Feb 15, 2003

NEW YORK – The Bush administration faced a widening credibility gap in its efforts to convince the world that a war to remove Saddam Hussein is imperative even if 100,000 Iraqis die in the Pentagon’s “Shock and Awe” war scenario.

CHICAGO – Beseiged on many fronts – layoffs, pension grabs, loss of medical benefits and even the very right to organize – but fighting back, workers and their unions are adding stopping the Bush administration’s disastrous war on Iraq to their urgent agenda.

I wasn’t surprised to hear that the crew on the space shuttle Columbia enjoyed listening to John Lennon’s “Imagine.” Looking at our beautiful and fragile planet from space must evoke a deep feeling – a feeling that Imagine captures so poignantly – of the oneness of life and the overarching necessity of safeguarding world peace.

NEW HAVEN, Conn. – Braving frigid cold winds, staff members and patients at the Connecticut Mental Health Center (CMHC) spent their lunch hour on the picket line, Feb. 3, wearing District 1199 signs proclaiming “Patient Care is OUR bottom line.”

NEW YORK – On the eve of the peace rally that is set to bring out hundreds of thousands against the war, people across this city are in the middle of a fight against what has been called a “war economy.”

Even though Section 9528 is buried deep within 670 pages of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLBA) its heading clearly explains its purpose, “Armed Forces Recruiter Access to Students and Student Recruiting Information.” While education advocates were concentrating on issues surrounding school funding, vouchers and over-testing, the clause was slipped through and became federal law with the rest of the NCLBA on Feb. 8, 2002.

MIAMI, Fla.: Peace warms Freedom Torch

Students joined “Grandmas for Peace” for a rally at the Freedom Torch plaza downtown demanding no war with Iraq. Hundreds of residents assembled protesting the Bush administration war policy.

Ryo Kumasaka was playing touch football in a nearby playground on December 7, 1941, when he heard Japanese planes had bombed Pearl Harbor.

Civil libertarians are reacting with shock to a draft of new legislation being circulated in the Bush administration which, if passed, would radically reduce the Constitutional rights of everyone, citizen and non-citizen alike. It would also drastically reduce the “checks and balances” of government.

Ryo Kumasaka, one of the 110,000 people of Japanese ancestry who were rounded up and forced into U.S. concentration camps during World War II, worries that history may be repeating itself.