No mandate from women of color
OPINION Millions of people worked as hard as they possibly could to turn the country onto a different path and still the village idiot was elected.
EDITORIALS
A grotesque inaugural / Socialism saves lives
A failing grade: Charter schools and education reform
Charter schools are a major aspect of the political right wing’s education reform agenda, which also includes vouchers and privatization. Turning failing schools into charter schools is one of the No Child Left Behind law’s sanctions, but in 2003 the first national comparison of reading and math test scores for students in charter schools versus regular public schools showed that charter school students often did worse than their counterparts regardless of family income, race, ethnicity or school location.
Babies have a right to live
The Cuban Ministry of Health recently announced Cuba’s best-ever infant mortality rate (IMR). In 2004, out of every 1,000 babies born, only 5.8 died during their first year of life.
Chief exonerated 150 years too late
A Washington state “retrial” found Chief Joseph Leschi of the Nisqually tribe innocent of murder charges, clearing Leschi’s name some 150 years after his execution. Leschi was railroaded and hanged in 1858 for allegedly killing a white man.
Pentagons toxic cocktail: rocket fuel in water
The chemical is call perchlorate — ammonium perchlorate to be exact. It is used in rocket fuel and explosives. There are millions of pounds of this toxin in drinking water and soil nationwide, especially near military installations.
Global manifest destiny and U.S. base mania
A doctrine to prevent “potential competitors from ever aspiring to a larger regional or global role” has been American policy since the collapse of the Soviet Union. In 1992, then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, drafted a strategic plan, later leaked to the press, for the construction of a unipolar world dominated by the United States.
A desolate building on Cody Avenue
Workers’ Correspondence I have a route to the train station I’ve been taking since 1981. It starts out in southern Queens, N.Y., and meanders into Ridgewood, Brooklyn.
LA hotel boycott remains strong
LOS ANGELES — Last Dec. 17, representatives from UNITE-HERE Local 11 rejected the contract proposal from the Los Angeles Hotel Employers Council, stating that the employers’ counteroffer was “a slap in the face.” On Jan. 15, the actual birth date of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., it was the workers who did the slapping.
WORLD NOTES
Palestine: Mutual ceasefire essential / Bolivia: Protest gas price hikes / Guinea: Teachers strike for higher pay / Moldova: CP the top political organization
