March 17, 2007

House and Senate Democratic leaders announced new moves to begin U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq this year and set a specific timetable for ending the U.S. combat role by next fall. While not going as far or fast as some peace advocates wanted, it marks the first major congressional drive to end the war since the invasion four years ago.

NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — Shock and anger swept through Massachusetts after agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raided Michael Bianco, Inc., on March 6, arresting 361 undocumented workers, mostly mothers, and leaving hundreds of children traumatized.

Jim Harmes, president of the International Association of Fire Chiefs, told the World he has been a firefighter for over 35 years, and “I don’t remember when there have been so many multiple-death house fires as we’ve had so far this year.”

SÃO PAOLO, Brazil — President George W. (“War”) Bush visited Brazil and four other countries — Uruguay, Colombia, Guatemala and Mexico — during his Latin American tour last week.

On March 12 Guatemalan President Oscar Berger took Bush to the Mayan sacred site Iximche. Hundreds of indigenous people carried out a vigil for 24 hours in nearby Tecpan that a leader described as “an act of resistance in defense of our sovereignty and motherland.” Afterwards they went to Iximche to ritually clean places Bush had visited.

The AFL-CIO is mobilizing its unions to line up the 60 Senate votes needed to halt a planned Republican filibuster against the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA).

Even as U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman steps up his support for the Bush administration’s war on Iraq, the movement for peace grows in his home state.

TACOMA, Wash.: 31 antiwar protesters arrested at port
AUSTIN, Texas: Students take on death penalty
MIAMI: Corruption leaves homeless on street
RALEIGH, N.C.: Thai immigrants snared by labor contractors

Eight thousand workers in Pascagoula, Miss., still picking up the pieces of their lives shattered by Hurricane Katrina, went out on strike at Northrop Grumman’s Ingalls shipyard March 8.

In the first 11 weeks of the 110th Congress, several pieces of progressive legislation, including the Employee Free Choice Act and an increase in the minimum wage, have passed in the House. With the new Democratic majority, congressional silence on the Iraq war has been shattered.