Feb. 3, 2007

WASHINGTON — More than 1,000 antiwar lobbyists from 48 states visited hundreds of lawmakers’ offices on Monday, Jan. 29, to urge them to pass a Senate resolution opposing the Iraq war and to use the “power of the purse strings” to terminate the deadly four-year conflict.

Instigated by a company hell-bent on keeping out a union, the U.S. government raided the world’s largest pork processing plant, Smithfield Packing, in Tar Heel, N.C., on Jan. 24.

Health care advocates slammed President Bush’s latest health care proposals as free-market fantasy that would dismantle employer-provided health coverage, enrich insurance companies and worsen the nation’s health care crisis.

The day after President Bush’s State of the Union address, the secretary of education, Margaret Spellings, presented a proposal to reauthorize the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), the administration’s troubled education law.

SAN FRANCISCO — It was a night of tumultuous applause and repeated standing ovations, from the introduction of war resister First Lieutenant Ehren Watada’s mother, Carolyn Ho, by San Francisco Labor Council head Tim Paulson, to the evening’s main presentation by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), now running for his party’s presidential nomination.

In smaller cities and towns across the nation, tens of thousands of people demonstrated in solidarity with those who marched in Washington on Jan. 27 to bring the troops home.

WASHINGTON — United in their opposition to the Iraq war, thousands of union members took aim at Bush administration policy last weekend, marching and rallying in the nation’s capital and beating corporate fat cats at their own game by lobbying in the halls of Congress.

NAIROBI, Kenya (IPS) — The 7th World Social Forum wound to a close here after five days of dialogue, art, poetry, dance, drama and protests led by participants from around the globe who believe “another world is possible.”

The World Social Forum in Nairobi concluded Jan. 25 with the approval of a motion in support of the world campaign for the release of the five Cuban anti-terrorist fighters held in U.S. prisons

The Communist Party of Venezuela (CPV) is about to introduce a proposal that the National Assembly establish workers councils and include them under the new “Organic Law for Citizen Participation and People’s Power.”