During the Great Depression The Homeless Created Hovervilles, Now
Mayor Bloomberg’s Budget Cuts Are Responsible For Bloombergville!
With
New Yorkers Against the Budget Cuts

Students, labor, and communities united against the Mayor’s proposed
budget cuts occupying downtown Manhattan near City Hall for the past
week, in symbolic encampments they’ve called Bloombergville in a campaign
to defeat the mayor's cutbacks and layoffs. The campaign against
Bloomberg's poverty budget has resulted in arrests of some of the protesters
and the NYPD has threatened arrests on several other occasions, but
Bloombergville is still alive -- and growing.
******************
Key Democrats Join Gov. Christie Cutting Public Worker Bargaining Rights
and Balancing the Budget on the Backs of the Workers
With
Barbara Keshishian, President, New Jersey Education Association
Hetty Rosenstein, Area Dir., Communications Workers of America N.J.

Despite a massive outpouring of protesters at the State Capital at Trenton, Democratic leaders of the State Senate and Assembly, Stephen Sweeney
and Sheila Oliver, joined with bombastic bully Governor Chris Christie to
get approval for a measure to strip health care benefits from collective
bargaining rights for state public workers. This could triple health care
costs to workers while the millionaires tax went down in defeat. Combined
with so called New Jersey public worker pension reforms this will lead to
lowering workers pay by 5 -10% while reaping big profits forthe insurance
industry who charge high commissions for public worker health care
insurance.

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A Conversation With Best-Selling Author Isabel Allende

Building Bridges had a rare opportunity to sit down with one of the most
widely read writers in the world, Isabel Allende, on the occasion of the
paperback release of her bestseller “Island Beneath The Sea”. Allende
discusses her novel, which powerfully evokes historical events that
rocked the late 18th century. She discusses the enthralling, blood-chilling,
and heart-breaking story that connects the links between the American
Revolution, the French Revolution, the revolt of the Haitian slaves led by
Toussaint Louverture , the sale of Louisiana to the U.S, & the rising
influence of the Abolition movement. Allende provided insight into her
politics & its creative expression through her writing. She juxtaposes slave
rebellion & the quest for self-determination of past decades with the
continuing reality of various nation’s imperialist designs, and the still
catastrophic results for the world’s peoples.

Allende also spoke of her painful recollections the death of her cousin ,
Chile’s socialist Pres. Salvador Allende, who died in a coup engineered
by General Augusto Pinchot, leading to years of fascist rule which deeply
influenced the core of her writings. Similarly her desire for the exhumation
of Salvator Allende to determine the exact manner of his death, as are her
writings, are a quest for historic reclamation & social rectification.

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Workers Aim at Target Unionization
With
Tashawna Green – Member Union Organizing Committee
Sonia Williams – Member Union Organizing Committee
Aly Wady – Special Projects Dir., Organizing Dept., UFCW, Local 1500
Diana Robinson – Food Policy Coordinator, UFCW, Local 1500

Target workers at the superstore’s Valley Stream location are furious that
their hours have been cut sometimes to just one or two days a week while
new workers are being hired. So they don’t have enough income to survive
forcing many to rely on food stamps and Medicaid. A majority of workers have
already signed cards supporting unionization with Local 1500, UFCW. Target
is fighting back by threatening union workers with firings, disciplinary actions
and closing the store. Workers have been prevented from discussing their employment on social networking sites, interrogated about their union activity
and have been told their union activity was under surveillance. If the workers
vote to join Local 1500 in the June 17 election, the Valley Stream store would
be the first Target in the country to be unionized but probably not the last
especially in the NYC area.
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Bloomberg’s Budget to Decimate Queens Public Library
With
John Hyslop, Pres., Queens Library Guild, Local 1321 , DC 37 AFSCME

Library workers are fighting Mayor Bloomberg's proposed $25.3 million in
budget cuts to the Queens Public Library. Since 2008, over 200 jobs have
already been lost through attrition and layoffs. The current proposed 30% cut
will result in library hours being at their lowest level ever, less than in NYC’s
budget crisis of the 1970s. These cuts would slash library services; close
branches 2-3 days a week; end free computer and Internet services; destroy
the materials budget; and force 234 Library employees to be laid off.
Local 1321 is sponsoring a demonstration outside the Central Library on
Merrick Blvd.

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WBAI Radio’s Building Bridges: Your Community and Labor Reports
Produced & Hosted by Mimi Rosenberg and Ken Nash Special Live Broadcast Of

District Council 37's Massive Fightback Rally at New York City Hall
No Layoffs, No Contracting Out and No Service Cutbacks
Tuesday, June 14th 4 – 6 pm


DC 37 rocked NY City Hall with its biggest demonstration ever.On June 14,
DC 37 union members, joined by allies of the working class stood up for
their union rights & economic needs, fought back against the fiscal assault
on our public schools & public health care, the shredding of public services
that prevent child abuse &keep rats from running wild in New York City, and
raised their voices against the drive to crush public employees' rights from
coast to coast. They stood in solidarity to protect the libraries where so
many immigrants enhance their language skills, where so many of the
unemployed use free computers to search for jobs, and where so many
children -especially the city's record 43,000 homeless children - do their
homework. They will spoke out for the public parks and pools, the only
free recreation available for working families.

By letting the state “millionaires’ tax” expire in December, the Mayor and
the Governor are cutting taxes on the wealthy by $5 billion a year. Mayor
Bloomberg has squandered taxpayer money by throwing away
three-quarters of a billion dollars on the CityTime payroll project (where
the contractor is also accused of stealing $80 million from the city), failing
to collect business taxes that are owed to the city, and continuing to waste
some $10 billion on 18,000 private contracts for work city employees could
perform. If his administration can waste that kind of money, then the Mayor
can afford to cancel the service cuts & layoffs, stop the attacks on public
employee benefits and get real about raises for workers. The right-wing
effort to destroy union rights and drive workers hard fought for wages and
benefits further down the economic ladder is a cancer that will spread
unless we stop it.

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Unemployment, Poverty and the “Great” Recession
with
Avis Jones-DeWeever, Exec. Dir., National Council of Negro Women,
Marc Morial President & CEO of the National Urban League, and
former Mayor of New Orleans,
Dean Baker, Co-director, Center for Economic and Policy Research

Signs of economic recovery, well, maybe for Wall Street, and the banksters,
but what about our street? Where’s the beef, where’s the jobs? The United
States is still experiencing its worst jobs crisis since the Great Depression.
Officially in of May 2011 the unemployment rate increased to 9.1%. In 2009
there were 43.6 million people living in poverty, the largest figure in the 51
years for which poverty estimates are available, and the numbers have been
climbing. This national crisis demands a bold plan to put people back to work
and to prevent those wielding the ax from chopping more jobs and cutting
further holes in the safety net and jeopardizing entitlement programs.

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