|
In the U.S.
A
brief summary of some of the solidarity demonstrations — many called on very short
notice — that have taken place so far in the U.S. Additional
demonstrations occurred in Washington, D.C.; Los Angeles; Minneapolis; Houston;
Dearborn, Mich.; and elsewhere. More solidarity actions are yet to
come....
Posted Jan 31, 2011
|
Veterans for Peace and their supporters and friends demonstrated Dec. 16 in
front of the White House to protest the ongoing U.S.-led wars and occupations
of Iraq and Afghanistan....
Posted Dec 23, 2010
|
On Dec. 17 Bradley Manning turned 23 in a cell at the Marine Corps base in
Quantico, Va. For him, it was just another day of isolation and abuse at the
hands of the U.S. military....
Posted Dec 23, 2010
|
Fawning eulogies that appeared in the capitalist press after Richard Holbrooke
died on Dec. 13 mention that his nickname was “the bulldozer.”...
Posted Dec 23, 2010
|
In El Paso, Texas — far from the White House and Congress, and the media
centers in Los Angeles, New York and Washington, D.C. — facts of the
U.S.-based terror campaign to destroy the sovereignty of socialist Cuba will be
presented in U.S. federal court beginning Jan. 10, again laying bare the double
standard of the U.S. so-called “war on terror.”...
Posted Dec 23, 2010
|
|
|
|
What conclusions or lessons can be drawn from the historic Georgia
prisoners’ strike that lasted close to a week and involved as many as 10
institutions across the state?...
Posted Dec 23, 2010
|
Protesters gathered in front of the Time Warner Building at Columbus
Circle in New York on Dec. 17 to protest the failure of television news
channel CNN to cover a strike of prisoners across Georgia during that week....
Posted Dec 23, 2010
|
An impressive outpouring of union members, community activists and supporters
shut down a planned Dec. 15 speaking event by Pulte Homes CEO Richard Dugas in
Troy, Mich....
Posted Dec 23, 2010
|
What the workers are going to get is nothing
but a pittance in return for this huge gift
to the rich and the super-rich....
Posted Dec 22, 2010
|
Under the theme “From Exclusion to Power,” hundreds of workers and
community members gathered in Birmingham, Ala., from Dec. 10 to 12 for the
eighth Bi-Annual Southern Human Rights Organizers Conference....
Posted Dec 22, 2010
|
Parents, students, teachers, school bus drivers and community
activists overflowed a Boston School Committee meeting in the auditorium of
English High School on Dec. 15....
Posted Dec 22, 2010
|
The house was packed on Dec. 17 in Cambridge, Mass., as a wide spectrum of
organizations and activists came out to a forum on the growing menace of FBI
repression....
Posted Dec 22, 2010
|
The myth of a post-racial U.S. society in light of the election of President
Barack Obama was shattered once again....
Posted Dec 22, 2010
|
New forms of technology are inherently destabilizing to the established
order....
Posted Dec 22, 2010
|
Students and supporters protested outside the administration building at Wayne
State University on Dec. 10 demanding the reinstatement of the Helen Thomas
Spirit of Diversity Award....
Posted Dec 18, 2010
|
|
Religious leaders support S.F. hotel workers | National actions demand unemployment benefits | Global call for action to help locked-out Iowa workers | Protesters confront Chase at 100 branches...
Posted Dec 18, 2010
|
Undocumented students and youth as well as their supporters have
ratcheted up the struggle to demand the passage of the DREAM Act with the vote
on the agenda in Congress....
Posted Dec 16, 2010
|
Cries of “Unjust!” and “Shame!” echoed through Boston
City Council Chambers on Dec. 1 as an overflow crowd of community supporters
protested the Council’s vote to remove progressive African-American
District 7 City Councilor Chuck Turner from the office the people of Roxbury
had elected him to....
Posted Dec 16, 2010
|
Excerpts from a Nov. 13 talk given by LeiLani Dowell, a
Workers World managing editor and Fight Imperialism, Stand Together (FIST)
organizer, at the Nov. 13-14 Workers World Party national conference....
Posted Dec 16, 2010
|
Workers around the world face a double crisis. Not only are they trying to
survive the worst crisis of capitalist overproduction since the 1930s, but this
crisis came during a massive global restructuring that has eliminated untold
numbers of formerly secure jobs....
Posted Dec 16, 2010
|
Hundreds of thousands of students across the world have stood up to raise the
demand: “Education is a right for all!” Massive student actions in
Ireland, Britain, Italy, Pakistan, France, Greece and Puerto Rico have begun to
challenge the ruling class’s program of draconian cutbacks to education
and public services with the pretext of reducing government deficits....
Posted Dec 15, 2010
|
According to reports from family members and prisoner rights advocates,
thousands of incarcerated men throughout Georgia engaged in a coordinated
strike starting Dec. 9. They refused to go to work or participate in other
assignments or activities, but stayed in their cells, calling it a
“lockdown for liberty.”...
Posted Dec 15, 2010
|
The New Orleans Police Department is known for carrying out heinous acts of
racist brutality, especially within the African-American and other oppressed
communities....
Posted Dec 15, 2010
|
Five Somali nationals were convicted of piracy in a U.S. federal court in
Norfolk, Va., on Nov. 24, with their sentencing set for March 2011. Based on
slave-era laws and criminal statutes that have not been enforced since the
1820s, the Somalis could be sentenced to life in prison....
Posted Dec 15, 2010
|
Dave Schultz was murdered by one of the richest men on the planet: John
Eleuthere DuPont. Nancy Schultz, Dave’s partner, witnessed the Jan. 26,
1996, killing of the father of their two children....
Posted Dec 15, 2010
|
As the cold winter chill sets in across the U.S., homelessness is at an
all-time high. Over the past few years, millions of people have been forced from their homes
by foreclosures and evictions and into overcrowded shelters and transitional
housing. The number of homeless families rose by close to 30 percent between
2007 and 2009....
Posted Dec 12, 2010
|
It was early Friday afternoon. I went down to the west side of Cleveland to
sell my blood plasma like I often do. Because winter is gradually setting in
and the holidays are approaching, there was a bigger crowd than usual....
Posted Dec 12, 2010
|
Anxiety over the possibility of losing their unemployment benefits and anger
over companies refusing to hire even as they make record profits are driving
more and more workers into the streets. Across the country, demonstrations were
held the last week of November and early December demanding no cuts in benefits
plus government action to create jobs. Below are reports from three of these
protests, in Baltimore, Detroit and New York....
Posted Dec 12, 2010
|
Members of the People Before Banks Coalition here simultaneously targeted
dozens of Chase Bank branches on Dec. 3....
Posted Dec 12, 2010
|
Students and faculty at the City University of New York, in opposition to
another tuition increase, held two disruptions at meetings of the Board of
Trustees in November....
Posted Dec 11, 2010
|
Just one day after 2 million people were cut off from extended unemployment
benefits, the Federal Reserve Bank was finally forced on Dec. 1 to reveal who
had received $3.3 trillion from its “emergency lending”
programs....
Posted Dec 11, 2010
|
Led by the 3-year-old daughter of a laid-off longshore worker whose sign read
“Del Monte ruined my Christmas,” more than 400 dockworkers and
community and labor allies marched in the busy noontime streets around City
Hall in Philadelphia on Nov. 22....
Posted Dec 11, 2010
|
The New York chapter of the Women’s Fightback Network hosted a
reportback meeting Dec. 4 on the Montreal International Women’s
Conference that took place Aug. 13-16 in Canada....
Posted Dec 11, 2010
|
Some 2 million long-term jobless workers face having their checks cut off in
December, unless Congress renews the federal extension of unemployment benefits
that expired on Nov. 30....
Posted Dec 9, 2010
|
About 100 protesters came together outside U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar’s
office here Dec. 2, in response to news that three Twin Cities anti-war and
social justice activists will be getting new orders to appear before a federal
grand jury in Chicago....
Posted Dec 9, 2010
|
More than 200 students and community supporters attended a Bay Area teach-in on
Palestine, U.S. wars and Islamophobia on Nov. 30, sponsored by the United
National Anti-war Committee, Cal Students for Justice in Palestine, the Muslim
Student Alliance at the University of California-Berkeley and the Middle East
Children’s Alliance. Held on the UC Berkeley campus, the teach-in was one
of several anticipated events building toward national anti-war actions called
by UNAC for April 9, 2011....
Posted Dec 9, 2010
|
Fred Goldstein’s book “Low-Wage Capitalism — What the new
globalized high-tech imperialism means for the class struggle in the
U.S.” is getting more attention the deeper the capitalist crisis
bites....
Posted Dec 9, 2010
|
Hyun Lee, an organizer from Nodutdol for Korean Community
Development and the National Campaign to End the Korean War, was a guest
speaker at a Workers World Party forum in New York on Dec. 3....
Posted Dec 8, 2010
|
The School of the Americas Watch reports that five undercover police
infiltrated a planning meeting to organize a civil disobedience action
following the puppet parade that concluded the annual SOA protest rally on Nov.
20 in Columbus, Ga....
Posted Dec 5, 2010
|
In many of the 35 solidarity statements Workers World Party received for its
Nov. 13-14 national conference, besides expressing solidarity, the
organizations focused on the capitalist economic crisis and the need for
workers to combat the austerity programs imposed on the working class....
Posted Dec 5, 2010
|
Contrary to gas drilling industry claims that hydraulic fracturing is
“accident free,” Texas-based XTO Energy has racked up 31 violations
at 20 wells drilled in the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania in 2010....
Posted Dec 4, 2010
|
The People Before Banks Coalition is
organizing a mass leafleting campaign demanding that Chase Bank impose a
two-year moratorium on home foreclosures and that the financial institution
stop bankrolling R.J. Reynolds Co., which is denying rights and decent working
conditions to migrant farmworkers in North Carolina’s tobacco fields....
Posted Dec 4, 2010
|
Florida nurses join union | Michigan nurses avoid strike | Atlantic City casino dealers ratify first contract | Support fair election for Delta flight attendants...
Posted Dec 4, 2010
|
Mailboxes are no longer crammed full of expensive election campaign propaganda....
Posted Dec 4, 2010
|
Nearly 100 people gathered Nov. 19 in front of Bill Clinton’s office
on 125th Street in Harlem to demand, “U.S. Out of Haiti! Clinton out of
Harlem!”...
Posted Dec 4, 2010
|
Hundreds of Native people and their supporters have gathered
every year since 1970 in Plymouth, Mass., on “thanksgiving
Thursday” to speak the truth about the history of the European invasion
of the Americas and the consequences for Indigenous peoples....
Posted Dec 2, 2010
|
|
Excerpts from a talk by Gloria Verdieu at the
Workers World Party national conference. Verdieu is an organizer with the San
Diego International Action Center and the San Diego Coalition to Free Mumia
Abu-Jamal....
Posted Dec 2, 2010
|
Excerpts from a talk by Megan Spencer at the Workers World Party national
conference. A student activist and WWP member, Spencer is a co-founder of the
Coalition Against Sexual Violence at Michigan State University....
Posted Dec 2, 2010
|
The struggle to demand political asylum for Chilean revolutionary Victor Toro
continues. Toro, who is undocumented, was racially profiled in July 2007 by
immigration agents on an Amtrak train in upstate New York....
Posted Dec 2, 2010
|
Excerpts from a talk at the Workers World Party
national conference given by Betsey Piette, an organizer of the Philadelphia
branch of WWP and a WW contributing editor....
Posted Dec 2, 2010
|
In the first of a series of actions in New York this week —
buttressed by similar protest demonstrations in other parts of the U.S. —
anti-war protesters marched near the military recruiting booth in Times Square
to protest the latest U.S./south Korean joint war exercises in the sea near
north Korea....
Posted Dec 1, 2010
|
Community activists took to the streets in Baltimore Nov. 30 during lunch
hour to say no to U.S. war threats against Korea....
Posted Dec 1, 2010
|
With 2007 and 2009 concessions, shedding tens of thousands of higher-paid
workers and hiring 7,000 new workers at half the pay of
“traditional” employees, labor costs have fallen dramatically.
Workers are seeing more of the value they produce go to profits than to their
own wages and benefits. That high rate of exploitation was GM’s major selling point....
Posted Nov 28, 2010
|
Thousands, mostly youth, amassed at the gates of Ft. Benning, Ga., on Nov.
20 and 21, to demand the closing of the School of the Americas, known
throughout Latin America as the School of the Assassins....
Posted Nov 28, 2010
|
United Auto Workers President Bob King announced that the UAW was now fully behind the
Coca-Cola boycott and that all UAW halls and buildings would soon be
Coke-free....
Posted Nov 28, 2010
|
Transgender Day of Remembrance was marked Nov. 20 and the preceding week by
lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people and their allies in the
U.S. and around the world...
Posted Nov 28, 2010
|
November 20 marked the one-year anniversary of the incarceration of “The
People’s Lawyer,” 71- year-old Lynne Stewart....
Posted Nov 24, 2010
|
On Nov. 19 Emily Guzman, with her young son at her side, spoke to 100 or
so protesters at the entrance to the Stewart Detention Center outside Lumpkin,
Ga. Close to 2,000 immigrants are currently detained at the facility in this
rural county awaiting deportation to Mexico, Jamaica, Bangladesh and the
Philippines, among many other countries....
Posted Nov 24, 2010
|
For the 22nd year, the Metro Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless organized
a march Nov. 1 through downtown to City Hall to remember the men, women and
children who died without shelter....
Posted Nov 24, 2010
|
Excerpts from the Nov. 13 talk given at the Workers
World Party national conference, by Phebe Eckfeldt, a leader of the Boston
branch and a representative of the Harvard Union of Technical and Clerical
Workers, AFSCME Local 3650....
Posted Nov 24, 2010
|
Excerpts from a Nov. 13 talk at the Workers World Party
national conference given by Monica Moorehead, member of the WW Secretariat, a
WW managing editor and editor of “Marxism, Reparations and the Black Freedom Struggle.”...
Posted Nov 24, 2010
|
The right to play chess in a public space became the focus of community
organizing in northern Manhattan’s Inwood Hill Park over the past month
when arbitrary actions by police angered many....
Posted Nov 24, 2010
|
The Committee to Stop FBI Repression continues to denounce the FBI raids
on activists in the Midwest on Sept. 24 and to demand an end to the grand jury
witch-hunt....
Posted Nov 24, 2010
|
A firestorm of protest and resistance is erupting across the U.S. in response
to the Transportation Security Administration’s ongoing implementation of
body scanners and invasive body searches....
Posted Nov 24, 2010
|
Shop stewards, who are members of Amalgamated Transit Local 1181-1061,
showed solidarity with parents of special needs children on Nov. 18....
Posted Nov 24, 2010
|
“Open the vaults, hire the workers.” That was one of many chants
heard at the Federal Reserve Bank in New York City on Nov. 20. The 99ers
— those who have been unemployed for more than 99 weeks whose benefits
have ended — other unemployed and their supporters reenacted a 1930s
breadline, a notable image throughout the Great Depression....
Posted Nov 23, 2010
|
“A man dies from prostate cancer every 16 minutes in this country. Why
does my brother have to wait over a year to receive even a
diagnosis?”...
Posted Nov 23, 2010
|
A $4.6 billion settlement for Native
and African-American farmers who have suffered decades of discrimination by
governmental agencies has been delayed because of the Senate’s failure
to provide funding to make payments to the victims who number in the tens of
thousands....
Posted Nov 23, 2010
|
Excerpts from a Nov. 13 talk at the Workers World Party
national conference by John Parker, a leader of the Los Angeles WW branch and a
coordinator of the West Coast International Action Center....
Posted Nov 23, 2010
|
Excerpts from a Nov. 13 talk at the Workers World Party
national conference by Martha Grevatt, a 23-year auto worker and United Auto
Workers activist, now in the Detroit branch. She had been a leading member of
the Cleveland branch for many years....
Posted Nov 23, 2010
|
The Coalition Against Sexual Violence at Michigan State University held a rally
outside the Hannah Administration Building Nov. 19. ...
Posted Nov 23, 2010
|
Hateful bigots from Fred Phelps’ Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka,
Kan., were met by protests on Nov. 18 when they visited several Michigan
cities....
Posted Nov 23, 2010
|
|
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the 10th richest person in the United
States with an $18 billion fortune, picked Cathleen Black as the next public
school chancellor....
Posted Nov 21, 2010
|
The global capitalist crisis is taking a heavy toll on public education. As in
many other districts, teachers and other education workers in the Los Angeles
Unified School District, the second largest in the United States, are under
siege....
Posted Nov 21, 2010
|
Public housing is under attack nationwide. In the line of fire are Public
Housing Authority workers, some of whom want to fight back. Tenants suffer
collateral damage through deteriorating living conditions. The attack is part
of the overall assault on programs for the poor, an intensification of poverty
for the benefit of the wealthy....
Posted Nov 20, 2010
|
Speaking at a Nov. 10 Town Hall meeting in Philadelphia on the war on dissent, Minneapolis
anti-war and Colombia-solidarity activist Jess Sundin received a standing
ovation after describing her experience as a target of FBI raids on Sept. 24.
“We have got to push back to stop these attacks,” Sundin stated.
“We can’t let them attempt to silence us.”...
Posted Nov 20, 2010
|
Less than a week after a major rally in their city against fracking, the
Pittsburgh City Council banned Marcellus Shale gas drilling inside city limits
by an 8-to-0 vote on Nov. 9....
Posted Nov 20, 2010
|
Hyatt housekeepers file OSHA complaints | Nurses in D.C. plan one-day strike | Flight attendants union challenges Delta vote | Midwest grocery store workers approve contracts...
Posted Nov 20, 2010
|
Talk given Nov. 13 at the Workers World Party
national conference by Larry Holmes, a member of the Secretariat of Workers
World Party and a leader of the Bail Out the People Movement....
Posted Nov 18, 2010
|
Excerpts from the Nov. 13 talk given at the Workers
World Party national conference by Teresa Gutierrez, a member of the
Secretariat of Workers World Party and a leader of the May 1 Coalition for
Worker and Immigrant Rights....
Posted Nov 18, 2010
|
Eexcerpts from the Nov. 13 talk at the Workers World
Party national conference by Fred Goldstein based upon a pre-conference
document entitled “The Capitalist Crisis.” Goldstein is a member of the Secretariat of
Workers World Party and the author of the book “Low-Wage Capitalism.”...
Posted Nov 18, 2010
|
Excerpts from the Nov. 13 talk given at the Workers World Party national conference by Larry
Hales, a founding member of Fight Imperialism, Stand Together
(FIST)....
Posted Nov 18, 2010
|
Excerpts from the talk by Elena Everett, who introduced
the opening plenary of the Workers World Party conference on Nov. 13. Everett
is a founding member of the Durham, N.C., branch, which became the newest WWP
branch in April 2009....
Posted Nov 18, 2010
|
Another huge fraud is being perpetrated so the rich can get their way. Their
weapon is fear. The corporate media are full of pundits explaining the
government must cut the national budget or everything will collapse....
Posted Nov 17, 2010
|
|
Almost out of nowhere the sound of conga drums shattered the silence.
Megaphones amplified the voices of young protesters crying, “Free Mumia
now!”...
Posted Nov 17, 2010
|
Some 300 Party members, friends and allies representing many important
struggles at home and abroad attended the annual Workers World Party national
conference Nov. 13-14. They came from cities where Party branches are located
and other parts of the country. Some revolutionaries traveled to the conference
from as far away as Canada and India. The very multinational crowd included
many young people....
Posted Nov 17, 2010
|
About 50 members and supporters of the Coalition Against Sexual Violence
demonstrated Oct. 22 outside of the Izzone Campout at Michigan State
University....
Posted Nov 12, 2010
|
Chanting “No fracking way!” while marching behind a giant banner
that read “We can’t drink money,” more than 500 anti-fracking
activists rallied in Pittsburgh Nov. 3 as part of the first World Protest
Against Shale Gas Fracking....
Posted Nov 12, 2010
|
“Stop the grand jury!” That was the main message of a Nov. 6
meeting here called to form a national defense committee to defend anti-war,
anti-racist and international solidarity activists from the Midwest who were
hit by FBI raids on their homes on Sept. 24....
Posted Nov 12, 2010
|
The first meeting in New York City of the United National Antiwar Committee put
on the map plans for a major regional anti-war action on April 9. More than 300
people packed the main space at the Church of St. Marks on the Bowery on Nov. 6
to hear the coalition’s plans and decided to commit to a spring
protest....
Posted Nov 12, 2010
|
The Restaurant Opportunities Center-United of Michigan celebrated the first
anniversary of its campaign against the Andiamo Restaurant chain Nov. 5 with a
rousing picket line....
Posted Nov 11, 2010
|
Excerpts from Part 2 of the document “Capitalism
in Crisis” by Fred Goldstein, written for discussion at the Workers World
Party National Conference taking place on Nov. 13-14....
Posted Nov 11, 2010
|
Although there has been no detailed analysis of the 2010 midterm elections yet,
exit polls conducted by various news organizations point to a low turnout by
youth, as well as Black and Latino/a voters....
Posted Nov 11, 2010
|
Charles Barron, the Freedom Party’s 2010 candidate for New York governor,
appeared on Gil Nobel’s “Like It Is” television program on
Nov. 7. The show was devoted to the fight to save Mumia Abu-Jamal from
reimposition of the death penalty. “We are going to fight for
Mumia’s freedom and stop the execution,” Barron said....
Posted Nov 11, 2010
|
Civil rights attorneys filed a federal lawsuit Nov. 4 charging that police in
Philadelphia are illegally stopping pedestrians based on race with little or no
justification. This comes amid a rising tide of police brutality and the arrest
on criminal charges of 15 members of the Philadelphia Police Department since
March 2009....
Posted Nov 11, 2010
|
A recent decision by the Federal Reserve to provide the bankers another $600
billion in bailout funds demonstrates the government’s continuing
failure, even under Democratic Party leadership, to provide any relief for
working people and the oppressed....
Posted Nov 10, 2010
|
More than 500 people, mostly African Americans and youth, mobilized for a
noontime outdoor rally Nov. 9 in support of political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal.
The rally lasted through a hearing of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
that argued on whether the death sentence would be reinstated against Mumia....
Posted Nov 10, 2010
|
Rallies were held in several cities following the sentencing of Johannes
Mehserle, the Oakland Bay Area Rapid Transit cop who killed an unarmed Oscar
Grant on Jan. 1, 2009. Grant was shot by Mehserle while lying face down with
his arms behind his back. Although the killing was videotaped and Mehserle fled the state after the
shooting, the court last July found him guilty not of murder, but of
involuntary manslaughter....
Posted Nov 10, 2010
|
On Oct. 28 the U.S. government revealed it spent $80 billion on intelligence
for fiscal year 2010. That’s more than the $53 billion the government
spent on the Department of Homeland Security or the $30 billion spent by the
Justice Department, according to the White House Office of Management and
Budget....
Posted Nov 7, 2010
|
The recently released documentary, “The Soul of a People: Writing
America’s Story,” highlights the role of cultural workers during
the Great Depression when they participated in the New Deal’s Federal
Writers’ Project administered by the Works Progress Administration....
Posted Nov 7, 2010
|
A very determined and diverse group of Baltimore workers — young and
elderly, jobless and those still working — launched a new movement for a
“People’s Assembly” at an Eastside church in Baltimore on
Oct. 30....
Posted Nov 5, 2010
|
After occupying the Whittier Elementary School field house also known as La
Casita for 43 days, the Whittier Parent Committee has ended the occupation in a
victory Oct. 28. They received, as they demanded, a written statement from
Chicago Public Schools CEO Ron Huberman saying that CPS would not tear down the
community center to replace it with a turf field....
Posted Nov 5, 2010
|
The Bronx, N.Y., Woodlawn Cemetery workers Band of Brothers had a union
election that was held on Oct. 28 in the service yard of the cemetery. The
workers made a huge statement to both management and the corrupt company union
USWU-IUJAT Local 74/811, headed by Sal Aladeen, by voting for Teamsters Local
808....
Posted Nov 5, 2010
|
Following the closing of the landmark St. Vincent’s Hospital on the
westside of downtown Manhattan, the community continues to fight for its
replacement....
Posted Nov 5, 2010
|
It is now 2010 and the U.S. economy is in the midst of the worst recession
since the 1920s and 1930s. As a result, many people are out of work, there are
record foreclosures, and many people are accumulating debts or cannot pay their
bills. Job searches are hindered by racism, age discrimination and in many
cases a poor credit history. Your credit can prevent you from getting loans,
mortgages or even a job....
Posted Nov 5, 2010
|
Hilton Hotel workers strike in S.F., Hawaii | Benefit for Detroit Orchestra strikers | Major tomato growers sign with Immokalee...
Posted Nov 5, 2010
|
With the release from death row of an exonerated Anthony Graves just three days
before the 11th Annual March to Abolish the Death Penalty, the crowd that
gathered at the Texas Capitol in Austin on Oct. 30 was in high spirits. Graves,
an African-American man from Brenham, Texas, was wrongfully locked up for 18
years. He was declared innocent and freed to his loving mother, family and
friends on Oct. 27....
Posted Nov 4, 2010
|
The Committee to Stop FBI Repression is convening a national meeting
in New York City on Nov. 6 at 6:30 p.m. Everyone who is interested in building
the movement against FBI raids and the grand jury attempt to criminalize
anti-war and international solidarity activists is invited to attend. For information, see www.stopFBI.net....
Posted Nov 4, 2010
|
From a talk given by Dante Strobino, a
UE150 organizer, at the Oct. 23 Workers World Party Southern Regional
Conference in Durham, N.C....
Posted Nov 4, 2010
|
In an attempt to stave off criticism for failing to secure a state tax on
natural gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale areas in Pennsylvania, out-going
Gov. Ed Rendell staged a press conference on Oct. 26 to announce he was signing
an executive order for a moratorium on leasing new tracts in state forest land
to companies for drilling....
Posted Nov 4, 2010
|
On Oct. 29 a predominantly white and suburban federal jury falsely found
African-American Boston City Councilor Chuck Turner guilty of one count of
attempted extortion and three counts of lying to the FBI....
Posted Nov 3, 2010
|
We are entering a rare period in history, a period in which a world historic
social system — the capitalist system — is showing all the signs
and symptoms of being in a profound crisis from which it cannot extricate
itself by economic means alone....
Posted Nov 3, 2010
|
The anniversary of the birth of a cherished freedom fighter occurred recently.
On Oct. 6, 1917, Fannie Lou Townsend was born and grew up on a Mississippi
plantation in a sharecropper family. She began picking cotton at the age of 6.
She was the youngest of 20 children and the granddaughter of an enslaved
African. After marrying, she became Fannie Lou Hamer....
Posted Oct 31, 2010
|
Most political pundits and leading corporate-oriented publications are
predicting significant gains by right-wing Republican candidates across the
United States in the midterm elections taking place Nov. 2....
Posted Oct 31, 2010
|
Early in the morning of Oct. 17, Pace University student Danroy (DJ)
Henry Jr. and his friends Brandon Cox and Desmond Hinds were parked outside
Finnegan’s Grill, a bar in Thornwood, N.Y., in Westchester County....
Posted Oct 31, 2010
|
Among the 115 groups that have taken a stand against the Sept. 24 FBI raids
targeting anti-war activists are a growing number of labor unions, federations
and organizations....
Posted Oct 31, 2010
|
The Committee to Stop FBI Repression is convening a national meeting in
New York City on Nov. 6....
Posted Oct 31, 2010
|
Attorney Chokwe Lumumba, a Jackson, Miss., City Council member, and
revolutionary rapper M-1 from Dead Prez were among those on the platform during
a “Political Prisoners Unity Rally” held Oct. 17 in Brooklyn, N.Y....
Posted Oct 31, 2010
|
Parents to Improve School Transportation held a rally at the New York City
Department of Education on the morning of Oct. 19....
Posted Oct 31, 2010
|
Activists from around the country will attend the Workers World Party national
conference being held Nov. 12-14 in New York City....
Posted Oct 29, 2010
|
Everyone has to make decisions on which bills to pay and which to forego.
This is not a bill. But it’s a serious appeal for money....
Posted Oct 29, 2010
|
A group of Michigan State University students, Michigan Emergency Committee
Against War and Injustice activists, and Workers World Party members gathered
the evening of Oct. 19 for a demonstration at MSU in solidarity with Palestine
in response to the “Soldiers Speak Out” campus tour of Israeli
soldiers....
Posted Oct 29, 2010
|
Proponents of U.S. capitalism call it the richest country in the world and use
this to drum up patriotism and chauvinism. While it is true that there is more
wealth in the U.S., it is mostly in the hands of a few and does not bring
prosperity to the majority....
Posted Oct 29, 2010
|
A broad coalition of labor, religious and community organizations held a press
conference Oct. 8 in Detroit to announce the formation of the People Before
Banks Coalition....
Posted Oct 29, 2010
|
The lifting of the major banks’ “foreclosure moratoriums”
— which had been instituted to stem the outcry over massive fraud in the
processing of foreclosure documents — demonstrates the necessity for the
working class to launch a struggle to win a genuine two-year moratorium on
foreclosures and evictions predicated on the premise that housing is a
fundamental human right....
Posted Oct 29, 2010
|
Anti-foreclosure activists gathered outside Bank of America in downtown
Detroit Oct. 22 to demand the bank stop its eviction of Michelle Hart and her
ill elderly mother from their home in Southfield, Mich....
Posted Oct 28, 2010
|
A standing-room crowd participated in Workers World
Party’s Southern Regional Conference, held Oct. 23 in Durham, N.C. The
conference was hosted by the Durham WWP branch. It is the first public conference on socialism in recent
memory held in this region of North Carolina, an anti-union, right-to-work
state....
Posted Oct 27, 2010
|
On Oct. 19 the office phones of U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and President
Barack Obama are expected to ring all day as they did a week earlier. Concerned
labor, community and anti-war callers will demand that the government end
repression of anti-war and international solidarity activists, return all
materials seized in the raids on their homes and office in September and call
off the grand jury....
Posted Oct 24, 2010
|
The U.S. Justice Department summoned numerous Muslim, Arab-American,
Asian-American, civil libertarian and civil rights organizations to the
downtown McNamara Building on Oct. 13 under the guise of providing a briefing
on their investigation into the shooting death of Imam Luqman Ameen Abdullah by
FBI agents at a Dearborn warehouse on Oct. 28, 2009....
Posted Oct 24, 2010
|
Afghan activist M. Shalalemi and children from the Poor Peoples’
Economic Human Rights Campaign led a march in Philadelphia on Oct. 16 calling
for an end to the war....
Posted Oct 24, 2010
|
The Black and Latino/a-led Freedom Party is attempting to get a minimum of
50,000 votes in the Nov. 2 midterm elections in New York State in order to
secure ballot status. One of the FP’s main goals is to challenge the
decades-long, oppressive stranglehold that the big business, pro-war Republican
and Democratic parties have had, a hold that keeps workers and oppressed
peoples economically and politically powerless....
Posted Oct 22, 2010
|
To say members of UAW Local 5960 are angry would be an understatement....
Posted Oct 22, 2010
|
According to U.S. Census data released in September, more than 29 percent of
residents in Philadelphia’s 1st Congressional District — just a few
miles from the historic Liberty Bell — live in poverty. Overall census
data found Philadelphia to be the poorest among the country’s 10 largest
cities, and the 1st District one of the hungriest, second only to the Bronx,
N.Y....
Posted Oct 22, 2010
|
Defenders of Harlem Hospital assembled on Oct. 13 to support the Doctors
Council SEIU, who are fighting the assault on patient services and opposing the
imminent layoffs of 20 or more doctors. Recently North General Hospital was
shut down and is now a clinic....
Posted Oct 22, 2010
|
The United National Anti-war
Coalition and some of its constituent organizations called for a public protest
on Oct. 17 outside the doors of Fox News in midtown Manhattan. That afternoon,
people from around the region, many from Muslim organizations, came out to
protest....
Posted Oct 22, 2010
|
Some 200 people rallied at a Raleigh, N.C., shopping center Oct. 17 to support a
lesbian couple. A security guard had ejected the couple from the property three
days earlier for displaying affection towards one another....
Posted Oct 21, 2010
|
Protesters from lesbian, gay, bi, trans and queer communities — joined by
supporters including union members and progressive activists — gathered
at Carl Paladino’s campaign headquarters in downtown Buffalo on two
successive afternoons the week of Oct. 11....
Posted Oct 21, 2010
|
The level of anti-immigrant bias in the state of Georgia went up another notch
with the passage on Oct.13 of a measure banning undocumented students from
attending certain public universities....
Posted Oct 21, 2010
|
In late August a woman reported being sexually assaulted in a dorm room by two
members of the Michigan State University Spartans men’s basketball team.
Despite the survivor reporting the assault, a police report being filed, and
the police recommending the pursuit of criminal sexual conduct charges against
the assailants, Ingham County Prosecutor Stuart Dunnings III decided not to
press charges....
Posted Oct 21, 2010
|
The 16-year struggle to free Jamie and Gladys Scott from a Mississippi prison
has caught the significant attention of a progressive African-American
journalist. Bob Herbert, who writes for the New York Times on a regular basis,
penned two op-ed pieces within three days of each other exposing the injustice
that the African-American sisters have suffered and calling for their immediate
release....
Posted Oct 20, 2010
|
Lakeland, Ga., is a small town that is 67 percent white, 29 percent
African-American and 0.7 percent Native American. The average salary of working
males is $29,257 and females $19,276, with most residents living below the 2000
poverty level....
Posted Oct 20, 2010
|
Fighting to abolish the death penalty is frustrating. But for a person wrongly
convicted and sentenced to death, fighting to prove their innocence can be
worse than frustrating. It can be almost impossible. It can be so maddening
that it causes debilitating mental illnesses and suicide....
Posted Oct 20, 2010
|
More than 1,000 people marched Oct. 16 through downtown Chicago in a Midwest
anti-war action marking the ninth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of
Afghanistan....
Posted Oct 20, 2010
|
The World Day Against the Death Penalty was commemorated on Oct. 10 with a
major emphasis on the United States, where more executions take place than any
other industrialized country. Since the death penalty was reinstituted by the
U.S. Supreme Court in 1976, 1,229 executions have taken place, with 41 in 2010
alone and counting....
Posted Oct 17, 2010
|
Family, friends and supporters of imprisoned
“people’s lawyer” Lynne Stewart marched, sang and drummed on
Oct. 8 outside the lower Manhattan prison where she is being held. It was her
71st birthday, and the crowd chanted “Free Lynne Stewart” and
“Happy Birthday, Lynne,” led by the booming voice of her spouse,
Ralph Poynter....
Posted Oct 17, 2010
|
In what is but the latest in an all-too-long and frequent string of
environmental accidents involving natural gas drilling, a section of highway
near the town of Hughesville, Pa., located in the upper Susquehanna River
Valley was closed Oct. 9 after a low-boy trailer leaked an undetermined amount
of frack fluid....
Posted Oct 15, 2010
|
Passage of stringent anti-woman restrictions on abortion funding in the new
health care system isn’t enough to satisfy Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ). Chair
of the so-called Pro-Life Caucus for 28 years, Smith introduced HR 5939, the
“No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act,” on July 29. As of Oct. 10
there were 183 cosponsors....
Posted Oct 15, 2010
|
A spirited group of anti-racist activists confronted the managers of posh
Woodlawn Cemetery in the northwest Bronx on Oct. 9. Loud chants of “Bury
racism at Woodlawn Cemetery!” rang against the stone walls of the
Woodlawn mansion inside the cemetery gates. Managers and security goons looked
on nervously amidst the din of honking horns of passing motorists expressing
support....
Posted Oct 14, 2010
|
The Oct. 9 rally in front of the main gates of the Woodlawn Cemetery followed
an earlier one last July, where many organizations, activists and leaders stood
in support of the Band of Brothers, workers in the struggle to fight racism on
the job....
Posted Oct 14, 2010
|
DeAsia Bronaugh, a Black high school student, was acquitted on all charges on
Oct. 7 in Cuyahoga County Juvenile Court.
The charges, including felonious assault on a police officer, stemmed from an
incident on May 13 when she and fellow students walked out of Collinwood High
School to protest plans to close more than 40 Cleveland schools and lay off
hundreds of teachers....
Posted Oct 14, 2010
|
Kohler workers fight concessions | Labor joins call to end ‘crimmigration’ | Anti-war activists support S.F. hotel workers...
Posted Oct 14, 2010
|
Nearly 80 demonstrations in 25 states were organized on Oct. 7, the second
National Day of Action to Defend Education, as thousands of students and
workers took to the streets to fight back against the attacks on education
being leveled across the country in the form of devastating budget cuts,
tuition hikes and the growing threat of privatization....
Posted Oct 14, 2010
|
Support throughout the progressive movement in the U.S. and worldwide continues
to grow for the anti-war and international solidarity activists whose homes
were invaded by the FBI on Sept. 24....
Posted Oct 14, 2010
|
Anti-Zionist Jews and Palestine solidarity activists disrupted the opening
plenary of the Jewish National Fund conference held Oct. 10 in the upscale
Intercontinental Hotel in Atlanta....
Posted Oct 14, 2010
|
Dozens of students and anti-racist community
activists protested outside the Temple University student center on Oct. 7....
Posted Oct 14, 2010
|
When the University of Illinois Board of Trustees refused to answer students’ questions, the students broke out chanting.Within 15 seconds of the start of the chants,
board members started leaving the room. As they exited, the students that had
not been allowed in had lined the halls, wearing white bandannas over their
faces with writing on them that said “Project 500” and
“Tuition Freeze Now!”...
Posted Oct 11, 2010
|
Members of United Auto Workers Local 23 at a General Motors stamping plant in
Indianapolis have been resisting company demands since last spring for a nearly
50 percent paycut. Both the company and top leaders of the UAW have been
exerting heavy pressure on the membership to take huge concessions. ...
Posted Oct 9, 2010
|
An exciting event launched the Freedom Party campaign on Oct. 3 at the Church
of the Resurrection, which also serves as home to the South Bronx Community
Congress. Charles Barron and Ramon Jimenez, candidates for governor and
attorney general, respectively, both spoke eloquently about the emerging Black
and Latino/a alliance....
Posted Oct 9, 2010
|
The recent number of lesbian/gay/bi/trans teen suicides requires all our
concern. In recognition of this, community vigils are being carried out
throughout the country....
Posted Oct 9, 2010
|
Hundreds of activists from across Pennsylvania rallied and lobbied in the
capital of Harrisburg Sept. 22 for a moratorium on natural gas drilling and
against gas-industry-sponsored legislation designed to give the green light to
unfettered drilling in the Marcellus Shale that sits beneath much of the
state....
Posted Oct 9, 2010
|
Report covers up FBI killing of imam | Hearing on Detroit fires, energy giant | Household income drops 21 percent...
Posted Oct 9, 2010
|
|
The recent revelations of massive fraud in the processing of foreclosures by
major banks demonstrate the urgent necessity for activists to press the demand
for an immediate declaration of a two-year moratorium to halt all foreclosures
and evictions in the U.S....
Posted Oct 7, 2010
|
On Sept. 29, Picture the Homeless, a grassroots organization founded and led by
homeless people, gathered along with many supporters at New York City Hall for a press
conference and rally urging passage of Intro 48....
Posted Oct 7, 2010
|
African-American farmers have held a series of activities highlighting the
failure of the Senate to pass legislation that would grant them compensation
for decades of discrimination by the U.S. government....
Posted Oct 7, 2010
|
|
On Oct. 2, the “One Nation Working Together” mobilization brought
together an estimated 200,000 people of all nationalities, ages, genders and
sexual orientations in Washington, D.C. The unifying theme for this massive
outpouring was for the creation of good-paying jobs for the more than 30
million unemployed and underemployed workers....
Posted Oct 6, 2010
|
Representatives of 14 solidarity activists in the Midwest
announced that none of them would comply with subpoenas ordering
them to testify before a grand jury in Chicago. They stood
before television cameras and more than 100 supporters in front of the Federal
Building where a grand jury was about to be empaneled....
Posted Oct 6, 2010
|
The movement is growing ever more united in defense of activists whose homes
the FBI invaded on Sept. 24 in a coordinated attack on the anti-imperialist and
anti-war movement....
Posted Oct 6, 2010
|
As African-American activists engaged in the many struggles for social and
economic justice and human rights, we are outraged by the recent FBI raids on
anti-war activists in several U.S. cities, alleging they have connections to
terrorism....
Posted Oct 6, 2010
|
Excerpts from a resolution adopted unanimously by
the San Francisco Labor Council delegates’ meeting on Sept.
27....
Posted Oct 6, 2010
|
Fight Imperialism, Stand Together joins all progressive
groups — be they anti-war, anti-imperialist, anti-racist or left
generally — in denouncing the raids against anti-imperialist activists in
Minnesota and Illinois, and condemns the grand jury subpoenas served on
activists in Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota and any other acts the FBI engaged
in to intimidate the Freedom Road Socialist Organization, Students for a
Democratic Society, the Palestine Solidarity Group, the Columbia Action Network
and others....
Posted Oct 6, 2010
|
The National Network on Cuba protests the ... FBI raids on the homes and
offices of international solidarity and anti-war activists in Chicago and
Minneapolis....
Posted Oct 6, 2010
|
Lok Morcha (Peoples’ Front), a democratic
revolutionary organization of the struggling people of Punjab, India, wedded to
anti-imperialism and anti-feudalism, strongly condemns the FBI raids on
anti-war and solidarity activists in the U.S....
Posted Oct 6, 2010
|
On Tuesday, Oct. 5, the first of 14 solidarity activists
targeted by the FBI will appear before a Chicago Grand
Jury. Workers World correspondents Abayomi Azikiwe and Cheryl LaBash will be on the scene. Follow their live tweets as events unfold throughout the day on @workersworld (http://twitter.com/workersworld/)....
Posted Oct 4, 2010
|
Everyone by now has heard that the recession is over. The
government says it ended in June 2009....
Posted Oct 3, 2010
|
The nearly 29-year struggle to free political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal faces a
critical juncture with the announcement that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the
Third Circuit will review Abu-Jamal’s death sentence on Nov. 9. It is
imperative that all who stand for justice and against racism and state
repression pack the courtroom in Philadelphia...
Posted Oct 1, 2010
|
Many community activists filled the meeting hall Sept. 25 at the first session
of the Bronx People’s Assembly for Jobs and Economic Survival. They came
to exchange information about independent organizing and to broaden their links
to national social and economic justice movements....
Posted Oct 1, 2010
|
Thousands demand jobs | Boycott Andiamo restaurants! | Immigrants rebuilding N.O. fight wage theft...
Posted Oct 1, 2010
|
ADAPT, a national disability rights action group, fought state budget cuts
to Medicaid home services by mobilizing in Washington, D.C., Sept. 19-22.
Activists chained themselves to three gates at the White House and blocked
street intersections....
Posted Oct 1, 2010
|
United Auto Workers President Bob King announced Sept. 24 that the UAW was
closing accounts worth “hundreds of millions of dollars” of strike
and other union funds at JPMorgan Chase bank....
Posted Sep 30, 2010
|
Since last spring, members of Local 23 of the United Auto Workers union at a
General Motors stamping plant in Indianapolis have been resisting company
demands for a nearly 50 percent pay cut....
Posted Sep 30, 2010
|
On Sept. 19 the Freedom Party marched in the 41st annual African-American
Day Parade in Harlem, N.Y., the largest Black parade in the U.S. New York state
gubernatorial candidate Charles Barron and Attorney General candidate Ramon
Jimenez proudly led the Freedom Party contingent....
Posted Sep 30, 2010
|
The corporate media can’t give enough coverage to the Tea Party movement
and its relationship to the Republican Party. Little, however, gives any useful
information about the real nature of these groupings in light of the class
nature of U.S. society or the economic crisis....
Posted Sep 30, 2010
|
More than 100 activists and journalists from a variety of organizations,
religious groups and media outlets attended a gathering with Iranian President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the Warwick Hotel here Sept. 21. The leader of the
Islamic Republic of Iran was in the city to attend the annual United Nations
General Assembly....
Posted Sep 30, 2010
|
There are 150,000 workers toiling 365 days a year in sweatshop warehouses in
the Chicago region. With dockworkers and truck drivers, they load and
distribute most of the products we wear, eat or use. The gigantic, concrete,
windowless warehouses hide the brutal and unsafe conditions inside....
Posted Sep 30, 2010
|
Anti-war, anti-racist and left political activists in the United States have
responded with unprecedented energy and outrage against nationally coordinated
FBI raids on the homes of well-respected political organizers. ...
Posted Sep 29, 2010
|
Progressive activists and organizations across the U.S. began immediately to
galvanize a struggle upon learning of the outrageous attacks carried out
against solidarity activists by federal agents and the Obama administration.
Demonstrations have been called in at least 32 cities and towns from coast to
coast....
Posted Sep 29, 2010
|
On Oct. 7 there will be a New York city-wide rally including students, educators, workers
and community activists to defend public education at 4 p.m. at the Harlem
State Office Building, followed by a march across Harlem, ending at the City
College of New York....
Posted Sep 29, 2010
|
In an echo of the Republic Windows and Doors occupation, which brought national
attention to immigrant workers’ fight for their rights in December 2008,
the battle to preserve the Whittier School Field House and Community Center has
received a groundswell of support....
Posted Sep 29, 2010
|
Koch Oil Industries, Donald Trump, Rupert Murdoch, ExxonMobil and the super
rich are all telling us to hate Muslims, hate immigrants and blame them for
everything. They don’t like speaking in their own names so they get the
Tea Party to do it for them....
Posted Sep 26, 2010
|
On Sept. 17 Harlem’s Convent Avenue Baptist Church filled with people
celebrating the example, ongoing legacy and life of the Rev. Dr. Lucius Walker.
Walker, 80, died suddenly Sept. 7 at his home in New Jersey.
The headline in Granma, the daily newspaper of the Cuban Communist Party,
announcing his death stated, “We do not want to think of a world without
Lucius Walker.”...
Posted Sep 26, 2010
|
The International Action Center supports the call from the Minnesota
Antiwar Committee for Emergency Actions at federal buildings and FBI offices on
Monday and Tuesday, Sept. 28 and 29, to support anti-war and international
solidarity activists and stop FBI raids and harassment, and urges you to
participate in one of the actions listed or to organize an action in your
city if one is not already planned....
Posted Sep 26, 2010
|
The International Action Center condemns the FBI raids on anti-war and
solidarity activists homes on Sept. 24 and supports the right of
all social justice activists to defend the rights of workers here at home and
to be in solidarity with our sisters and brothers around the world resisting
occupation and military dictatorship....
Posted Sep 24, 2010
|
Eighty people attended a Midwest conference that the Chicago branch of Workers
World Party hosted here on Sept. 18. Its theme: the need for a revolutionary
struggle against capitalism and for socialism....
Posted Sep 24, 2010
|
The outcry continues to grow against the killing of John T. Williams, a First
Nations wood carver, by a member of the Seattle police force on Aug. 30....
Posted Sep 24, 2010
|
The struggle to free Gladys and Jamie Scott is gaining more and more national
attention and momentum. The African-American sisters have been in the Central
Mississippi Correctional Facility since October 1994 after they were convicted
for allegedly stealing eleven dollars from a Scott County convenience store in
December 1993....
Posted Sep 23, 2010
|
“F — k the UAW!” That statement, quoted in the tell-all book “Overhaul” by former
White House Auto Adviser Stephen Rattner, was made by White House Chief of
Staff Rahm Emanuel during last year’s General Motors bankruptcy
proceedings....
Posted Sep 23, 2010
|
A strong showing of activist groups and individuals rallied and marched to
support and defend GI whistleblower Bradley Manning in more than 17 cities
across the country and internationally between Sept. 16 and 19. They called on
the U.S. government to drop all charges against him.
...
Posted Sep 23, 2010
|
For weeks “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” brilliantly skewered
those who were leading and supporting a racist campaign against Muslims and the
building of a Muslim community center blocks from the World Trade Center. And
then on Sept. 16 Stewart announced he was holding a “Rally to Restore
Sanity” in Washington, D.C., at the end of October, a sort of mocking of
rightist Glenn Beck’s rally....
Posted Sep 23, 2010
|
A review of Fred Goldstein’s book, “Low-Wage
Capitalism,” appeared Aug. 13 in the Los Angeles Examiner....
Posted Sep 23, 2010
|
The official U.S. poverty rate is now 15 percent which amounts to 44 million
people or one out of seven. This is the highest number of people in poverty on
record. Despite claims that the recession in the United States has been over
now for 16 months, the Census Bureau’s findings show that the entire
working class has been deeply impacted by the loss of jobs, pensions, health
care and housing. Among the most oppressed segments of the U.S. population,
women and the internally colonized people of color, the situation is far
worse....
Posted Sep 22, 2010
|
Evidence that Pennsylvania’s Department of Homeland Security is working
on behalf of the natural gas industry came to light in early September when
internal department bulletins were leaked to an anti-drilling listserve. The
department had contracted an Israeli-linked agency to spy on anti-drilling
activists....
Posted Sep 22, 2010
|
The struggle for justice being waged by North Carolina farmworkers who toil in
the fields for tobacco giant R.J. Reynolds continues to push forward. On Sept.
7 the Farm Labor Organizing Committee announced a divestment campaign targeted
at JPMorgan Chase Bank....
Posted Sep 22, 2010
|
Momentum is building for a People’s Assembly on Sept. 25 at Hostos
College in the Bronx, N.Y....
Posted Sep 22, 2010
|
The first U.S. petition campaign to divest workers’ pension funds
from companies that supply Israel with equipment to oppress Palestinians was
launched in Los Angeles on Sept. 8....
Posted Sep 19, 2010
|
The “experts” on Wall Street and in the big business media force
themselves to rave over the fact that the private sector created 67,000 jobs in
August. Never mind that this represents a decline from the monthly average of
90,000 private sector jobs created over the last year. And never mind that
141,000 government census workers were laid off last month....
Posted Sep 17, 2010
|
Capitalist statisticians are beginning to lift the lid on some of the
devastation caused by the economic crisis.
According to the latest government reports, the poverty level in the U.S. rose
in 2009 from 13.2 percent to 15 percent — the largest jump since 1959, the
first year such records were kept. This means that one in every seven people in
the U.S. lives in poverty....
Posted Sep 17, 2010
|
A standing-room-only audience turned out Sept. 11 in Detroit to hear
“Low-Wage Capitalism” author Fred Goldstein speak on “What
the economic crisis means for workers and the ever-growing poor — and how
to strategize a working-class fightback.”...
Posted Sep 17, 2010
|
A series of 85 fires struck several Detroit neighborhoods on Sept. 7. Initial reports from the corporate media and DTE Energy indicated that the blazes were the result of arson and theft of power service. However, a Detroit Fire Department official soon claimed that the fires
directly emanated from the failure of DTE Energy to respond to calls about
downed lines days before the fires rendered hundreds homeless....
Posted Sep 17, 2010
|
The anger of the mostly Central American migrant neighborhood of Westlake in
Los Angeles erupted in the streets for four nights over a police slaying. A
37-year-old Guatemalan day laborer, Manuel Jamines, was shot twice in the head
on a crowded street on Sept. 5. He was unarmed according to eyewitnesses. After the slaying, militant demonstrations each night were attacked by police
with tear gas and rubber bullets. Cops wielding batons charged into crowds of
angry residents and demonstrators. People fled, regrouped and fought back.
There were injuries on both sides and more than 30 arrests....
Posted Sep 16, 2010
|
The 2010 National Football League season began on Sept. 9 with an unexpected
but welcome show of solidarity displayed by the two opposing teams — the
New Orleans Saints, who are the defending Super Bowl champions, and the
Minnesota Vikings....
Posted Sep 16, 2010
|
Another deadly accident in the rapidly expanding and largely unregulated U.S.
gas and oil industry has devastated a community.
A fire in San Bruno, Calif., on Sept. 9 killed at least seven people, injured
more than 60 others, and destroyed or damaged dozens of homes over a 15-acre
area in a residential neighborhood....
Posted Sep 16, 2010
|
Data show immigrants vital to U.S. economy | Mott’s workers defend jobs, union as strike ends | Adjunct faculty protest in Chicago | Asian/Pacific Island workers abused | Tell P.R. governor to stop anti-worker brutality...
Posted Sep 16, 2010
|
Open letter to AFL-CIO head Rich Trumka | Mott’s strike a key test case...
Posted Sep 16, 2010
|
Thousands of people gathered in City Hall Park near this city’s World
Trade Center site on Sept. 11 to show solidarity with the Muslim community and
condemn the racism and bigotry whipped up by the right wing over a plan to
build an Islamic community center in the neighborhood....
Posted Sep 15, 2010
|
Several hundred people rallied and marched against anti-Islamic bigotry in Gainesville, Fla., on
Sept. 11 despite the presence of scores of police, who barricaded the street.
Most were youth and students, many from the University of Florida....
Posted Sep 15, 2010
|
A Workers World Party Midwest conference will take place in Chicago on Sept.
18. Members and friends of WWP and progressive activists involved in struggles
in Illinois, Ohio, Michigan and other states plan to attend. ...
Posted Sep 15, 2010
|
Statement issued by
Leonard Peltier on the occasion of his 66th birthday on Sept. 12. Peltier, who
was framed up by the FBI for the shooting of two agents at Pine Ridge
Reservation in South Dakota in 1975, has been unjustly imprisoned since 1976....
Posted Sep 15, 2010
|
A protest took place Aug. 25 at the new Petco Park in San Diego when the Padres
played the Arizona Diamondbacks. The protest opposed SB1070 and supported the
boycotting of Arizona....
Posted Sep 12, 2010
|
The Justice Department has filed a lawsuit against Arpaio and his office
for refusing to cooperate with its investigations of alleged discrimination on
the basis of national origin — a violation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act....
Posted Sep 12, 2010
|
Members of the Moratorium NOW! Coalition to Stop Foreclosures, Evictions and
Utility Shutoffs along with other labor, community and student supporters took
on Bank of America on Sept. 1 with a protest outside a main BOA branch in
downtown Detroit. ...
Posted Sep 12, 2010
|
Capitalism has always been very fond of races — including the race to
conquer, the race to exploit and the race to accumulate as much wealth as
possible, all at the expense of the workers, the poor and the oppressed. The
U.S. government’s recent unveiling of a new race in education, the
“Race to the Top,” is part of the same corporate contest. Only this
time, the survival of public education is on the line....
Posted Sep 12, 2010
|
In a city that is home to more nationalities than any other in the world, all
seemed represented in the crowd of thousands who came to demonstrate in the
City Hall area on Sept. 11. They were there to express solidarity with the
Muslim community in the struggle over the building of an Islamic Community
Center near the World Trade Center site. International Action Center co-coordinator Sara Flounders, one of the rally
chairs, told Workers World that “10,000 people joined today, coming from
dozens of communities in the city. They represented neighborhood organizations,
religious groups of all kinds, political and anti-war groups and human rights
groups. Many workers wore their union caps or tee shirts.”...
Posted Sep 11, 2010
|
On Sept. 2, Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland, bowing to the pressure of online
petitions, letters, calls and e-mails from thousands of supporters, commuted
Kevin Keith’s death sentence to life in prison due to “real and
unanswered questions.” In doing so he set aside the unanimous
recommendation against clemency of the Ohio Parole Board....
Posted Sep 10, 2010
|
Shareef Aleem started the Aurora, Colo., chapter of Cop Watch and was
a leading member of Colorado Communities United Against Police Brutality. He
is the founder of New Ghetto Boogieology and hosts a radio show on
Denver’s KGNU. Aleem was charged with second degree aggravated assault on
a cop during a Regents meeting for Colorado University Professor Ward Churchill
in 2006, but was later found not guilty....
Posted Sep 10, 2010
|
Much of the focus on the rapid expansion of natural gas extraction through
hydrofracturing, or “fracking,” has centered on methane leaks and
chemical contamination of residential water wells. In Dimock, Pa., more than 15
residents sued Cabot Oil and Gas Corp., charging permanent damage to their
wells....
Posted Sep 10, 2010
|
Five years after the U.S. government let Black and poor people drown and
starve in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, 70 survivors and supporters gathered
in New York City’s Solidarity Center on Aug. 29....
Posted Sep 10, 2010
|
Yes, we are still marching — united, determined and many thousands strong — on Sept. 11! Join us 1 p.m. at Park Place & Broadway — New York City Hall Park
...
Posted Sep 9, 2010
|
Despite an announcement by Pastor Terry Jones that he will
not burn Qur’ans Sept. 11, organizers of the counter-protest against
racism and anti-Muslim bigotry say they will go ahead with their rally and
march....
Posted Sep 9, 2010
|
Ahlam Mohsen, a 22-year-old Arab-American and Michigan State University
student, was arrested Aug. 16 and charged with two felony counts of stalking
and assault after she pied U.S. Sen. Carl Levin at a Democrats meeting in the
Michigan town of Big Rapids....
Posted Sep 9, 2010
|
Several hundred people gathered Sept. 3 in Dearborn, Mich., for an Al-Quds Day
rally in solidarity with the people of Palestine. ...
Posted Sep 9, 2010
|
Family and supporters of the Fort Dix Five rallied outside the Federal
Court in Philadelphia, where an appeal of the Five’s 2008 convictions was
filed on Aug. 31....
Posted Sep 9, 2010
|
This letter was written by a leader of the Band of Brothers,
a group of workers at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, N.Y., who are fighting
racism on the job....
Posted Sep 8, 2010
|
Known in the region as “the people’s library,” the Southern
California Library of Los Angeles was the site of the first Western Regional
“Abolish Capitalism, Fight Injustice — Conference on
Socialism” of Workers World Party....
Posted Sep 8, 2010
|
After a militant six-year campaign of marching, rallying and lobbying, Domestic
Workers United won a New York State Domestic Workers Bill of Rights. On Aug.
31, New York Gov. David Paterson signed this landmark bill into law; it goes
into effect after 90 days....
Posted Sep 8, 2010
|
The Rev. Lucius Walker Jr, executive director of the Interreligious
Foundation for Community Organization and its founding director from 1967 to
1973, passed away on Sept 7....
Posted Sep 8, 2010
|
The hullabaloo and objections to the proposed building of the Islamic Cultural
Center, also known as Cordoba House or the Park 51 project, as being
“insensitively” located in lower Manhattan near the World Trade
Center site, are not due to concern for “the feelings of the 9/11
families.” That is not the real issue at hand....
Posted Sep 6, 2010
|
More than 100 activists came together at the Solidarity Center in New York
to mobilize for a march and protest on Sept. 11 “in solidarity with our
Muslim sisters and brothers,” as many who took the floor said. They were
reacting to the challenge of the Tea Party and other racist forces who will
gather at the World Trade Center site to protest plans to build a Muslim
community center two blocks away....
Posted Sep 6, 2010
|
Food service and laundry workers, student organizers and Workers United of the
Service Employees union descended upon Atlanta the week of Aug. 9 to culminate
a summer-long program aimed at pressuring food service giant Sodexo to agree to
a global card check agreement....
Posted Sep 6, 2010
|
APWU and other
postal workers and their supporters marched to say “no way” to the
proposed five-day mail service the U.S. Postal Service management wants to
implement....
Posted Sep 6, 2010
|
The official unemployment rate, which was 9.5 percent in July, has no
credibility. It is classic “political spin” intended to fill
workers’ heads with hope that a recovery is right around the corner....
Posted Sep 6, 2010
|
Community members organized two powerful protests against the Buffalo News on
Aug. 27. The anger of the community spoke truth to power about the
insensitivity and racism of the Buffalo big-business-owned media....
Posted Sep 6, 2010
|
California is in a state of economic emergency on many fronts. Not only does
official unemployment hover around 12 percent, but approximately 702,000 homes
— nearly 1 in 8 — are currently in foreclosure....
Posted Sep 2, 2010
|
Many people heaved a sigh of relief when a federal judge enjoined portions of
Arizona’s anti-immigrant law SB 1070 in response to a lawsuit filed by
the federal government. But, court order or no court order, the situation on
the ground in southern Arizona has worsened. Arrests and detentions are
increasing, and there are noticeably more Border Patrol agents roaming the
streets of cities like Tucson, which is more than 60 miles north of the border
with Mexico....
Posted Sep 2, 2010
|
Many thousands of people in the U.S. and in many other parts of the world have read
and been inspired by the writings of Leslie Feinberg, a transgender lesbian
activist, revolutionary working-class intellectual and Workers World newspaper
managing editor....
Posted Sep 2, 2010
|
The Sonoma (Calif.) County Board of Supervisors finally surrendered on Aug. 5.
The board agreed to settle with Clay Greene, and he was awarded $650,000. Clay
Greene and his partner Harold Scull had been forcibly abducted by the county in
April 2008. Their possessions had been auctioned off after the city terminated
the lease on their home....
Posted Sep 2, 2010
|
Workers and activists packed the Solidarity Center Aug. 21 to participate in a
forum entitled, “What are the next steps in the fight for immigrant and
workers’ rights?” Speakers included representatives of community
groups, unions, and workers’ and youth organizations....
Posted Sep 2, 2010
|
For millions of people with Parkinson’s and other degenerative and
incurable diseases, a hope for a cure relies heavily on stem cell research....
Posted Sep 2, 2010
|
Ahlam Mohsen, the 22-year-old Michigan State University student and anti-war
activist arrested for throwing a pie at U.S. Sen. Carl Levin, is now the
subject of an FBI investigation and faces possible federal charges of
assaulting a member of Congress....
Posted Sep 2, 2010
|
Protesters denounced Admiral Mike Mullen Aug. 26 at Wayne State University
in Detroit. Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mullen is the highest-ranking
military officer in the U.S....
Posted Sep 2, 2010
|
Once again, poor immigrants suffering from kidney failure face a cutoff of
their life-sustaining dialysis treatment. Atlanta’s Grady Hospital had sent some 38
patients a letter informing them that Aug. 31 was the last day the cost of
their treatments....
Posted Sep 2, 2010
|
Aug. 30 was the 100th day that Mott’s applesauce and apple
juice workers have been on strike in Western New York. They’d planned a
rally at 1 p.m. to commemorate their stand against corporate greed....
Posted Sep 1, 2010
|
It is now the beginning of the fourth year since the housing bubble burst in
August 2007, leading to the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.
Record amounts of money, reaching into the trillions of dollars, have been
spent by the capitalist government — most of it in handouts to the banks
to keep the economy from collapsing altogether....
Posted Sep 1, 2010
|
The outbreak of salmonella poisoning that sickened more than 1,500 people in
the U.S. in August, forcing the recall of more than a half billion eggs,
mandates a harder look at the combined impact of the monopolization of the
poultry industry coupled with the critical lack of government oversight....
Posted Sep 1, 2010
|
The busiest passenger railroad in the United States came to a virtual halt on
Aug. 23. A fire in a key switching facility shut down service on 10 of the 11
lines of the Long Island Railroad....
Posted Sep 1, 2010
|
Some 5,000 protesters marched and rallied in downtown Detroit on Aug. 28
demanding jobs, peace and justice. ...
Posted Sep 1, 2010
|
Most people who are familiar with Miami would be surprised to find themselves
in the midst of a crowd of young people singing, “Happy birthday”
to Cuban socialist leader Fidel Castro. “Happy birthday Fidel. Happy
birthday Fidel. Happy birthday Fidel Castro. Happy birthday to you!”...
Posted Sep 1, 2010
|
According to the Aug. 11 “Global Employment Trends for Youth 2010”
report by the International Labor Organization, a U.N. agency, more than 82
million young people aged 16-25, or 13 percent of 620 million young workers
across the world, are unemployed....
Posted Aug 29, 2010
|
For nearly 30 long, tortuous years, Marilyn Buck was a political prisoner
of the state; a captive in the federal prison system for her role in the
liberation of former Black Panther Assata Shakur....
Posted Aug 29, 2010
|
Racism and ageism were themes for the keynote speakers at the Old Lesbians
Organizing for Change national gathering in Cleveland in July....
Posted Aug 29, 2010
|
Resolutions passed by Old Lesbians
Organizing for Change at its national gathering, held July 14-18 in
Cleveland....
Posted Aug 29, 2010
|
Activists around the country have begun mobilizing to stop cold those
who promote racism and hatred of Muslims. They plan to confront a vicious
demonstration and rally scheduled for the World Trade Center site on Sept. 11.
A rally and counterprotest near the WTC site on Aug. 22 showed that the
confrontation is gaining momentum....
Posted Aug 26, 2010
|
A tiny right-wing Christian religious sect in Gainesville, Fla., is threatening
to burn copies of the Koran (Qur’an) — the central book of the
Muslim religion — on Sept. 11. The local chapter of the Students for a
Democratic Society at the University of Florida has called a counter-protest
that has the sympathy of many students and Gainesville residents....
Posted Aug 26, 2010
|
The Palestinian community in Houston has lost a beloved, generous, courageous and
dedicated activist and leader. Abu Obeida Omran was killed during an attempted
robbery on Aug. 13....
Posted Aug 26, 2010
|
An effort to educate people on the dangers of rapidly expanding drilling for
natural gas in the Marcellus Shale region brought more than 500 people to the
Luzerne County Fairgrounds in northeastern Pennsylvania on Aug. 22. The Gas
Stock Festival offered an all-day event with bands, information tables, vendors
and a “soap box” section for speakers....
Posted Aug 26, 2010
|
New York State
United Teachers, which represents 600,000 teachers, education workers and
retirees, refused to endorse Andrew Cuomo, the Democratic candidate for
governor, and about 30 Democratic candidates for the state Senate and
Assembly....
Posted Aug 26, 2010
|
Support grows for Mott’s strikers | Calif. nurses act on Women’s Equality Day | Steelworkers defend locked-out nuclear workers | Casino dealers ratify historic contract | Calif. state workers ratify contracts | Rally in defense of Bangladesh labor leaders...
Posted Aug 26, 2010
|
The foreclosure epidemic ravaging cities and states across the U.S. shows no
end in sight, with no real relief available to the vast majority of workers,
homeowners and renters. More than 2.3 million households have been forced out
of their homes due to foreclosure and repossession by the banks and lenders
since the economic crisis officially began in December 2007. A million more
will likely be added to those ranks this year, with some economic forecasters
predicting 1.5 million additional foreclosures in 2011....
Posted Aug 25, 2010
|
Ahlam Mohsen, a 22-year-old student at Michigan State University, was arrested
Aug. 15 and charged with two felony counts after she threw a pie at Sen. Carl
Levin as an anti-war protest....
Posted Aug 25, 2010
|
The coming together of the United Auto Workers and the Rainbow/Push Coalition
for the Aug. 28 “March for Jobs, Justice and Peace” in Detroit
represents the potential for a re-emergence of the African-American and labor
alliance that proved critical from the 1930s through the 1960s in movements
winning significant concessions and social advances for workers’ and
civil rights....
Posted Aug 25, 2010
|
In 1942 a struggle in Detroit erupted over who would occupy a new federal
housing project named for Sojourner Truth. The complex was located in a
predominantly white neighborhood, but the government’s stated intention
had been to make the units available to Black tenants. At that time public
housing was still segregated.
When it appeared the government would renege and only rent to white residents,
Black leaders of the United Auto Workers initiated the Sojourner Truth Citizens
Committee. White leaders of the UAW and the Wayne County CIO joined the
committee, which held daily pickets of City Hall, in solidarity....
Posted Aug 25, 2010
|
When White House Press Secretary Robert L. Gibbs blasted the “left
wing” of the Democratic Party on Aug. 10 during an interview with The
Hill it kicked up quite a storm. Yet not one of the articles on
Gibbs’ outburst got to the heart of the matter. The Democratic Party is
made up of two classes. Its base is made up of the unions, so-called
“minorities” and the poor — the working class. But the
leadership is firmly in the hands of the banks and corporations — the
ruling capitalist class....
Posted Aug 25, 2010
|
Sometimes life under capitalism is like an episode of “The Twilight
Zone” — completely irrational.
However, recent acts of Congress are not science fiction but very real actions
that will have dire consequences for millions of the poorest people in the
country....
Posted Aug 22, 2010
|
The steady stream of dismal economic reports released in recent weeks has even
the most persistent optimists on Wall Street doubting the strength of the
so-called economic recovery. Current statistics showing sharp rises in
first-time jobless claims and a dramatic widening of the trade deficit have
sent many institutional investors running for cover amid heightened fears of a
“double-dip” recession....
Posted Aug 22, 2010
|
Chants of “We want jobs!” rang out at the
corner of Wall and Broad streets in the shadow of the Stock Exchange at noon on
Aug. 12 as the “99ers” made their first appearance in struggle in
the streets....
Posted Aug 22, 2010
|
It merited the evening news, not just in Atlanta but nationally.
Contradicting all the pundits who were opining on the “positive”
economic outlook came the startling video of thousands of people standing in
long lines that stretched around an East Point, Ga., strip mall parking lot. A
predominantly Black suburb of Atlanta in south Fulton County, East Point has
about 40,000 residents....
Posted Aug 19, 2010
|
Candidates for the post of Arizona state superintendent of schools faced a
packed auditorium at a local high school during a public forum on Aug. 12. The
superintendent of schools position has taken on special importance here with
the draconian cuts to the education budget and a vicious attack on ethnic
studies....
Posted Aug 19, 2010
|
The economic crisis has hit the workers in Michigan, a state of heavy
industry, especially hard, and has also brought with it an intensified struggle
against racism. These brief reports cover three different areas of the state....
Posted Aug 19, 2010
|
The New York State Freedom Party announced Aug. 16 at a press conference
at Brooklyn’s Borough Hall that it had collected more than 43,500
signatures on petitions nominating New York City Council member Charles Barron,
Eva Doyle and Ramón Jimenez to run for governor, lieutenant governor and
attorney general, respectively....
Posted Aug 18, 2010
|
One thing the superrich hope to gain from high unemployment is a grateful and
submissive working class. They hope those still working will feel so privileged
and thankful to have a job that they’ll do anything to keep it —
doing extra work to make up for those laid off, accepting cutbacks in wages and
benefits, and being generally happy and compliant doing whatever is demanded of
them on the job....
Posted Aug 18, 2010
|
An energetic protest demanding jobs in Harlem, N.Y., and beyond hit several
targets on Aug. 6. Community leaders and activists began their action at North
General Hospital — where workers, represented by Service Employees Local
1199, were given only four days’ notice that the entire hospital would be
shut down. Describing the closing of the hospital as an attack on the whole
community, union members declared their struggle to be not just a fight for
jobs, but also a fight to preserve affordable health care in Harlem....
Posted Aug 15, 2010
|
It was announced Aug. 5 that Camden, N.J., that state’s most impoverished
city, will close all its public libraries by the end of 2010 due to a projected
budget shortfall of $28 million. The shortfall stems from reductions in state
aid and lack of taxable property, according to Mayor Dana L. Redd....
Posted Aug 15, 2010
|
More than 200 union members, retirees and community activists mobilized by
the Atlanta-N. Georgia Labor Council and the Atlanta Fighting Foreclosure
Coalition held a public forum on the housing crisis on July 22....
Posted Aug 15, 2010
|
No scabs, shout Mott’s strikers | Domestic workers recognized | Students get Nike to pay Honduran workers | Calif. Labor nixes SB 1070...
Posted Aug 15, 2010
|
This is not a book you read from page one in sequence....
Posted Aug 15, 2010
|
In 1998, a well-known and popular New York City center for Latin American
solidarity events, Casa de las Americas, was forced to close its doors due to
high rent resulting from gentrification of the neighborhood and other
issues....
Posted Aug 15, 2010
|
Early on Aug. 3, Omar Thornton was in a meeting with officials of
Hartford Distributors and the Teamsters local that represents drivers at the
beer wholesaler in Manchester, Conn. The company alleges that employee Thornton
had been stealing beer and that it had videotaped evidence after being allowed
by the union to use surveillance against Thornton....
Posted Aug 11, 2010
|
Several brutal attacks have targeted African-American men in Michigan, Virginia
and Ohio....
Posted Aug 11, 2010
|
Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx features 400 beautifully maintained, serene and
quiet acres. But for the 38 workers who maintain it, especially the Black and
Latino workers, that serenity masked a pit of ugly racism until a group of
workers, the “Band of Brothers,” started fighting back....
Posted Aug 11, 2010
|
Statement by a leader of the Woodlawn Cemetery workers on the events in Connecticut involving Omar Thornton....
Posted Aug 11, 2010
|
On Aug. 8, star actor Danny Glover visited Gerardo Hernández, one
of the Cuban Five anti-terrorist heroes now imprisoned in the United States....
Posted Aug 11, 2010
|
Corporate profits are rising, corporate cash is piling up, business has
increased. But jobs are not coming back any time soon for the millions of
unemployed....
Posted Aug 8, 2010
|
Although the 20th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act was
celebrated across the U.S. on July 26 with much publicity, in a corner of
Detroit the practical struggle to implement it was quietly playing out in the
struggle spirit that originally won the ADA....
Posted Aug 8, 2010
|
Jonathan Jackson was only 17 years old when he gave his life for oppressed
people on Aug. 7, 1970, when he went to the San Rafael, Calif., courthouse to
free his older brother George Jackson, along with Fleeta Drumgo and John
Clutchette — the “Soledad Brothers.”...
Posted Aug 8, 2010
|
For a woman who spent a lifetime in the Civil Rights Movement and the struggle
for the rights of rural farmers, the events of recent days may have taught her
that the rights of federal workers — especially Black ones —
don’t count for much....
Posted Aug 8, 2010
|
James Rivera would have been 17 years old on July 23, and the community
barbecue and potluck held that day should have been in celebration of his young
life. Instead, it was a gathering to mourn the young man, who was gunned down
by Stockton, Calif., police in the late morning of July 22, and to strategize
to win justice against this latest police killing of a young person of color in
California....
Posted Aug 6, 2010
|
Imagine losing everything you’ve ever owned, including your personal
documents, your most valuable and cherished possessions. In addition, there is
suffering the personal loss through death, disappearance or displacement of
family, loved ones and friends. This was the plight of most survivors of 2005
Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and the ensuing flood from broken levees,
especially in the Ninth Ward....
Posted Aug 6, 2010
|
Carl B. Hampton, the leader of People’s Party II in Houston, was
assassinated by the Houston police 40 years ago on July 26. His life and
legacy, however, are very much alive in the hearts and actions of those who
worked with him, those who remember him and those who treasure his history but
were not yet born when he was killed....
Posted Aug 6, 2010
|
Pro-choice activists successfully defended the Family Reproductive
Health clinic for a week in July in Charlotte, N.C. The facility, which
provides a wide range of medical care for women, including check-ups, testing
and treatment, family planning and abortions, has been under siege for eight
years by the right-wing Operation Rescue/Operation Save America....
Posted Aug 6, 2010
|
After 21 undocumented youth and DREAM Act supporters engaged in civil
disobedience in Washington, D.C., on July 21, that same evening Texas students
held a candlelight vigil at the Federal Building in Houston, demanding the
passage of the DREAM Act this year....
Posted Aug 6, 2010
|
On July 29 the racist, anti-immigrant law SB1070 went into effect in Arizona.
On July 28, federal judge Susan Bolton temporarily blocked the worst parts of
the law from being implemented. Nonetheless, July 29 was a day filled with
nonstop protests and bold actions as people took to the streets to show their
outrage at this bigoted attack against immigrants and workers....
Posted Aug 4, 2010
|
Demonstrations around the U.S. called for the overturn of Arizona’s SB
1070 as the racist, anti-immigrant bill was scheduled to become law on July 29.
Although a federal judge issued an injunction on July 28 that temporarily
barred many components of the law from taking effect, activists rallied to
demand its total overturn and for full rights for all immigrant workers. Many
viewed the judge’s decision as a victory won through struggle....
Posted Aug 4, 2010
|
On July 31, under the pressure of a national campaign calling for her to honor
the boycott of Arizona, Lady Gaga, one the biggest icons in pop music, met with
local activists and used her Phoenix concert to speak out against SB1070....
Posted Aug 4, 2010
|
Workers and oppressed peoples in the U.S. are responding to the escalating
racism and political repression that is taking place amid the worst economic
crisis since the Great Depression. Even during an election year, various organizations and movements have come out into the streets to
engage in demonstrations and civil disobedience....
Posted Aug 4, 2010
|
After a brief rally on the sidewalk plaza by the Four Seasons — one
of several San Francisco hotels where the workers are working without a
contract — several hundred hotel workers, their allies and community
activists marched by the Hotel Frank on July 22....
Posted Aug 1, 2010
|
Excerpts from a resolution adopted by the California
Labor Federation....
Posted Aug 1, 2010
|
Shaw workers end strike | NYC support for Mott’s workers | Solidarity after attack on SW Workers Union | Catholic hospitals in Mich. unfair to nurses | SF Labor Council demands immigration reform | Unions endorse Oct. 2 march for jobs...
Posted Aug 1, 2010
|
Excerpted from the book “Low-Wage
Capitalism,” a Marxist analysis of globalization and its effects on the
U.S. working class by Fred Goldstein...
Posted Aug 1, 2010
|
With the overwhelming support of the more than 700 people who registered for
the three-day event, the United National Anti-war Conference decided July 25 to
adopt an action program....
Posted Aug 1, 2010
|
A solidarity demonstration with the Muslim community of Albany, N.Y., on
July 25 immediately followed the last session of a national anti-war conference
held in this city....
Posted Aug 1, 2010
|
A protest on July 22 to stop the foreclosure of Marvin and Louise Morris
turned into a victory celebration after their mortgage servicer finally agreed
to allow the elderly couple to remain in their modest Detroit home....
Posted Jul 30, 2010
|
The evening gathering on June 11 at the historic Siloam Presbyterian Church,
located in Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn, N.Y., will go down in the annals of
New York state’s Black political history as a significant revolutionary
development....
Posted Jul 30, 2010
|
The rhythmic sound of African drums filled the air and brought hundreds of
mourners into harmony in tribute to Sister Njere Alghanee, first on July 2 at
the Tupac Shakur Center for the Arts and then at many home-going celebrations
on July 3....
Posted Jul 30, 2010
|
A political firestorm erupted on July 20 when Shirley Sherrod, the U.S.
Department of Agriculture’s rural development director for Georgia, was
terminated as the result of a false accusation made against her by a right-wing
propagandist. A deceptively edited video of a speech, delivered by Sherrod at
an NAACP event in March, was used as the pretense for her firing and public
vilification....
Posted Jul 28, 2010
|
Despite a continuous onslaught of attacks against immigrant workers, resistance
and opposition continue to grow in the U.S. — not only against
Arizona’s Senate Bill 1070, but also against the entire campaign to
criminalize and drive workers born outside this country underground...
Posted Jul 28, 2010
|
Organizations from Arizona’s three major population centers —
Tucson, Flagstaff and Phoenix — met on July 17 to prepare coordinated
activities for July 29, the date of SB 1070’s implementation. SB 1070 is
a racist, anti-immigrant state law that is opposed by immigrant rights
advocates, progressives and justice-loving people in Arizona and around the
country....
Posted Jul 26, 2010
|
Marilyn Buck, a political prisoner in the U.S., was released July 15 from
the federal prison medical center in Carswell, Texas, according to her support
group, Friends of Marilyn Buck....
Posted Jul 26, 2010
|
Several African states have been targeted by successive U.S. administrations
for regime change and political domination. Those facing threats from the U.S.
include, but are not limited to, Egypt, Sudan, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Somalia and
the Democratic Republic of Congo. It is essential that the anti-war movement in
the U.S. firmly oppose U.S. imperialist intervention in Africa....
Posted Jul 23, 2010
|
Workers World Party activists are proud to be among the many anti-war, union and
community organizers from dozens of groups who have come to Albany, N.Y., on
July 23-25 to plan the next steps to end the U.S. occupations of Iraq and
Afghanistan and stop further U.S. wars....
Posted Jul 23, 2010
|
New York City Transit riders, communities and Transport Workers Local 100 have
come together to launch a “Campaign to Take Back Our Transit
System” ....
Posted Jul 23, 2010
|
Excerpted from the book “Low-Wage
Capitalism,” a Marxist analysis of globalization and its effects on the
U.S. working class by Fred Goldstein...
Posted Jul 23, 2010
|
From a July 4, 2010, audio column at www.prisonradio.org by Mumia Abu-Jamal on death row....
Posted Jul 23, 2010
|
July 20 began with a mass demonstration to stop the racist attempts to
resegregate the schools in Wake County, North Carolina, and ended with the
arrest of 19 people at the school board meeting later that afternoon.
Nearly 2,000 demonstrators filled the streets of downtown Raleigh on the
morning of July 20 for a march called by the North Carolina chapter of the
NAACP and endorsed by the national AME Zion Church. The church was holding its
national convention in Raleigh July 16-21 at the Raleigh Convention Center. The
church also recently cancelled their winter meeting scheduled for Arizona in
solidarity with the boycott called against the racist, anti-immigrant SB
1070....
Posted Jul 23, 2010
|
New York Gov. David Paterson signed a bill on July 16 limiting the use of a
database of names collected by New York City cops of people who had committed
no crime but whose names were gathered through the stop-and-frisk policy used
by NYC cops and cops all over the country....
Posted Jul 23, 2010
|
Operation POWER (People Organizing and Working for Empowerment and
Respect), a Black grassroots organization, held an outreach forum on July 17 at
the House of the Lord Church in Brooklyn. The group uses various organizing
tactics, including running candidates of color for office, to promote the right
to self-determination....
Posted Jul 23, 2010
|
Excerpts from a talk given by LeiLani Dowell, Fight
Imperialism, Stand Together and Bail Out the People Movement organizer, at a
July 17 Operation POWER meeting in Brooklyn, N.Y....
Posted Jul 23, 2010
|
Food service workers at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, N.Y., have won a
strong first union contract after a hard-fought, year-long struggle against
union-busting company AVI Fresh and an unsympathetic, hands-off college
administration....
Posted Jul 23, 2010
|
On July 10 around 600 demonstrators took to the streets of Boston to send
a message to Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer and governors from around the country at
the National Governors Association meeting here: Racist, anti-immigrant laws
and their promoters are not welcome in Massachusetts....
Posted Jul 23, 2010
|
At the annual convention of the National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People held in Kansas City the week of July 12, the largest civil
rights organization in the U.S. went on record through a resolution condemning
the racist elements within the right-wing Tea Party movement...
Posted Jul 23, 2010
|
A mass demonstration July 20 against racism and school resegregation in Wake County took to the streets of
Raleigh, N.C., as 1,000 people marched from the Convention Center to the State Capitol building. A civil disobedience action took place after the march which resulted in 19 arrests including Black church leaders and city council members. Youth activists were also arrested including members of Raleigh Fight Imperialism, Stand Together. ...
Posted Jul 21, 2010
|
This past week “people’s attorney” Lynne Stewart faced the
outrage of being returned to court for an even harsher sentence at the demand
of reactionary judges on a higher court who had denounced her original sentence
of 28 months as too lenient....
Posted Jul 21, 2010
|
A selection of responses from activists after the Lynne
Stewart resentencing hearing July 15, when the judge gave the progressive
lawyer and breast-cancer survivor a 10-year prison term....
Posted Jul 21, 2010
|
In the last
three weeks [from the end of June until mid-July], almost 1 million unemployed
people were cut from the federal Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC) and
Extended Benefits (EB) programs....
Posted Jul 21, 2010
|
As a consumer I have discovered that so many workers, such as clerks, food
service workers or bank tellers, have to take on a second job. It seems every
worker in these increasingly deskilled and low-paid jobs is now a salesperson,
in addition to the drudgery of the dull, unforgiving work they already have to
do....
Posted Jul 21, 2010
|
Forty-five activists attended an organizing meeting July 17 at Central United
Methodist Church in Detroit sponsored by the Moratorium NOW! Coalition to Stop
Foreclosures, Evictions and Utility Shutoffs. People’s attorney Vanessa Fluker outlined the story of 79-year-old Marvin
Morris and his ailing spouse, Louise, who face foreclosure and eviction from
their home of 38 years after running out of options in the court system....
Posted Jul 21, 2010
|
On July 6 in the suburb of Eastpointe, located right outside Detroit, 17 mainly
African-American households received a duplicate handwritten letter demanding
that they move out of the city or face death. The community has been undergoing
a rapid demographic shift, with at least 20 African-American families moving
onto Sprenger Avenue over the last several months....
Posted Jul 16, 2010
|
The growing war on Black people was the impetus for the Black Liberation
People’s Movement Assembly, held at the 2010 U.S. Social Forum in Detroit
on June 24. The status and nature of the liberation movement and the move from
theory to practice were part of the discussion....
Posted Jul 16, 2010
|
The memory of Fannie Lou Hamer is inspiring Black and Latino/a activists
throughout New York state to build the new Freedom Party.
The party is running New York City Councilperson Charles Barron for governor,
Buffalo educator and historian Eva Doyle for lieutenant governor, and Bronx
activist Ramon Jimenez for attorney general....
Posted Jul 16, 2010
|
The U.S.-based social-networking monolith Facebook has begun an all-out assault
on its members, deleting three active groups that advocated for progressive and
radical causes, permanently banning the accounts of four individuals who
administered one group, and sending threatening messages to others....
Posted Jul 16, 2010
|
Shirley Qahhar, a long-time community activist, passed away on June 9 in
Cleveland....
Posted Jul 16, 2010
|
Afghan resistance fighters killed six GIs in six different battles on July 10
as Gen. David Petraeus took over command from the fired Gen. Stanley
McChrystal. The disarray in the U.S. command and the growing casualties
highlight the disintegration of the U.S. war strategy. They also underline the
importance of an upcoming national anti-war conference whose goal is producing
an action program for the coming period....
Posted Jul 15, 2010
|
Once again Tucson activists filled the intersection of Congress and Granada to
call for resistance to the notorious SB 1070 law, slated to take effect on July
29. Gathering in front of the state building on July 9, Tucsonans protested and
listened to local poets and spoken-word artists denounce SB 1070 and proclaim
“We will resist” this racist law....
Posted Jul 15, 2010
|
Workers historically excluded from labor organizing and protections are
challenging the mainstream trade union movement in the United States, which is
now finding itself in increasing decline with deindustrialization and massive
job loss. Domestic workers, public sector workers in the South, farmworkers,
day laborers and temporary workers have begun to organize against their
exclusion from U.S. labor laws and for rights other workers have won over years
of struggle....
Posted Jul 15, 2010
|
On June 25 more than 300 people attending the U.S. Social Forum in Detroit
took part in a People’s Movement Assembly organized around global
ecological justice and environmental racism....
Posted Jul 15, 2010
|
A coalition of unions and community groups held a rally on the steps of
City Hall in Providence, R.I., July 7 to demand that unemployment benefits be
extended along with COBRA health care coverage for jobless workers....
Posted Jul 15, 2010
|
Excerpted from the book “Low-Wage
Capitalism,” a Marxist analysis of globalization and its effects on the
U.S. working class by Fred Goldstein....
Posted Jul 15, 2010
|
When the jury returned its verdict in the late afternoon on July 8, protesters
in several cities across this state and in other parts of the U.S. expressed
their anger and dismay over the involuntary manslaughter conviction of Johannes
Mehserle, the Bay Area Rapid Transit cop who shot and killed Oscar Grant.
Family members and friends at impromptu press conferences in Los Angeles and
Oakland said that a conviction on any charge less than murder was a racist
insult to the memory of Grant, a 22-year-old unarmed Black man who was shot
dead by Mehserle on Oakland’s Fruitvale BART platform on New Year’s
Day 2009....
Posted Jul 14, 2010
|
Statement by the militant youth
organization Fight Imperialism, Stand Together....
Posted Jul 14, 2010
|
Solidarity House, the international headquarters of the United Auto Workers,
was the scene of a packed press conference the afternoon of July 12. Recently
elected UAW President Bob King joined with the Rev. Jesse Jackson and other
union, political and religious leaders to announce an Aug. 28 march in Detroit
that will kick off a campaign for “jobs, justice and peace.”...
Posted Jul 14, 2010
|
According to a recent exposé, a small group of U.S. death penalty
abolitionist leaders tried to exclude the case of death-row political prisoner
Mumia Abu-Jamal from the Fourth World Congress Against the Death Penalty, held
in March in Geneva, Switzerland....
Posted Jul 14, 2010
|
An estimated 1,000 people marched on Chase Bank in Detroit on June 25 during
the U.S. Social Forum to demand a moratorium on foreclosures and evictions and
an end to Chase’s funding of RJ Reynolds’ abuse of farmworkers in
North Carolina’s tobacco fields....
Posted Jul 11, 2010
|
The need for African-American solidarity with Cuba was the subject of a U.S.
Social Forum workshop organized by the Cuba Working Group of the Black Left
Unity Network on June 23 in Detroit. The group challenged the recent
accusations of Cuba being a racist society. The aim of all unjustified attacks
against Cuba, of course, has been to discredit the social, political and
economic gains of the Cuban socialist revolution and its system of ensuring
equitable distribution of resources for all....
Posted Jul 11, 2010
|
More than 300 people from the U.S., Canada and Latin America participated in a
vibrant People’s Movement Assembly at the U.S. Social Forum in Detroit on
June 25 to discuss global ecological justice and environmental racism....
Posted Jul 11, 2010
|
President Barack Obama gave a major address on immigration on July 1, after
much anticipation by the immigrant rights movement. If immigrants and supporters expected anything positive to come out of the speech, they were greatly disappointed. In fact, what President Obama endorsed as proposed policy is everything the movement has been fighting against, not only since 2006, but historically....
Posted Jul 9, 2010
|
Students and youth in the Student Immigration Movement spearheaded a dynamic
struggle called Mass Hope 2010 that won a significant victory for immigrant
rights....
Posted Jul 9, 2010
|
Glenn Beck, an extreme right-wing pundit of television and radio, has shown his
outrageous racism and anti-working-class sentiments once again....
Posted Jul 9, 2010
|
The New York Metropolitan Transit Authority’s announcement of 800 job
cuts at the end of June means that hundreds of station booths will be shut down
and bus and transit service reduced across the city’s five boroughs. The
MTA seeks to privatize and restructure transit for more layoffs, service cuts
and fare hikes....
Posted Jul 9, 2010
|
Support grows for Mott’s workers | Co-op City workers win decent contract | Hotel workers confront Hyatt shareholders | Stand up for grocery workers | Three S.F. Labor Council resolutions...
Posted Jul 9, 2010
|
On June 29, a coalition of 17 Tucson community organizations kicked off a month
of resistance against the racist and divisive SB 1070 law with a well-attended
press conference, one month before the law goes into effect....
Posted Jul 8, 2010
|
More than 200 parents, students, teachers, school bus drivers, custodians and
community activists came together to say “No!” to the Boston School
Department and the city’s plans to gut public schools and return to
racist segregated “neighborhood” schools....
Posted Jul 8, 2010
|
Potentially toxic and carcinogenic chemicals are used in the hydraulic
fracturing process to obtain natural gas from shale. Whenever industry
officials are confronted with concerns regarding their use, their standard
answer is, “The chemicals account for less than 1 percent of the fluid
that is blasted underground.” The problem with this pat response is that they never say what these chemicals
are....
Posted Jul 8, 2010
|
From the book “Low-Wage Capitalism,” a
Marxist analysis of globalization and its effects on the U.S. working class by
Fred Goldstein...
Posted Jul 8, 2010
|
Activists in the Latin American community here are rallying around Vicky
Peláez, one of 11 people rounded up by the FBI for allegedly being paid by
Russia to spy on the U.S. Many believe that the arrest of Peláez, a
journalist who writes sympathetically of anti-imperialist causes, is an attempt
to silence dissent and send a threat to the anti-imperialist movement within
the U.S....
Posted Jul 7, 2010
|
Activists supporting African-American political prisoner and revolutionary
journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal held a lively street meeting on the corner of Sixth
and Market near the Liberty Bell monument in Philadelphia on July 4....
Posted Jul 7, 2010
|
Lynne Stewart, targeted by the Bush-era Justice
Department for daring to forcefully advocate for her client, is in danger
— and only immense popular support can save her....
Posted Jul 7, 2010
|
A look at Google News shows that tens of thousands of articles have reported or
commented on President Barack Obama’s firing of Gen. Stanley McChrystal
and his replacement by Gen. David Petraeus. This exposure of disarray and
demoralization within U.S. imperialism’s military and civilian leadership
provides a welcome opportunity to accelerate efforts to force Washington and
its allies to withdraw and end the illegal U.S.-NATO war and occupation of
Afghanistan....
Posted Jul 5, 2010
|
From the book “Low-Wage Capitalism,” a
Marxist analysis of globalization and its effects on the U.S. working class by
Fred Goldstein...
Posted Jul 5, 2010
|
The Gray-Haired Witnesses Fast for Justice held on June 21 in Washington, D.C.,
called attention to the growing number of incarcerated Black women and the
gross oversentencing in cases such as the Mississippi Scott Sisters, Jamie and
Gladys. The Scott Sisters received double-life sentences each in an alleged
armed robbery of $11 in which no one was harmed or injured and for which they
have steadfastly maintained their innocence....
Posted Jul 2, 2010
|
From a June 26 message written by
Indigenous political prisoner Leonard Peltier, who was falsely arrested by the
U.S. government months after June 26, 1975, shooting deaths of two FBI agents
at the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota....
Posted Jul 2, 2010
|
Media in the San Francisco Bay Area are full of warnings that the Oakland
Police Department, police of the Bay Area Rapid Transit, the California Highway
Patrol and the Alameda Sheriff’s Office have all been practicing
“riot control” maneuvers in anticipation of a verdict in the trial
of former BART cop Johannes Mehserle....
Posted Jul 2, 2010
|
The University of California at Irvine is a hotbed of opposition to the Israeli
government....
Posted Jul 2, 2010
|
After a federal judge in White Plains, N.Y., denied bail for the Newburgh Four
on June 25, the defendants’ family and friends mapped plans for a
campaign to expose the government’s ongoing massive anti-Muslim campaign.
...
Posted Jul 2, 2010
|
Last weekend British Petroleum CEO Tony Hayward took a break. As sticky, gooey
oil continued to gush into the Gulf of Mexico, he watched the yacht he owns
race in an event called (no kidding!) the “J.P. Morgan Asset Management
Round the Island Race.”...
Posted Jul 2, 2010
|
On June 23 more than 800 demonstrators gathered at the Michigan Labor
Legacy Monument at Hart Plaza in Detroit for a rally demanding jobs and
denouncing the role of the banks in destroying the lives of working people....
Posted Jul 2, 2010
|
June 27 saw the biggest cuts to mass transit in New York City in the last 30
years while fares remained the same....
Posted Jul 2, 2010
|
More than its predecessor in Atlanta in 2007, the U.S. Social Forum in Detroit
June 22-26 reflected the growing awareness that although the struggles at home
and internationally have many fronts, they share a common enemy —
capitalism....
Posted Jun 30, 2010
|
Members and friends of Workers World Party and the youth organization Fight
Imperialism, Stand Together carried out a bold intervention in the name of
revolutionary socialism during the United States Social Forum held in Detroit
June 22-26....
Posted Jun 30, 2010
|
As a part of the U.S. Social Forum, the artwork of Antonio Guerrero, one of the
Cuban Five, was displayed in an exhibit called “From My Altitude.”
...
Posted Jun 30, 2010
|
Just like in the fable, “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” the
U.S. military machine was stripped and paraded through the streets of
SAN FRANCISCO for all to see. ...
Posted Jun 30, 2010
|
A coalition of Tucson activists and organizations has called for a month
of resistance to the implementation of the racist SB 1070 law, which goes into
effect on July 29....
Posted Jun 30, 2010
|
Hundreds of people rallied for immigrant rights in Seattle on June 23....
Posted Jun 30, 2010
|
On June 1, an estimated 325,000 eligible unemployed workers were denied
extended unemployment benefits. By the end of June, if Congress does not pass
the latest emergency unemployment benefits extension bill, this number is
expected to mushroom to at least one and a quarter million workers, according
to government figures....
Posted Jun 28, 2010
|
Despite claims of an economic recovery by the Barack Obama administration and
corporate media, the crisis in home foreclosures — which triggered the
2008 financial meltdown — still remains a major problem. A recently
released study by the Center for Responsible Lending reports a 4.5 percent rate
of home foreclosures for whites and rates nearly twice as high for African
Americans and Latinos/as....
Posted Jun 28, 2010
|
A federal judge in White Plains, N.Y., “indefinitely postponed” the
trial of the Newburgh 4 on June 15. The four are charged with plotting to bomb
a Bronx synagogue and a Jewish community center and shoot down military planes
at Stewart International Airport near Newburgh, N.Y.
Judge Colleen McMahon angrily criticized prosecutors for covering up an
investigator’s report showing the “plot” was the work of a
government agent, working for the FBI....
Posted Jun 28, 2010
|
Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade Theater was packed on June 16 and 17
for the New York premiere of the documentary “In the Land of the
Free,” which tells the chilling story of the Angola 3 — members of
the Black Panther Party who were targeted for their struggle against atrocious
conditions at the hellhole known as Angola penitentiary in Louisiana....
Posted Jun 28, 2010
|
On June 18, a multinational crowd of spirited demonstrators protested the
Arizona Diamondbacks at Comerica Park in downtown Detroit before the baseball
team’s game with the Detroit Tigers. ...
Posted Jun 28, 2010
|
The 35th Constitutional Convention of the United Auto Workers, held here in
Detroit for the first time in decades, concluded on June 17 with a rousing
speech by the union’s newly elected president, Bob King. King stressed
the UAW’s renewed commitment to organizing the unorganized, starting with
Toyota’s U.S. plants....
Posted Jun 25, 2010
|
Thousands of New York City workers — from janitors to teachers, day
care, transit and hospital workers — rallied at City Hall on June 16 to
oppose 11,000 layoffs and deep cuts in every social program demanded by the
banks and billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg....
Posted Jun 25, 2010
|
The slide in union membership, the decline of wages, and the general
deterioration of living conditions for the working class, as well as the
increase in racism and national oppression, the wave of anti-immigrant attacks,
and all the other setbacks during the last three decades and more, were not
inevitable. They were avoidable....
Posted Jun 25, 2010
|
The theme of the night was solidarity and struggle at the Workers World Forum
in Boston on June 19....
Posted Jun 25, 2010
|
Hundreds of thousands of spirited marchers and cheering spectators
participated in Boston’s 40th Lesbian/Gay/Bi/Trans/Queer Pride Parade on
June 12. The theme of this year’s march was “From Riots to
Rights.”...
Posted Jun 24, 2010
|
In a spirit of militant defiance, some 450 people packed Brooklyn’s House
of the Lord church June 17 to hear an eyewitness report from the Gaza Freedom
Flotilla. They wanted to hear what really happened when Israeli commandos
stormed the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara on May 31 in international waters,
killing nine and wounding scores....
Posted Jun 24, 2010
|
Chanting, “Queers come out and take a stand, there’s too much
blood on Israel’s hands!” an angry group of LGBTQ activists
picketed on June 17 in front of the Castro Theatre in San Francisco to protest
Israeli support of the Frameline LGBT Film Festival....
Posted Jun 24, 2010
|
About 35 people met in the Five Points South neighborhood of Birmingham,
Ala., on June 19 to show solidarity with the besieged and invaded people of
Palestine and to protest the Freedom Flotilla massacre....
Posted Jun 24, 2010
|
Reporters for big media outlets owned by corporate giants are nevertheless
supposedly independent and unbiased. What happens if the U.S. government is
also paying them while their articles and broadcasts inflame the atmosphere
against defendants during a high-profile political trial?...
Posted Jun 24, 2010
|
When an Israeli cargo ship pulled into Berth 58 in the Port of Oakland on the
evening of June 20, there were no dockworkers on hand to unload it. Longshore
workers refused to cross a picket line of hundreds of labor and community
activists protesting Israel’s blockade of Gaza and its recent murderous
attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla....
Posted Jun 23, 2010
|
Thousands gathered in Detroit on June 22 at the place where Martin Luther King Jr.
had begun his June 1963 “I Have a Dream” march. They marched to
Cobo Hall for the start of the second U.S. Social Forum....
Posted Jun 23, 2010
|
Statement being distributed at the U.S. Social Forum
in Detroit....
Posted Jun 23, 2010
|
After decades of rapacious capitalist policies aimed at the weakening of the
trade union movement, the superexploitation of labor and the maintenance of
racism and national oppression against African Americans, Detroit is the
epicenter of the economic crisis in the United States....
Posted Jun 21, 2010
|
Workers World Party extends warm greetings and solidarity to the thousands of
progressive activists from around the country and the world who are gathering
in Detroit for the U.S. Social Forum....
Posted Jun 21, 2010
|
As a born-and-raised Detroiter and a socialist, the decision to attend the U.S.
Social Forum was a no-brainer for me. A gathering of thousands of folks from
all over the country (and the world), all dedicated to the creation of another
more peaceful, just, loving world? The possibility of not going never crossed
my mind...
Posted Jun 21, 2010
|
Will the rapid, unregulated expansion of hydraulic fracturing to extract
natural gas give way to the next major disaster in the oil and gas industry?
Three separate accidents in just one week signify that this could happen....
Posted Jun 19, 2010
|
A 24-hour strike by 12,000 members of the Minnesota Nurses Association
concluded at 7 a.m. on June 11. It was the single largest nursing strike in the history of the United States....
Posted Jun 19, 2010
|
Members of Local 2095 of the American Federation of State, County, and
Municipal Employees were joined by other unionists and community activists as
they picketed their workplace on June 10....
Posted Jun 19, 2010
|
From the time the first Africans set their feet on this New World, they
brought their rhythms and beats along....
Posted Jun 19, 2010
|
The New York branch of Workers World Party held a memorial June 12 for Sebastian Pernice,
a 1969 Stonewall Rebellion participant and Party
member who passed away on Feb. 1 at the age of 61 from lung cancer....
Posted Jun 19, 2010
|
Workers World Party and the International Action Center joined the Vets
for Peace contingent during Philadelphia’s annual lesbian, gay, bisexual
and transgender pride parade on June 13....
Posted Jun 19, 2010
|
Spirit Airline pilots strike | Co-Op City workers locked out | N.J. workers protest budget cuts | Day care closings protested in N.Y. | California nurses join one-day strike | Temple nurses win unemployment pay...
Posted Jun 19, 2010
|
Playing by the rules and priorities of the capitalist profit system means
surrender in one area of life after another when the workers, communities,
students and youth are under attack. Whether it is the fight for jobs, the
environment, housing, health care, or a decent retirement, the framework
established by capitalism leaves no way but to give in to the rich....
Posted Jun 17, 2010
|
While delegates were registering for the United Auto Workers 35th
Constitutional Convention outside Cobo Center in Detroit, about 50 militant
autoworkers demonstrated outside with the theme “1 million members lost
— It’s time to change course.” Among the chants were,
“Working people under attack — What does a union do? Fight
back!” and “A job is a right — We’re gonna fight,
fight, fight.”...
Posted Jun 17, 2010
|
A June 11 demonstration in San Antonio, Texas, to protest the killing of 14-year-old
Mexican student Sergio Adrián Hernández Huereka by a U.S. Border
Patrol agent placed the blame for his killing on the U.S.’s
militarization of its border with Mexico....
Posted Jun 16, 2010
|
The Workers World Party Bookstore will be open Tuesday through Friday,
June 22-25, from 10 a.m. until 10 p.m. during the U.S. Social Forum. It’s
located at 5920 Second Ave. in Detroit, one block west of Cass Avenue (at
Antoinette) and just north of Wayne State University. Every evening a coffee
house will take place at the same location from 7:30 until 10. On Friday, FIST
(Fight Imperialism, Stand Together) will hold a meeting for youth organizers
from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m....
Posted Jun 16, 2010
|
It is an unforgettable, heartbreaking image. A seabird from Grand Island, La.,
lies in a basket, covered with a thick brownish layer of oil, gasping for air
and blinking its eyes as if in stunned amazement.
...
Posted Jun 10, 2010
|
An important demonstration is scheduled for June 21 in Washington, D.C....
Posted Jun 10, 2010
|
On May 18 a resolution supporting a federal jobs program and opposing cuts to
federal youth programs was passed by the Raleigh City Council.
Chants of “A job is right, we gotta fight fight fight!” and
“Money for jobs and education, not for banks and incarceration!”
greeted Raleigh City Council members at recent meetings. Two well-attended
rallies at Raleigh City Council meetings on May 4 and May 18 were organized by
the Raleigh Peoples’ Assembly....
Posted Jun 10, 2010
|
A powerful and historic alliance has developed here between hotel and
restaurant workers represented by UNITE HERE and the lesbian/gay/bi/trans/queer
community, through support and struggle for each other’s causes....
Posted Jun 10, 2010
|
West Virginia Pride held its 14th annual LGBTQ Pride Parade/Festival in
the capital city of Charleston on June 6. ...
Posted Jun 10, 2010
|
The United Auto Workers union, whose 35th Constitutional Convention begins June
14, is celebrating its 75th anniversary this year. “I think we’ve
hit bottom,” stated outgoing President Ron Gettelfinger. (Detroit News,
May 28) He was referring to the union’s precipitous decline in membership
— from 1.5 million at its peak to 750,000 in 2001 to less than half that
today....
Posted Jun 10, 2010
|
“Separate and unequal, spent years under federal surveillance for
uplifting his people, when the pigs got fed-up the brother got set-up,”
Hasan Salaam rapped on May 28 during a CD-release benefit for political
prisoner Tarek Mehanna. Another performer featured on the album, Jen Waller,
sang, “I never hurt nobody, I never broke no laws, but if you struggle
for freedom, better hope you don’t get caught.”...
Posted Jun 10, 2010
|
On April 25, 2009, a concerned father dialed 911 and requested Cleveland
police mediation because he feared his adult daughter would drive her vehicle
after coming home from a dinner date where she’d consumed alcohol. ...
Posted Jun 10, 2010
|
The sound of the stock market crashing on June 4, when the Dow Jones Industrial
Average lost 324 points in one day, was the sound of Wall Street catching up to
economic developments.
...
Posted Jun 10, 2010
|
Protesters in dozens of cities — perhaps as many as a hundred —
across the U.S. are voicing a common demand for an end to the U.S.-backed
Israeli blockade of Gaza and an end to U.S. funding of Israel’s
occupation of Palestine....
Posted Jun 10, 2010
|
June 8 was the eighth day of a hunger strike being conducted by immigrant
youth....
Posted Jun 10, 2010
|
n the evening of
May 28 Anastasio Hernández Rojas, 42 years old, was tasered and beaten to
death by Border Patrol agents....
Posted Jun 10, 2010
|
The money the U.S. government will spend this year on the Pentagon and its
wars, past and present, is approaching the total of the budgets of all 50 U.S.
states combined....
Posted Jun 10, 2010
|
The capitalist politicians are beginning to realize that as BP’s
credibility declines, their own dubious records are increasingly called into
question. They know that the broad masses of people are stirring in response to
the crisis, so their anger and dismay are tinged with political fear and
mindless panic....
Posted Jun 7, 2010
|
Claiming a budget deficit, New York
City Mayor Bloomberg, a multibillionaire, is waging war against city workers
and every human service we need and deserve. There really is plenty of dough.
The problem is that the NYC government acts as a collection agency for taxpayer
dollars and hands it over to Wall Street and real estate developers....
Posted Jun 7, 2010
|
New Jersey’s reactionary Republican governor, Chris Christie, a former
federal prosecutor described by right-wing columnist George Will as
“America’s most interesting governor,” is trying to destroy
public education, public services and public-sector unions....
Posted Jun 7, 2010
|
Justice for Aiyana Jones | Separate and unequal | Statewide fight for quality education | Michigan violates treaty rights for mining giant...
Posted Jun 7, 2010
|
Applesauce workers strike | Shaw’s workers demand contract | Miners protest, denounce nonunion Massey | New election rules for air, rail workers | Unions demand ‘Boycott Arizona’ | Catfish workers take defiant stand...
Posted Jun 7, 2010
|
A Living Wage Rally was called by the Retail, Wholesale, Department Store union
on the steps of City Hall in New York City on May 25....
Posted Jun 7, 2010
|
A massive march filled the streets of downtown Phoenix on May 29 as close to
200,000 people gathered to denounce the racist SB 1070 law and show their
determination to fight back against this anti-immigrant attack. The streets
were packed from curb to curb for over three miles as demonstrators made their
way along the six-mile route that began at Steele Indian School Park, snaked
its way through downtown and ended at the state Capitol building....
Posted Jun 3, 2010
|
Protests in support of immigrants and against Arizona’s racist
anti-immigrant legislation were held across the U.S. in solidarity with a
national march and rally in Phoenix May 29 of 200,000 people. In many cities
demonstrators also targeted similar legislation being pushed in their states as
well as Obama’s failure to pass promised progressive national legislation
for immigrant rights....
Posted Jun 3, 2010
|
Chants of “G.O.P. you should know, hate in Texas has to go!”
greeted members of the Republican National Hispanic Assembly of Harris County
in Houston as they arrived at their monthly meeting on May 26. Texas State Rep.
Debbie Riddle was their special guest. Riddle is planning to introduce an
anti-immigrant, Arizona-type bill in the Texas Legislature in January....
Posted Jun 3, 2010
|
Applicants for firefighting jobs in Chicago were jubilant after a May 24
Supreme Court ruling that stated they did not wait too long to seek legal
redress after a 1995 test proved to be discriminatory against African
Americans. The decision allowed the case of some 6,000 African Americans to
proceed....
Posted Jun 3, 2010
|
May 31 marked the anniversary of the 1921 Tulsa, Okla., race
“riot.” The so-called riot was actually an 18-hour massacre of
approximately 300 Black people, perpetrated by white residents in the
segregated section of Greenwood. It was accompanied by the displacement and
ethnic cleansing of 10,000 Black residents who were driven out of town....
Posted Jun 3, 2010
|
Harlem’s 125th Street was the site of a “Post-Katrina/Rita
Awareness Walk” on May 29. The purpose of the walk, attended by more than
60 people, was to protest that the issues arising after Hurricanes Katrina and
Rita in 2005 have not been resolved....
Posted Jun 3, 2010
|
It was front-page news. General Motors, for the first time in three years,
posted a profit — and no small profit. In January, February and March
combined GM raked in $865 million....
Posted May 28, 2010
|
WW writer Martha Grevatt received the following letter from a reader
in Cuba after the recent publicationof Part 1 of “Two Choices for UAW.”...
Posted May 28, 2010
|
The People’s Organization for Progress, along with other community
and political organizations, held a rally and march on May 22 to demand an end
to evictions and foreclosures throughout New Jersey. The protest was held in
the majority African-American city of Newark, which has the largest population
in the state and one of the highest poverty rates in the U.S....
Posted May 28, 2010
|
Anger exists in Cleveland against the routine brutal practices of the police
department. Over 11,500 people have watched the YouTube video of cops attacking
DeAsia Bronaugh and Destiny Bronaugh, two African-American high school students
and sisters, as they participated in a peaceful student walkout at Collinwood
High School against mass school closings and cutbacks....
Posted May 28, 2010
|
Dozens of protesters rallied on May 24 outside the City University of N.Y.
Research Foundation headquarters in midtown Manhattan to demand that
Professional Staff Congress members at the New York City Tech, LaGuardia
Community College and Graduate Center Research Foundations receive a fair first
contract....
Posted May 28, 2010
|
Twins Cities nurses vote to strike | National Nurses Week ‘on the move’ | Women’s bias suit against Wal-Mart | Women win lawsuit against Novartis | Defend union rights in Mexico...
Posted May 28, 2010
|
Seven-year-old Aiyana Jones, who was killed by a Detroit police special unit
team that raided her home on May 16, was eulogized on May 22 at Second Ebenezer
Church on the city’s east side. The city remains shocked and angered over
the shooting and subsequent efforts by Mayor Dave Bing’s administration
and the police to shift responsibility for the unprovoked killing to the recent
rash in violence that has hit Detroit....
Posted May 27, 2010
|
Momentum is growing internationally for the United States Social Forum to be
held June 22-26 in Detroit. Tens of thousands of progressive activists are
expected to attend....
Posted May 27, 2010
|
Immigrant students and their supporters in Houston held a press conference
and demonstration outside the federal building in solidarity with students
arrested four days earlier in Arizona....
Posted May 27, 2010
|
The Texas State Board of Education began a campaign a few months ago of
proposed revisions to the Texas social studies curriculum. Discussions ranged
from whether President Ronald Reagan should get more attention (yes); whether
hip-hop should be included as part of lessons on culture (no); and whether
Confederate president Jefferson Davis’ inaugural address should be
studied alongside Abraham Lincoln’s (yes)....
Posted May 27, 2010
|
In an outstanding contribution to the music of the world’s peoples, the
renowned Irish artists, The Chieftains, have produced a stunning new compact
disc entitled “San Patricio.” It is a tribute and a history lesson,
set to music....
Posted May 27, 2010
|
Momentum is growing for the national march to stop SB 1070 to be held May 29 in
Phoenix. The march will demand the repeal of SB 1070, Arizona’s
“Show me your papers” law, and an end to racist immigrant-bashing
and the blaming of immigrants for economic and social problems which in reality
result from the capitalist economic crisis....
Posted May 26, 2010
|
At approximately 1 p.m. on May 21, more than a dozen people occupied the
Tucson Headquarters of the U.S. Border Patrol to draw attention to impacts of
border militarization in Indigenous Communities. Six people, including Alex
Soto, a member of the Tohono O’odham Nation and a volunteer with the
group O’odham Solidarity Across Borders, locked themselves together for
up to three and a half hours. “Indigenous voices have been ignored. In
our action today we say NO MORE!” said Soto....
Posted May 26, 2010
|
Imperialist plunder of natural resources and the attempt to colonize an entire
nation and its people is the sum of the history between the U.S. and
Mexico.
And today, not only do Mexicans and other immigrants have to seriously endanger
themselves, even die to cross that border, Mexicans living on this side of the
border cannot even study that history....
Posted May 26, 2010
|
Rebecca Whitby and her family are celebrating a temporary reprieve. Judge
Stuart Friedman declared a mistrial on May 14 before the jury had even been
selected. The charges, including resisting arrest and obstruction, that Whitby
and her mother are facing arose from the brutal beating of Whitby by police in
the family’s home in April 2009 and her mother’s attempts to
protect her daughter from repeated punches in the face....
Posted May 23, 2010
|
Jim Crow injustice has not ended in the state of Mississippi, certainly not for
Gladys and Jamie Scott. The sisters have been unjustly incarcerated in a
Mississippi prison for 16 years for a crime they did not commit....
Posted May 23, 2010
|
New York Gov. David Paterson decided at the end of April to force the
state’s unionized workers to give up raises and other contract
improvements by slapping them with a one-day furlough. Since the budget was
overdue and New York is facing a $9.2 billion deficit, he pushed the furlough
through the state Legislature on May 10 by threatening to shut down the state
government if it didn’t pass his bill....
Posted May 23, 2010
|
On May 11, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer signed into law House Bill 2281, which
eliminates ethnic studies programs from the state’s K-12 schools. This
came just three weeks after she signed the repugnant anti-immigrant Senate Bill
1070....
Posted May 21, 2010
|
Dozens of opponents of Arizona’s apartheid law criminalizing
immigrants gathered in front of Turner Field in Atlanta on May 15 to hold a
“Don’t Play Ball with the State of Hate” pep rally, complete
with a band, cheerleaders, street theater, large banners and signs....
Posted May 21, 2010
|
On March 29, Jessica Colotl was a high-achieving senior majoring in political
science and French at Kennesaw State University and looking forward to
graduating in a few months. Her life abruptly changed when a campus cop pulled
her over for “impeding the flow of traffic” as she was entering a
university parking lot....
Posted May 21, 2010
|
When a supposed attempt to set off a car bomb in New York City fizzled in early
May, with no one injured, a massive government investigation was launched to
bring the alleged “terrorists” to justice.
Yet 25 years ago, when the authorities dropped a bomb on the roof of the MOVE
house in West Philadelphia, causing a fire that killed 11 men, women and
children and destroyed 61 homes, this act of terror against an African-American
community resulted only in a government cover-up....
Posted May 21, 2010
|
Whether it is Virginia or Arizona, racist
reminders are to be found everywhere, including in the once pro-Confederate
state of Maryland, as members of the Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition (NYC) were
reminded of on their trip to Washington, D.C., on April 26....
Posted May 21, 2010
|
The big picture is that the global profit system of capitalism is in a crisis
that is enveloping more and more workers on all continents. The fate of workers
everywhere is deeply interconnected....
Posted May 20, 2010
|
As millions of gallons of crude oil continue to spew into the Gulf of Mexico,
the owner of the collapsed oil rig that caused the disaster is trying
desperately to elude responsibility for what has already cost the lives of 11
workers and threatens to become the worst oil catastrophe in U.S. history....
Posted May 20, 2010
|
The Raleigh/Wake County People’s Assembly organized a rally on May 8
in front of a Raleigh, N.C., City Council meeting to demand that the city advocate for
a federally funded public jobs program....
Posted May 20, 2010
|
Roughly 600 employees of Delta Pride Catfish, Inc., mostly African-American
women, may go on strike soon. ...
Posted May 20, 2010
|
Just days before the great Lena Horne passed away on May 9 at the age of 92, I
was watching one of my all-time favorite movie musicals, “Stormy
Weather.” The groundbreaking 1943 movie featured an incredibly talented
all-Black cast that included Horne, then a 26-year-old singer, and the
legendary tap dancer Bill “Bojangles” Robinson. Also in the cast
were Cab Calloway and his orchestra, the Nicholas Brothers and the Katherine
Dunham dance troupe....
Posted May 20, 2010
|
|
While leafleting outside Cleveland’s Collinwood High School in support of
police brutality survivor Rebecca Whitby, some activists met 16-year-old
student Seth Bartlekamp. He announced a student walkout on May 13 to oppose the
impending closing of 16 city schools and layoffs of 800 teachers and other
school employees across the city’s school district....
Posted May 19, 2010
|
Some 300 students from Hope High School here walked out of class on May 13.
They marched first to the Providence School Department, where 200 other
students joined them. Their numbers swelled to 500 for the final leg of their
march to Providence City Hall, where they took control of the building from top
to bottom for half an hour....
Posted May 19, 2010
|
Seven British Petroleum executives gathered on the Deepwater Horizon drilling
platform in the Gulf of Mexico on April 20 to “celebrate the
project’s safety record.” Considering the dismal past safety
performance of BP, the rig’s owner, this would seem to have been a hollow
exercise. Several miles below them, natural forces were preparing to spoil
their party in a deadly way....
Posted May 16, 2010
|
Election results in the Sudan national elections returned President Omar Hassan
al-Bashir to power in Africa’s largest geographic nation-state. The
ruling National Congress Party won an overwhelming majority with President
Bashir gaining 68 percent of the vote and the frist vice-president and
president of South Sudan, Salva Kiir, taking 93 percent in the southern
region....
Posted May 16, 2010
|
The U.S. war against the Vietnamese people continues, though it officially
ended 35 years ago. The poisonous legacy of the war — the contamination
of the land with chemicals like dioxin in Agent Orange — continues to
maim millions of Vietnamese, now into the third generation....
Posted May 16, 2010
|
As the Boycott Arizona movement continues to resonate throughout the U.S. in
response to the racist, anti-immigrant Senate Bill 1070, sports world figures
are taking a unique and progressive stand. On May 5 — recognized as Cinco
de Mayo, a Mexican holiday — the National Basketball Association team the
Phoenix Suns decided to show their opposition to the racist bill by wearing
jerseys emblazoned with “Los Suns.”...
Posted May 15, 2010
|
Ever since the signing of Arizona’s racist SB 1070, protests and outrage
against this apartheid-like law have continued nonstop. In addition to the
protests and demonstrations demanding the repeal of SB 1070, the call for
“Boycott Arizona!” has emerged and caught fire....
Posted May 15, 2010
|
Guru, a giant of hip-hop music, of Black culture and of entertainment in
general died April 19 from multiple myeloma at the young age of 47, weeks after
he went into cardiac arrest and lapsed into a coma. Guru (Gifted Unlimited
Rhymes Universal), originally named Keith Elam, was one of the founding members
of the pioneering group Gang Starr, along with D.J. Premier....
Posted May 15, 2010
|
Nurses on the move in D.C. | FLOC demands rights for tobacco workers | CIW continue fight for tomato workers | Over two hundred groups support Employment Non-Discrimination Act | Calif. teachers pass resolution to end Afghan war...
Posted May 15, 2010
|
Home defender Keith Sadler and six supporters are out of jail after their
arrest during a home invasion and forced eviction by the Wood County SWAT team
early May 7. While the paramilitary police stormed Sadler’s home, about
30 supporters rallied outside in the pouring rain chanting,
“Keith’s house!” The SWAT home invasion and the arrests were
recorded and photographed...
Posted May 13, 2010
|
Hundreds of homeless men receive shelter every night at the Task Force for the
Homeless building on Peachtree and Pine streets in midtown Atlanta. Through the
machinations and dirty dealings of a cabal of speculators, corporate heads and
politicians, they are being threatened with eviction....
Posted May 13, 2010
|
An essay by Harvard Prof. Henry Louis Gates Jr. in the April 23 New York Times
took up the ongoing contentious debate around the demand for reparations for
the centuries of unpaid labor extracted from Africans brought to the United
States as enslaved workers. Gates claims that the demand for reparations is
invalid since there were some Africans who collaborated with European slave
traders in dislocating millions of people from the continent between the 16th
and 19th centuries....
Posted May 13, 2010
|
On March 3 Lucasville uprising prisoner Greg Curry took a stand against
relentless harassment by guards at Ohio State Penitentiary....
Posted May 13, 2010
|
Several hundred angry New York state workers gathered in downtown Buffalo
May 10 to protest threatened furloughs, chanting “Cut back Wall Street,
Not Main Street!”...
Posted May 13, 2010
|
In a powerful, energetic and inspiring day of action, activists, unemployed
people, students and youth, and community organizers from across the East Coast
and Midwest converged on the Department of Labor on May 8 to honor the 75th
anniversary of the Works Projects Administration — by demanding a
concrete jobs program, now. They then held a meeting to strategize around their
demands and plan future events....
Posted May 12, 2010
|
Workers gathered outside the San Francisco Federal Building to
demand a “real jobs program” for the millions of unemployed in this
country. Organized by the San Francisco Bail Out the People Movement, this May
8 protest commemorated the 75th anniversary of the Works Projects
Administration, the depression-era jobs program that put millions of unemployed
back to work. The protest also demanded that the government do whatever it
takes to create jobs needed by the more than 30 million unemployed....
Posted May 12, 2010
|
On a breezy May 8 morning, a school bus filled with activists left the Bail Out
the People Movement office in Baltimore and headed for the Protest For a Jobs
Program in Washington, D.C....
Posted May 12, 2010
|
Hundreds of high school students and community members, many of them gay and
lesbian youth and all of them opponents of lesbian/gay/bi/trans oppression,
counter-demonstrated against seven members of the notoriously anti-LGBT and
anti- Semitic Westboro Baptist Church on May 6 in Atlanta....
Posted May 12, 2010
|
Virginia Gov. Robert McDonnell recently issued a proclamation designating April
as “Confederate Heritage Month.” This was done initially without
even mentioning the Atlantic slave trade or the economic system that was built
from the labor of African people brought to North America between the 17th and
19th centuries....
Posted May 7, 2010
|
Supporters are urgently needed at Keith Sadler’s home in Stony Ridge,
Ohio, just outside of Toledo. On May 2 Sadler and five supporters barricaded
themselves inside the home to protest the bank’s foreclosure and eviction
of Sadler from his home of 20 years....
Posted May 7, 2010
|
Hate crimes against the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities are
far from rare in the United States. In many cases, it is not just hate-filled
bigots who commit these crimes, but the government itself.
A recent case in Sonoma County, Calif., shows how a local government
disregarded its own laws in order to terrorize, repress and rob two elderly gay
men....
Posted May 7, 2010
|
Chanting, “Hey, hey, ho, ho, it’s back to work we go!” nurses
and allied professional staff at Temple University Hospital returned to their
jobs on April 30 after a successful strike that lasted more than four weeks.
The nurses’ victory strikes a blow for organized labor in the
Philadelphia area....
Posted May 7, 2010
|
In the Gulf of Mexico, a churning, swelling slick of dense, rust-colored oil
the size of Puerto Rico is threatening to overwhelm a huge portion of not only
the natural habitat, but also the human infrastructure of the entire
southeastern coast of the United States. The oil leak is an ongoing calamity
that some experts say could become the worst petroleum spill in history....
Posted May 6, 2010
|
Despite industry claims that the rapidly expanding practice of hydraulic
fracturing to extract natural gas from deep underground shale layers is
“perfectly safe,” on April 15 the Pennsylvania Department of
Environmental Protection fined Houston-based Cabot Oil and Gas $240,000 for
causing the contamination of 14 residential water wells in Dimock Township,
Pa....
Posted May 6, 2010
|
The New York City Central Labor Council, in conjunction with the National
People’s Action, held a march on Wall Street April 29....
Posted May 6, 2010
|
It was a significant event that not even the big-business-owned press could
ignore, hard as they wanted to do. May Day 2010 in the United States was the
largest national outpouring of protests since the May Day Immigrant Uprising of
2006, when millions of people, the great majority of Latin American and
Caribbean origin, took to the streets against the reactionary Sensenbrenner
bill that denied full immigrant rights....
Posted May 5, 2010
|
May Day at Union Square in New York was a stunning sight as thousands poured into the park
to send a resounding message of repudiation against the recently passed SB1071
law in Arizona. They demanded legalization for the undocumented as well as
jobs, housing, education and social services for all....
Posted May 5, 2010
|
Eyewitness reports from some of the cities where May
Day activities were held. Other protests took place in Boston, Chicago, Dallas,
Miami, Minneapolis, Trenton, N.J., and elsewhere....
Posted May 5, 2010
|
There have been growing
protests at stadiums where the Major League Baseball team Arizona Diamondbacks
play. The team’s owners financially backed Republican legislators who
supported and pushed through the bill....
Posted May 5, 2010
|
Four years ago on May Day millions of immigrants and their supporters forced
the capitalist government to back away from the vicious, anti-immigrant
Sensenbrenner bill.
This May Day more than 1 million immigrants and supporters demonstrating in
more than 100 cities sent a powerful message to anti-immigrant racist forces in
Arizona to drop their police-state, apartheid law that legalizes racial
profiling....
Posted May 5, 2010
|
The big business media is focusing all eyes on Wall Street, Goldman Sachs and
the question of financial regulatory reform. An economic recovery has been
declared and now attention is being shifted to a supposedly
“titanic” battle shaping up between the bankers and the Obama
administration over reforming the financial system....
Posted May 2, 2010
|
Health care activists from the Private Health Insurance Must Go! Coalition, in
collaboration with Healthcare-NOW!, Physicians for a National Health Program
(N.Y. Metro chapter) and Single Payer New York, gathered at St. Luke’s
Hospital on April 24 to discuss moving forward in the fight for universal
health care in the U.S....
Posted May 2, 2010
|
Two major developments in Detroit have highlighted the struggle against
ruling-class attempts to privatize the public education system and impose a
massive “rightsizing” plan that would dislocate thousands of
residents....
Posted May 2, 2010
|
Rio Tinto lockout protested | Study shows low nurse-patient ratio saves lives | NYC building workers’ strike averted | S.F. Labor Council supports May Day | Two pro-labor lawyers appointed to NLRB...
Posted May 2, 2010
|
The day celebrated for over a century as an emblem of
workers’ power, May Day seems to have become a symbol of its fall....
Posted May 2, 2010
|
Besides the ones in Arizona itself, protests in the United States and abroad
greeted a new Arizona anti-immigrant bill that was signed into law on April
23....
Posted May 1, 2010
|
Myth: Immigrants are taking jobs away...
Posted May 1, 2010
|
After four weeks on the picket line, 1,500 nurses and allied professional
workers at Temple University Hospital forced management to back down on
contract proposals that demanded severe concessions from the workers. The
nurses’ victory in this confrontation strikes a blow for all workers who
face concessions in upcoming contracts....
Posted May 1, 2010
|
In one of the largest protests in Illinois in years, more than 15,000
workers and students from across the state descended on the state Capitol in
Springfield, Ill., April 21....
Posted May 1, 2010
|
Arizona’s reactionary new anti-immigrant law has given another impulse to
the already growing pressure for powerful May Day marches around the U.S.
focusing on immigrant rights....
Posted Apr 29, 2010
|
Various events took place in the U.S. and worldwide on April 24 to
celebrate the 56th birthday of African-American political prisoner, Mumia
Abu-Jamal. The main birthday wish echoed in each event was a demand for freedom
for the award-winning journalist and former Black Panther....
Posted Apr 29, 2010
|
Capping off a weekend of global celebrations of political prisoner Mumia
Abu-Jamal’s 56th birthday on April 24, supporters gathered in Washington,
D.C., on April 26....
Posted Apr 29, 2010
|
Anyone who still believes that the U.S. is the most democratic and just country
in the world has only to examine the shocking case of the Scott sisters to be
disabused of that erroneous notion. While this case is becoming more and more
well-known by word of mouth, mainly on the Internet, the 16-year-old case has
never received the national and international media attention that it so richly
deserves. The facts of the case will explain the reason why....
Posted Apr 29, 2010
|
Arizona’s sweeping, racist anti-immigrant bill has unleashed a firestorm
of outrage from Arizona’s oppressed communities. Even before Gov. Jan
Brewer signed it into law on April 23, Arizona students and youths had called
for protests of all kinds. The May Day action is expected to demonstrate this
outrage....
Posted Apr 28, 2010
|
Despite all the assurances by Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, the recent passing of
Senate Bill 1070 is a racist attack against the U.S. working class. SB 1070
— which uses local police forces to question people about their
documentation, and criminalizes immigrant workers — smacks of South
African apartheid and a host of other repressive laws from U.S. history and
elsewhere....
Posted Apr 28, 2010
|
On April 21, a very spirited rally by more than 1,200 striking nurses,
professional staff and their family members and other supporters gathered
outside Temple University Hospital, as the nurses’ strike that began on
March 31 entered its fourth week....
Posted Apr 25, 2010
|
|
Support for striking Temple University Hospital nurses and professional staff
is gaining momentum among community-based organizations, which will be holding
a benefit on April 29 to collect supplies needed by the strikers’
families....
Posted Apr 24, 2010
|
A report released April 14 by RealtyTrac reveals that the foreclosure crisis is
deeper and broader than ever. Another report by the Congressional Oversight
Panel formed to oversee the government’s response to the crisis, which
harshly criticized the Treasury Department’s efforts as
“ineffective,” shows that some in the capitalist class are very
worried....
Posted Apr 24, 2010
|
Syracuse University students marched through the center of campus on April 16,
banged on pots and pans, drummed and chanted to oppose a corporate
“takeover” of their commencement. The SU administration has invited
CEO Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase, the second-largest bank in the U.S., to
speak to the 2010 graduating class on May 15....
Posted Apr 24, 2010
|
|
Labor, community, student and political activists packed the North Carolina
Association of Teachers auditorium here on April 10 for the 27th Annual Martin
Luther King Support for Labor banquet organized by the Black Workers For
Justice....
Posted Apr 22, 2010
|
On April 11, Black Workers For Justice hosted an
activists’ brunch in Raleigh, N.C., featuring a presentation by Larry Holmes, a leader
of the Bail Out the People Movement from New York.
Holmes motivated the upcoming May 8 Jobs rally and strategizing meeting in
Washington, D.C....
Posted Apr 22, 2010
|
The International Action Center, Denver, in association with Aurora Cop Watch,
presented an evening in solidarity with Mumia Abu-Jamal on April 11. This
meeting served to update local activists and the community on recent events in
the court case of this famous political prisoner....
Posted Apr 22, 2010
|
Next year the United Auto Workers union will commemorate its 75th anniversary.
Highlights from the union’s history — the great sit-downs of
1936-37, the long and bitter General Motors strike after World War II, and
subsequent strikes that institutionalized annual wage increases, a
cost-of-living allowance, supplementary unemployment benefits, pensions,
cradle-to-grave health coverage for autoworkers and their dependents, and more
— will feature prominently during the UAW’s 35th Constitutional
Convention this June 14-17 in Detroit....
Posted Apr 22, 2010
|
In the early morning hours of April 15, agents from Immigration and Customs
Enforcement, the FBI and other Homeland Security agencies launched a military
operation against Tucson’s mostly Latino/a and Indigenous south side
neighborhoods. Activist Kat Rodriguez said: “What we have experienced for the
last six hours is the terrorization of our community. People are afraid to
leave their home, afraid to go shopping, afraid to go to the hospital, afraid
to go anywhere.”...
Posted Apr 21, 2010
|
On April 17, the openly Nazi group NSM held a rally at Los Angeles City Hall.
Many groups, including socialist, anti-war and anti-racist organizations,
mobilized to challenge their so-called right to free speech that motivates
violence, racism and genocide against non-European peoples and the LGBTQ
community....
Posted Apr 21, 2010
|
The Securities and Exchange Commission has leveled sensational charges of
multi-billion-dollar fraud against the investment banking firm Goldman Sachs.
That this comes just when the bank is reporting a 91 percent increase in its
first-quarter profit over last year is sure to inflame even greater public
anger at the Wall Street institution.
What every class-conscious worker should be aware of, however, is that the SEC
has put the spotlight on only one limited operation by a larcenous, global
financial power, while shielding the rest of the banking system and capitalism
itself from criticism....
Posted Apr 21, 2010
|
On April 15 the Southern California Immigration
Coalition and the United for Immigration Reform Coalition held a public press
conference in downtown Los Angeles. All of the major coalitions in Los Angeles
came together in a historic show of unity to invite the community to one united
march and rally on May 1, International Workers Day. The May Day action in
downtown Los Angeles will demand immigration reform in 2010....
Posted Apr 21, 2010
|
In New York City a young man is being held under conditions that are
described in international law as severe torture. This prisoner, named Fahad
Hashmi, has not been convicted of any crime and has no prior criminal record.
Yet he has been held in almost total extended isolation for the past three
years....
Posted Apr 21, 2010
|
A standing-room-only crowd of activists gathered April 7 to continue building
for the May Day rally at New York’s Union Square. The joint meeting of the May 1 Coalition for Worker and Immigrant Rights and
the Bail Out the People Movement included
members of immigrant communities and unions, and also representatives from the
March 4 student actions for education. In a spirited discussion, they reported
on the widespread organizing efforts under way for the May 1 action....
Posted Apr 18, 2010
|
Faced with organized public opposition from Ohio to Pennsylvania, companies
that profit from the expansion of natural gas wells using hydraulic fracturing
in the Marcellus Shale region are engaged in a campaign to sell the idea that
the practice is entirely safe, despite mounting evidence to the contrary....
Posted Apr 18, 2010
|
From April 8 to 11 the bigoted Westboro Baptist Church — infamous for
promoting hate speech and fascist propaganda against lesbian, gay, bi, trans
and queer communities — orchestrated a hate tour in Charleston, W.Va.,
but were met with strong opposition....
Posted Apr 18, 2010
|
University of California-Berkeley students, faculty members and community
supporters turned out April 5 in the pouring rain on Sproul Plaza, the
birthplace of the Free Speech Movement in 1964, to support nearly 100 students
facing suspension for their participation in student protests last fall. They
held a spirited rally despite the poor weather....
Posted Apr 18, 2010
|
Among the many so-called “Tea Party” actions mobilizing right-wing
forces on the pretext of opposing paying taxes was one called by a local New
York City group, which seemed to be based in Staten Island. The Tax Day rally,
however, was set at the Central Post Office across from Madison Square Garden
in Manhattan....
Posted Apr 17, 2010
|
The strike at Temple University Hospital in north Philadelphia that began March
31 is heading into its third week. Hospital administrators are demonstrating
their lack of concern over patient safety and are ready to spend whatever it
takes to break the union representing more than 1,500 nurses and
professional/technical staff....
Posted Apr 17, 2010
|
Across the U.S., in at least 10 states, food service workers employed by the
giant multinational corporation Sodexo are actively fighting to win union
rights and recognition. In the metropolitan Atlanta area, students at five
campuses — including Emory University, Georgia Tech and Morehouse College
— have joined together to combat attempts by company management and
university officials to threaten and intimidate the workers....
Posted Apr 17, 2010
|
NYC building workers set to strike | Hotel workers’ actions across U.S. | DOL workers ‘ready to march’ | S.F. Labor demands jobs for all...
Posted Apr 17, 2010
|
F.O. Richardson, who everyone called “Richie,” was still in
his teens when he jumped into France on the night of June 5, 1944, the eve of
the allied landing at Normandy....
Posted Apr 17, 2010
|
|
A community meeting was held March 27 to announce the launching of an
independent investigation into the assassination of Imam Luqman Ameen Abdullah.
The event was held at the Historic New Bethel Baptist Church on Detroit’s
West Side, just several blocks east of the location of the Masjid al-Haqq
mosque, where Abdullah served as leader for more than two decades....
Posted Apr 15, 2010
|
On April 7 hundreds of Cleveland union members rallied to support 300 workers
fighting to keep the Hugo Boss men’s suit factory open....
Posted Apr 15, 2010
|
The corporate media may give it a different spin, but for
Palin and Wall Street’s Tea Party, Boston was a bust.
The day started with immediate tension as Bail Out the People Movement
activists and the mostly Haitian-origin staff of Steelworkers Local 8751
unfurled their banner in the middle of the Tea Party’s rally....
Posted Apr 14, 2010
|
A visit of the “Tea Party Express” to cities in the Midwest —
a region of the country that has been most devastated by the economic crisis of
capitalism — did not go unchallenged. Rather, activists and community
members confronted them at several stops to denounce the right-wing attempt to
divide working and oppressed people and to show that the racist, sexist,
anti-lesbian-gay-bi-trans, anti-immigrant, corporate-funded Tea Party does not
speak for working people....
Posted Apr 14, 2010
|
Few autoworkers have heard of Maynards, yet the company that brags of being
“one of the pre-eminent liquidation, auction and appraisal companies in
North America” is playing a major role in the current phase of capitalist
restructuring — in this case “destructuring.”...
Posted Apr 14, 2010
|
Constance McMillen, an 18-year-old senior at Itawamba Agricultural High School
in the small town of Fulton, Miss., just wanted to do what millions of high
school students around the country look forward to every spring: get dressed
up, go to prom and have a great time. But McMillen is a lesbian. She wanted to
take her girlfriend to the prom. She wanted to wear a tuxedo....
Posted Apr 14, 2010
|
The Boston chapter of the Bail Out the People Movement will be holding
a protest against Sarah Palin and the Tea Party on April 14 at 9:30 a.m. The
protest will take place at the Boston Common Bandstand, where these extreme
ultraright reactionaries will be holding a rally....
Posted Apr 11, 2010
|
President Barack Obama announced a new energy plan on March 31 that includes a
huge new expansion of oil and natural gas drilling along the eastern, southern
and Alaskan shores of the United States....
Posted Apr 11, 2010
|
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer signed a state budget for 2011 that slashes $1.1
billion from needed social programs, eliminates more state workers and cripples
public education and health care. While preparing this anti-worker and anti-poor budget, legislators whipped up
anti-immigrant racism by introducing a series of bills targeting the Latino/a
and immigrant communities. These laws are designed to terrorize the oppressed communities while confusing
and disorienting the white workers who are losing their jobs, their savings and
their homes in record numbers....
Posted Apr 9, 2010
|
On April 3, day four of their continued effort to win a fair contract, striking
nurses from Temple University Hospital brought their case to the doorstep of a
luxury condominium in Rittenhouse Square — the home of Temple University
President Ann Weaver Hart. If Hart didn’t get the message, her neighbors
and visitors in the park clearly heard it....
Posted Apr 9, 2010
|
Almost one thousand immigrants and their supporters took their demands for
comprehensive immigration reform to the streets of Houston on March 21....
Posted Apr 9, 2010
|
‘”They say cut back, we say fight back!” demanded
protesters outside Granby High School on March 24 in Norfolk, Va., home to the
largest U.S. naval base....
Posted Apr 9, 2010
|
On April 1, Scott Roeder was sentenced to life in prison for murdering Dr.
George Tiller. Kansas District Judge Warren Wilbert ordered him to serve 50
years without parole....
Posted Apr 9, 2010
|
In the first action of its type during the current U.S. wars in Iraq,
Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Berkeley, Calif., City Council on March 9 passed
a resolution entitled, “Universal and Unconditional Amnesty for Iraq,
Afghanistan, and Pakistan War Military Resisters and Veterans Who Acted In
Opposition to the War for Matters of Conscience.”...
Posted Apr 9, 2010
|
Jordan Miles is one of millions of young Black people in the United States
trying to escape the deplorable conditions the racist capitalist establishment
subjects African Americans to on a daily basis....
Posted Apr 8, 2010
|
BAYAN USA joins the millions of Filipinos in the United States
and around the world in taking collective offense to the tasteless remarks
recently made by radio personality Adam Carolla regarding Manny Pacquiao, the
Philippines and the Filipino people on his nationally syndicated show,
“The Adam Carolla Podcast.” We also agree with the demand that
Carolla issue an official apology for his insensitive and vulgar insinuations
about [world boxing welterweight champion] Manny Pacquiao, Filipinos, and most
especially Filipina women and children in the sex trade industry....
Posted Apr 8, 2010
|
Students at Syracuse University are mobilizing to stop the head banker of
JPMorgan Chase from delivering their 2010 graduation address in May....
Posted Apr 8, 2010
|
Writers for Mumia, an afternoon of readings and testimonials by poets,
playwrights, journalists, book authors, wordsmiths and activists, will be held
April 24 from 2:30 to 6 p.m. at St. Mary’s Church, 512 W. 126th St. in
Harlem. The New York Chapter of the National Writers Union and the Free Mumia
Abu-Jamal Coalition of New York City are co-sponsoring the event....
Posted Apr 8, 2010
|
Due to the insatiable greed of the Massey Energy Co., 25 coal miners
at the Upper Big Branch mine in Julian, W.V., died April 5 in an explosion at a
mine cited repeatedly for improperly venting methane gas....
Posted Apr 7, 2010
|
A new round of rallies and demonstrations began during the week of March 29 in
efforts to halt the closing of 45 schools and other attacks involving the
downsizing of Detroit and the sale of the nonprofit Medical Center. Residents
came out in the hundreds to community meetings seeking answers and methods of
struggle to stop the escalating attacks on the largely African-American and
working-class municipality....
Posted Apr 7, 2010
|
On March 29 more than 500 Detroit workers, retirees and community members
filled the Detroit City Council’s auditorium to oppose the $6 billion
giveaway of city pension assets initiated by Mayor Dave Bing....
Posted Apr 7, 2010
|
Cheerleaders for capitalism are talking out of both sides of their mouths about
the latest job numbers, which showed the creation of 162,000 jobs in March. However, a few lines further down came the bad news: “The economy needs
to add more than 100,000 jobs a month just to absorb new entrants into the
labor market, let alone provide a livelihood for the 15 million Americans
already looking for work. Without constant, robust growth, the unemployment
rate won’t budge....
Posted Apr 7, 2010
|
Even as the minutes slipped away before her spouse was to be put to death,
Sandrine Ageorges-Skinner never lost hope that he would win a reprieve....
Posted Apr 5, 2010
|
Community activists with the Network to Stop Foreclosures and Evictions held a
picket line March 23 in front of the law offices of Cohn, Goldberg and Deutsch,
LLC, a foreclosure firm. They were protesting to save the home of Renee
Washington DeFreitas. Bank of America began the foreclosure process before it
even reviewed her application for a loan modification....
Posted Apr 5, 2010
|
From San Francisco to Boston and points between, angry workers are showing up
at banks demanding, “Good jobs now! Make Wall Street pay!” The
AFL-CIO is organizing 200 actions across the U.S., targeting six large
bailed-out banks: Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Citibank, Goldman Sachs,
JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo/Wachovia....
Posted Apr 5, 2010
|
On March 24, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority continued to swing its
budget axe, eliminating two major subway lines and dozens of buses in New York
City....
Posted Apr 5, 2010
|
Rio Tinto withdraws illegal demands | Janitors win in Minneapolis | Media workers fight cutbacks | U. of Wis. faculty, research assistants organizing...
Posted Apr 5, 2010
|
With 30 million unemployed or underemployed, the failure of the just-signed
health care law to meet the needs and expectations of the population, plus its
giveaway to the health care industry, is bound to add to the frustration and
alienation of the workers....
Posted Apr 2, 2010
|
While thousands protested the Iraq and Afghanistan wars on March 20 and
hundreds of thousands rallied for immigrant rights in Washington on March 21,
several thousand people interested in Marxism participated in the Left Forum at
Pace University in NYC for a struggle over ideas....
Posted Apr 2, 2010
|
The looming threat of a return to the dark days of Jim Crow segregation has
ignited a broad struggle against the racist new Raleigh school board
majority.
On March 23, the board was scheduled to take the second of two votes needed to
dismantle the system’s busing program and move to a “neighborhood
schools” model. It would mean the resegregation of the school system....
Posted Apr 1, 2010
|
In response to Mayor Thomas M. Menino’s announced massive defunding of
and charter privatization program for Boston’s public schools, over 2,000
people shut down the streets surrounding a building where Menino’s
hand-picked Boston School Committee was voting on March 24 to approve nearly
$60 million in budget cuts. The boisterous protest was organized by the Boston
Teachers Union, the Coalition for Equal Quality Education, Boston Public
Schools Custodians, and the Boston School Bus Drivers Union to demand,
“Full Funding for Public Education, No Budget Cuts!”...
Posted Apr 1, 2010
|
A citywide meeting held March 27 at the Central United Methodist Church in
downtown Detroit called for a united effort to address the escalating attacks
against working people, including school closures, education and other public
sector layoffs, and plans to seize municipal pension funds, downsize the city
and sell the Medical Center to an outside Tennessee-based corporation....
Posted Apr 1, 2010
|
“The Last Truck: The Closing of a GM Plant” was shown March 26 at
the Cleveland International Film Festival. The 2009 film portrays, through
autoworkers’ eyes, the process leading up to the closing of a General
Motors assembly plant in Moraine, Ohio....
Posted Apr 1, 2010
|
A diverse coalition of student and labor organizations at the University of
Wisconsin-Milwaukee and in the wider campus community is fighting trumped-up
charges against the Milwaukee 16....
Posted Apr 1, 2010
|
Over 1,500 members of Pennsylvania Association of
Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals hit the bricks today after six months of
negotiations with Temple University Hospital failed to reach a contract. Two
days prior PASNAP members voted 980 to 50 to strike....
Posted Mar 31, 2010
|
Women of all ages and nationalities gathered in New York on March 27 to commemorate
the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day....
Posted Mar 31, 2010
|
The Women’s Fightback Network held a rally at the Massachusetts
Statehouse March 24 commemorating International Women’s Month....
Posted Mar 31, 2010
|
The National Museum of the American Indian celebrated Women’s History
Month by paying tribute to the first woman to become president of the Oglala
Sioux Tribe of South Dakota....
Posted Mar 31, 2010
|
It seemed like a scandalous disconnect, a case of the right brain not knowing
what the left brain was doing. On March 12 Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon of the United Nations announced the
appointment of a High-level Advisory Group on Climate Change Financing. March 12 also happened to be the last day of a two-week session of the U.N.
Commission on the Status of Women. Of the 19 appointees to the high-level climate change group announced March 12
by the secretary-general, not one was a woman....
Posted Mar 28, 2010
|
Operation POWER (People Organizing and Working for Empowerment and Respect), a
Black grassroots activist organization, held a special International
Women’s Day forum March 20 at the House of the Lord Church in Brooklyn,
N.Y. March 8 marked the 100th anniversary of the founding of IWD....
Posted Mar 28, 2010
|
During the week of March 15, corporate interests unveiled several initiatives
to further usurp local control of Detroit....
Posted Mar 28, 2010
|
On March 18 nearly 200 members and supporters of striking United Food and
Commercial Workers Local 791 picketed and held the line outside Shaw’s
Supermarket in Dorchester, Mass., in solidarity with 310 women and men workers
from the warehouse distribution center in Methuen, Mass....
Posted Mar 28, 2010
|
The Latin American Labor Leaders tour kicked off March 21 in Cleveland
demanding an end to the U.S. blockade of Cuba and its trade and travel ban that
prevents workers from exchanging views and direct understanding....
Posted Mar 28, 2010
|
The events of recent weeks in Haiti and Chile have had impacts far beyond the
borders of these countries. These impacts have been global....
Posted Mar 28, 2010
|
On the steps of the North Carolina General Assembly, thousands of people from
over 100 progressive organizations from across the state came together Feb. 27
in downtown Raleigh around a diverse 14-point People’s Agenda. This
“People’s Assembly” is the most visible part of the HK on J
(Historic Thousands on Jones Street) movement, which has won same-day voter
registration and other important progressive reforms in the state....
Posted Mar 25, 2010
|
Reacting to reports that hundreds of millions of dollars in budget cuts
are under consideration by Georgia lawmakers, over 400 students from across the
state’s university system marched and rallied at the State Capitol in
Atlanta on March 15....
Posted Mar 25, 2010
|
Cleveland, like many other industrial cities in the “rust belt,”
has suffered terribly in the economic crisis. The Bureau of Labor Statistics
reports that unemployment in Ohio is at 10.8 percent. (bls.gov) The Cleveland
Police Department wages a reign of terror against oppressed people, and seeks
to jail young Rebecca Whitby for daring to file a complaint after suffering a
police assault in her own home....
Posted Mar 25, 2010
|
On March 19 activists for universal, single payer and Medicare-for-all
health care rallied and marched through the upscale high-rise shopping and
office complex, Embarcadero 2, in the San Francisco financial district. They
attempted to enter the local office of the “health non-care for
profit” Anthem Blue Cross California, a subsidiary of WellPoint Inc., a
health care corporation with $9 billion in annual profits....
Posted Mar 25, 2010
|
The dynamic New York City youth movement against the Metropolitan Transit
Authority’s subway cutbacks and layoffs reached a new level in March,
when Bronx students forced a meeting with MTA head Jay Walder....
Posted Mar 25, 2010
|
On March 21 a multitude of immigrants and their supporters amassed in the
largest demonstration for immigrant rights in Washington, D.C., in decades, if
not ever....
Posted Mar 24, 2010
|
Tens of millions of people in this country were hoping to be delivered from the
clutches of the ruthless profiteers who control the health care system and were
hoping for universal health care. But the very opposite has happened....
Posted Mar 24, 2010
|
The seventh anniversary of the criminal U.S.-British occupation of Iraq on
March 20 gave impetus to demonstrations in cities around the world. Anti-war
protesters could not forget the suffering this U.S.-led aggression has imposed
on the Iraqis, killing over a million and driving 5 million people into
exile....
Posted Mar 24, 2010
|
Twelve hundred tenants from Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village (ST-PCV)
met March 13 to prepare a housing battle that can impact on tenants of all
incomes throughout New York City....
Posted Mar 21, 2010
|
Seven Boston City Councilors attended an eyewitness report from Haiti in
Boston City Hall on March 11. City Councilors Chuck Turner and Charles Yancey
hosted the meeting, which filled the Piemonte Room. In Turner’s
introductory speech, he called for a grassroots mobilization demanding the
restoration of democracy in Haiti....
Posted Mar 21, 2010
|
Culminating a years-long legal struggle and a week-long trial, on March 12 a
federal jury found the Secret Service had carried out a de facto arrest without
probable cause when agents dragged Indian-American Vijay Shah from a July 2004
protest march at the Democratic National Convention in Boston. Agents
handcuffed Shah, dragged him to a police car and took him to a police station
where he was held in handcuffs in a holding cell....
Posted Mar 21, 2010
|
A spirited program addressing the tactics used by corporate media to undermine
Black radio was held in Philadelphia March 9. It was attended by activists
already involved in efforts to stem this tide and others concerned over how to
keep peoples’ news and culture alive and thriving....
Posted Mar 21, 2010
|
On March 21, tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of people will be
demonstrating for immigrant rights in Washington, D.C.
The action arises from the frustration and deep anger that exist in the
immigrant community and among their supporters that despite a nonstop demand
for full rights for immigrants, especially legalization for the undocumented,
such pleas have been ignored by Washington....
Posted Mar 19, 2010
|
As soon as I saw the WW editorial about the “Double standards in
Black and white,” I immediately thought of Pittsburgh Steelers
quarterback Ben Roethlisberger....
Posted Mar 19, 2010
|
Capitalism is leaving tens of millions of workers without jobs. It is also
abandoning millions of children to flounder in a chaotic education system,
buffeted by school closings and teacher firings....
Posted Mar 18, 2010
|
Spokespersons for corporate Detroit have issued plans to take total control of
the public school system as well as “shrink” the city over the next
decade. These efforts come amidst the worst economic crisis in Detroit since
the Great Depression. The city leads all other major urban centers in
joblessness with an official unemployment rate of 28 percent....
Posted Mar 18, 2010
|
No matter which way the Iraqi elections turn out, the media bleats about
"democracy's" triumph. Notwithstanding, the lives of average
Iraqis will remain an intolerable brew of nastiness and ugliness....
Posted Mar 18, 2010
|
Hotel workers continue fight for contract | Health insurance lobbyists in D.C. | First labor contract signed under Indigenous law | Defend union staff at NY Historical Society | S.F. Labor Council affirms Haitian sovereignty...
Posted Mar 18, 2010
|
When you think of the 1930s, one of the first things that come to mind is the
great struggle of the United Auto Workers to organize Detroit’s biggest
employers. In fact there were numerous sit-down strikes outside the auto
industry. Courageous women led many, including a cigar-makers sit-down strike
that lasted over two months....
Posted Mar 17, 2010
|
The New York City branch of Workers World Party held a forum on
“Women, the global capitalist crisis and the growing fightback”
March 13 at the Solidarity Center....
Posted Mar 17, 2010
|
A small, stalwart crowd rallied at the University of Alabama on March 4 in
support of campus bus drivers fighting for their first union contract. A
multinational group of protesters — including undergraduate and graduate
students, faculty and a U of A alumnae — defended education by supporting
them. The rally was organized by Tuscaloosa Students for a Democratic Society
and Students in Solidarity with Crimson Ride Shuttle Drivers....
Posted Mar 13, 2010
|
An even bigger rally in support of the courageous stand of Rebecca Whitby and
her mother will take place on March 9 on the steps of the Justice Center in
Cleveland, where their trial is slated to go forward. The packed courtroom will
remind the prosecutor and the judge of the Whitbys’ widespread community
support....
Posted Mar 13, 2010
|
DTE Energy is responsible for the deaths of Travion Young, age 5; Salena,
3; and Fantasia, 4. That’s what hundreds of community activists said at a
noisy protest outside the utility monopoly’s headquarters in downtown
Detroit on March 4....
Posted Mar 13, 2010
|
Cold winds didn’t stop people from commemorating the 10th anniversary of
Malcolm Ferguson’s assassination by New York City police. Supporters
gathered in the evening of March 1 outside the Bronx home of Juanita Young,
Ferguson’s mother....
Posted Mar 13, 2010
|
International Women’s Day was celebrated at a Workers World Party
forum in Detroit on March 6....
Posted Mar 11, 2010
|
An excerpt from “Low-Wage Capitalism,” by Fred
Goldstein, recalls the importance of a little-known eight-day sit-down strike
by women workers that swept the country and organized the Wal-Mart of the 1930s
and other service companies....
Posted Mar 11, 2010
|
On March 4 more than 100 demonstrations were organized in 33 states against
the devastating cuts, layoffs and tuition hikes as part of the National Day of
Action to Defend Education, including campuses such as the University of
Maryland and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign....
Posted Mar 10, 2010
|
Sometimes a legacy can be buried within the rubble of politics for a long
time, waiting to be unearthed and refined like a diamond in the rough.
Such is the legacy of Claudia Jones. She was persecuted by the McCarthyite
anti-communist witch hunt and by the McCarran-Walter and Smith Acts against
immigrants....
Posted Mar 10, 2010
|
Hundreds of thousands of students, teachers and other education
workers demonstrated, rallied, sat in and marched across the United States on
March 4. Protesting cuts in education budgets and layoffs, they raised the
powerful demand that education is a right of the working class. A national leader of this action is
Larry Hales of the youth organization Fight Imperialism, Stand Together....
Posted Mar 7, 2010
|
Chanting, “Drop the charges!” and “Free the Whitbys!”
activists gathered Feb. 24 on the steps of the so-called Justice Center, which
houses Cleveland’s police department, courtrooms and jail. Several
pointed out that it is the cops — who brutally beat Rebecca Whitby in an
unprovoked attack — who should be on trial, not the 23 year old and her
mother, who tried to shield her from some of the blows....
Posted Mar 5, 2010
|
Leonard Peltier was a leader of the American Indian Movement in 1976
when he was arrested and charged with the deaths of two FBI agents during a
shootout at the Pine Ridge Reservation of the Oglala-Lakota Nation. He has now
been imprisoned for 34 years — one of the world’s longest-held
political prisoners. Peltier sent this message to an international
teach-in held Feb. 13 in Philadelphia on the struggle to free death-row inmate
and former Black Panther Party activist Mumia Abu-Jamal....
Posted Mar 5, 2010
|
More than 100 dockworkers, joined by close to another 100 unionists and
community activists, gathered in Charleston on Feb. 27-28 to commemorate the
10th anniversary of the Charleston 5 victory. The dockworkers, four Black and
one white, most of them members of the International Longshoremen’s Association
Local 1422, had been attacked by police riding on horses, in armored cars and
in helicopters while picketing a non-union ship. They were jailed on
“riot” charges but later freed after a long struggle....
Posted Mar 5, 2010
|
A report issued Feb. 19 by the U.S. Department of Energy’s inspector
general revealed that one of the hallmark programs of the federal economic
stimulus program has proven a dismal failure. President Barack Obama’s
much-heralded plan to create jobs and save on energy costs for low-income
residents through a massively funded weatherization program has fallen far
short of its goals....
Posted Mar 5, 2010
|
The Bail Out the People Movement, meeting in New York on Feb. 24, voted to
endorse and help to mobilize for the March 20 National March on Washington....
Posted Mar 5, 2010
|
UC researchers, technicians win contract | Faculty file for union election in
Michigan | Univ. of Tenn. employees fight cuts | Pittsburgh passes prevailing
wage law | Mass. and R.I. workers vs. Stop & Shop | S.F. Labor Council
supports Mexican workers...
Posted Mar 5, 2010
|
Racist students on the San Diego campus of the University of California
recently organized and publicized a sickening social event. Emboldened by
increasingly common racist rants on the part of corporate media talking-heads,
the coded racist outbursts of right-wing politicians, and the historic policies
of discrimination and repression directed against communities of color and
immigrant workers all across the U.S., they made no effort to disguise the
racially offensive character of their “Compton Cookout” party,
which took place on Feb. 15....
Posted Mar 4, 2010
|
Fight Imperialism, Stand Together (FIST) statement in solidarity with the March 4 national day of action in defense of education....
Posted Mar 4, 2010
|
Larry Hales of Fight Imperialism, Stand Together (FIST) facilitated a
workshop entitled the “University of Capitalism” at the Black
Student Activism Conference held at New York University on Feb. 27....
Posted Mar 4, 2010
|
Trail of Dreams, a grassroots immigration reform group that has been
staging a protest walk from Miami to Washington, came through Atlanta on Feb.
27....
Posted Mar 4, 2010
|
Immigrant communities and their allies are organizing resistance
nationwide in the face of stubborn government inaction on the issue of
immigrant rights and continuing acts of anti-immigrant terrorism on the part of
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The demand for full legal equality is
being voiced repeatedly in the U.S./Mexico border county of San Diego....
Posted Mar 4, 2010
|
This year’s Left Forum in New York City will take place March 19-21 at
Pace University, near City Hall....
Posted Mar 4, 2010
|
A Gallup Poll released on Feb. 23 revealed that in January 30 million workers
in the U.S. were either on forced part-time or out of work altogether. This
number, based on a poll of over 20,000 adults over the age of 18 and conducted
from Jan. 2 to Jan. 31, amounts to 20 percent of the workforce....
Posted Mar 3, 2010
|
The New York Governor’s Office has proposed a new budget that
slashes education funding and reduces aid to local municipalities.
State school aid will be cut by $1.1 billion. This amounts to a $469
million cut to New York City’s Department of Education. It is estimated
that as many as 8,500 city teachers could be laid off as a result....
Posted Mar 3, 2010
|
The jobless recovery has been declared official by the New York Times, the
newspaper of record for the U.S. ruling class. Its edition of Feb. 21 —
the Sunday paper that is read in every capital, finance ministry, embassy,
consulate, department of state, etc., in the capitalist world — carried
the following two-column banner headline in bold: “Despite Signs of
Recovery, Chronic Joblessness Rises — The Unemployed Face Years Without
Jobs, Exhausting Savings and Benefits.”...
Posted Feb 28, 2010
|
Two street meetings held on Feb. 19, one in Los Angeles and the other in
New York City, confirmed mass opposition to the war in Afghanistan and
disillusion with the government by a population reeling from unemployment,
foreclosures and budget cuts....
Posted Feb 28, 2010
|
A coalition of students from high schools throughout Tucson held their first
encuentro — a community meeting — on Feb. 19 to build support and
alliances in the struggle against the mounting right-wing attacks on public
education....
Posted Feb 26, 2010
|
An energetic and promising meeting to launch May Day 2010 was hosted by
the Transport Workers Union Local 100 and its leadership at their union hall in
New York on Feb. 18. The meeting was sponsored by the May 1 Coalition for
Worker and Immigrant Rights, which has organized major marches on May 1 every
year since 2006....
Posted Feb 26, 2010
|
An eviction blockade took place Feb. 19 in Dorchester, Mass....
Posted Feb 26, 2010
|
A wave of bad weather swept over many parts of the country in February.
Blizzards ripped through the Northeast, leaving residents without necessities
such as electricity, in some cases for weeks on end.
One would logically assume that localities which normally receive snow in
winter would be prepared for an enormous storm....
Posted Feb 26, 2010
|
It is “Time for U.S. Steel to do the right thing!” for 300
workers still on layoff; for the workers in the mill with understaffed jobs,
long hours, no training and dirty lunch and locker facilities; as well as for
the downriver Detroit communities suffering from high unemployment....
Posted Feb 26, 2010
|
In 1933 St. Louis, Mo., was the gateway to the segregated South. Here was the
last train stop before passengers were reassigned to cars marked
“colored” and “white.” While the city did not have
apartheid codes on the books, St. Louis itself was in every other way a Jim
Crow town.
Yet there, in the worst year yet of a depression that had gone on for four
years, African-American women who shelled pecans all day led a victorious
strike....
Posted Feb 26, 2010
|
Sebastian Pernice, who died Feb. 1 of lung cancer, was born in Militello,
Sicily, in 1948. He came to the U.S. with his parents when he was eight. By the
age of 14, he was fearlessly and unapologetically gay....
Posted Feb 26, 2010
|
On Feb. 18, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced the latest settlement
to provide compensation and resources to African-American farmers. An
organization that represents African-American farmers, the Federation of
Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund — founded in 1967 —
welcomed the announced settlement....
Posted Feb 25, 2010
|
History has a way of repeating itself, it is said. This couldn’t be truer
than in the racist differential treatment of Black men and youth by U.S. state
and local police departments. Equal justice under the law has never been part
of the U.S. criminal justice system....
Posted Feb 25, 2010
|
Teodoro Aguiluz, Central American Resource Center executive director, drew
loud applause when he told the crowd of almost 800 immigrants and their
supporters: “We’ve had enough.”...
Posted Feb 25, 2010
|
After a nearly three-year struggle, owners of the Crosby Mint Farm were able to
purchase back most of their historic farm from Greenstone Farm Credit Services,
the bank that seized the farm on Aug. 28 from farmers Peppermint Jim Crosby and
Linette Crosby. The Crosby siblings endured foreclosure, attacks on their Web
site, a sheriff’s sale, eviction and an auction of their farm before
finally getting their farm back....
Posted Feb 25, 2010
|
On Feb. 9 the Restaurant Opportunities Center — United of Michigan issued
the most comprehensive report on the metro Detroit restaurant industry to
date.
“It is more common for employers in the industry to break the law than to
follow it,” said Minsu Longiaru, coordinator of ROC-Michigan, to a packed
forum of ROC members, allies and media at Slow’s Bar-B-Q restaurant in
Detroit....
Posted Feb 25, 2010
|
Attorney Vanessa Fluker, a leader of the Moratorium NOW! Coalition to Stop
Foreclosures, Evictions and Utility Shutoffs, was honored at a brunch held Feb.
20 at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit....
Posted Feb 25, 2010
|
On March 4 students and workers from all around the country will take action to
defend education against increased privatization of pre-kindergarten through
12th grade schools, budget cuts, layoffs, furloughs and tuition increases at
college and universities — especially the public institutions....
Posted Feb 24, 2010
|
More than 10 years ago, the U.S. government jailed five Cubans after one of the
most unjust and ludicrous trials that has ever occurred in this country.
Many people, especially people of color, are behind jail doors unfairly in this
country. Many of them are innocent or never had a fair day in court, to say the
least....
Posted Feb 24, 2010
|
Mumia Abu-Jamal faces perhaps the most crucial period since 1999 when
then-Governor of Pennsylvania Tom Ridge signed the last of the two death
warrants for Mumia, the first being in 1995....
Posted Feb 24, 2010
|
On the 45th anniversary of the assassination of Malcolm X, people
came out to champion U.S. political prisoner and freedom fighter Mumia
Abu-Jamal and other political prisoners . The Feb.
21 benefit in Oakland, Calif., was for Prison Radio, which carries
commentaries online of political prisoners....
Posted Feb 24, 2010
|
Forty-five years ago on Feb. 21, Malcolm X — El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz
— had begun his address to a mass meeting of the Organization of
Afro-American Unity in New York City at the Audubon Ballroom when several men
opened fire on him with shotguns and pistols, killing him....
Posted Feb 22, 2010
|
|
In the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan, a 162-year-old hospital fights
to remain open. On Feb. 10 the Coalition to Save St. Vincent’s Catholic
Hospital and Medical Center held a community forum at Service Employees
International Union Local 32-BJ headquarters. More than 300 people attended.
Other rallies and town hall meetings were also held during the prior couple of
weeks....
Posted Feb 19, 2010
|
Judging from the number of police assigned to follow demonstrators on Feb.
8 at New York’s Port Authority bus terminal, the demand for universal
health care must be very dangerous....
Posted Feb 19, 2010
|
Borax workers fight lockout | Continental ground workers join Teamsters | Migrant workers win $2.75 million settlement | Reuters reporters make news | S.F. Labor Council supports organizing in the South...
Posted Feb 19, 2010
|
After six months of so-called “recovery,” massive unemployment
remains and foreclosures reach new highs. Now another fundamental aspect of the
capitalist economic crisis — the budget crisis — is escalating as
millions of people face the loss of vital services, threatening their futures
and their very survival....
Posted Feb 18, 2010
|
Working mothers and their children, unionized day care workers and community
supporters, outraged by slashed day care subsidies, marched and rallied in
protest Feb. 9 in downtown Buffalo, mobilized by the religious group
VOICE-Buffalo and an outspoken county government representative from the inner
city, Betty Jean Grant....
Posted Feb 18, 2010
|
John Carroll University in University Heights, Ohio, was recently the site of a
protest for lesbian/gay/bisexual and transgender rights....
Posted Feb 18, 2010
|
The United Farm Workers union reports that the U.S. Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission has just filed a lawsuit against Giumarra Vineyards
“for violating federal law by sexually harassing a teenage female
farmworker” and retaliating against farmworkers who witnessed the abuse
and reported it to company officials....
Posted Feb 18, 2010
|
Attacks on public education in Rhode Island are coming one after another. Gov.
Donald Carcieri proposed $125 million in cuts to education and services this
year and proposes to cut $162 million next year....
Posted Feb 18, 2010
|
More than 50 people who have either lost a home through foreclosure or are
facing foreclosure took a bus from Los Angeles County to Sacramento on Feb. 10.
The predominantly Latino/a and majority women caravan demanded that the
governor immediately respond to the foreclosure crisis by declaring a state of
emergency in California....
Posted Feb 18, 2010
|
Activists from Philadelphia, across the U.S. and around the world participated
in a video conferencing and live teach-in Feb. 13 to take up the next stage in
the struggle to free Mumia Abu-Jamal. The hall at the Abiding Truth Ministries
Church was full despite nearly 50 inches of snow that hampered public
transportation and put parking in the city at a premium....
Posted Feb 17, 2010
|
New York City commemorating Black History Month.
Feb. 1 marked the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the sit-ins at so-called
“whites only” lunch counters in Greensboro, N.C., a struggle that
effectively launched the student movement for African-American civil rights. On
that day, four Black students sat down at a Woolworth’s lunch counter at
4:30 pm and ordered coffee. When they were refused, they remained in their
seats until the counter closed at 5:30....
Posted Feb 15, 2010
|
With snow on the city sidewalks the summer still seems a long way away, but for
many New York City students the anxiety over where they will find summer
employment this year is inescapable. ...
Posted Feb 15, 2010
|
In an effort to help mobilize actions in Michigan for the March 4 National Day
of Action to Defend Education, organizer and FIST (Fight Imperialism, Stand
Together) leader Larry Hales engaged a diverse range of student-workers at
numerous locations during an exciting tour of the state....
Posted Feb 15, 2010
|
Amid mounting pressure from the community and activists, Pittsburgh Mayor Luke
Ravenstahl met the press on Feb. 1 and announced that three officers involved
in the beating of Jordan Miles were now on paid administrative leave, as an
investigation continued....
Posted Feb 15, 2010
|
Holding signs demanding “Save our homes” and “Stop
displacement of working families,” some 700 tenants of New York
City’s iconic middle-income housing projects, Stuyvesant Town and Peter
Cooper Village, protested on a cold Sunday morning Jan. 31 to demand their
rights following the latest twist in the development’s ownership
saga....
Posted Feb 15, 2010
|
Thirty-four years. It doesn’t even sound like a real number to me. Not
when one really thinks about being in a jail cell for that long. All these
years and I swear, I still think sometimes I’ll wake up from this
nightmare in my own bed, in my own home, with my family in the next room. I
would never have imagined such a thing. Surely the only place people are
unjustly imprisoned for 34 years is in faraway lands, books or fairy tales....
Posted Feb 12, 2010
|
Derek Cannon went on a two-week hunger strike from Jan. 14 to Jan. 28 at Ohio
State Penitentiary (OSP), a supermax prison, after getting no response to his
factual challenge to a Rules Infraction Board ticket. Cannon, who was sentenced
to life in prison after the 1993 Lucasville, Ohio, prison uprising, ended his
hunger strike out of consideration for the concerns of his spouse, Kandy
Cannon....
Posted Feb 12, 2010
|
Nearly 200 demonstrators, many in wheelchairs, gathered at the Broad Street
Ministry on Feb. 3 to march to City Hall in protest of $22 million in cuts to
Supplemental Security Income. The cuts took effect in Pennsylvania on Feb.
1....
Posted Feb 12, 2010
|
Located on Atlanta’s prestigious Peachtree Street, which is home to many
upscale condos and towering office buildings, the Task Force for the Homeless
has operated an emergency shelter with beds for 700 men; a daytime facility
providing space for hundreds seeking relief from rain, cold and heat; a 24-hour
hotline that offers multiple services to men, women and children; as well as a
resident program for some two dozen employed men, who receive counseling
help....
Posted Feb 12, 2010
|
The big business media and the Obama administration trumpeted the message of
hope and recovery last week when the government announced a drop in the
official unemployment rate.
The Bail Out the People Movement, however, is not waiting around for a job
recovery. Instead it is building a broad-based coalition to go to Washington on
April 10, the 75th anniversary of the Works Progress Administration. It will
demand a massive government jobs program to give every worker a job at a living
wage or a guaranteed income. Eight million workers got jobs under the Roosevelt
administration’s WPA during the Depression of the 1930s....
Posted Feb 11, 2010
|
It was on Feb. 1, 1960, some five decades ago, that the student movement was
initiated when four youths were arrested for demanding service at a segregated
whites-only lunch counter in Greensboro, N.C....
Posted Feb 11, 2010
|
In light of the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that opened the door for
reinstatement of the death penalty for political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal,
activists from the Philadelphia region, across the U.S. and around the globe
will take part in an important teach-in in Philadelphia on Feb. 13, to take up
the next stage in the struggle to free Mumia....
Posted Feb 10, 2010
|
Excerpts from a talk providing a Marxist analysis on
President Barack Obama’s first year in office by Larry Holmes, a
Secretariat member of Workers World Party, at a Black History Month forum in
New York City on Feb. 6....
Posted Feb 10, 2010
|
On Feb. 1 the long-suppressed autopsy of slain Muslim leader Imam Luqman Ameen
Abdullah was released to the public at the Dearborn, Mich., police
headquarters. Imam Abdullah was killed in Dearborn, a suburb of Detroit, on
Oct. 28....
Posted Feb 10, 2010
|
On Feb. 4, hundreds of Wayne County workers protested forced weekly unpaid
furlough days that were to begin the next day. This 20-percent pay cut will
affect 700 selected workers, many making less than $30,000 per year....
Posted Feb 10, 2010
|
The Democratic Party suffered a severe political setback in Massachusetts with
the loss of the U.S. Senate seat, held by Ted Kennedy for almost 50 years, to
Scott Brown. A stealth right-wing politician, Brown rode around the state in a
pickup truck claiming to be an independent and “man of the
people.”...
Posted Feb 7, 2010
|
South Carolina Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer recently made outrageously racist and
anti-poor remarks at a town hall meeting of his Republican supporters....
Posted Feb 6, 2010
|
On Jan. 23 over 100 autoworkers met in Detroit for a conference sponsored by
rank-and-file activist groups Soldiers of Solidarity, Autoworkers Caravan and
Factory Rats Unite to take up a truly compelling question: Where do we go from
here?...
Posted Feb 6, 2010
|
Anti-abortion zealot Scott Roeder was convicted in Wichita, Kan., on Jan. 29 of
the cold-blooded murder of Dr. George R. Tiller, a fearless, caring physician
who performed abortions for women in desperate circumstances, while enduring
great personal risk and paying the ultimate sacrifice....
Posted Feb 6, 2010
|
Since mid-January, hardly a day has gone by without some report in the
big-business-controlled media about China and censorship of the Internet. Given the way the U.S. media report this, it is important to make it clear that
China does not control the Internet. Control of the Internet lies completely in
the hands of the U.S., or more precisely, the U.S. military-industrial complex....
Posted Feb 6, 2010
|
A revolutionary Party utilizes
all methods to try and win the hearts and minds of the working class and the
oppressed, so that our class sisters and brothers become partisan fighters
alongside us in the global class struggle against capitalist exploitation and
imperialism....
Posted Feb 6, 2010
|
Around 11 p.m. on Jan. 12, another tragic incident demonstrated the racist
establishment’s brutal punshment of
the crime of “walking while Black” in Pittsburgh.
Jordan Miles, an 18-year-old viola player and honors student at the prestigious
Creative and Performing Arts High School (CAPA), was walking from his
mother’s home to his grandmother’s home where he frequently stayed,
when he was inexplicably and brutally attacked by three white Pittsburgh police
officers....
Posted Feb 4, 2010
|
A dynamic student movement has risen up against the bank-controlled New York
Metropolitan Transit Authority’s provocative proposal to eliminate free
student MetroCards....
Posted Feb 4, 2010
|
Larry Hales, a leader of the March 4 National Day of Action to Defend
Education, began his Michigan tour Feb. 1 in Ann Arbor speaking to a group of
student-workers at the William Monroe Trotter Multicultural Center at the
University of Michigan....
Posted Feb 4, 2010
|
On occasion someone makes such a significant contribution to the cause that the
work speaks for itself and, assessed objectively, functions as a weapon in the
class struggle.
Such an occasion was the life and such a contribution was the work of Howard
Zinn....
Posted Feb 4, 2010
|
Hilda Bell Roberts, born in 1915 and raised in Philadelphia of immigrant
parents, a lifelong progressive activist and a volunteer nurse in the Abraham
Lincoln Brigade during the 1936-1939 Spanish Civil War fighting against fascist
dictator Francisco Franco, passed away in the San Francisco Bay Area last September....
Posted Feb 4, 2010
|
The news that while the economy grew at an annual rate of 5.7 percent in the
last quarter, there was simultaneously a net loss of 208,000 jobs, indicates
that U.S. capitalism has entered a new phase — the phase of the
“jobless recovery” with increasingly intractable and growing
long-term mass unemployment....
Posted Feb 3, 2010
|
February 2010 represents the 84th anniversary of the founding of Negro History
Week, now known as African-American History Month. This month of commemoration
was initiated by historian Dr. Carter G. Woodson, who worked tirelessly for
many years to popularize the dissemination and study of the history of African
people in the United States and throughout the world....
Posted Feb 3, 2010
|
Boston’s Haitian community and its supporters have begun a campaign to
allow Boston teenager Jenny Ulysse to return home from Haiti and for the right
of all U.S. permanent residents to return to their homes. They are also calling
for medical treatment or evacuation for all in need of critical medical
attention....
Posted Feb 3, 2010
|
Hundreds gathered in Brooklyn, N.Y., at the call of Kowalisyon pou
Kore Ayiti (The Coalition to Stand With Haiti) on Jan. 29 in bitter cold to
hear a series of speeches denouncing the current U.S. occupation of Haiti...
Posted Feb 3, 2010
|
Statement from the Black Workers League, based in Rocky Mount, N.C.,...
Posted Jan 31, 2010
|
The recent natural disaster in Haiti has once again thrown Haiti into the eyes
of the world and once again brought out the best and the worst of us. ...
Posted Jan 31, 2010
|
A multinational standing-room-only crowd packed the Action Center office
in Boston for a Workers World forum entitled “Solidarity With the People
of Haiti — U.S. Imperialism: Humanitarian Aid or Military
Occupation?”...
Posted Jan 31, 2010
|
Members and friends of Workers World Party gathered in Detroit on
Jan. 23 for an emergency meeting on the crisis in Haiti....
Posted Jan 31, 2010
|
A spirited group of demonstrators, overwhelmingly youths and
students, marched through downtown Raleigh, N.C., on Jan. 15, Dr. Martin Luther
King Jr.’s birthday. The march, organized by the Peoples’ Empowerment Movement and Raleigh
Fight Imperialism, Stand Together, demanded a city-run, federally funded jobs
program that puts Raleigh’s unemployed back to work and provides for a
living wage, full benefits and pensions, in line with Dr. King’s lifelong
demand for full employment....
Posted Jan 30, 2010
|
The multi-billion-dollar University of Pittsburgh Medical Center is quickly
moving to close the Braddock hospital on Jan. 31. The labor-community struggle
to keep the hospital open is continuing....
Posted Jan 30, 2010
|
For over 100 years, Grady Hospital, located on the edge of downtown Atlanta,
served the medical needs of poor, uninsured and underinsured people while at
the same time establishing world-class trauma, burn and neonatal clinics....
Posted Jan 30, 2010
|
On Dec. 18, just before Christmas, 40 unionized shuttle bus drivers who
transport Georgia Tech students, faculty and staff around the sprawling campus
were notified they had lost their jobs....
Posted Jan 30, 2010
|
D.C. hotel workers demand union | Workers take on Verizon | U.S. labor union research delegation visits Cuba | Labor for Haiti...
Posted Jan 30, 2010
|
On Jan. 19 the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling that has opened the way for
the reinstatement of the death sentence for Mumia Abu-Jamal. Pam Africa, chairperson of International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia
Abu-Jamal, said: “Mumia cannot get any fairness in this court system.”...
Posted Jan 28, 2010
|
While five Cuban heroes remain imprisoned because of a cruel vendetta by the
U.S. government against the courageous socialist republic of Cuba, more and
more voices of opposition to their unjust incarceration are being raised
worldwide....
Posted Jan 28, 2010
|
Imari Obadele, a founder of the Republic of New
Africa and known by many as “the father of reparations,” passed
away on Jan. 18....
Posted Jan 28, 2010
|
The lesbian, gay, bi and trans community and straight supporters in Buffalo
have organized an immediate and strong response to two separate attacks on
individuals targeted for being gay....
Posted Jan 28, 2010
|
Activists around the country marched and rallied to demand jobs on Jan. 18
in celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day....
Posted Jan 28, 2010
|
On Jan. 18 over 1,000 people gathered at the historic Central United Methodist
Church for a rally and march in downtown Detroit to honor the 81st birthday of
the martyred civil rights and anti-war activist Dr. Martin Luther King Jr....
Posted Jan 28, 2010
|
In spite of pouring rain, activists held a protest at the downtown Federal
Building in Los Angeles Jan. 23 demanding the U.S. government stop blocking
international aid to Haiti....
Posted Jan 27, 2010
|
The victory of right-wing candidate Scott Brown in the Massachusetts senatorial
election throws into bold relief the crisis for the workers and the oppressed
in this country. It is one of leadership, politics and organization....
Posted Jan 27, 2010
|
For years, and especially since the four devastating hurricanes that struck
Haiti in August and September of 2008, progressive organizations and
individuals in the United States have been urging the Homeland Security
Department to grant Temporary Protective Status to Haitians....
Posted Jan 27, 2010
|
Just before Dr. Aafia Siddiqui’s trial was to begin the morning of Jan.
19, her supporters around the world demonstrated their firm belief in her
innocence. In New York, both Pakistani immigrants and U.S. progressives
gathered near the courthouse at 500 Pearl Street to stage a public protest and
then attend her trial....
Posted Jan 24, 2010
|
Plans by Pennsylvania to expand leasing of public land for shale gas drilling
are fueling a growing public concern over potential hazards to the environment
and drinking water supplies....
Posted Jan 23, 2010
|
A few hundred San Francisco hotel workers, many employed at the Westin St.
Francis hotel, bordering the west side of Union Square, were joined by
community and universal health care activists at a picket in front of the hotel
on Jan. 13....
Posted Jan 23, 2010
|
On Jan. 11 the North American International Auto Show opened to the media.
Outside Detroit’s Cobo Center a picket of autoworkers drew attention away
from the glitz and glamour with chants of “A job is a right! We’re
going to fight, fight, fight!” Their concerns were all but ignored, of
course, by the industry’s “star” executives who turned up to
speechify....
Posted Jan 23, 2010
|
Labor, community and student supporters participated in a Michigan
Restaurant Opportunities Center united protest on Jan. 12 at the Andiamo
restaurant in Dearborn, Mich....
Posted Jan 23, 2010
|
The U.S. Government Accountability Office released a December report
highlighting the extraordinary price increases for many brand-name prescription
drugs. According to the GAO, prices for many widely used drugs more than
doubled between the years 2000 and 2008....
Posted Jan 23, 2010
|
People gathered in Providence, R.I., at a grassroots All-Peoples
Assembly for Jobs and Human Needs on Jan. 16 to honor and carry on the words
and works of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr....
Posted Jan 23, 2010
|
The 32nd annual original Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Parade, sponsored by
the Black Heritage Society, drew over 25,000 people to downtown Houston on Jan.
18....
Posted Jan 21, 2010
|
Jan. 22 is the 37th anniversary of the landmark Roe v. Wade U.S. Supreme Court
decision that guaranteed the constitutional right of women to have abortions....
Posted Jan 21, 2010
|
New York City Councilperson Charles Barron noted that President Barack Obama
has pledged only a $100 million aid package for Haiti: “There are 2
million people in Port-au-Prince. That’s $50 a person.”...
Posted Jan 21, 2010
|
“¡Se ve, se siente! ¡El pueblo está presente! (You can see
it! You can feel it! The people are here!)” ...
Posted Jan 21, 2010
|
From an audio essay by Mumia Abu-Jamal....
Posted Jan 17, 2010
|
Winter came early this year to the U.S. Many states and cities have run out of
money to keep the roads plowed the way they should be to keep goods and people
moving and to provide ambulance and other emergency services....
Posted Jan 15, 2010
|
Supporters in a packed courtroom on Jan. 4 were in high spirits at
the granting of a continuance in the cases of 23-year-old Rebecca Whitby and
her mother, who is also named Rebecca Whitby. They will now be better able to
prepare a strong defense against false charges following a brutal attack by
Cleveland police on April 23....
Posted Jan 15, 2010
|
Veronica Jones, a witness during the 1982 trial and 1996 Post-Conviction Relief
Act hearing for Mumia Abu-Jamal, died Dec. 8....
Posted Jan 15, 2010
|
At least 1,000 San Francisco hotel workers and supporters rallied, marched and
picketed during downtown evening rush hour on Jan. 5, kicking off a boycott of
the upscale Hilton San Francisco hotel. Working without a contract since Aug.
19, the 9,000 union workers at more than 30 of the fanciest San Francisco
hotels continued their fight for a new contract during the last months of 2009
right into 2010....
Posted Jan 14, 2010
|
Members of the Moratorium NOW! Coalition to Stop Foreclosures, Evictions
and Utility Shutoffs joined activists with the Autoworkers Caravan and
advocates for single-payer health care at a demonstration against the
“jobless recovery” outside the North American International Auto
Show in Detroit on Jan. 11....
Posted Jan 14, 2010
|
Activists gathered in front of 26 Federal Plaza in New York
City to protest the U.S. government’s attempt to deport Victor Toro....
Posted Jan 14, 2010
|
Jean Murat Montrevil got caught selling cocaine when he was 19, a few years
after he emigrated to the U.S. legally from Haiti....
Posted Jan 14, 2010
|
|
The earthquake that flattened Haiti’s capital and brought a new
calamity to millions of people in that heroic but impoverished country has
awakened calls for solidarity and aid from the vast majority of the
world’s people. ...
Posted Jan 14, 2010
|
Fight Imperialism Stand
Together extends its solidarity to Haiti, its people and the
peoples’ movements....
Posted Jan 14, 2010
|
The latest job reports for December should convince workers that all the talk
about economic recovery coming from the media pundits is just hot air. The only
recovery is the bankers’ bonuses and the corporations’ profits. And
the time to fight back against layoffs, foreclosures and cutbacks is now....
Posted Jan 13, 2010
|
|
In response to the immigrant bashing and fear mongering tactics of the infamous
racist sheriff, Joe Arpaio, and his colleagues in the Arizona state
Legislature, Phoenix activists have called for a national day of action in
Phoenix on Jan. 16. The event has been endorsed by dozens of organizations
throughout the country, and will put the right wing on notice that they are no
longer welcome in Arizona....
Posted Jan 13, 2010
|
Dozens of people arrived in a long car caravan with an escort of police cars,
red and blue lights whirling. A bus had been reserved. Whole families
celebrated, while cameras flashed to capture the historic moment.
The scene could have been photographed a century ago at a lynching in the Old
South. But it took place on Jan. 7, as the state of Texas executed Kenneth
Mosley at the Walls Unit in Huntsville. This legal lynching of a Black man was
the first Texas execution of 2010 and the state’s 448th since 1982....
Posted Jan 13, 2010
|
Rising unemployment and out-of-control insurance premiums have intersected to
cause almost 5 million people to lose their health coverage since the beginning
of 2008, according to Families USA. This has exacerbated an already dire health
care crisis that has left more than 50 million people uninsured and another 25
million underinsured....
Posted Jan 10, 2010
|
One week before the next hearing in the case of Victor Toro, the Department of
Homeland Security has submitted ominous new documents focusing on Toro’s
role as a political leader in Chile in the 1970s. In turn Toro’s attorney
has called on an expert historian on Chile to testify in his behalf....
Posted Jan 9, 2010
|
Greg Owen and Keesha Rutherford, after being unable to pay a series of illegal
fees demanded by their landlord, discovered they were scheduled for eviction
from the land they rent in order to have a place for their mobile home....
Posted Jan 9, 2010
|
In December, the Centers for Disease Control issued a report regarding national
mortality and infection rates from the H1N1 “swine” flu virus. One
portion of the report was almost an afterthought and not very widely reported:
Indigenous peoples in the U.S. and Alaska have been four times more likely to
die from the swine flu as has the population overall....
Posted Jan 9, 2010
|
On Dec. 22, Imperial Eleven Concerned Citizens of Cleveland held a news
conference to announce the posting of a letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric
Holder requesting an investigation. The letter contends that at least six of 11
murdered Black women whose bodies were found on Imperial Avenue “would be
alive if not for a dereliction of duty of officials in Cleveland City
Government.”...
Posted Jan 9, 2010
|
Rhode Islanders turned out at the State House to show their support for
Henry Shelton, the 79-year-old founder and leader of The George Wiley Center....
Posted Jan 9, 2010
|
Excerpts from a talk given by Richard Kossally at the Workers World Party 50th anniversary national conference....
Posted Jan 7, 2010
|
Excerpts from a talk given by Steve Kirschbaum at the Workers World Party 50th anniversary national conference....
Posted Jan 7, 2010
|
Consuela Lee, an African-American jazz pianist, composer, arranger and music
educator, passed away on Dec. 26 in Atlanta, Ga. She was 83 years old....
Posted Jan 6, 2010
|
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.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email: [email protected]
Subscribe [email protected]
Support independent news http://www.workers.org/orders/donate.php
|
Sign up to get EMAIL UPDATES
Follow workers.org on TWITTER
and on FACEBOOK
|
Email
Save & share