Oct. 6, 2007

VANCOUVER, British Columbia — While the people of Haiti have experienced an improvement in the country’s political atmosphere, their economic situation continues to deteriorate, said Roger Annis, a representative of the Canada-Haiti Action Network.

Egypt: Textile workers strike
China: Dam project has environmental costs
Serbia: NATO relents, permits cluster bomb search
South Africa: Farming for food or fuel?
Cuba: U.S. denies visiting rights, again

CHICAGO — If you thought every woman and man that served in the U.S. military and honorably discharged was guaranteed health care as a veteran, you would be wrong. Funding shortages still limit the extent and duration of care, and appropriations for the VA is up to the yearly “discretion” of Congress and the president.

SAN FRANCISCO — Talks for a new contract continued this week after workers who provide security in prime downtown office buildings returned to their jobs Sept. 27 following a first-ever three-day strike.
Workers, members of SEIU Local 24/7, and their supporters held a spirited late afternoon rally on Market Street Sept. 27 before marching past many of the buildings they protect.

Our nation’s health care crisis is in the public eye, and while Democratic presidential candidates, with the exception of Dennis Kucinich, are trying to appropriate the language of universal health care to win support for plans that don’t eliminate the private insurance industry, new opportunities for alliances and advocacy continue to appear.

The defeat of the Senate’s flawed comprehensive immigration bill last spring and the Bush administration’s escalating of factory and neighborhood raids, deportations and militarization of the border are largely blamed on right-wing forces who see legalization and a path to citizenship for undocumented workers as unacceptable amnesty.

Last week Illinois Sen. Barack Obama announced that as president he would set a goal of ridding the world of nuclear weapons. In doing so, he joined another Democratic presidential candidate, John Edwards, who called earlier this year for a nuclear-weapons-free world.

Every day women go to work and have to face various kinds of gender discrimination — an unfair wage differential, discrimination in health and other benefits, lack of advancement opportunities, and sexual harassment.

Terrible UAW contract
SCHIP action
Cutting Medicaid to pay for war?
Free the Jena 6
Good memories
ARA: anyone can join

The end of the historic strike against General Motors by the nation’s autoworkers may well signal the beginning of a fight by all workers against a new level of the corporate offensive against our jobs, our wages, our benefits and our very livelihoods.