Philadelphia — Over the years, since the 1982 frame-up conviction of political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal, witnesses have come forward one by one to reveal that the testimony they gave during the trial supporting the prosecution’s case was coerced. One of the most poignant accounts of prosecutorial coercion came from Veronica Jones. Her courageous story is the [...]
On Oct. 13, community activists along with friends and families of victims of police brutality gathered for the East Baltimore Peoples Assembly for Justice for Anthony Anderson Sr. The outdoor assembly took place on the vacant lot by a makeshift memorial marking the spot where Anderson was brutally killed in front of family members by [...]
In an Oct. 3 letter written to Oakland Police Chief Howard Jordan, Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O’Malley announced her findings that “the evidence does not justify criminal charges against Oakland Police Officer Masso.” Masso is the Oakland Police Department officer who killed 18-year-old Alan Blueford, an African American, on May 6, just before he [...]
On Oct. 13, a 13-person multinational group from “99-Pickets” with Labor Occupy Wall Street and Brooklyn’s Kensington OWS took action to support Golden Farm Grocery workers in New York City. They delayed lines of store shoppers, customers who declined to boycott the store as the picketers requested. The boycott will continue until the boss negotiates [...]
This lightly edited article was written for the Port Workers United newsletter in Oakland, Calif. Thomas is a third-generation member of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 10, and co-chair of the Million Worker March movement, who actively supported ILWU Local 21 in their battle with the new high-tech grain export terminal in [...]
Joseph “Jazz” Hayden no longer faces fourteen years of imprisonment for bogus weapons charges in his arrest last December. Hayden has been filming the New York Police Department’s illegal stop-and-frisks in his Harlem community. To date this year, there have been more than 600,000 young Black and Latino men stopped, questioned and frisked for just [...]
Summer is an activist with the Revolutionary Students Union in Salt Lake City, Utah, where she lives with her partner Wilden and their daughter. Along with student organizing, Summer and Wilden have worked in support of workers’ rights and in the anti-war movement. I grew up Mormon in the very conservative state of Utah. It [...]
Racist police practices were the focus of a struggle within the New York City Council on Oct. 10. A six-hour public hearing took place that day in the body’s Public Safety Committee on the Community Safety Act introduced by Brooklyn Council member Jumaane Williams. Its four bills aim to curtail rampant, often brutal NYC police [...]
From Illinois to southern California, Walmart workers are fighting back against one of the most notorious union-busting corporations in the United States. They are walking out against unfair labor practices and protesting the working conditions and low pay foisted upon them by the largest retail corporation in the world. These courageous workers, not members of [...]
Close to 50 Food and Commercial Workers union members, Occupy Philly and other labor activists assembled at the front doors of Walmart, off Aramingo Avenue in Philadelphia, on Oct. 10. They handed out fliers in support of “OUR Walmart,” the worker-led organization of the giant retailers’ “associates.” Most shoppers were enthusiastic in taking fliers, some [...]
