Nov. 5, 2005

Slams ‘corporate scavengers,’ government inaction

BATON ROUGE, La. — Sporting union, NAACP and ACORN T-shirts, more than 1,000 rallied here Oct. 29 for jobs, living wages, affordable housing and public services for south Louisiana. Gov. Kathleen Blanco, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney and the Rev. Al Sharpton were joined by rank-and-file workers and community activists in calling for a rebuilding program that puts victims of Katrina and Rita first. Speakers also called on the federal government to supply grants, not loans, to local governments for basic services.

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Emboldened by the indictment of Vice President Dick Cheney’s Chief of Staff, I. Lewis Libby, Democrats forced the majority-Republican Senate into a closed-door session Nov. 1 to hear their charges that the Bush administration used false intelligence to whip up support for the war on Iraq.

ST. LOUIS — The second annual “Working Class Media and Democracy” forum here Oct. 21, sponsored by the Missouri-Kansas People’s Weekly World bureau, featured a panel of print and radio personalities, including Lizz Brown, WGNU radio, Johnson Lancaster, Belleville News-Democrat, and Joel Wendland, Political Affairs magazine. The event was moderated by state Rep. Jeanette Mott Oxford.

We are glad to welcome our new staff writer, Jose “Pepe” Lozano.

President Bush’s Halloween nomination of Samuel Alito to replace Sandra Day O’Connor on the Supreme Court is seen by both right and left as a confrontational “bring ’em on” offensive against mainstream democratic and progressive America.

CHICAGO — “Killing one human being is like killing all of humanity. Saving one human being is like saving all of humanity,” said Abdul Malik Mujahid, president of the Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago, at an Oct. 26 vigil here marking 2,000 U.S. military deaths in Iraq. Hundreds gathered in downtown Federal Plaza to pay homage to those killed in the war, both U.S. and Iraqi, and to call for an end to the war.

Exxon Mobil Corp. broke records as its third-quarter profits soared to almost $10 billion and it became the first public company ever with quarterly sales topping $100 billion. Royal Dutch Shell wasn’t far behind, posting profits of $9 billion for the quarter.

BERKELEY, Calif. — As the number of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq neared the 2,000 mark, nearly 500 university and high school students, military resisters, veterans and peace activists gathered on the UC Berkeley campus Oct. 22-23 for “On the Frontlines: Options for Youth in Times of War.” While most participants were from California, some came from as far away as New York state.

WASHINGTON: Danger in deodorants?; WASHINGTON: Face-off on Arctic Refuge; PHILADELPHIA: Transit workers strike; MONTGOMERY, Ala.: City honors Rosa Parks

NEW YORK — Last week at a demonstration in Times Square marking the 2,000th American death in the Iraq war, I saw an old friend and asked if he was working for Fernando Ferrer. He said that although he’d probably vote for him, he wasn’t “enthusiastic.”

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