Nov. 3, 2007

“The people believe that peace is possible and we know that we are here to make it happen,” Rep. Danny Davis told thousands in Chicago Oct. 27 rallying for an end to the Iraq war. “We have to keep the heat on,” declared Davis, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus and longtime progressive leader. “Let’s stop the funding, let’s stop the war, let’s bring the troops home.”

Racist provocations and violence are on the rise and a cause for great concern. Racism represents a grave danger to our nation.

NEW ORLEANS — Renaissance Park in Baker, La., has a name that does it no justice. Home to Catherine Pitt, 31, an African American mother and her two children, it is row after row of cramped FEMA trailers sitting on a flat field encircled by barbed wire and patrolled by armed Blackwater USA security guards.

CLEVELAND — Blasting the insurance and drug company “rackets” that are draining Medicare, Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) urged seniors here to get active in the fight to preserve and expand the besieged federal health care system.

With contract approval at Chrysler, the United Auto Workers is shifting gears to Ford, the third company with which it needs to hammer out a new contract.

Four thousand UAW members at 11 local unions in six states have been on strike since Oct. 23 against International Truck and Engine, maker of Navistar trucks, in response to the company’s unfair labor practices.

The struggle over health care reform in California goes on, following Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s veto last month of health care legislation passed by both houses of the Democratic-led Legislature and backed by the state’s labor federation and a broad coalition of health care organizations.

The NAACP has declared a “state of emergency” in the criminal justice system’s brutal mistreatment of Black youth across the nation. The declaration cites the zealous over-prosecution of the Jena Six teenagers in Louisiana, the killing by guards of Martin Lee Anderson, 14, at a Florida boot camp last year and the Oct. 4 beating and pepper-spraying of Shelwanda Riley, 15, for curfew violation in Fort Pierce, Fla.

WASHINGTON — Congressional Republicans sustained President Bush’s veto of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) bill for the second time in as many weeks, ignoring a new report that 21 states will run out of SCHIP funds in 2008 unless Congress approves the program with a big increase over current spending.

A senior United Nations official said that cooperation with Iran was “good” Oct. 29, a day after the head of the UN’s nuclear watchdog agency said that there was no evidence that Iran was working to build nuclear weapons.