A delegation representing civil rights and labor leaders will be in Berlin, Germany, on Wednesday April 4 to urge Daimler AG and its shareholders to seek repeal of Alabama’s racial profiling law, H.B. 56, according to a press release sent out in an e-mail blast by the Service Employees International Union.
The law denies fundamental civil rights to immigrants and minorities and impacts trade union activities between and among union members, inhibiting freedom of association, according to a complaint being filed today with the International Labor Organization of the United Nations by the SEIU and its affiliate, the Southern Regional Joint Board of Workers United.
Daimler, which produces Mercedes-Benz vehicles in Alabama, is a founding signatory of the United Nations Global Compact, which calls on businesses to “make sure they are not complicit in human rights abuses.”
Until now, Daimler and Mercedes-Benz have been silent on this law which violates human rights, even though one of its German executives was arrested under the Alabama law.
Bill Moyers talks with community organizer George Goehl about how — and even if — average people can fight back against self-rewarding actions of banks and corporations.
“If we want to shift our politics,” Goehl tells Moyers, “we have to make politicians who side with the big banks and the larger corporations pay a price for not siding with everyday people.”
Goehl is a co-organizer of The 99% Spring, a national effort to train 100,000 Americans to teach the country about income inequality in homes, places of worship, campuses and the streets. Goehl is also executive director of National People’s Action, a network of grassroots organizations using direct action to battle economic and racial injustice.
MARGARETVILLE, Ala. — It is a lovely Sunday morning and amazingly quiet in the suburbs on this April Fool’s Day. The Carolina Wren’s are feeding new young in the hand-crafted birdhouse attached to the screened-in porch. They stop only occasionally between feedings to sing, and they sound about as happy as I feel with my new dog and best friend Jefferson laying at my feet.
If I didn’t know better, I would finish by saying “all’s right with the world.”
But you and I both know better.
As I peruse the headlines from my hand-made html news page, which may go the way of the Dodo bird soon and be replaced by a Word Press front page, and as I look through the Google alerts and other e-mails, I run across an interesting column from Phil Rockstroh, who calls himself a poet, lyricist and philosopher bard living in New York City but who is from the South. He laments the fact that his white male Southern buddies cling to the Republican fantasy of “free-market capitalism,” while their jobs disappear and their lives diminish into a political bitterness they cannot seem to escape.
Task Force Says Bad Schools Hurt National Security
by Glynn Wilson
Republicans in the Alabama Legislature are pushing a bill to take some funding away from already cash-strapped public schools in the attempt to privatize public schools, a move that most experts say will just make public education in the U.S. worse.
A report just out from a task force led by former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Joel Klein, the former chancellor of New York City’s school system, says the nation’s security and economic prosperity are at risk if America’s schools don’t improve.
“The dominant power of the 21st century will depend on human capital,” the report warned. “The failure to produce that capital will undermine American security.”
The task force says the State Department and U.S. intelligence agencies face critical shortfalls in the number of foreign language speakers, and that fields such as science, defense and aerospace are at particular risk because a shortage of skilled workers is expected to worsen as baby boomers retire.
President Barack Obama leads Republican front-runner Mitt Romney by 20 percent among women, and by 26 percent over Rick Santorum, according to a recent Pew survey.
In the same survey, President Obama’s approval rating stands at 50 percent. He leads Romney in a head-to-head matchup by 12 points, 54 to 42 percent, and he leads Santorum by 18 points, 57 to 39 percent.
Democratic political consultant and strategist Chris Lehane says these numbers make the electoral college math “virtually impossible,” for the Republicans in November.
Plus, Romney and the other Republicans at the national and state level are backing the wrong issues to appeal to women, and in fact, they are turning off women in droves.
The AFL-CIO and other labor unions joined the Selma-to-Montgomery Civil Rights March this year on the 47 anniversary of Bloody Sunday. Alabama AFL-CIO Al Henley addressed a night rally in White Hall on Wednesday night. Watch the video to see what he had to say. To see our full coverage of the events, check out this story and links.
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — The dogwoods, azaleas and cherry blossoms are in full bloom a full three weeks before Easter here, but of course that’s no sign of global warming and climate change, according to the Republicans and the media in Alabamaland.
The so-called Christians could care less. It must all be part of god’s plan. Right.
Nevermind that if there was a god, even the people who know a little about science yet believe say he gave the human species free will, which has led him to greedy pursuits that in fact do impact the climate.
Now if I was a Christian and I was searching for an answer to this riddle, I would conclude that if there were any such thing as a plan based on a “creation” event, if there was a god he would hold man in contempt for screwing up that creation.
Sharon McClendon Price speaks at The First Baptist Church of Selma on women’s issues on March 6, 2012 at one of the night rallies during the commemoration of the 47th Anniversary of the Selma-to-Montgomery March. This will make you cry.
Ten Commandments Judge Roy Moore could be returning to power to lead the Alabama Supreme Court as chief justice again if the unofficial results from Tuesday’s primary hold up and there’s no runoff.
You may recall that Alabama was the laughing stock of the nation back in 2003 when Moore was removed from that position for refusing to remove a hand-carved granite monument to the Ten Commandments from the state judicial building after a federal jury found it violated the separation of church and state and a federal judge ordered it removed.
According to the unofficial results, Moore received 50.37 percent of the vote on Tuesday, more than enough to hold off challenges from the sitting Chief Justice, Chuck Malone, who was appointed by Governor Robert Bentley after a Democrat resigned from the seat, and former state Attorney General Charlie Graddick, who was trying to return to statewide politics after a hiatus of 25 years. He play a particularly embarrassing role in state politics back in 1986 when he won the Democratic primary for governor with crossover votes, but was blocked from taking office when those votes were ruled illegal.
Moore will now go up against Pelham attorney Harry Lyon, a Democrat, in the general election in the November. If Moore wins, the nine-member Supreme Court will remain all Republican and continue to side with big business over average working people on case after case and run roughshod over the Constitutional rights of juries for another four years.
During the Bush years, we specialized in covering the politicization of the U.S. justice system as much as any news organization. Our archives are about the most comprehensive for anyone researching the prosecution of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, and the original case against Richard Scrushy, which Glynn Wilson covered for The New York Times.
