National

Voters in Michigan can deliver a knockout punch to the Bush agenda. But to do so, they will have to find their way through a Republican minefield that works to scapegoat the victims of an economic crisis that has Michigan autoworkers and the communities they live in reeling.

Some 100 union coal miners jammed the Mine Safety and Health Administration district office in Morgantown, W.Va., Oct. 24. They demanded stepped up enforcement of safety laws, oxygen packs and other equipment, and more mine inspectors. They also protested President Bush’s appointment of a coal operator to head the federal mine safety agency.

According to Chinese reports, North Korean leader Kim Jong Il expressed regret over his country’s nuclear weapons test, saying that it would not conduct another so long as the United States did not escalate threats against the North.

CLEVELAND — Voters in Ohio, the bellwether state that gave George W. Bush the presidency by a slim margin, are poised to deliver a major rebuke to the Republican Party in the Nov. 7 elections.

Harold Ford, Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate from Tennessee, is a “favorite son” of AFSCME Local 1733, a lawmaker with a 100 percent voting record in support of working families in the Memphis district he has represented for 10 years in Congress.

The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force recognizes as a step forward today’s unanimous New Jersey Supreme Court decision holding that denying rights and benefits to same-sex couples that are statutorily given to heterosexual couples violates the state’s constitution.

CARPENTERSVILLE, Illinois – Cuando casi tres mil residentes hicieron acto de presencia en la reunión de la Junta de la Aldea de Carpentersville cuando esta estaba programada a discutir una ley contra los inmigrantes indocumentados el 3 de octubre, los dirigentes de la aldea decidieron posponer el debate. Según ellos, esto fue para buscar un sitio más grande para vistas públicas.

SAN ANTONIO — El día 12 de octubre, Día de la Raza, gente se congregaron en la Plaza Guadalupe para asistir a una manifestación auspiciadas por el Concilio Laboral para el Avance Latinoamericano (conocido por sus siglas en inglés LCLAA) y por La Liga Unida de Ciudadanos Latinoamericanos.

A year after hurricanes Katrina and Rita devastated the Gulf Coast, I thought I’d take a look back (like everyone else) and see how we as a country and as an industry have fared since. In doing so I came across a recent study by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research titled “The Women of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast: Disadvantages and Key Assets for Recovery, Part II. Gender, Race and Class in the Labor Market,” which confirmed some of my apprehensions.

They are smiling in Hell these days. White-collar criminals just got another free ride from the Reagan/Bush U.S. judicial system. “Kenny Boy” Lay, the recently deceased close friend and supporter of President George W. Bush, has been exonerated by U.S. District Judge Sim Lake. The millions of Californians and Texans who realized during the Enron scandal that they had been robbed are going to find it even harder to collect any damages.