The cry was and is unity!
“How do we stop Bush?” is the burning question of the day for the working class and democratically minded people, fighting against vicious attacks on our unions, living standards, democratic liberties and even our very lives. This challenge was brought into sharper focus with Bush’s racist betrayal of poor and working-class African Americans during and after Hurricane Katrina.
Hurricanes and snowmobiles
In 1565, Queen Elizabeth was whisked off to Windsor Castle. The idea was to escape the plague, which was ravaging London. Understanding the contagiousness of the disease, she ordered her henchmen to hang anyone who ventured to her castle door from London. The poor were left to fend for themselves. In other words, escaping the plague was class-driven.
Capitalism at $3 a gallon
After the New Orleans disaster, gas prices skyrocketed in a matter of days, shooting well over $3 a gallon everywhere in the U.S. While the prices have begun to come down somewhat, they are still substantially above what they were before the storm, and analysts are predicting that home heating oil will rise by 31 percent this winter.
My son has gone to Iraq
Last week, my son left the United States for Iraq. I yelled at him, I cried, and did everything I swore I would not do on our last visit. I can hardly mention the subject without floods of tears and a sense of overwhelming insanity.
Editorial: Torture authorized at the top
A collective sigh of relief must have rippled through the Pentagon and the White House Sept. 26 when 22-year old Army Private Lynndie England was convicted and sentenced for her despicable torture of detainees at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison. Her superiors, including the commander in chief, were off the hook.
Justice is not blind
Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black remarked in a famous decision, Griffin v. Illinois (1956), “There can be no equal justice where the kind of trial a man gets depends on the amount of money he has.” Black’s statement can be viewed as a central argument in two uniquely different books on the American criminal justice system: “No Equal Justice,” by David Cole, law professor at George Washington University and a legal analyst for The Nation magazine, and “Courtroom 302,” by Steve Bogira, longtime writer and staff member of The Reader, a Chicago newsweekly. Cole offers an overview of the system, and Bogira relates the daily happenings in an urban criminal courtroom.
National campaign to end AIDS launched
CHICAGO — The Campaign to End AIDS (C2EA) kicked off its nationwide movement on this city’s Magnificent Mile Oct. 1. Two hundred protesters emphasized the need to reauthorize the Ryan White CARE Act, which expired Sept. 30. The CARE Act provides federal funds for HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment for people with AIDS and HIV.
Hurricanes and hummingbirds
Houston reader Pat Burnham forwarded us the letter she sent out to friends after a weekend with Hurricane Rita.
DeLay, Frist to wed
Embattled Republicans seek legal protection as gay married couple In what some skeptics saw as a calculated move to protect themselves from impending prosecution and ethics probes, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and former Speaker of the House Tom DeLay announced today that they were engaged to be married.
A Tale of Two Bankruptcies
Airlines flying high, but new bankruptcy law threatens Katrina victims with endless debt A federal bankruptcy court judge on Sept. 15 approved Delta Air Lines’ request to borrow $2.05 billion from its creditors in a move that will help the carrier maintain operations following its bankruptcy filing earlier this week.
