Aug 16, 2003

When Texas progressives gather together they often complain. And yet, at a recent Dallas meeting of the North Texas Friends of the People’s Weekly World, participants couldn’t help but note a number of positive developments in the state.

CHICAGO – The City of Big Shoulders was an appropriate place for the mid-year AFL-CIO Executive Council meeting Aug. 5-6. Here organized labor, deliberately and with little fanfare, began the heavy lifting of coordinating and mobilizing the nation’s working families to stop the corporate onslaught against the American people’s standard of living and democratic rights in the 2004 elections.

The following is an abridged e-mail sent by a Senegalese woman and health activist to friends. It gives an uncensored view of George W. Bush’s Africa visit.

Iraq: Protest of fuel & power shortages / South Africa: Gov’t to provide AIDS drugs / South Korea: Hyundai workers win wage hike / Dominican Republic: Police raid transport union office / India: Anger grows over strike ban

BUFFALO – The 34th contingent of the Venceremos Brigade triumphantly returned from its visit to Cuba on Aug. 4 when participants walked across the International Peace Bridge from Fort Erie, Ontario, Canada, to Buffalo, N.Y., without any trouble from U.S. Immigration and Customs.

LIVERMORE, Calif. – Over 1,200 demonstrators from many organizations gathered near Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Aug. 10 to demand the Bush administration end plans to develop new nuclear weapons and fulfill its obligation under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to eliminate U.S. nuclear arms.

The honesty-impaired Bush administration does not limit its deception to weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. When it comes to taxes, the spin starts when they call their program the “Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Act of 2003.”

Organizing Wal-Mart, dealing with the crisis in U.S. health care, and defeating George Bush in 2004 were recurring themes in the international convention of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW) held in San Francisco July 31 to Aug. 3.

Sal, a young Texas soldier in Iraq, writes to let us know that he is OK.

Sick and injured war veterans and victims of industrial workplace accidents have a lot in common. Both are treated disgracefully.