Apr 2, 2005

WASHINGTON — Georgetown University workers won a tremendous living wage victory last week. After months of organizing and a nine-day hunger strike, a student-labor alliance at Georgetown won a $14-an-hour wage for 452 fulltime contract campus workers, who had been making as little as $8.50 an hour. Workers will receive a minimum of $13 per hour by July 1 this year and $14 per hour by July 1, 2007.

A report in the March/April issue of the journal Health Affairs estimates that 83,570 excess African American deaths occur each year as a direct result of health care disparities between Blacks and whites. The report, whose lead author is former Surgeon General David Satcher, points to “pervasive inequalities in America’s social, economic and health care systems.” It indicts the for-profit health system for failing to provide basic services to a huge segment of the U.S. population.

SAN FRANCISCO — It was billed as a press conference. But what really happened in Civic Center Plaza on the morning of March 25 was an hour-long, intensely moving memorial tribute to the 1,525 U.S. soldiers who have died in Iraq, and to the estimated 100,000 Iraqi civilians who have died as a result of the war.

TEXAS CITY, Texas — “They are killing people for money,” a retired union carpenter told me as I was standing in front of the British Petroleum refinery plant here, March 26.

WASHINGTON — “Culture of life” has become one of President George W. Bush’s clichés even as he sows death and destruction here and abroad.

NEW HAVEN, Conn. — When community leaders and elected officials showed up March 17 for a press conference at the Winchester plant’s Division Street entrance here, the company refused to open the gates so that workers could join in.

SALINAS, Calif.: Library to hold emergency ‘read-in.’ BIRMINGHAM, Ala.: Bishops against death penalty. WASHINGTON: Wal-Mart pays millions in abuse penalty. TOMBSTONE, Ariz.: Stop border vigilantes

As Gov. Arnold Schwarzen-egger continues to threaten a special election next November to press his pro-corporate agenda, a broad and growing coalition is fighting back with positive initiatives to benefit California’s ordinary people.

LOS ANGELES — When musical composer Aaron Copland was commissioned by the Works Projects Administration to write “Fanfare for the Common Man,” it must have been with public workers in mind.

The March 18-20 weekend marked the two-year anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. At least 765 towns and cities, in all 50 states, held antiwar actions. Last week’s PWW reported from a national action in Fayetteville, N.C., and other cities. Here are a few more reports.