Apr 30, 2005

NEW YORK — The worldwide movement to end nuclear weapons, energized and united with the antiwar movement, is converging here for a month of actions. Kicking it off is a May 1 mass “No Nukes! No Wars!” march. On May 2, the United Nations opens a review of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which aims to curb and eventually eliminate these weapons of mass destruction.click here for Spanish text

ST. LOUIS — Washington University here will commit at least $1 million over the next two years toward higher salaries and better benefits for low-paid contract employees as a result of a 19-day sit-in by students demanding a living wage for service workers. Wash U’s Student Worker Alliance (SWA) reached a groundbreaking agreement with campus officials April 22. “We won more in the last 19 days than we won in the last 18 months put together,” said SWA member Ojiugo Uzoma.

DES MOINES, Iowa — “The word of God and communism are hand in hand,” said Diana Sowry, a school bus driver from Ashtabula County, Ohio. She was one of a group of clergy and lay people participating in a conference on religion sponsored by the Communist Party USA here April 15-16.

WASHINGTON — Thousands cheered at a Capitol Hill rally April 26 as lawmakers and leaders of labor, retirees, women, youth of color and the disabled vowed “no compromise” in the battle to block President Bush’s plan to privatize Social Security.

According to a U.S. Army study, unprecedented numbers of African American youth are refusing to join the Army and they are doing so for a very clear reason — opposition to the Iraq war.

In the coming week millions of Mexican Americans, mexicanos, Latinos, African Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans, white Americans — Americans of all kinds — will take part in Cinco de Mayo events across the United States.

LOUISVILLE, Ky.: Protest ‘Justice Sunday’; SANTA CRUZ, Calif.: Police attack tent city; ST. PAUL, Minn.: Stop CAFTA; CHAPEL HILL, N.C.: Protect public health, marchers say

NEW HAVEN, Conn. — Refusing to be silenced by the Bush administration’s National Labor Relations Board, graduate student teachers at Yale and Columbia went on strike last week in the first ever Ivy League coordinated job action.

San Francisco and Los Angeles hotel workers’ long-running contract battles to save quality health coverage and win decent wages and reasonable workloads are intensifying, with “street heat,” boycott successes and growing international solidarity.

To counter the anti-people program being put forward by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and his corporate backers, the California Labor Federation is putting forward its own program for economic recovery.