June 23, 2007

WASHINGTON — Fired up by victory over the Republican right in last November’s election, 3,000 progressives at a “Take Back America” conference cheered as speakers demanded that Congress end the Iraq war, restore union rights and enact health care for all.

With the crisis unfolding in Gaza and the West Bank, a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian crisis is in jeopardy, Palestinian and Israeli progressives fear.

CHICAGO — Four years after 150 employees walked off the job at the historic Congress Plaza Hotel to protest cuts in wages and health benefits, workers continue to picket, saying they are holding out for a fair contract.

WASHINGTON — No matter how hot and sweaty it got here June 19, support for the Employee Free Choice Act was hotter. Some 3,000 union members and allies rallied on Capitol Hill for the most radical reform of U.S. labor law in over 70 years.

Even before it officially opens on June 29, Michael Moore’s latest documentary “Sicko” is already impacting the national health care debate. Over 1,000 nurses and supporters braved sweltering heat to join Moore at a June 12 rally in Sacramento, Calif., sponsored by the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee.

NEW HAVEN, Conn. — After residents were terrorized by a federal immigration raid, the usually busy streets of this city’s Fair Haven neighborhood were silent for a week and a half. The silence was broken June 16, as over 1,000 marched in solidarity wearing signs declaring, “No human being is illegal.”

ARROWSIC, Maine: Town meeting adopts antiwar stance
HOUSTON: Labor-backed Democrat wins in company town
WASHINGTON: House to vote on torture school
BOSTON: Same-sex marriage upheld

North Korea announced June 16 that it plans to shut down and seal its Yongbyon nuclear facilities in accordance with an agreement reached at the six-party talks aimed at addressing the Korean nuclear issue.

Brazil: Landless workers weigh in on biofuels
Ghana: African leader tells rich nations to keep promises
UN: Iraqi, Palestinian children abandoned, forced to work
Nepal: Gov’t prepares elections, cuts king’s powers
Britain: Troops say, ‘Out of Iraq!’

NEW YORK — In 1964 Nguyen Thi Hong, then a young woman of 17, joined the struggle against the U.S. occupation of her country, Vietnam. She knew that she might lose her life. But she had no idea that she would become sick and remain so for more than 30 years. “I was exposed to dioxin during the war,” Hong told reporters outside a federal courtroom here June 18.