In Washington, DC protesters will gather at FBI Headquarters EFF press release – Concerned iPhone users and digital security supporters will gather at Apple stores in more than 30 cities this coming Tuesday, February 23rd, exactly one week after a court order that attempts to force Apple to write software that would undermine the safety
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By Doug Cunningham
Thousands of McDonald’s workers are taking their “Fight For $15” directly to the company’s shareholders meeting in Oak Brook Illinois. They rallied Wednesday and will again Thursday.
Five thousand workers turned out for the Wednesday rally.
McDonald’s is still refusing to adopt the $15 minimum wage for its workers, despite having spent $30 billion over ten years to buy back company stock.
Team Solidarity activists win Local 8751 election by landslide.WW photo: Team Solidarity Boston — In a stunning victory, the militant, fighting rank and file of the Boston school bus drivers’ union, United Steelworkers Local 8751, voted in the full slate of Team Solidarity candidates, led by four illegally fired leaders, on the union’s Executive Board. The April 30 election was the largest voter turnout in the history of the local and resulted in an unprecedented landslide vote by more than 3 to 1 for the Team Solidarity ticket. The membership sent a clear message to Veolia/Transdev, the union-busting school bus management company, as well as to Boston Public Schools and Mayor Marty Walsh, that they will fight and win a just contract and the rehiring of their leaders. They will also unite with the communities they serve to struggle for Equal Quality Education. The new executive board-elect of the 850-strong union, whose members are largely Haitian, Cape Verdean and African-American, includes President Andre Francois, long-time chief steward; Vice President Stevan Kirschbaum, a founder of the local; Treasurer Georgia Scott, veteran of the 1965 Civil Rights battle on Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala.; Financial Secretary Steven Gillis, the outgoing vice president and benefits administrator; Recording Secretary Claude “Tou Tou” St. […]
Chicago, IL – 40 people gathered in Millennium Park here, April 25, to protest the U.S./Saudi bombing of Yemen.
In Yemen, a movement of the poor and oppressed people is fighting for bread and justice, against imperialism, monarchy and Zionism. The fight back there is led by the Ansurallah movement, which the Western media calls the Houthis.
Saudi Arabia has been bombing for a month, causing over 1000 deaths. The World Health Organization reports over 3487 wounded, most of them civilians. The U.S. is providing the Saudis with data on targets and mid-air refueling of their bombers.
Joe Iosbaker of the Anti-War Committee-Chicago spoke to those gathered and pointed out that this has to be seen as a U.S./Saudi War. “The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has no arms industry. Their weapons come from the U.S. Saudi Arabia could not act if the U.S. withdrew their support. We have to demand, “U.S., Saudi Arabia, hands off Yemen!”
Photo: Milwaukee Teachers Education Association Hundreds of members of the Milwaukee Teachers Education Association, students and community supporters protested in Milwaukee April 18 to end cuts to K-12 and higher education, protest toxic testing and charter schools, and demand adequate resources and services for teachers, staff, students and communities. The April 18 demonstration is part of a series of mass protests since January when Gov. Scott Walker unveiled his 2015-17 austerity budget. They are a continuation of the people’s occupation of the state Capitol in 2011. The effects of the 2013-2015 state budget, which included the largest cuts to public education in Wisconsin history, are now painfully felt in every city, town and village. The vast majority of the state’s poor and working people are demanding: Hands off public education! The 2015-17 proposed austerity budget, like the previous one, attacks every sector of the working class and oppressed, including environmental and prevailing wage laws, unemployment insurance, FoodShare benefits, senior care, project labor agreements and public education. Wall Street organizations such as Americans For Prosperity, American Legislative Exchange Council and the Heritage Foundation are fast attempting to eviscerate progressive Wisconsin laws won decades ago through mass struggle. On behalf of Wall […]
By Doug Cunningham
Thousands of nurses will strike hospitals in California and Chicago April 30 and May 1st. The RN’s with National Nurses United and the California Nurses Association say staffing and patient care concerns are at the heart of their strike. More than 6400 RN’s will strike, some on April 30th, others on May 1st. The nurses say they are demanding policies that “give RN’s a stronger voice in patient care delivery.” Strike locations include Kaiser Permanente’s Los Angeles Medical Center, Providence Health and Services Hospitals in Santa Monica and Torrance, California and five Sutter health facilities in Northern California. The nurses will also strike the University of Chicago Medical Center. The nurses planning to strike say patient safety and protections are compromised across the country as the corporate model of patient health care delivery relentlessly pushes for cuts to increase profits. Kaiser alone made a net profit of $4.3 billion last year. The nurses accuse Kaiser of engaging in an anti-union campaign to silence nurses advocating for patients. In Chicago staffing is also an issue, including what they say is the unsafe practice of rotating shifts for nurses.
Where did all the Black men go? Analysis of population data shows so many Black males have gone to prison, died of disease of accidents, or by violence, that Black females in many communities outnumber Black men by ratios of 6 to 10. A national policy of mass Black incarceration is the primary factor – a factual basis for a charge of genocide.
A new analysis of population data confirms what has long been obvious to every minimally conscious Black person in the United States: a huge proportion of the Black male population is missing, physically absent from the daily life of the community. Many are prematurely dead, but the largest group has been consigned to the social death of incarceration. According to a study by the Upshot unit of the New York Times, when prison inmates of both sexes are taken out of the equation, there are now 1.5 million more Black women in the country, age 25 to 54, than there are Black men. In some locations – for example, Ferguson, Missouri – there are only six Black men physically present in the community for every ten Black women.
In white America, there is almost no imbalance in gender among the 25 to 54 age group. For every 100 white women, there are 99 white men.
There are more Black men missing from their communities than the combined Black male populations of Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Houston, Washington and Boston. Six hundred thousand of them are in prison, and that’s not counting Black male prison inmates that are younger than 25 and older than 54. The analysts estimate that roughly half, and maybe as many as three-quarters, of the other 900,000 missing Black men have died before their time from diseases and accidents, and that 200,000 are no longer here due to homicide.
Black life in America does not start out with these bizarre imbalances between the sexes. There is no gender gap among Blacks in childhood. Roughly the same number of boys and girls are born, and the ratio stays stable until the teenage years, when the war of attrition begins mercilessly grinding down the numbers of Black males. How else is this phenomenon to be described except as a war, in which 600,000 are held captive during their most productive years, 200,000 are killed by violence, and most of the rest go to early graves from accidents and diseases that cause far lower casualties among whites.
The data show that U.S. society has become much more toxic for Black men during the very period in which Blacks were supposedly making such fantastic “progress.” The numbers show that the missing-Black-men phenomenon “began growing in the middle decades of the 20th century.” The increasing ratio of Black women to men is primarily a product of the age of mass Black incarceration. The war of attrition is a race war deliberately and methodically initiated by the U.S. government, the effects of which have been devastating to Black society on the most fundamental level: stunting the formation of Black families and the Black American group as a whole by physically removing and eliminating the men.
The data support a totally plausible, factually grounded charge of genocide, based on international law. The U.S. government, through its mass Black incarceration policies of the last half century, has been guilty of a) “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part,” as well as b) “causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group.”
The facts bear witness to the indictment. So do 1.5 million missing Black men.
For Black Agenda Radio, I’m Glen Ford. On the web, go to BlackAgendaReport.com
By Doug Cunningham
The boycott campaign against Staples organized by the American Postal Workers Union was supported in Boston Wednesday by teachers who delivered a “don’t buy school supplies at Staples” message. Staples is being boycotted for taking postal jobs in a deal with the U.S. Postal Service to provide mail services at Staples stores. The Lynn Teachers Union joined APWU members in urging a Staples boycott. An August 27th rally is planned for City Hall Plaza in Boston. The APWU objects to outsourcing postal work to poorly trained, low wage workers at Staples. The National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers both support the Staples boycott in solidarity with postal unions.
By JoAnne Pow!ers
Members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union in Los Angeles and Long Beach were ordered to return to work Tuesday morning after walking off the job in solidarity with striking port truck drivers. After the longshore workers refused to cross the picket lines, a federal arbiter ruled that the action was a violation of their current contract. The 120 truckers are holding the Unfair Labor Practice strike over misclassification of the workers by three transportation companies as “independent contractors”, resulting in lower pay and fewer benefits than if they were properly classified as employees. The misclassification has been ruled a violation of U.S. labor law, and would prevent the workers from being able to form a union. The open-ended strike, supported by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, is the third, following two shorter walkouts earlier this year. While ongoing contract negotiations prevented comment from the ILWU, International Brotherhood of Teamsters Vice President and Ports Division Director Fred Potter feels that the rank-and-file longshore workers and other union members are deeply committed to helping the striking drivers: