Mar 2, 2002

PITTSBURGH – There is cold rolled anger in the heartland; there is blast furnance fury on the East Coast. In the last two weeks, workers, their families, clergy, school board members and elected officials have jammed high school auditoriums and union halls cheering United Steelworkers of America (USWA) President Leo Gerard’s call for militant action.

It took nearly two years, but a Longshore local of majority African-American dockers, supported by a worldwide movement, finally won freedom for Elijah Ford, Peter Washington, Kenneth Jefferson, Jason Edgerton and Ricky Simmons – the Charleston Five. To view the entire article, click on the headline. For a link to the chonology of events for the Charleston Five struggle, click here, or to see the AFL-CIO press release on their victory, click here.

Even though a recession is on, there is at least one industry that is booming – the excuse industry. Excuse factories are working overtime, combining and recombining excuses like strands of DNA.

The Bushies are having a helluva time getting things straight. On the one hand, they tell us the economy is recovering – that we are, as Lawrence Lindsey, chief White House economic advisor, said recently, at a stage where the economy is “beginning to begin its recovery.”

During the last presidential campaign George W. Bush called for the creation of a “21st century” military capability.

Last week another contingent of the expected 660 U.S. soldiers arrived in the Philippines. Their arrival was greeted by an explosion that killed five Filipino civilians.

In both word and deed, the Bush administration indicated this week that it is escalating its military role in Afghanistan amid signs that increased clashes among competing warlords and challenges by rival militias to the U.S-installed interim government could tip Afghanistan back into chaos.

The Port and Maritime Security Act of 2001, a bill now before the Congress, is one of the legislative overreactions to the Sept. 11 terrorist attack that could gut union rights at our nation’s ports.

CHICAGO – In the early 1900s, American working women demonstrated for union rights and the right to vote. Their fight inspired the International Socialist Women’s Conference in 1910 to declare March 8 International Women’s Day. Today, the women of Chicago’s Wisconsin Steel are continuing this fight for workers’ rights. For the entire article, click on the headline. To read an article on Black women in steel from the PWW in 1995, click here.

At least 30,000 tons of scrap from the World Trade Center wreckage has been exported to India.