Aug 30, 2003

Thousands will be marching in the streets of Miami, Florida, during the week of Nov. 17-21, protesting the proposed Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA). They will pour into Miami from all over the country and from all over the world. The protesters will be trade unionists, anti-globalization activists, environmentalists, family farmers, religious activists, civil and human rights activists. Thousands will come to Miami to make their voices heard at a meeting of trade ministers from around the Americas.

It takes a fight to win / Bush is beatable

Bush recruits Saddam’s thugs / Military-industrial-complex / PWW/NM a high priority / Bush photo-ops in Africa / Communism and religion

The labor movement today is under attack by the monopoly corporations as a greedy “special interest” bunch. The attack starts in the White House and fills every media form every day. It increases in intensity as the 2004 elections draw ever closer.

The Bush administration needs California to win the 2004 presidential elections. The grand prize will be its large number of Electoral College votes in the winner-take-all elections – California has the most electoral votes in the nation. In the last presidential elections California voters overwhelmingly voted for Al Gore. Bush political advisor Karl Rove has said that he believes California can be won for Bush this time.

While the California recall vote will get most media attention before the Oct. 7 election, progressive-minded voters are also gearing up to defeat a ballot initiative that will appear on the same ballot – Proposition 54. This is a follow-up measure to Prop. 209, the anti-affirmative action or so-called “civil rights” initiative passed in November 1996, proposed by right-wing University of California Regent Ward Connerly and his so-called American Civil Rights Institute.

Bloodied but unbowed after a terrible state legislative session, Texas labor is laying plans to continue fighting. At the AFL-CIO convention in Austin July 24-26, over 400 delegates applauded the “Killer-D” state representatives who fled the state in May (and again in late July) to thwart a redistricting power grab by their Republican opponents. They endorsed the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride, a national Cesar Chavez holiday, and dozens of other progressive proposals.

BALTIMORE, Md. – A recent “Tour of Shame” of some of Baltimore’s poorest, working-class, and racially oppressed neighborhoods spotlighted the extent of the economic devastation that has been visited on large sections of this city.

Strikebreaking and union-busting has taken many shapes and forms over the years, but the goals haven’t changed. While the “profession” started as an obvious, and usually violent, infringement upon workers’ rights to organize, it soon metamorphosed into something much more subtle and insidious.

DETROIT, Mich. – With its gleaming stainless steel arches reaching toward each other 63 feet in the air, a monument to Michigan’s working class, the Michigan Labor Legacy Project, was unveiled Aug. 20 in downtown Detroit.