Oct. 26, 2002

There’s still time / Thugs and rogues at UN

Gus Hall former national chairman of the Communist Party, was interred at Forest Home Cemetery (formerly Waldheim Cemetery), near Chicago, Sept. 20. Gus and Elizabeth’s children, Barbara Conway and Arvo Hall, party leaders and friends attended the ceremony.

LOS ANGELES – International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) President James Spinosa and AFL-CIO Secretary Treasurer Richard Trumka both spoke at the Oct. 22 general membership meeting of ILWU Local 13 where nearly 2,000 members packed the union hall to hear reports on developments in their battle with their employers, the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA).

Italy: General strike for workers’ rights / Colombia: Public workers need support / Kenya: Teachers gain int’l solidarity / Belgium: Int’l unionists denounce McDonald’s / Israel: 100,000 workers strike

TEL-AVIV – Marwan Barghouti, the leader of El-Fatah – the Palestinian Liberation Organization’s (PLO) majority party chaired by Yasser Arafat – is being convicted and sentenced to death by a small group of hysterical people. Barghouti, arrested in April by the Israeli occupation regime, faces numerous charges, including murder. He was brought with shackled hands and feet to the district court here, Oct. 3.

WEST PALM BEACH, Florida – En la media noche, un dibujador desconocido de grafitis está poniendo pegatinas en los letreros de campaña de Jeb Bush por todo el estado. La pegatina tiene solo una palabra: “Devious.”

BOSTON – “We don’t need a California business magnate to come to Massachusetts and tell us how to educate our children,” Kathleen Kelly, president of the Massachusetts Federation of Teachers, said, expressing the sentiments of a coalition opposed to Question 2, an anti-bilingual education referendum on the November ballot.

BOSTON – Partidarios de los limpiadores en huelga marcaron el fin de la tercera semana del paro con una manifestación masiva y marcha aquí el sábado, 19 de octubre. Organizaciones laborales, estudiantiles, inmigrantes y del clero además de otras estuvieron presente para expresar su solidaridad con los huelguistas, en su mayoría latinos.

Raised in Brooklyn in a housing project in a community with strong ties to Puerto Rico and its histories of political resistance, Martín Espada is now recognized as a major poet of his generation.