Apr 2, 2005

Labor editor’s note: A while back, cost-cutting employers began promoting stock market-based 401(k) plans as an alternative to pensions with defined benefits. Many of these 401(k) plans took a bath when the stock market dipped, so it’s no surprise that today workers have serious doubts about relying on the stock market to take care of them in their old age. In the spirit of April 1, the PWW offers the following plan, re-printed from an Internet message, to the retirement security debate.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — Nearly 500 members of Planned Parenthood, NARAL Pro-Choice Missouri, the National Organization for Women and the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice converged here March 15 to pressure Republican Gov. Matt Blunt and the state Legislature to back off their assault on the reproductive rights of this state’s women.

Two weeks ago, few outside Florida had heard of Terri Schiavo. As of this writing, her family has run out of court appeals and legislative efforts to reconnect her feeding tube. This is probably not the end of the national horror show over the future of this brain-damaged woman or the Republicans’ use of a private, heartbreaking situation for their own ends. The case has implications for congressional intrusion into the most intimate areas of our lives and the separation between Congress and the courts.

Chicago CLUW’s (Coalition of Labor Union Women) annual dinner March 24 presents Bea Lumpkin their Olga Maddar award.

Jean-Baptiste Gomont Diagou wants to set the record straight about the conflict besetting Côte d’Ivoire, his home country.

This weekend marks two key dates in the struggle for social and economic justice: the 78th anniversary of the birth of Cesar Chavez and the 37th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Once again, at the urging of the United States, Cuba is being singled out for possible censure by the UN Commission on Human Rights.

Hate patrols in Arizona. A Bush diversion. Correction to migration story. Not just a matter of $. Support AWOL troops. Nuclear threat. All together now.

The New Deal of the 1930s can be seen as a response to the reality of socialism born in 1917, when the Russian Revolution thrust on the world’s action agenda the vision of a society based on collective ownership and working class empowerment to meet human needs. Seventy years later, the Bush/Republican far-right advocacy of an “ownership society” can be seen as an effort to turn the clock back to the world before socialism came on the scene — a world of untrammeled power for a few “captains of society,” and crumbs for those who do the work.

The heartbreaking saga of Terri Schindler-Schiavo is nearing its end as the legal and political maneuvers surrounding her wind down. The Pinellas Park, Fla., hospice continues to be the focus of media attention as this is written, with the encampment of journalists swelled by the presence of protesters, the curious, and law enforcement officers.