July 23, 2005

With a vote on the Central American Free Trade Agreement expected in the House of Representative before the end of July, 10 activists in the Los Angeles Coalition Against CAFTA held a four-day hunger strike July 13-17 urging pressure on Congress to oppose the measure. It has already passed the Senate.

Read the 1946 political action program of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) and much of it sounds like it could have been written for today. It is a fighting program calling for a national health care system, shorter hours, organizing the South (“Operation Dixie”), raising the minimum wage, child care programs, low cost housing, abolition of the poll tax, boosting public education, benefits for returning veterans and much more.

Our page 3 story highlights the longstanding slimy, criminal tactics of Bush-Cheney mastermind Karl Rove. It points out how Rove’s lying, cheating, backstabbing methods, dating back to the Nixon days, helped the ultra-right seize the pinnacles of political power in our country.

As our nation’s labor movement convenes in Chicago, the crisis facing working families is in sharp relief.

Lunchroom talk; A global culture of peace; Investigate Karl Rove; Follow the money; Massacre in Haiti; Great to see e-PWW

A unified working class: This is the one force with the strength to confront the ultra-right and to thwart the damage of corporate globalism. Without unity of workers, no lasting positive change can be won and held.

There is something about Cuba that addles the brains of otherwise intelligent journalists, political pundits and social scientists. Could it be that when they examine the situation of Cuba, they fail to put it in context?

The Mexican government’s decision to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the comic strip character Memin Pinguin by putting it on a postage stamp demonstrates forcefully the nationalist and racial illusions that the Mexican establishment propagates in its ever-more-difficult quest for relevancy, with the increasingly irrelevant and arrogant Vicente Fox at its helm.

The reports of recruiting difficulties by the U.S. Army come as no surprise to many Americans. Indeed, the surprise is that the armed forces did not seem to see it coming. Their response has been to raise sign-up bonuses, drop standards and circle vulnerable young men and women like hawks flying over little chicks. And Americans should not be surprised if we soon hear that the draft is coming back, despite all of the denials by government officials.

Imagine a beautiful song with elements of jazz, hip-hop, reggae, R&B, compa, funk, blues, spoken word, bachata and salsa. This is what it will sound like this summer when thousands of youth and students from over 100 countries representing a wide spectrum of world cultures meet in Caracas, Venezuela, Aug. 7-15.