Aug. 25, 2007

NEW ORLEANS — Two years after his wife was swept away by Hurricane Katrina, Calvin Bernard still comes to sweep the slab and water the flowers where their house once stood in this city’s Lower 9th Ward. It is his way of keeping alive the hope that he can rebuild his life and his community.

The same day that Jocka Jones laid to rest her brother, who was killed trying to rescue six trapped Utah miners, officials of the Crandall Canyon Mine said it would soon be back in business. Choking back tears during a phone interview Aug. 22, Jones said her brother, Dale Ray Black, 48, “will have died in vain if one more person is killed in that mine.”

MySpace, the popular social networking site, has 70 million users. The People’s Weekly World has joined a range of progressive organizations and individuals who are using the site to advance a pro-people agenda.

LOS ANGELES — Elvira Arellano stepped completely out of the shadows last week, seeking to galvanize the immigrant rights movement into emergency action. At stake is the fate of the nation’s 12 million undocumented immigrant workers and their families.

Smithfield Packing employs 5,500 workers who slaughter and package the meat of 32,000 hogs a day at its sprawling plant in Tar Heel, a tiny town 80 miles south of Raleigh, N.C. The facility has become a rallying point for the nation’s labor movement and for civil rights, immigrant rights, community and human rights groups seeking an end to injustice.

OAKLAND, Calif. — The national media chain that now owns nearly all daily newspapers in the San Francisco Bay Area said Aug. 13 it was withdrawing recognition of the union representing newsroom employees.

CHARLESTON, W.Va.: War costs could pay for kids’ health care
JENA, La.: Hundreds demand justice for Jena 6 students
KALAMAZOO, Mich.: Town hall meets ‘take a stand’ vs. war
MEMPHIS, Tenn.: Heat kills 13 in state, more throughout South

José Padilla, a U.S. citizen and convert to Islam, was convicted by a federal jury in Miami, on Aug 16, on three charges of conspiracy and material support for terrorism. The verdict may be appealed. The case, however, continues to be central to accusations that the Bush administration has gone berserk in its attacks on due process.

DALLAS — One of the most important civil liberties trials in recent times has been under way here since July 26. Each day, government prosecutors inundate the jury with evidence of the Holy Land Foundation’s involvement in providing assistance to the suffering people of Palestine without any mention of actual crimes.

On Aug. 4, four African American Delaware State University students, Dashon Harvey, Iofemi Hightower, Terrance Aeriel and his sister, Natasha Aeriel, were shot execution-style in a Newark, N.J., elementary schoolyard. Only Natasha survived. Newark Mayor Cory Booker called the victims “good kids with bright futures who had never been in trouble.”