June 30, 2007

WASHINGTON — One week before our nation’s July 4 celebration, thousands of protesters wearing Statue of Liberty crowns and holding signs reading “Torture is wrong” rallied on Capitol Hill to demand that Congress restore constitutional freedoms shredded by the Bush administration.

ROSEMONT, Ill. — United for Peace and Justice, the national antiwar coalition, decided at its third national assembly here June 22-24 to make congressional action to end the Iraq war its number one priority in the coming months.

PHILADELPHIA — The nation’s largest union, the National Education Association, returns to the city where it was founded in 1857 to hold its annual meeting and representative assembly, June 30-July 5

WASHINGTON — Democratic presidential candidates Barack Obama and John Edwards topped a straw poll of liberal and progressive activists at the Take Back America conference here June 20.

PAINESVILLE, Ohio — With raids and arrests of undocumented workers spreading, hundreds of farmworkers held a silent, solemn Father’s Day march and rally in this mid-sized town about 30 miles east of Cleveland.

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.: Demand humane treatment for jailed immigrants
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J.: Global concerts launch campaign on global warming
RIVERDALE, Ill.: Jackson says get the guns off city streets
RENO, Nev.: State universities OK arming college staff

BROOKLYN, N.Y. — The New York Police Department is running wild in Black and Latino neighborhoods, using racial profiling as a tool of choice, charges a group of students and residents of Brooklyn’s Bushwick neighborhood.

OAKLAND, Calif. — Expressing concerns shared by many California communities, affordable housing activists gathered on the City Hall steps, June 19, to protest long delays by the City Council and a blue-ribbon commission in preparing proposals to increase affordable housing and to protect tenants whose buildings are converted into condos.

Many thousands of trade unionists, peace activists, community organizers, students and young workers are converging on the U.S. Social Forum in Atlanta this week to march, rally and develop strategies in their fight against the ultra-right

Vilma Espín Guillois, a legendary heroine of the Cuban Revolution, died June 18 in Havana. She was 77. A student activist in the struggle against the Batista dictatorship, Espín later emerged as a courageous guerilla fighter in the successful drive led by Fidel Castro to topple the corrupt, gangster-infested U.S.-backed regime.