>next on NYPD's hit list'?
>
>"Police brutality and misconduct are everywhere, including
>Philadelphia and Los Angeles. But the main national focus
>is on New York. We must see May 7 as an important vehicle
>to show that Mumia is just as much a victim of police
>brutality as Diallo, Dorismond, Anthony Baez and countless
>others. The May 7 mobilization will not only help bring
>worldwide attention to this terrible racist repression but
>will show there is growing mass resistance to this terror.
>This rally will demand people's justice for Mumia, Patrick
>Dorismond and all victims of police brutality."
>
>The May 7 Mobilization needs volunteers to come into the
>office to help with visibility and phone banking on a daily
>basis. Tickets are now on sale for $15. Special group rates
>can be ordered from www.leftbooks. com. A May 7
>commemorative journal is being created to help to raise
>necessary funds to defray the costs of the mobilization.
>
>To distribute leaflets and posters, contact the
>International Action Center/Millions for Mumia office at
>(212) 633-6646 or drop by 39 W. 14th St., Room 206, in
>Manhattan. May 7 leaflets can be downloaded at
>www.mumia2000.org. Leaflets for Mumia's day in court can
>also be picked up at the IAC/Millions for Mumia office.
>
> - END -
>
>(Copyleft Workers World Service. Everyone is permitted to
>copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but
>changing it is not allowed. For more information contact
>Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail:
>[EMAIL PROTECTED] For subscription info send message
>to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.workers.org)
>
>
>
>Message-ID: <017301bf9c49$a8dcc6d0$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>From: "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: [WW] Texas death machine: Lawyers call for moratorium
>Date: Sat, 1 Apr 2000 21:17:56 -0500
>Content-Type: text/plain;
> charset="iso-8859-1"
>Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
>
>-------------------------
>Via Workers World News Service
>Reprinted from the Apr. 6, 2000
>issue of Workers World newspaper
>-------------------------
>
>TEXAS DEATH MACHINE: LAWYERS CALL FOR MORATORIUM
>
>By Gloria Rubac
>Houston
>
>Pressure is building for Gov. George W. Bush to impose a
>moratorium on executions in Texas. The state has been
>responsible for executing 223 of the 624 people put to
>death in the United States since the death penalty was
>reinstated in 1976.
>
>On March 25 the Texas Criminal Defense Lawyers Association
>passed a resolution calling for a moratorium in Texas.
>
>Two men who had been released from death row and a woman
>who had received a life sentence spoke at a TCDLA news
>conference that same day. Each had served about 10 years
>for crimes of which they were later found to be innocent.
>
>Clarence Brandley, one of the former prisoners who spoke,
>told reporters that the only reason he got off death row
>was because of excellent lawyers and a movement of people
>who fought for his release. He said the system is not
>working or he would not have spent nine years, five months
>and 23 days on death row.
>
>He insisted that George W. Bush must "do the right thing"
>and stop the executions.
>
>Randall Dale Adams spoke about the recent movement toward
>a moratorium in several states. He sent this message to
>Bush: "Read my lips! The death penalty is on its way out.
>The death penalty has been given a death sentence and we
>are going to give it an execution date!"
>
>Joyce Ann Brown emerged from nearly 10 years of a life
>sentence for robbery and murder to establish an innocence
>project that serves many who are unjustly sentenced, as she
>was.
>
>TCDLA President Michael Heiskell announced the
>organization's call for a moratorium. He also declared that
>"the Texas system is fraught with error and had the current
>state laws been applicable to the cases of Mr. Brandley and
>Mr. Adams, both of them would have been executed before
>their claims of innocence could have been established.
>
>"Often the qualifications of attorneys given appointments
>to capital cases are minimal. Innocent until proven
>indigent seems to be the standard applied to Texas death
>cases," he said, stressing the word indigent.
>
>The establishment of a new Texas Innocence Network was
>announced at the news conference. Lawyers, university
>professors and activists formed it in conjunction with
>noted lawyer Barry Scheck of the Innocence Project in New
>York. Attorney Cynthia Orr chairs the new network.
>
>With the aid of law and journalism students the network
>will initially investigate the cases of several prisoners
>who are believed to have been unjustly sentenced. This is
>similar to the work done by journalism students in
>Illinois, which resulted in freeing a dozen death-row
>prisoners and winning a state moratorium on executions.
>
> - END -
>
>(Copyleft Workers World Service. Everyone is permitted to
>copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but
>changing it is not allowed. For more information contact
>Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail:
>[EMAIL PROTECTED] For subscription info send message
>to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.workers.org)
>
>
>
>Message-ID: <017901bf9c49$d77e2f60$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>From: "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: [WW] Hollywood protest: Don't televise 'Dr. Laura's' gay bashing
>Date: Sat, 1 Apr 2000 21:19:15 -0500
>Content-Type: text/plain;
> charset="iso-8859-1"
>Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
>
>-------------------------
>Via Workers World News Service
>Reprinted from the Apr. 6, 2000
>issue of Workers World newspaper
>-------------------------
>
>HOLLYWOOD PROTESTERS TELL PARAMOUNT:
>DON'T TELEVISE "DR. LAURA'S" GAY-BASHING
>
>By Workers World Los Angeles bureau
>
>Four hundred angry people protested at the gates of
>Paramount Studios on Hollywood's Melrose Avenue March 21. They
>denounced plans to give anti-gay radio personality Dr. Laura
>Schlessinger her own television show.
>
>Demonstrators shouted, "Shame! Shame!" at Paramount managers
>who scurried past the outraged crowd to get to their cars.
>
>Schlessinger unapologetically describes lesbian, gay,
>bisexual and trans people as "biological errors" and
>"deviants." She regularly equates gay men with child
>molesters. And she used her radio show to promote the recent
>passage of Proposition 22, banning same-sex marriage, in
>California.
>
>Joe Delaplaine of the Stonewall Initiative for Equal Rights
>told the militant rally: "This is an issue of greed, not free
>speech. Paramount routinely tries to profit off controversy.
>It failed to get a racist comedy about slavery on the air last
>year and it will fail to get a homophobic talk show on the air
>this year."
>
>Delaplaine stressed: "Schlessinger's anti-gay rhetoric
>endangers the lives of our families and loved ones. She
>already reaches 20 million listeners across the country every
>day with her radio show--more than Howard Stern or Rush
>Limbaugh. And with a television program she'd reach millions
>more."
>
>Other speakers at the protest included members of the Gay &
>Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, Queer Nation, Parents and
>Friends of Lesbians and Gays, and several lesbian, gay,
>bisexual and trans workers from Paramount Studios.
>
> - END -
>
>(Copyleft Workers World Service. Everyone is permitted to
>copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but
>changing it is not allowed. For more information contact
>Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail:
>[EMAIL PROTECTED] For subscription info send message
>to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.workers.org)
>
>
>
>Message-ID: <017f01bf9c4a$2afe6010$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>From: "WW" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: [WW] On the picket line: 4/6/2000
>Date: Sat, 1 Apr 2000 21:21:35 -0500
>Content-Type: text/plain;
> charset="iso-8859-1"
>Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
>
>-------------------------
>Via Workers World News Service
>Reprinted from the Apr. 6, 2000
>issue of Workers World newspaper
>-------------------------
>
>ON THE PICKET LINE
>
>BIG BOEING VICTORY
>
>Engineering and technical employees in Kansas, California
>and Washington state returned to work at the Boeing Co.
>March 20--gathering outside company sites and marching in
>together, chanting, clapping and waving fists.
>
>It was a fitting close to a triumphal struggle that won
>many of their demands, raised their consciousness as
>workers, united them as sisters and brothers in the
>organized-labor movement, and sent a powerful message to
>the capitalist class that "white-collar" workers are
>heeding the union call.
>
>After striking for 40 days, on March 19 the workers voted
>to approve a contract settlement by a strong 70-percent
>margin. The contract features raises of up to 17 percent
>over three years. Workers won domestic-partner health
>coverage. And they beat back Boeing's effort to force them
>to start paying part of their medical insurance costs.
>
>"The technical community has found its voice. ... This has
>been a clear victory," said Charles Bofferding, executive
>director of the Society of Professional Engineering
>Employees in Aerospace, at a March 19 news conference in
>Seattle.
>
>AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka congratulated
>Bofferding and the 18,000 strikers. Noting that SPEEA had
>affiliated with the AFL-CIO only shortly before the strike
>began, Trumka said, "Our newest affiliate has shown us our
>oldest lesson, that solidarity does work."
>
>The labor movement rallied behind the SPEEA strikers. The
>AFL-CIO and a number of national unions each provided
>financial backing, crucial to a union that had no strike
>fund when the walkout began.
>
>And the strike hurt. Boeing's stock prices plummeted.
>Scheduled deliveries of at least three dozen commercial
>jets never happened. That represents hundreds of millions
>of dollars in revenues.
>
>Indeed, this strike by "professionals" stunned the boss
>class. "It's clear the company lost," said Wall Street
>analyst Richard Aboulafia.
>
>Even worse, from the bosses' point of view, said Jeffrey
>McGuiness, "It clearly will lead to greater interest among
>white-collar workers in unionization." McGuiness is
>president of LPA, which describes itself as "the nation's
>leading public policy association of senior human resource
>executives, representing more than 250 major corporations
>doing business in the United States."
>
>US AIRWAYS FLIGHT ATTENDANTS SOAR
>
>"We have a contract! A mighty, mighty contract!" The chant
>reverberated through Washington's National Airport at 3:30
>a.m. March 25 when Lynn Lenosky, president of the Flight
>Attendants union's US Airways section, emerged from
>negotiations to inform a crowd of workers that a tentative
>settlement had been reached.
>
>US Airways bosses had backed down in the face of the
>flight attendants' credible threat of CHAOS--Create Havoc
>Around Our System, a strategy of staging coordinated
>strikes on an airline's heaviest-traveled routes. The
>10,000 US Airways flight attendants were angry at going
>without raises since 1996. They were united in a tight
>mobilization that was ready to take on the country's sixth-
>biggest passenger carrier.
>
>The bosses had countered by threatening to shut down and
>lock out all the workers if some of them started CHAOS. This
>attempt to divide the flight attendants, and set pilots,
>grounds crews and passengers against them, only succeeded
>in making the workers angrier and more united.
>
>According to Lenosky, the tentative pact features a 10-
>percent bonus when it is ratified and signed, then raises
>totaling 6 percent over the next four years. For the first
>time, workers won premium pay for working on holidays.
>Union leaders said they also did away with unequal pension
>benefits. Other details--about work-rule changes and about
>how the question of pay parity with other airlines was
>resolved--are not yet available.
>
>Flight Attendants leaders will meet with workers around
>the country to explain the agreement. A ratification vote
>on the five-year contract will take place in the coming
>weeks.
>
>UNIVISION HUNGER STRIKE
>
>Workers at KFTV-21 in Fresno, Calif., have been locked in
>a battle with the Spanish-language national television
>network Univision and its president, Henry Cisneros, for
>almost a year. They voted in Broadcast Employees and
>Technicians/Communications Workers Local 51 last May. But
>the bosses stonewalled on serious contract talks for so
>long that the workers were forced to take drastic action.
>In what they say is a tactic inspired by the late Farm
>Workers union founder Cesar Chavez, KFTV technicians and
>reporters went on a hunger strike to demand a decent
>contract.
>
>The fast started Feb. 17. Seven community supporters
>joined seven KFTV workers, including on-air news anchor
>Fermin Chavez. The workers' demands are simple. Decent pay
>tops the list. They are paid by far the lowest wages of any
>television crews in Fresno. Chavez, for example, makes
>$35,000 a year, compared to $100,000 for anchors at the
>English-language stations. Martin Castellano, who runs the
>station's control room and routinely works 10-hour days,
>makes $21,481.
>
>Cisneros, former mayor of San Antonio and former Clinton
>administration secretary of housing and urban development,
>has snubbed the workers. He refused to meet with the hunger
>strikers. His Fresno station manager, Maria Gutierrez,
>called the fast "a garden-variety labor dispute."
>
>Still, management found its way to the bargaining table
>after workers fasted for three weeks and won strong support
>from around the country. Univision negotiators made an
>offer that "did come up on the money, some of it, but not
>enough," according to union negotiator and hunger striker
>Carrie Biggs-Adams. Strikers voted unanimously to reject
>it. When a federal mediator tried to persuade them to end
>the strike, they told him they were "offended at the
>content of the company offer." As of March 20, three people
>remained on the hunger strike, backed by the rest of the
>workers.
>
>STRIKE STOPS TWINKIES
>
>Teamsters truck drivers throughout the Northeast struck
>Interstate Bakeries Corp. March 15-23. The walkout by 1,400
>truckers shut down IBC bakeries. That cut off the region's
>supply of Hostess Twinkies, Wonder Bread, Drake's Cakes,
>Yodels and Ding Dongs--which naturally prompted outrage
>from devotees of these fine products. This created added
>pressure against the bosses to settle the strike. So the
>company agreed to address the Teamsters' demand, that it
>honor work rules regarding delivery and pay systems.
>
>JANITORS STRIKE GOLDEN MARK
>
>Six hundred people who clean New York office buildings
>have been fighting for union recognition for two years.
>They work for Golden Mark Maintenance, the city's biggest
>commercial cleaning contractor. Most of them are
>immigrants. Many are women. Golden Mark pays them $6 an
>hour, with no benefits. Service Employees Local 32B-32J has
>held several rallies to back the workers' struggle. That
>struggle stepped to the next level for two weeks in March,
>when Golden Mark workers at 14 commercial buildings in
>Queens, Brooklyn and Manhattan struck. Targeting the
>bosses' refusal to recognize the union and negotiate a
>contract, they said it was an Unfair Labor Practice strike
>and set up picket lines to inform the public about how
>badly they are exploited.
>
>In the wake of the walkout, the battle continues--but
>workers say they are strengthened. Aida Lopez, a Dominican
>immigrant who cleans the Con Edison building in Queens,
>told a reporter: "Before, we were scared. But now we feel
>we can talk louder to the supervisor. The only thing we
>want is a chance for a decent life."
>
>TRIANGLE ANNIVERSARY
>
>Labor leaders, rank-and-file workers, and students active
>in the campaign against sweatshops gathered March 24 on
>Washington Place, at the center of New York University's
>Manhattan campus, to mark the 89th anniversary of the
>Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire. One hundred forty-six
>workers, immigrant women and girls, had died in the fire on
>March 25, 1911. They worked in a garment sweatshop on the
>eighth, ninth and 10th floors of what is now an NYU
>building. When fire broke out the workers discovered that
>all the doors were locked from the outside. Some died in
>the smoke and flames. Others jumped to their deaths. The
>outrage spurred union organizing by the Ladies Garment
>Workers. Its descendant, the Union of Needletrades
>Industrial and Textile Employees, still leads the fight
>against sweatshops--which still fill New York and other big
>cities. Garment-industry bosses still super-exploit women
>workers, now mostly Asian, Latin American and Caribbean
>immigrants.
>
>At the March 24 commemoration, Charlie Eaton of United
>Students Against Sweatshops pointed out that NYU upholds
>the Triangle bosses' vile legacy. He told the crowd that
>the administration at the country's biggest private
>university is currently engaged in three anti-labor drives:
>to prevent graduate employees from winning union
>representation, to block clerical employees from
>establishing a union shop, and to keep using scab
>construction firms and non-union labor to build new
>dormitories.
>
>AK LOCKOUT PROTEST
>
>Some 6,000 members of the Steel Workers union, plus family
>members and supporters, rallied March 25 in Mansfield,
>Ohio, to protest an ongoing lockout at AK Steel--formerly
>Armco. Some 620 members of Steel Workers Local 169 have
>been locked out at AK since their contract expired on Sept.
>1.
>
>Supporters came to the rally from across the Midwest. One
>group came all the way from Natchez, Miss. They served
>homemade jambalaya to the protesters. AFL-CIO Secretary-
>Treasurer Richard Trumka told the locked-out workers, "We
>will stand with this union and this community for as long
>as it takes to bring justice to AK Steel." Steel Workers
>President George Becker said, "The day will come when you
>will march back into that plant."
>
>Ten members of Congress from Ohio sent a letter asking AK
>Steel to allow the workers to return to their jobs and to
>bargain in good faith. AK Steel's response was to print a
>full-page ad in the Mansfield newspaper blaming the union
>for the breakdown in negotiations. All this is designed to
>pressure the workers to accept a contract full of
>givebacks.
>
>--Martha Grevatt
>
> - END -
>
>(Copyleft Workers World Service. Everyone is permitted to
>copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but
>changing it is not allowed. For more information contact
>Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail:
>[EMAIL PROTECTED] For subscription info send message
>to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.workers.org)
>
>
>
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