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In a widely acclaimed speech at an African American church on Chicago’s South Side to commemorate Father’s Day, Barack Obama gave a presentation that, while acknowledging the racial challenges of the past, gave great weight to the themes of personal responsibility and moral uplift confronting African American men. The central theme that resonated through the presentation was “stop making excuses” for your own failings to be fathers.

The yearning in our country for a new direction and new priorities has taken hold in the 2008 elections. Voters turned out in record numbers for the primaries, propelled by economic necessity and determination to end the war, and inspired by the historic breakthrough of a woman or an African American as a major party candidate for president.

Stimulating!

Start with regulating Big Oil

Don’t let capitalism off the hook

Can we abolish war?

Thoughts about art and class

Youth joblessness is reaching record highs this summer, hitting 66 percent nationwide (the highest since unemployment data was first collected in the 1960s). These numbers rise dramatically for African American youth, who in Chicago face an unemployment rate of 85 percent. These numbers also rise across the board if you include young people who have given up looking for work, who currently go uncounted. But this is not a numbers game.

With the windup of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, much attention has been focused on the role of sexism in our national discourse.

Dramatic TV ads are only part of what AFSCME has in its arsenal for the election battle. The union plans to mobilize more than 40,000 of its own members as activists in the fall campaign for Obama and will commit $50 million to campaign activity.

Greenpeace is calling for signatures on an online petition to McCain, titled “Just Say NO to Offshore Drilling.”

CLEVELAND — Delegates to the North Shore (Cleveland) AFL-CIO Federation of Labor erupted in cheers and applause when President Loree Soggs, referring to Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama, opened his report to the June 11 meeting saying, “We now have a candidate.”

CHICAGO — Sixty striking workers who have been taking turns picketing in front of the Congress Hotel here for the past five years could not conceal their joy June 11 as thousands of trade union and community activists joined their ranks.

PARIS — Undocumented workers here have done what was once considered unthinkable. Starting in mid-April, they have organized a series of strikes and work stoppages. In some cases the workers, many of whom are African, even occupied their workplaces.