San Jose, CA – On April 24, the Northern California Unemployed Committee, or NCUC, marched in support of the fight against police crimes in the wake of the conviction of Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd.

San Jose, CA – On Sunday, April 11, at 2 p.m. Pacific / 5 p.m. Eastern, the Freedom Road Socialist Organization is hosting an online program about the wave of violence against Asian Americans; violence which led to the recent massacre of eight people, six of whom were Asian American women near Atlanta, Georgia.

San José, CA – For more than a year Asian Americans have seen a rising tide of violence aimed at individuals of Asian descent. Starting with a vicious knife attack on a father and his two sons, aged six and three years in Midland, Texas in March 2020 and now the murders of eight people, six of whom were Asian American women, near Atlanta, Georgia, thousands of attacks have been reported in the last year – and many more have not.

$1.9 trillion COVID relief is badly needed, but more needs to be done

San José, CA – This past week, on March 11, Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives, U.S. Senate, and White House passed a $1.9 trillion COVID-19 rescue law without the support of a single Republican in the House or the Senate. The law provides much-needed relief for millions of people whose finances have been wounded by the pandemic. Yet much more needs to be done, especially in the fight against the growing economic inequality.

San Jose, CA – Eighty people rallied on March 8, in response to a nationwide call for protests on the first day of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin’s trial. Key organizations responsible for organizing the protest were the Freedom Road Socialist Organization, Anakbayan Silicon Valley, and the Northern California Unemployed Committee. They staged a protest in front of San Jose City Hall, a center for political protests in the city, especially during the wave of uprisings in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. Several organizations joined the call, such as LEAD Filipino, the youth branch of the Silicon Valley chapter of the NAACP, HERO Tent, Students for Justice in Palestine, the South Bay Indigenous Solidarity Group, and more.

California hit hard

San José, CA – The number of people receiving unemployment aid from federal and state governments remained very high in February. Most newspapers and media hailed the decline in the number of new applications for the regular state unemployment insurance and the federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, or PUA, for self-employed and gig workers for last week. However, the latest week reporting the number of people receiving aid for all programs – including UI, PUA, the federal Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation or PEUC, and the state Extended Benefits – showed an increase of 700,000. The national total is nine times what it was before the start of the recession a year ago.

San José, CA – Even as the COVID-19 pandemic continued to subside during mid-February, layoffs were on the rise, showing that we are nowhere near the end of the tunnel for workers in this country. For the week ending February 13, the U.S. Department of Labor reported that there were 861,000 new applications for regular state unemployment insurance, an increase of 13,000 over the previous week. Applications for the federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program for gig workers and the self-employed rose by a much larger 174,427 the same week, to 516,299 new claims. Together, this meant that almost 190,000 working people had to file for government aid because of layoffs and business closures.

Restore the $600 per week unemployment supplement!

San José, CA – On February 13, the Northern California Unemployed Committee (NCUC) held its first protest in San José. The protest was called for the day after the IRS began accepting 2020 tax returns, to demand that the federal government stop taxing benefits for the unemployed. The protest also called for the restoration of the $600 weekly unemployment supplement.

Total number collecting unemployment on the rise again

San José, CA – During the week ending February 6, almost 800,000 (793,000) people filed for new claims for regular state unemployment insurance. More than 330,000 others applied for the federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance or PUA that covers the self-employed and gig workers. This comes to a total of more than 1.1 million people who have lost their jobs in the past week.

San José, CA – On Friday, February 5 the U.S. Department of Labor released their monthly jobs report showing a very small gain of 49,000 net new jobs. This was only half of what economists had predicted, and the job loss in December was revised up by 87,000, so there were still 178,000 fewer jobs in January than in November.