Pentagon
and also by the masses of people in the U.S. who will pay for these military
operations and have to carry them out....
Posted Mar 19, 2009
|
International Women’s Day and International Working Women’s Month
were celebrated in Detroit on March 14 at a forum hosted by Workers World Party....
Posted Mar 19, 2009
|
A thoroughly multinational crowd filled the
cafeteria of Roxbury Community College on the afternoon of March 14 for an
International Women’s Day “Sistah Summit—Women Rise Up”
event organized by the Women’s Fightback Network (WFN)....
Posted Mar 19, 2009
|
“Disgusting!” “It’s an outrage!” “They made
sure that they got theirs.” These are some of the nicer comments bound to
be heard as workers discuss the latest scandal involving corporate misuse of
government bailout funds....
Posted Mar 18, 2009
|
Workers of Stella D’oro, who have been on strike for seven months,
were joined on March 11 by community activists and allies in a protest in front
of the company’s plant in the Bronx, N.Y....
Posted Mar 18, 2009
|
At least 60 supporters crowded around Rev. Luis Barrios as he entered the
Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York March 9 to begin serving a
two-month sentence for “trespassing” at the notorious School of the
Americas last fall....
Posted Mar 18, 2009
|
No event is so tragic that U.S. financiers and brokers won’t look for a
way to make money from it. It’s a relief when someone exposes them for
the vultures they are....
Posted Mar 15, 2009
|
Millions of homeowners and residents facing foreclosure and eviction are
hoping and expecting that the Obama-Treasury plan will afford them relief so
they can stay in their homes. However, according to Detroit attorney Jerry Goldberg, who fights
foreclosures and evictions on behalf of homeowners and renters, “The plan
must be seriously amended in order to be truly effective and not be just
another announcement that generates false expectations....
Posted Mar 15, 2009
|
Albert Woodfox, one of the three political prisoners known as the Angola
3, has been in solitary confinement for 36 years after a politically motivated
murder conviction. Supporters, including some from as far as Maine and California, wore black
T-shirts that proclaimed “I am Albert Woodfox” and “I am
Herman Wallace,” the other member of the Angola 3 who has not been
released....
Posted Mar 15, 2009
|
The health care crisis facing workers in the U.S. is severe. Fifty million
people lack health insurance and another 25 million are underinsured....
Posted Mar 14, 2009
|
The alarming prospect of deep budget and service cutbacks, layoffs and the
closing of hospitals and other workplaces brought tens of thousands of workers
into the streets near New York’s City Hall March 5 for a monster
“Rally for New York.” The gigantic outpouring of throngs of union
and community protesters lasted for hours and stretched for blocks and blocks
in lower Manhattan....
Posted Mar 14, 2009
|
Richard Durst, president of Baldwin-Wallace College in Berea, Ohio, claims to
have served in Vietnam alongside Bob Kerrey, the president of New School
University. Both went on orders from the U.S. government to repress the
Vietnamese people and their resistance.
Durst and Kerrey are once again repressing justified resistance—this time
from students at the institutions of higher education they have directed....
Posted Mar 14, 2009
|
Resistance is the byproduct of oppression. With the first inkling of
exploitation and oppression come the seeds of struggle to throw off those who
would exploit and oppress....
Posted Mar 14, 2009
|
There’s been a backlash to the comments by newly appointed U.S. Attorney
General Eric Holder in his Feb. 18 speech on U.S. race relations. Holder, the
first African American to hold this top position, stated that “Though
this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things
racial we have always been, and we, I believe, continue to be, in too many
ways, essentially a nation of cowards.”...
Posted Mar 14, 2009
|
The loss of 651,000 more jobs in February and the jump in the official
unemployment rate to 8.1 percent have produced important admissions in the
capitalist press that every worker should pay close attention to....
Posted Mar 12, 2009
|
The U.S. Supreme Court got a glimpse of the strong support for Mumia Abu-Jamal
and the Cuban Five--Antonio Guerrero, Fernando González, Gerardo
Hernández, René González and Ramón Labañino--when
friend-of-the-court legal documents were filed March 5 and 6 on behalf of these
six internationally known political prisoners....
Posted Mar 12, 2009
|
Several thousand protesters gathered in front of San Francisco City Hall March
5 as the marriage rights struggle made its way to the California Supreme
Court....
Posted Mar 12, 2009
|
For the second year in a row, the International Women’s Day Philadelphia
Coalition has brought together women from diverse communities, cultures and
struggles.
This year’s event included strong participation from Latina, Asian and
Black women, as well as many activists from Philadelphia’s LGBT
community. With the growing economic crisis hitting women the hardest, many
speakers addressed social and economic justice issues, including the mortgage
crisis, health care reform and the struggle to pass the Employee Free Choice
Act....
Posted Mar 11, 2009
|
Hundreds of women, along with male supporters, rallied at New York’s Union Square and then
marched together on March 8 to commemorate International Women’s Day.
They called for “a bailout of women and our communities,” not the
banks, in the U.S. and worldwide....
Posted Mar 11, 2009
|
Emotions ran high as four women, dressed in drab green prison clothes, entered
a conference room at the Etowah County Detention Center in northern
Alabama on March 7 to the cheers and applause of a group of immigrant
rights activists, legal workers and family members...
Posted Mar 11, 2009
|
Local Mexicana/Chicana women gave a strong working-class and combat-ready tone
to the International Women’s Day March in San Antonio. The march
challenged the city’s new rule making marches illegal....
Posted Mar 11, 2009
|
Texas activists carrying colorful signs and banners formed a loud, militant
demonstration in front of the T. Don Hutto Residential Facility on March 7,
chanting, “CCA [Corrections Corporation of America], shut it down!”
“Free the children, shut it down!” and “ICE [Immigration and
Customs Enforcement], shut it down!”...
Posted Mar 11, 2009
|
The Solidarity Center hosted a meeting and reception on March 4 to welcome
two revolutionary women who traveled to New York City from socialist Cuba to
participate in International Working Women’s Month activities at the
United Nations....
Posted Mar 11, 2009
|
The racist, sexist subprime mortgage industry and the crisis it created has
especially affected women and their families, so it is no surprise that women
are active in the forefront of struggles around the country to stop
foreclosures and evictions....
Posted Mar 8, 2009
|
Palestinian-American activist Sahar Abusada returned home and was greeted by a
welcoming crowd at the airport in Houston Feb. 28. Abusada had raised money in
Houston to buy 140 large tents and 280 blankets for families in Gaza who are
homeless due to the recent Israeli bombing....
Posted Mar 8, 2009
|
When a Harvard University dining hall manager called two women workers
“lesbians” in an attempt to intimidate and insult them, the
response from the workers, their union and students was to mount a
fightback....
Posted Mar 8, 2009
|
Friends of the Cuban Revolution rallied in front of the Cuban Mission to
the United Nations March 1 to counter a simultaneous rally of right-wing Cuban
exiles....
Posted Mar 8, 2009
|
The announcement that the U.S. government plans to keep an occupation force of
up to 50,000 troops–plus countless civilian mercenaries–in Iraq
indefinitely as well as immediately send an additional 17,000 troops to
Afghanistan has met a firestorm of protest and opposition....
Posted Mar 8, 2009
|
The Moratorium NOW! Coalition to Stop Foreclosures and Evictions voted
unanimously on Feb. 28 to call a People’s Summit in Detroit from June
14-17. Organizers will begin widespread outreach to garner endorsers and draw
other organizations into building for the June activities. These actions will
include a march along Woodward Avenue for jobs and housing and a tent city in
Grand Circus Park of the foreclosed-upon, jobless, underpaid, homeless and all
who struggle for social and economic justice....
Posted Mar 7, 2009
|
Ford workers are voting by March 9 on whether to go along with the contract
revision, which also cuts pay, break time, holidays, and Supplemental
Unemployment Benefits, and further endangers retiree health benefits. It’s assumed that UAW members at Chrysler and General Motors will be
asked to approve the same deal. They might as well be voting with a loaded gun
to their heads, considering the number of bankers, politicians, and so-called
“economists” and “analysts” who are demanding
union-busting-by-bankruptcy....
Posted Mar 7, 2009
|
* Tomato pickers to march on Tallahassee * Grocery workers get their $1.5 million * SAG rejects ‘last, best, final offer’ * Hotel workers demand pay * Calif. caregivers sign first contract *...
Posted Mar 7, 2009
|
An interview with Electrical Workers union (UE) Local
1110 President Armando Robles, conducted in Cleveland by Martha Grevatt. Robles
was a leader of the successful worker occupation of Republic Windows and Doors
factory in Chicago in December....
Posted Mar 7, 2009
|
Workers and communities throughout the U.S. already facing record unemployment
are now being pressed to bear the brunt of state and local budget shortfall
“solutions.” However, resistance is bubbling up as workers push
back with demands for foreclosure and eviction moratoriums, house take-backs,
labor union civil disobedience, marches and non-cooperation....
Posted Mar 5, 2009
|
Many thousands of people—young and old, Black, white and
Latina/o—packed downtown Phoenix on Feb. 28 for an all-day rally and
march protesting the racist actions of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio....
Posted Mar 5, 2009
|
For years now, banks, investment houses and brokerage firms have engaged
in a feverish dance of hustling from homeowners...
Posted Mar 5, 2009
|
The 81st Academy Awards show on Feb. 22 opened with its typical pomp and
circumstance despite the current recession. Oscar night, however, was an interesting cultural study of class and national
oppression—both for what the awards show recognized and for what it
overlooked....
Posted Mar 5, 2009
|
There’s a lot of talk and confusion about Main Street versus Wall Street
these days. But there was no confusion on Feb. 28 at the Boston fight-back
conference about what side people need to be on. ...
Posted Mar 5, 2009
|
Subway-fare activist Stephen Millies created a stir—and got arrested and
charged with disorderly conduct—when he reached for his shoe at a
December hearing to protest what he and many others considered outrageous New
York Metropolitan Transportation Authority fare hikes. On Feb. 23 Millies had a
victory in court when the judge threw out the case against him....
Posted Mar 5, 2009
|
The budget is looking to bring about a recovery for the capitalist class. It expects an increase in production and in profits, but leaves the working class with massive unemployment, which is especially severe in the Black, Latin/o, Asian and Native communities. ...
Posted Mar 4, 2009
|
March 8, International Women’s Day, is not only an important time to
reflect on women’s resistance to all forms of injustice and oppression
from the past, but also to help inspire a fightback for the important struggles
that lie ahead. And inspiration is needed now more than ever as women bear a
significant burden with the deepening capitalist economic crisis....
Posted Mar 4, 2009
|
Robert Robideau, a member of the American Indian Movement since 1973,
died Feb. 17 at his home in Barcelona, Spain, where he was the founder and
director of the American Indian Movement Museum....
Posted Mar 4, 2009
|
It is becoming clearer every day that the capitalist class has no solution to
the present crisis, either short term or long term. The short-term stimulus
will not work and the long-term forces that have in the past pushed capitalism
forward are exhausted.
It is clear from this that the multinational working class, through independent
mass action, is the only force that can intervene to stop the layoffs,
foreclosures and evictions and that the workers must do so in order to save
themselves from being driven deeper into poverty....
Posted Mar 2, 2009
|
The crash of a turboprop commuter plane near Buffalo, N.Y., on Feb. 12 killed
all 49 people on board and one on the ground. The plane, operated by Pinnacle
Airlines for Continental Airlines, went down while approaching the Buffalo
airport in icy conditions. All sources immediately suggested that icing played
a role in the crash....
Posted Mar 2, 2009
|
Barack Obama is the first African-American president in the U.S. However, the
more things change, the more they remain the same, for there is another
dimension of Black history we need to be aware of....
Posted Mar 2, 2009
|
The UAW last week reached a tentative agreement on new wage and
benefit concessions. If news reports are correct, workers will be asked to give
up cost-of-living-allowance raises and annual bonuses, work more than eight
hours a day for straight time, and lose all income security after two years of
layoff. This is a precedent-setting rollback of 70 years’ worth of
hard-fought gains.
The fact is that concessions have never saved jobs....
Posted Feb 28, 2009
|
In addition to planning cutbacks in city social programs for the elderly,
disabled and children, and layoffs of city workers and decreases in their
benefits, now New York Mayor Bloomberg refuses to expand food stamp eligibility, even though the newly enacted federal “stimulus package”
would fund it....
Posted Feb 28, 2009
|
On Feb. 18, New York University students, along with students from other
colleges and universities throughout the metropolitan area, began occupying the
cafeteria in the Kimmel Center on NYU’s campus....
Posted Feb 28, 2009
|
While some parents got some good news on Feb. 11, most of the over 800 parents
and children who attended the school closure meeting of the West Contra Costa
Unified School District (WCCUSD) did not. The school board voted to close four
schools this year and four schools next year. Parents, teachers and students
are outraged....
Posted Feb 28, 2009
|
On Jan. 26, Fr. Luis Barrios declared the Western Hemisphere Institute for
Security Cooperation guilty of training in murder and torture to advance U.S.
imperialism’s interests in Latin America. At the same time, the U.S.
District Court sentenced him to serve two months in federal prison for walking
onto the grounds of Fort Benning, home of Whinsec, better known by its former
name, School of the Americas....
Posted Feb 26, 2009
|
The racist forces and the business establishment of Boston have never given
up the goal of returning to racist, resegregated “neighborhood”
schools where all the resources are reserved for the white neighborhoods....
Posted Feb 26, 2009
|
Ron Wilburn, the FBI’s “cooperating witness” in their case
against Boston City Councilor Chuck Turner and former Massachusetts state Sen.
Dianne Wilkerson, told the Boston Globe he was used and duped by the
FBI—not to expose corruption in the Massachusetts political
establishment, but to bring down two prominent progressive Black elected
officials....
Posted Feb 26, 2009
|
As the staggering bank losses continue to mount, representatives of the U.S.
ruling class are coming to the forced realization that many of the largest
financial institutions in the U.S. are insolvent....
Posted Feb 26, 2009
|
|
The New York Post created a firestorm of righteous anger and spontaneous
protest when it printed a horrific, racist cartoon
Feb. 18 depicting President Barack Obama as a chimpanzee being shot to death by
two white policemen. Many see the cartoon as advocating the assassination of the President....
Posted Feb 25, 2009
|
Thousands of workers, youth, religious leaders and civil rights activists
marched through the streets of downtown Raleigh, N.C., on Feb. 14 in the third
annual “Historic Thousands on Jones Street” (HKonJ) march....
Posted Feb 25, 2009
|
Marxists cannot ignore the fact that under capitalism, anti-drug wars are
police measures meant to intimidate the working class. The steroid issue is
just the sports version of the drug wars that have jailed so many poor
people....
Posted Feb 25, 2009
|
The Moratorium NOW! Coalition to Stop Foreclosures and Evictions has launched a
struggle to keep Anthony King in his home....
Posted Feb 25, 2009
|
The Bail Out the People Movement is calling for a march on Wall Street on April
3 and 4....
Posted Feb 23, 2009
|
On Feb. 7, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) won a significant victory at
Hampshire College in Massachusetts when the administration announced it would
divest from six companies that directly profit from the Israeli occupation of
the West Bank and Gaza....
Posted Feb 23, 2009
|
Several hundred people gathered in the International Longshore and Warehouse
Union’s historic union hall Feb. 14 for a Black History Month rally,
entitled “Racism, Repression and Rebellion: The Lessons of Labor
Defense,” in San Francisco....
Posted Feb 22, 2009
|
At the packed International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 58
union hall in Detroit Feb. 9, a multinational crowd witnessed history as
Armando Robles, president of Electrical Workers union (UE) Local 1110, and Bob
Kingsley, UE director of organizing, presented a “Sit-Down Pioneer”
award to two Flint sit-down strikers of 1936-1937, Geraldine Blankenship of the
Women’s Emergency Brigade and Olen Ham....
Posted Feb 22, 2009
|
On Feb. 10 Cleveland trade unionists, students and community activists
filled the Teamsters Local 407 hall to hear about the heroic sit-down at
Republic Windows and Doors Factory this past December....
Posted Feb 22, 2009
|
There was an air of excitement and anticipation as dozens of people
decorated a flatbed truck and assorted other vehicles in preparation for the
“demonstration on wheels” which would take about 200 people from
across Georgia to the gold-domed state Capitol....
Posted Feb 22, 2009
|
* Workers march for jobs in Illinois * Contract won after 6-month teachers’ struggle * Talks extended for refinery workers * Labor ‘rat’ is ruled free speech * LGBT coalition supports passage of EFCA * S.F. labor groups demand Gaza relief...
Posted Feb 22, 2009
|
A case of judicial corruption in Pennsylvania has once again exposed the true
nature of the profit-driven prison industrial complex and the warehousing of
poor youth....
Posted Feb 19, 2009
|
Immigrant prisoners at the Reeves County Detention Center, a private prison in
Pecos, Texas, took over the prison on Jan. 31 after they attempted to meet with
prison officials regarding a seriously ill detainee being held in solitary
confinement. When their demand that this prisoner be immediately taken to a
hospital was ignored, a spontaneous rebellion began....
Posted Feb 19, 2009
|
Hundreds of Philadelphia drug convictions could be overturned, and pending
cases dropped, because of police falsification of evidence against people they
accused of dealing drugs....
Posted Feb 19, 2009
|
The inherent violence of the capitalist system has been demonstrated time and
again throughout history. It is not necessary to peruse a history book, but
simply to pick up a newspaper, walk outside or observe everyday relations.
Putting profit before need is violent and as established before, class society
produces struggle of the opposing classes, from whence violence inevitably
arises....
Posted Feb 19, 2009
|
As the crisis deepens in the United States, the multinational working class,
unions, community organizations, students and youth must not be lulled into
inactivity waiting for the $787 billion stimulus package, signed on Feb. 17, to
take effect....
Posted Feb 18, 2009
|
Excerpts are from talks presented at a Feb. 8
“Zimbabwe: Pan Africanism or Imperialism” forum in Harlem, N.Y. The
forum was organized by the December 12th Movement and Friends of Zimbabwe....
Posted Feb 18, 2009
|
The New York branch of Workers World Party will hold its annual Black
History Month forum, featuring Omowale Clay, a leader of the December 12th
Movement and Friends of Zimbabwe...
Posted Feb 18, 2009
|
Activists from around New England will gather Feb. 28 at the union hall of the
Boston School Bus Drivers, United Steelworkers Local 8751, for a conference on
the economic crisis and how to fight back....
Posted Feb 18, 2009
|
Two million Bolivians voted in the Jan. 25 national referendum, with some 1.3
million of the 2 million voters—almost 62 percent—voting to approve
the new constitution. ...
Posted Feb 16, 2009
|
Any serious attempt to delve into the nature of violence—where it comes
from and its uses—has to analyze it from a class perspective, taking into
account the most oppressed among the working class....
Posted Feb 16, 2009
|
February is designated as Black History Month in the U.S. It is also celebrated
in many other countries in the African Diaspora....
Posted Feb 16, 2009
|
|
In collaboration with the International Action Center, City Councilor Chuck
Turner has launched a new phase of his “Campaign for Truth, Light and
Justice,” focusing national and international attention not just on
frame-up charges against Turner but also on eight years of corrupt practices by
the Bush administration’s Department of “Justice.”...
Posted Feb 14, 2009
|
For 37 years no one was able to see “FTA,” a riveting documentary
of the anti-war show that Jane Fonda, Donald Sutherland and others performed
for GIs during the Vietnam War. The film was yanked from theaters one week
after it opened in 1972, and all copies were destroyed. However, the original
negatives were discovered a few years ago, and a reprint of the movie is now
being released on DVD....
Posted Feb 14, 2009
|
The Treasury Secretary will soon announce plans for the federal government to
essentially take over the failed mortgage industry....
Posted Feb 14, 2009
|
This letter arrived in response to the article, “Welfare
vanishes as poverty soars,” published in the Feb. 12 issue of Workers
World....
Posted Feb 14, 2009
|
For over two years organizers have been fighting for a moratorium to halt the
widespread foreclosure crisis engulfing every part of Michigan. Gov. Granholm
has rejected demands that she declare a state of economic emergency and impose
a moratorium on foreclosures and evictions.Instead, huge budget cuts and layoffs are on the
horizon....
Posted Feb 12, 2009
|
Because of her record of hostility to immigrants, Rep. Kirsten
Gillibrand’s appointment to replace Secretary of State Hillary Rodham
Clinton in the U.S. Senate has drawn opposition....
Posted Feb 12, 2009
|
A coalition of community activists interrupted a Feb. 3 conference of New
York’s corporate elite, demanding that the needs of poor and
working-class New Yorkers come before the wishes of Wall Street’s power
brokers....
Posted Feb 12, 2009
|
The official unemployment number has jumped from 7.2 percent to 7.6 percent.
But this is not the total unemployment number, which includes those who have
stopped looking for work and those working part time because they cannot find
full-time work. That has jumped from 13.5 percent to 13.9 percent.
In effect, this means that to achieve full employment for the approximately 154
million people in the workforce, some 21.4 million new full-time jobs would be
needed now—and this number is growing rapidly each month....
Posted Feb 11, 2009
|
On Feb. 4, thousands of workers delivered boxes of signed cards supporting the
Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) to Congress in Washington, D.C. The cards
represent more than 1.5 million signers from every U.S. state. On Feb. 5,
workers in California marched 10 miles in the rain from downtown Los Angeles to
the Westwood Federal Building dramatically demanding passage of the EFCA....
Posted Feb 11, 2009
|
“Milk” is a rare film for, from the viewpoint of partisans for LGBT
liberation, it deserves the acclaim it’s received. Although it is
ostensibly about the title character, this is really a movie about something
much bigger than one person....
Posted Feb 11, 2009
|
When the House version of the $819-billion economic stimulus plan passed on
Jan. 28, one important section was missing. It pertained to expansion of health
care services for low-income women....
Posted Feb 8, 2009
|
Wayne County Sheriff Warren Evans announced Feb. 2 that his office will
immediately suspend all sales on foreclosed homes in the county....
Posted Feb 8, 2009
|
Thousands of outraged transit riders and transit workers across the greater New
York area are saying that the Metropolitan Transit Authority and its proposed
fare hikes and service cuts are posing direct threats to public safety on the
transit system....
Posted Feb 8, 2009
|
An elderly widower died an excruciating death from hypothermia in Bay City,
Mich., a small city 100 miles north of Detroit. Marvin E. Schur, age 93, froze
to death in his own home after the city’s power company installed a
“limiting device,” which shuts off electricity when it reaches a
minimal usage level....
Posted Feb 8, 2009
|
On Jan. 28 over 2,000 students from Arizona’s three state universities
descended on the state Capitol building in Phoenix to protest the
legislature’s proposal to slash university funding by over $140 million....
Posted Feb 8, 2009
|
Months of community organizing to stop the closing of 11 branch libraries ended
in a victory on Jan. 28 when Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter announced all libraries would
remain open through June 30....
Posted Feb 8, 2009
|
The heroic six-day factory occupation this past December by the Republic
Windows and Doors workers in Chicago continues to resonate among labor
activists and progressive forces throughout the United States....
Posted Feb 8, 2009
|
A rally in the lobby
rotunda of the Rhode Island State House on Jan. 19 called for
an end to foreclosures, evictions, utility shutoffs and layoffs, and for
funding human needs—not budget cuts....
Posted Feb 8, 2009
|
The Pentagon reported in January that “Suicides among soldiers rose for
the fourth straight year, exceeding the rate for civilians for the first time
in decades.” Despite this admission, the Pentagon was downplaying the suicide story....
Posted Feb 8, 2009
|
* Most union growth in 25 years * Obama signs pay equity bill * Republic workers’ victory tour * Health-care workers organize in Mass. * SAG resumes negotiations...
Posted Feb 8, 2009
|
Like you, I’ve seen the searing phone-camera tape of the killing of
22-year-old Oscar Grant of Oakland, Calif....
Posted Feb 5, 2009
|
Solidarity! Some 500 supporters of striking bakery workers marched Jan. 31
from their struck plant to a major shopping center in the South Bronx. The
workers have been out since last August....
Posted Feb 5, 2009
|
As millions are being thrown out of their homes and losing their jobs, state
governments are reducing the meager assistance available to the poor and
unemployed....
Posted Feb 4, 2009
|
From a Jan. 31 statement by imprisoned Native
leader Leonard Peltier on his return to Lewisburg prison from Canaan, where he
had been brutally beaten....
Posted Feb 4, 2009
|
The Illinois State Senate voted unanimously on Jan. 29 to throw Gov. Rod
Blagojevich out of office. Compared to Dick Cheney’s record, what
Blagojevich is accused of amounts to peanuts. But Congress refused to touch
Cheney or his fellow war criminal George W. Bush....
Posted Feb 4, 2009
|
The struggle to free the Cuban Five entered a new stage Jan. 30 when the
defense team filed a formal request—a petition for a writ of
certiorari—asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review the decisions of lower
courts that have caused these five Cuban antiterrorist heroes to be imprisoned
in the United States since 1998....
Posted Feb 4, 2009
|
Large U.S. companies publicly announced more than 170,000 layoffs
in the first four weeks of this year, but hundreds of
thousands more are expected to be added when the government releases its
monthly statistics early in February. The capitalist government in Washington has not been trying to solve the
banks’ problem of insolvency by rushing to the aid of the millions of
workers who are defaulting on their debts and losing their homes and jobs.
Instead, it has put limited aid to the workers on the slow track while it
rushes to find ways to bolster the banks....
Posted Feb 1, 2009
|
Organizers with the Moratorium NOW! Coalition to Stop Foreclosures and
Evictions are gearing up for a Feb. 3 demonstration at the state Capitol in
Lansing, Mich., when Gov. Jennifer Granholm delivers her annual State of the
State address. Activists continue to demand that the governor declare a state
of economic emergency in Michigan and take executive measures to give immediate
relief to the people, including imposition of a two-year moratorium on
foreclosures and evictions....
Posted Feb 1, 2009
|
Wayne County Sheriff Warren Evans has sent a letter to Michigan Gov.
Jennifer Granholm requesting she declare a state of economic emergency in the
county and a six-month moratorium on foreclosures....
Posted Feb 1, 2009
|
From remarks made by Wayne Curtis, a local artist and former
Black Panther Party member, at Detroit’s annual Martin Luther King Jr.
Day event. Curtis’ work was presented to Rubie Curl-Pinkins, recipient of
the 2009 award, who successfully fought eviction from her home in July....
Posted Feb 1, 2009
|
The auto workers can provide ample proof of managerial ineptitude, and can
easily demonstrate their capacity to run a “viable” company.
It’s time the union leadership advance the slogan of workers’
control. Let the government forget about bailing out the bosses—give the
money to the workers with no strings attached....
Posted Jan 31, 2009
|
When Boston Mayor Thomas
Menino called for a wage freeze his target was not the highest paid middle managers at city hall. His target even went beyond the
city workers. Menino also directed his frigid message at some of
the most militant representatives of private-sector workers in the city....
Posted Jan 31, 2009
|
President Barack Obama on Jan. 23 rescinded what is known as “the global
gag rule.” This policy, instituted by former President George W. Bush on
his first day in office in 2001, has had severely detrimental effects on
millions of women worldwide....
Posted Jan 31, 2009
|
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is once again being resurrected this
time of year, in part because of his birthday, but also, of course,
because of the swearing-in of Barack H.
Obama....
Posted Jan 30, 2009
|
When Leonard Peltier arrived at Canaan Federal Prison in
Pennsylvania after being transferred from another facility in the state, he was
brutally assaulted by a group of inmates. A letter from Peltier’s sister,
Betty Peltier-Solano, says he suffered numerous head blows and “blood was
everywhere.” She also said one of his fingers has been broken. He has
been put in solitary confinement....
Posted Jan 29, 2009
|
|
Michael McGee has been in jail since May 31, 2007. During his time in elected office, McGee engaged in many progressive actions
including fighting police brutality....
Posted Jan 29, 2009
|
Huey P. Newton’s name, and more importantly, his
history of resistance and struggle, are little more than a mystery for many
younger people in their 20s....
Posted Jan 29, 2009
|
The unfolding capitalist economic crisis is now hitting state budgets like an
avalanche. The state of California, which alone boasts the world’s
eighth-biggest economy, is a case in point. Despite its tremendous productive
capacity in agriculture, mineral extraction, manufacturing, fisheries, tourism
and more, and its abundant pool of skilled workers, politicians here are crying
poverty....
Posted Jan 28, 2009
|
Following on the heels of a highly successful Fightback Conference that took
place in New York City on Jan. 17, the Bail Out the People Movement’s
call for a West Coast meeting on Jan. 24 drew activists to the Service
Employees Local 721 union hall in Los Angeles....
Posted Jan 28, 2009
|
A report issued Jan. 13 by Kids Count in Michigan said:
“Michigan’s continuing economic woes are spilling over into the
lives of the state’s youngest residents with nearly one out of every four
young children (under age 5) living in poverty...
Posted Jan 23, 2009
|
A commentary from political prisoner Bomani Shakur: History could not have created a more poignant scene. In the midst of what
may be the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression in a country known
for its racial injustice, the United States elected its first Black president....
Posted Jan 23, 2009
|
Wet snow flurries greeted a seasoned band of heroic Stella D’oro
production workers who stood shoulder to shoulder with their community
supporters on the picket line. ...
Posted Jan 23, 2009
|
Outrage has been the public response to projected New York City subway fare
hikes. Despite the corporate media trying to make it seem like the hikes are
inevitable, anger has been growing....
Posted Jan 23, 2009
|
House passes two pay-equity bills * ILWU supports Cuban Five * Sign petition supporting EFCA * Wal-Mart to pay $352-$640 million over wage violations * Proud day for union labor!...
Posted Jan 23, 2009
|
Activists attended the
first of a number of mini-conferences to discuss and strategize around a united
fightback program of action to challenge the deepening economic crisis,
especially inside the U.S....
Posted Jan 22, 2009
|
Excerpts from a Bail Out the People Movement draft
document adopted at the Jan. 17 Fightback Conference in NYC....
Posted Jan 22, 2009
|
Message to Bail Out the People conference: The members of UE Local 1110, workers from Republic Windows and Doors, stand
with you in demanding a people’s bailout....
Posted Jan 22, 2009
|
BULLETIN URGENT! Leonard Peltier’s Safety in Jeopardy! Peltier was severely beaten upon
his arrival at the Canaan Federal Penitentiary. Call and request Leonard Peltier be treated with dignity and
respect. Canaan Federal Prison 570-488-8000.
Peltier’s register number (prison ID) is: 89637-132....
Posted Jan 22, 2009
|
In Atlanta, the annual Martin Luther King Day march, which
highlights the role of unions, community organizations, churches and
progressive groups, filled Atlanta’s major thoroughfare, Peachtree
Street. Some of the signs read “End the War in Iraq? Yes, We Can!”
“Justice for Troy Davis!” and “Bail Out the People!”
The most numerous and loudest contingent was that of Palestinians and other
opponents of the U.S.-backed Israeli massacre in Gaza....
Posted Jan 21, 2009
|
In this important year of commemoration of the 80th birthday of
the late civil rights and anti-war martyr, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King,
Jr., and the ascendancy of the country’s first African-American
president, the U.S. is experiencing the worst economic crisis since the Great
Depression....
Posted Jan 18, 2009
|
Autoworkers have more than enough reasons to be concerned about their economic
future....
Posted Jan 18, 2009
|
In the first week of January, as the number of workers filing new claims
reached a 26-year high and the U.S. unemployment rate climbed to 7.2 percent,
the job center computer systems in New York, North Carolina and Ohio
crashed....
Posted Jan 18, 2009
|
The current surge in GI resistance, as reported in earlier articles in Workers
World, has begun to stimulate calls for a sanctuary movement....
Posted Jan 18, 2009
|
In the early morning of the first day of the new year, as celebrations around
the country were waning and millions were clinging to a hope of change coming
soon with the first African-American president, the police of Bay Area Rapid
Transit demonstrated the brutality of the capitalist state in Oakland,
Calif....
Posted Jan 16, 2009
|
The Network to Stop Foreclosures and Evictions rallied outside Baltimore City Hall to call on Mayor Sheila Dixon and the City Council to make the city
a “foreclosure-and-eviction-free zone.”...
Posted Jan 16, 2009
|
On Jan. 6 Standard and Poor’s triggered a financial emergency in Detroit
by lowering the city’s rating to “junk bond” status....
Posted Jan 16, 2009
|
Activists with the Moratorium NOW! Coalition to Stop Foreclosures and Evictions
are stepping up their struggle for a moratorium on foreclosures, evictions,
utility shutoffs and plant closings....
Posted Jan 16, 2009
|
The intensifying capitalist crisis, which is bringing greater and greater
suffering daily, is leaving the workers and the oppressed with no alternative
but to organize a fightback. The deadly waves of unemployment, foreclosures,
homelessness, hunger and repression are spreading while the ruling-class
politicians and experts debate over the terms of the so-called “stimulus
package.”...
Posted Jan 15, 2009
|
The Chippewa Valley, once called “Wisconsin’s Silicon
Valley,” has just been hit by the termination of more than 1,000 factory
jobs at SGI, Hutchinson Technology and other computer parts manufacturers....
Posted Jan 15, 2009
|
Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion as a
woman’s right, will be 36 years old on Jan. 22....
Posted Jan 15, 2009
|
Protests, vigils and mass marches are continuing throughout the
U.S. against Israel’s vicious assault on Gaza....
Posted Jan 14, 2009
|
For 60 years, Israel has persecuted the Palestinian people with impunity in
defiance of United Nations General Assembly and Security Council resolutions,
orders of the International Court of Justice, international law and fundamental
human rights....
Posted Jan 11, 2009
|
“We, Black people in the United States, condemn the criminal Israeli attacks
on the people of Gaza. These war crimes are being conducted with the overt
material and unapologetic political backing of the U.S. government.”...
Posted Jan 11, 2009
|
General Motors and Chrysler LLC began the New Year by
depositing the first installments of a federal government loan in the bank. Meanwhile, all but a small fraction of Chrysler’s workers will spend the
first month of the year laid off. GM workers will be unemployed at least part
of the first quarter. None of them will see an improvement in their situation
due to the bailout....
Posted Jan 10, 2009
|
What has three heads, drops bombs and destroys jobs? Cerberus, the three-headed
guard-dog of Greek mythology, is the name and mascot of the Wall Street hedge
fund that owns Chrysler LLC....
Posted Jan 10, 2009
|
Labor groups condemn Israeli attacks on Gaza - Will actors vote to strike? - Starbucks violates labor laws - Subway signs with CIW...
Posted Jan 10, 2009
|
|
A police raid on the Superfly Barber Shop in Cleveland took place on Dec. 24. The shop is
owned by Art McKoy, a long-time anti-drug and anti-police-brutality activist....
Posted Jan 8, 2009
|
|
Jan. 5—Attention customarily turns away from news of the world during a
holiday week when U.S. schools, organizations and workplaces close. But even
so, outraged demonstrations to stop the U.S./Israeli bombing of Gaza flared in
every major U.S. metropolitan area more than once and in some cases, daily. [Includes slideshow of protests across the country.]...
Posted Jan 7, 2009
|
In an investigative article released this week, a reporter who spent a year and
a half in New Orleans connects the dots on reports that have circulated ever
since Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005 showing that Black people were dying from
indiscriminate shootings as well as from drowning after Katrina....
Posted Dec 22, 2008
|
|
Students at The New School in New York City formed the New School Radical
Student Union and occupied the dining hall of a New School building on Dec. 17,
demanding more accessible and democratic education....
Posted Dec 22, 2008
|
|
|
Transit riders in Buffalo have a right to feel excited about their efforts to
stop a two-phased, 50-cent rate hike—25 cents now and another 25 cents in
six months....
Posted Dec 22, 2008
|
Gov. David Paterson has announced his proposed New York State budget for fiscal
year 2009-2010, which begins July 1. Among the list of regressive tax hikes and
devastating cuts to almost every state service, from education to health care,
is yet another proposed cut to the state’s paltry indigent legal services
budget....
Posted Dec 22, 2008
|
|
|
|
|
|
Excerpts from a talk given by Sharon Black at the Nov. 15-16 WWP
National Conference.
...
Posted Dec 22, 2008
|
|
|
The statements of war resisters Benji Lewis and Robin Long are strong examples
of the current surge in GI resistance and the emerging struggles for amnesty
and sanctuary....
Posted Dec 22, 2008
|
|
Articles copyright 1995-2009 Workers World.
Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.
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