Aug. 12, 2006

Chicago made national news the last week in July when it became the largest city in the country to set minimum wage and benefit standards for retail workers. Many lies and myths have been perpetrated about the wage law. Principal sponsors Alderman Freddrenna Lyle, from the 6th Ward, responded to many of these myths in her speech from the floor of the City Council, as did Alderman Joe Moore from the 49th Ward. The following are abridgments of their speeches.

Connecticut Democratic voters took a dramatic stand that shook the nation in last Tuesday’s primary. Their vote to send Joe Lieberman home and put Ned Lamont in the U.S. Senate changes the political landscape and adds to the growing upsurge in the country

Having experienced the horrors of war firsthand, many veterans have come home to join the antiwar movement. Groups like Veterans for Peace, which holds its convention this week, play a special role in the peace movement.

Minimum wage & seniors
Ex-NASA chief responds
Disappointing
Correct position

Father Carl Kabat, 72, Greg Boertje-Obed, 51, and Michael Walli, 57, sit in jail in North Dakota awaiting a federal criminal trial because of weapons of mass destruction and because of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I visited them last week.

I noticed that recent CPUSA statements on the Middle East put a heavy weight on Israel’s responsibility and much lighter weight on Hezbollah or Hamas. Why doesn’t the CPUSA take a more even-handed approach?

For the past year there has been a widening split within the ranks of American organized labor, and this split risks hardening as the new Change to Win (CTW) coalition increasingly takes on the complexion of a rival labor federation.

Has the stroke of a corporate media pen attempted to define “working class” away in your city? Once again, it has in mine. A June 23 article in the St. Paul Pioneer Press illustrates the point made by Communist economist Victor Perlo: the capitalists attempt to divide the working class by confusing “class” with “income.”

As months, weeks, hours, even as nanoseconds haul by in this day and age, making that metal against concrete screech, there is nothing like the relief of the annually anticipated Ani album.