May 11, 2002

LOS ANGELES - "Nadie es ilegal" vocearon más de 10.000 sindicalistas, estudiantes, jóvenes y activistas comunitarios llamando por la legalización de trabajadores inmigrantes indocumentados en la manifestación más grande del Día Internacional de los Trabajadores que se hecho aquí en años.

LOS ANGELES – “No one is illegal!” chanted over 10,000 union members, students, youth and community activists demanding legalization for undocumented immigrant workers in the largest May Day/International Workers Day turnout here in years. For the entire article, click on the headline. To read a short synopsis from the Service Employees Union, click here.

Sixty thousand German autoworkers stayed home May 6 as IG Metall, the country’s largest and most powerful union, with 2.7 million members, launched the first wave of a series of “flexible” strikes that will move from company to company through the country’s industrial heartland in coming days. For the entire article, click on the headline. For more information, visit the homepage of The German International Mine Workers' Federation.

About a thousand union and community people marked May Day with a rally and march through downtown Minneapolis, organized by Service Employees International Union Local 17 and Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union Local 17. The main themes were workers’ rights, immigrant rights and social justice.

LA HABANA (Prensa Latina) – América Latina demuestra al mundo la necesidad de una concepción balanceada en la disminución de cultivos de materias primas que contemple no solo la erradicación física de plantíos, sino además la creación de programas alternativos.

WASHINGTON, DC – Autobuses llenos de trabajadores y sus aliados llegaron a la capital del país, el Primero de Mayo, Día Internacional de los Trabajadores, para exigir que el Congreso promulgue un proyecto de ley (HR-500) introducido por el congresista Luis Gutiérrrez, demócrata por Illinois, que legalizará la condición de inmigrante a millones de indocumentados. Este día de acción legislativa también fue por muchas organizaciones, incluyendo el Comité Organizador de Trabajo Agrícola, afiliada a la AFL-CIO, y organizaciones de derechos del inmigrante con participantes que portaban pegatinas que decían “Voto Sí al HR-500 ... Reclamar el Derecho a la Residencia Permanente.”

John Tateishi, who spent three years in a U.S. concentration camp from 1942 to 1945, sees a parallel between the treatment of Japanese Americans during World War II and the attacks on immigrants from the Middle East today.

SAN FRANCISCO – A crowd of more than 1,000 baggage screeners and their allies gathered at a school auditorium near San Francisco’s airport to demand job security for the screeners whose jobs are threatened by the Bush administration’s requirement that they be citizens to hold their jobs.

WASHINGTON – The May 1 vote in the House Armed Services Committee authorizing a fiscal year military budget of $383.4 billion has drawn sharp criticism from peace and social justice groups who denounced the military-industrial complex for devouring billions of dollars that could be better spent to meet the nation’s crying needs in education, the environment, health and other social programs. The committee also approved a separate $10 billion military contingency fund. For the entire article, click on the headline. For more information, visit The Council for a Livable World or The War Resisters League.

PHIlADELPHIA – On April 27 over 200 people attended a conference, Education Not Incarceration, presented by the Philadelphia Black Radical Congress (BRC) in association with the Criminal Justice Program of the American Friends Service Committee.