Drug industry desecrates public interest
Review: 'The Truth about the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It.' The U.S. health care system means misery for many, abundance for others. Parts of the story are easily told: low life expectancy and high infant mortality for the poor and racially oppressed, and millions who are uninsured or have poor coverage...
Missourians fight to blunt health cuts
ST. LOUIS — “Hurting Missouri’s most vulnerable citizens is not the way to fix our state’s budget problems,” said Cathy Martarella at a March 21 press conference announcing the formation of Missourians for Health. The new coalition includes health care providers, mental health advocates, Medicaid recipients, trade unionists and parents of children in the state’s First Steps program, which serves developmentally disabled toddlers.
Union rights for North Carolina farm workers
Mexican workers headed to the fields of North Carolina under the H-2A visa program can now stop by the Farm Labor Organizing Committee’s office in Monterrey, Mexico, to find out about their newly won rights. Opening the office was the first concrete step in implementing a groundbreaking agreement signed last fall between FLOC and the North Carolina Growers Association. The agreement covers 7,500 Mexican guest workers who cultivate and harvest cucumbers and other crops in North Carolina. This is the first time immigrant farm workers in the U.S. government’s existing H-2A guest worker program have been unionized.
Protesting 12-hour days
Garment industry workers in Dhaka, Bangladesh, March 18th, protest a government edict adding four hours to their eight-hour shifts.
African American laundry womens strike of 1881
With slavery less than two decades behind them, thousands of African American home laundry workers went on strike for higher wages, respect for their work and control over how their work was organized. In the summer of 1881, the home laundry workers took on Atlanta’s business and political establishment, and gained so much support that they threatened to call a general strike, which would have shut the city down.
WORLD NOTES
Japan: Peace committee says, ban the Marines. Colombia: Reveal plot to kill unionists. Tanzania: Teachers need respect, support. Britain: Union wins historic equal pay award. Afghanistan: Bitter winter kills children.
Israeli land grab continues in West Bank
On March 21 the Israeli government confirmed its approval of plans to build 3,500 new housing units in two new neighborhoods in Ma’ale Adumim, an illegal West Bank settlement. The construction would significantly expand the settlement toward the northeast and around east Jerusalem, a move that will tighten the Israeli stranglehold on Jerusalem and its Palestinian residents even further.
New initiatives to end U.S. travel ban to Cuba
The U.S. ban on travel to Cuba has become a focus for people of all shades of opinion working to reverse U.S. policy toward Cuba. Announcements are now out for a conference and several trips this year are planned as direct challenges to the travel restrictions.
World recoils at Wolfowitz nomination
Coming on the heels of his nomination of extreme right-winger John Bolton as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, President Bush has delivered another slap in the face to the international community with the appointment of Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz to head the World Bank.
Cesar Chavez to be honored
Celebrations of the life and work of the great Mexican American labor and civil rights leader Cesar Chavez, founder of the United Farm Workers of America (UFW), are being held throughout the country between now and April 3.
