National

WASHINGTON — No matter how hot and sweaty it got here June 19, support for the Employee Free Choice Act was hotter. Some 3,000 union members and allies rallied on Capitol Hill for the most radical reform of U.S. labor law in over 70 years.

You may not know it living in the United States, but this year most of what historians call the Atlantic World is commemorating the 200th anniversary of the British abolition of the transatlantic slave trade.

Ever since President Bush began to build his administration’s track record of undermining the U.S. Constitution and restricting Americans’ civil liberties, he has had a loyal yes-man and enabler, Alberto “Can’t Recall” Gonzales.

Growing up in western Texas as the daughter of cotton sharecroppers, I spent my summers weeding cotton, five days a week, 10 hours a day, in 95-degree heat. As grueling as this workload was, others had it even worse. For foreign workers toiling as “guest workers” (or “braceros”) alongside us in the cotton fields, the five-day workweek was an impossible luxury.

CHICAGO — Graduating with a college degree is more than ever a necessity today. Students and their families are doing whatever it takes to pay for higher education, including taking on excessive amounts of debt.

President Bush, with Wall Street backing, is pushing hard for a policy that would legalize undocumented workers but keep them in a subservient status for more than a decade. His proposals would also relegate future “lower-skilled status workers” to perpetual servitude.

WASHINGTON — Anger over skyrocketing gasoline prices is turning to fightback with more than 570,768 people signing an online petition to the U.S. Senate demanding that they approve a bill that makes gasoline price gouging a federal crime.

Twenty-two union leaders were arrested at the State Capitol in Hartford, Conn., June 1, as they called for universal health care.

DALLAS, Tejas — Farmers Branch, un suburbio de Dallas, ha logrado la triste distinción de ser la primera ciudad norteamericana a criminalizar a dueños y terratenientes que dan albergue a los no ciudadanos.

The Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) will convene its sixth annual “Take Back America” conference in Washington, D.C., June 18. Every year for the past five years thousands of union members, peace, civil and human rights activists, and environmentalists have gathered for these conferences.