I recently traveled to the land where Ché Guevara's ghost still breathes with the people. I was a guest of the Narco News School of Authentic Journalism, a gathering of more than 60 journalists from around the globe. The journalists – representing radio, film, Internet and print media – had come to the school in Bolivia in early August to explore strategies for advancing credible media coverage of the war on drugs and democracy movements in the Americas.
Urbana, IL – Beasts lurk within the halls of our universities. They kidnap professors, raise tuition and exploit public tax dollars. The destructive monster that plagues our universities is corporate influence.
Minneapolis, MN – After a 45-day strike, Twin Cities transit workers reached a tentative agreement on a new contract, April 13. Despite vocal opposition in the media by some members of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1005, the contract was ratified with 72% voting in favor. The final scorecard was clear – retiree medical benefits were eliminated and wage increases were only 1.5% over three years. While there were some gains from the employer’s final pre-strike offer, the union was able to get back only a portion of the millions of dollars the employer saved by not operating buses during the strike.
Ileana Gadea and Naomi Nakamura, both regular contributors to Fight Back!, reviewed the film A Day Without A Mexican . Based on the premise that California is covered by a thick fog and Latinos have vanished, the movie satirically deals with role of Mexicans and Latinos in the California economy. How well does the film do this? What follows are two different views.
The new book, Crusade for Justice, Chicano Militancy, by Ernesto B. Vigil, is a major contribution to U.S. and Chicano history. The University of Wisconsin Press edition, released May 1999, tells the history of the Crusade for Justice (CFJ) and its militants' struggles for Chicano Liberation in the late 1960s and 1970s.
A review of the pamphlet Build a Fighting Workers Movement by the Labor Commission of Freedom Road Socialist Organization
This past Dec. 5, 250 workers occupied the Republic Windows and Doors factory on Goose Island in Chicago. They had been told a few days earlier that the company was closing and that there would be no severance pay, or even payment of wages or sick or vacation pay owed them. Their protest, targeting their company and the Bank of America, became a national symbol of working people’s anger at the rich and powerful. “Banks got bailed out, we got sold out,” they chanted as their story was reported across the world.
In Colombia, the people are winning. The U.S. war machine is losing plane after plane to a growing popular insurgency. On April 7, a U.S. pilot died when his plane crashed while spraying deadly chemicals on fields in rural Colombia. The U.S. State Department refused comment on assumptions that the plane was shot down by rebels.
The Bush administration knows nothing about peace. The administration backed Israel's brutal, right-wing Sharon government from day one, and waged a cowardly military attack on Iraq. In the aftermath of militarily defeating the Iraqi government, the Bush administration is trying to reshape the Middle East, dominate the entire region and eliminate all opposition to the United States. While the attempt to put down the Iraqi resistance continues, Washington is now taking aim at the Palestinian liberation struggle. Central to the struggle for freedom in the Middle East, the battle of Palestinians for Palestine serves as an example and an inspiration to all the Arab peoples of the region.
Los Angeles, CA – Former Republican governor of California, Pete Wilson is personally sponsoring another oppressive and discriminatory ballot initiative. On March 7, 2000, Californians will vote on the Juvenile Crime Initiative that if approved will allow for the prosecution of teenagers, as young as 14 years old, in the adult court system rather than the juvenile system.
