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November 24, 2011

Outsourcing air traffic control

Trade unions and church groups in the Philippines have joined together in calling a boycott of Philippine Airlines and Air Philippines in solidarity with the Philippine Airlines Employees’ Association (PALEA).
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The PALEA union likens its struggle to that of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) union in 1981. Those familiar with U.S. labor history will recall: when 13,000 air traffic controllers went on strike, Ronald Reagan fired the union supporters and broke the union. As a result, the bargaining power of American workers and labor unions was severely undermined. Let’s act together for a better future for airline workers who are facing job loss and state-sponsored repression today. Now is the time to join with PALEA in their call for justice.

Continue reading "Outsourcing air traffic control"

Posted by cat at 02:50 AM

November 18, 2011

#occupybaltimore Mic Checks Karl Rove

Posted by cat at 01:05 PM

November 02, 2011

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

The Howard Zinn Memorial Lecture Series proudly presents Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz speaking on the subject: “The City on a Hill, Where it All Began”

Friday, November 4th
1:30 p.m.
Dewey Square
Occupy Boston Encampment
Corner of Summer and Atlantic Streets

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz (born 10 September 1939) is an American academic, educator, feminist activist, and writer. Born in San Antonio, Texas, Dunbar-Ortiz is of partial American Indian background. She spent most of her youth growing up in the rural community of Piedmont, Oklahoma. Dunbar-Ortiz's grandfather was an organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World, and for the Oklahoma Socialist Party during its brief era of success, between the beginning of statehood in 1907 and its repression following the Green Corn Rebellion of 1917.

She earned her Ph.D in History from UCLA in 1974. In the 1960s and 1970s, she was active in the anti-Vietnam War and radical left movements and worked closely with the SDS, the Weather Underground, and the African National Congress. She was also very active in the women's rights movement, and from 1968–1970 was a leading figure, along with Maureen Maynes, Dana Densmore and Betsy Warrior, in the radical feminist group, Cell 16.

In 1977, she and Jimmie Durham organised the Conference on Indians in the Americas in Geneva. She has authored a number of scholarly books and articles on Native American history, and has published three memoirs, Red Dirt: Growing Up Okie (1997); Outlaw Woman: A Memoir of the War Years, 1960–1975 (2002); and Blood on the Border (2005), which is about what she saw during the Nicaraguan Contra war against the Sandinistas in the 1980s. Outlaw Woman won recognition from the Organization of American Historians as a 2003 finalist for the Liberty Legacy Foundation Award in the field of American civil rights struggles. Her writing has also appeared in Monthly Review and The Nation, and on the CounterPunch website. She is presently Professor Emerita of Ethnic Studies at California State University, Hayward.

Posted by cat at 09:25 PM