Bloomberg To FDNY Vulcans, “Burn Baby Burn”
with
Paul Washington, Past President, Vulcan Society, FDNY
Richard Levy, attorney for Vulcan Society

Rather than complying with a Federal court order to choose among five plans to increase hiring of African American and Latino candidates for the NYC Fire Dept. to reverse long standing discrimination, Mayor Bloomberg choose to suspend hiring for the next class of 300 firefighters. This will result in short staffing in the Department and an expensive increase in overtime pay. The class action lawsuit was initiated in 2002 by the Department of Justice and the Vulcan Society, the fraternal organization of NYC Black firefighters, against NYC’s discriminatory hiring practices.
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Laundry Workers Rally To Protest Privatization & Save Union Jobs

In the battle against filth, the workers at the Brooklyn Central Laundry in East Flatbush are stalwart foot soldiers. Union workers wash the dirty sheets, towels and uniforms for most of New York City’s hospitals, folding more than 10 million pounds of laundry a year. Employees say the linens sometimes hold body parts. They nearly always contain blood. But under a proposed reorganization plan announced in May by the Health and Hospitals Corp. (HHC), which runs the laundry, the service would be taken over by an undetermined private company. The city says private companies can beat the laundry’s price per pound, which the union estimates at $1.30. Privatization will cause the loss of 120 living wage union jobs. So while HHC says get back, the workers fight back.
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Social Security Under Attack
With
Eric Kingson, Prof. of Social Work, Syracuse University’s
School of Social Work & Co-Dir., Social Security Works

It’s the Social Security program, which in large part keeps
older people from poverty and destitution. But, the program is
under attack from the Simpson-Bowles deficit reduction
Commission established by the President, The attack is
dressed up in the fallacious rhetoric of the necessity of
deficit reduction, it’s really a raid on the social security
trust fund to help balance the federal budget deficit. They
will call for deep benefit cuts, probably in the form of
another rise in the retirement age.
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2nd Jury Nullification in Tyson Discrimination Suit
With
U. W. Clemon, Alabama's first African-American Federal
judge, who also served as chief judge of the U,S. District
Court for the Northern District of Alabama. Before his
notable career on the federal bench, he was a distinguished
civil rights activist, a lawyer, and state senator.

For the second time a federal appeals court panel rejected jury
awards in favor of African-American plaintiffs who alleged
discrimination against the poultry company Tyson Foods. In a
2-1 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit
found that a Tyson manager's use of the word "boy" to address
an African-American man, did not amount to evidence of racial
discrimination.

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We Need Jobs, Jobs and More Jobs
With
. Avis Jones-DeWeever, Exec. Dir., Ntl. Council of Negro Women
. Heidi Shierholz, labor market economist, Economic Policy Institute
. Catherine Singley, Policy Analyst, Economic Employment Project,
National Council of La Raza

Persistent high unemployment & lackluster job growth are having a profoundly
damaging impact on millions in America. The Jobs Report for August
documented 54,000 jobs lost and the unemployment rate increasing to 9.6%.
The underemployment rate is 16.7 %. The ranks of the unemployed are
continuing to swell. These adverse effects are not limited to the unlucky ones
who have lost their jobs. This is also creating shock waves among those who
are still employed, lowering wages and benefits. We are creating a new layer
of poverty on top of the old for the foreseeable future unless we decide to
make fighting unemployment priority job1 and implement a stimulus big
enough to get that job done
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99ers Protest at Unemployment Demonstration

Heeding a call to put New Yorkers back to work, hundreds rallied at Federal
Hall in lower Manhattan to build for the October 2nd One Nation Working
Together Washington demonstration to demand that city, state and federal
government representatives make getting people back to work their number
one priority. Let’s go to the rally and hear what members of the United
Workers Action Group, an organization of 99ers who have exhausted their 99 week limit on unemployment benefits, had to say.

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One Nation Working Together
With.
. Arlene Holt Baker, Executive Vice President, AFL-CIO
. George Gresham, President of 1199SEIU

This October 2nd, triggered by the AFL-CIO, SEIU Local 1199 and the NAACP, now joined by hundreds of organizations we’re headed, to a mass demonstration in Washington D.C. to demand the jobs to put people to work, and back to work. Jobs, economic security, comprehensive immigration reform, safe and renewable energy policy and a reversal of national priorities from making wars to meeting human needs - that’s the message! We’re going to march to demand the change we voted for when Barack Obama was elected. That’s right - create jobs and stop moving money out of education and into wars and prisons. Plus sound from Wall Street Jobs Rally.

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Puerto Rican Political Prisoner Carlos Alberto Torres Free After 30 Years In Prison
with
Carlos Alberto Torres

A discussion with Carlos Alberto Torres, free from behind bars after 30 years. He was convicted of seditious conspiracy - conspiring to use force against the lawful authority of The United States over Puerto Rico. Torres was punished for being a member of the armed clandestine organization the FALN (Armed Forces of National Liberation), which had taken responsibility for bombings that resultedin no deaths or injuries. He was not accused of taking part in these bombings, only of being a member of the FALN. Torres will also discuss the legacy of the recently departed Lolita Lebron, a Puerto Rican nationalist heroine who blazed her way to notoriety as she led three other Puerto Rican nationalists in an attack on the United States House of Representatives on March 1, 1954.

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