What Is To Be Done?

In this period of intensified class warfare against the working class and the
poor, what will it take to mobilize the people for the mass movement it will
surely take to win? Many have been heartened by the fightback in Wisconsin
and many of the frontline states. But is the predominately electoral strategy
that is currently being followed sufficient to win? What is the role direct action,
strikes, including general strikes, and cross union and community solidarity?
We talk with:

General Baker has been called the most important 21st century American
revolutionary. He was a leader of the Detroit wildcat strikes in the 1960s, a
founder of the legendary League of Revolutionary Black Workers, the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM), & the first American to refuse
induction to fight in Vietnam. The book, "Detroit: I Do Mind Dying" (about the
worker revolts of that era) calls Baker the "soul of the Dodge Revolutionary
Union Movement (DRUM)." An autoworker for 30 years, he remains a
champion of the unemployed and unorganized workers.

Stanley Aronowitz is a Professor of Sociology at the Graduate Center of the
City University of New York, where he studies labor, social movements,
science and technology, education, social theory and cultural studies. He is
author or editor of 25 books including: Left Turn: Forging a New Political
Future; How Class Works; The Jobless Future (with William DiFazio); and
False Promises: The Shaping of American Working Class Consciousness.

Staughton Lynd has dedicated his life to activism & social change as a
historian, lawyer, and labor activist. He helped direct the Mississippi
Freedom Schools. In April 1965 he spoke at the first march on Washington
against the Vietnam War and became an early leader of the anti-war
movement. Subsequent to becoming an attorney he spent years focusing
on labor and prison issues. He wrote the definitive history of the 1993 Ohio
prison uprising at Lucasville as well as the ever popular “Labor Law for the
Rank and Filer” and “Rank and File” oral histories of the 1930’s .

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The Freedom Riders and Lessons for Today
With
The Rev. Dr. James Lawson , helped coordinate the Sitdown
strike in 1960, Freedom Rides in 1961, the Meredith March in
1966. While working as a pastor at the Centenary Methodist
Church in Memphis, he invited Dr. King to Memphis & played
a major role in the sanitation workers strike of 1968. Dr. King
called Lawson "the leading theorist and strategist of
nonviolence in the world.”

and
Diane Nash, a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee (SNCC) who participated in the sitdown strikes in
Nashville & rode the freedom buses into Alabama and Miss.
where she endured mob violence & imprisonment. Later, she
was hired by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference
(SCLC) & was a major organizer for the 1963 Birmingham
campaign.

The movement by African-Americans, in the 60’s to desegregate interstate
travel facilities throughout the South was pivotal in challenging & ultimately eradicating the most onerous Jim Crow laws and breaking the back of what
were the police states of the South. The Freedom Rides, along with efforts
to integrate public accommodations, & educational institutions and the voter registration campaigns coalesced as a mass movement that triggered the
conscience of a nation and spurred it to action. Risking life and limb to
confront white supremacy, the civil rights activists forced major changes
in the power relationships of the nation.

Fifty years after the freedom rides, on this anniversary Building Bridges
looks back at & learns anew how the freedom riders organized and
mobilized to dramatically alter the very functioning of the state and what
e can emulate today in the face of increasing repression, by undemocratic
forces who seek to unravel fifty years of gains, ushered in by the freedom
riders.

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The People versus the Corporations in America’s Rust Belt
The Coup in Benton Harbor, Michigan
with
Rev. Edward Pinkney, Community Activist & Leader in the Fight
Against The Takeover of Benton Harbor

For the residents of Benton Harbor, Michigan the question is will America
have prosperity and democracy, or live in poverty under the heel of open
corporate power. There’s been a coup in Benton Harbor, First, Whirlpool
controlled Benton Harbor and now the City of Benton Harbor has become
the battleground for Michigan’s new emergency financial management law.
The law gives an accountant, Joseph Harris, dubbed an emergency manager
the right to tear up labor contracts. And, in Detroit district wide layoff
notices hit every one of its Public Schools. The 5,466 unionized employees
called the move the largest “one fell swoop” firing of teachers in union
memory. Additionally, the Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb’s
concurrent announcement that he plans to unilaterally modify the Detroit
Federation of Teachers’ collective bargaining agreement is the first test
of a sweeping new state law.
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Fighting Back
with
Frances Fox Piven, Professor of Political Science and Sociology,
The Graduate Center, City University of New York

Frances Fox Piven, a distinguished professor, legendary activist, and writer
for more than a year has been accused by Fox news host Glenn Beck, who
employees a graphic of a tree to do so of being an advocate of violence
and plotting since 1966 to overthrow the system. Well Piven now closes
our programming, with our support, respect and affection as she addresses
a national youth audience Teach-In. You’ll hear Piven reference the tree
and rather use the metaphor to advocate organizing movements for peace
and justice.

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In Brief- Produced by Mimi Rosenberg
presents
Protecting Reproductive Freedom

with
Jennifer Dalven, Director of the ACLU's Reproductive Freedom Project

Since the start of this year, 916 measures seeking to regulate reproductive
health had been introduced in 49 states. And by the end of March, 15 laws
had been enacted in seven states. Is this death by a thousand cuts, has state
law and new federal legislation affectively aborted, literally the right of choice ensconced in Roe v. Wade.

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Inspiration From Egypt: A May Day Message
with
Hossam el-Hamalawy,
Historian, Activist Reporter,Blogger, from Cairo

The events in Egypt, were a catalyst throughout the Middle East
for the yearnings for democracy and working class empowerment.
And, as well the aspirations & activism of the Egyptians has given
inspiration to us here, in the face of a full court press against the
working class. The current renaissance of unionism in Egypt should
likewise give us inspiration. Hossam el-Hamalawy provides an
insightful report on the May Day celebrations in Cairo detailing
the continuing conflict between the newly formed independent
unions and the state unions which were still being supported by
the military on May Day celebrations. He provides a fascinating
history of unions in Egypt culminating in their present emergence
of a free trade union movement independent of the state with
demands for dissolution of the state unions, higher wages and renationization of substantial parts of previously privatized
industries.

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Port Workers In Bay Area Turn Out To Say An Injury To One Is An Injury To All
with
Clarence Thomas, Former Secretary Treasurer of Local 10, and rank
& file activist Local 10

The Bay Area’s International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 10is under attack by the Pacific Maritime Association, after the rank and file dock workers’ voluntary action in solidarity with the national “We Are One” action, for the Wisconsin public workers. The PMA is suing the ILWU Local 10 because the members shutdown the ports in support of other workers. This is a serious attack on the right of workers to withhold their labor to support other workers, and alongwith support from the 87,000 member San Francisco Labor Council Local 10 workers continue to demonstrate their solidarity with workers fighting the attacks on collective bargaining rights.

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Shredding The Child Labor Safety Net
with
Susan F. Feiner, Prof. of Economics & Prof. of Women
& Gender Studies, University of Southern Maine, Portland.

Republicans in Utah, Ohio, Minnesota, Maine and Missouri are
proposing sweeping changes to child labor legislation including
expanding the use of sub-minimum wages for workers up to
the age of 20 & permitting teens to work till 11pm on school
nights. Missouri is taking the lead in the race back to the 19th
century, by drastically cutting back on enforcement & inspection
of child labor protections, including those protecting child
workers' health and safety on the job.

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Holding Women’s Health Hostage
with
LisaLyn Jacobs, Vice President of Government Relations, Legal Momentum (formerly NOW LDF)

House Republicans threaten to shut down the government over federal funding for Planned Parenthood. After weeks of federal budget negotiations, the focus shifted from economic issues to a particular rider that would eliminate all gov't funding to Planned Parenthood through the Title X family planning program. Conservatives are targeting PlannedParenthood because some of its clinics provide abortions, even though those abortions make up less than 3% of Planned Parenthood's services and federal money is not used to pay for abortion services. What was proposed by the House of Representatives is to say that women can no longer go to Planned Parenthood to get their cancer screenings, to gettheir birth control, to get any kind of services through federal programs.
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Highlights From The Money for Jobs, Not for War Rally

Thousands of protesters attended the largest national antiwar protest inyears. The rally juxtaposed the Democrats and Republicans haggling over budget proposals that in any event slashed billions in life-sustaining programs. As the rally organizers stated Head Start, Medicare and Medicaid are being threatened -- but there is always money for another war – but, if we brought the troops home now, the deficit could be wiped out in a heartbeat. Saturday’s demonstration represented a renewal ofthe antiwar movement and we will bring its highlights.

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Just A Cutting & A Slicing:
Bloomberg Seeks To Eliminate Subsidized Day Care
with
G.L. Tyler, Political Action Director, DC 1707

Mayor Bloomberg, is attempting to eliminate nearly 17,000 infants and toddlers from safe, quality and affordable day care. The “Education Mayor” is prepared to devastate subsidized daycare. Once again, Bloomberg has exposed himself to be not the protector of working families but ready to turn his back on working families needing public day care. The Mayor has a $2 billion “Rainy Day” fund that he does not wish to share with New Yorkers in need. He cannot take this money, our money, and give it to the millionaires and billionaires while cutting the jobs of day care providers and forcing working parents out of the work force if they don’t have child care.

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Martin Luther King’s Economic Justice Agenda From Memphis To Wisconsin Forty three years ago, a struggle by 1,300 sanitation workers for economic justice brought Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to Memphis. On the eve of his death, hours after marching with the AFSCME sanitation workers, being denied the right of collective bargaining & facing down the armed forces of a city & state, Martin Luther King, Jr. declared: “work that serves humanity…It has dignity and it has worth.” WE ARE ONE Today in Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan, Florida and more than a dozen other states, well-funded, corporatist politicians are trying to take away the union rights Dr. King gave his life for. This year, to commemorate his sacrifice, the AFL-CIO called for nationwide events and actions to link the struggle of 1968 to the challenges we face today, We Are One. ***** Carrying On The Legacy Of Dr. Martin Luther King with Dr. Vincent Harding, an associate of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, has written numerous books, including "Martin Luther King: The Inconvenient Hero". On this 43rd year since the death of Dr. King, speechwriter, confidante Dr. Harding discusses Dr. King’s economic justice activism and its relevance for us today as workers battle for the survival of their labor organizations, against give backs, stagnating wages and unemployment **** From Ground Zero Of the War on the Workers: Reports from Wisconsin and Ohio with Peter Rickman, Teaching Asst., LaFollette Law School , Univ. of Wisconsin, & member of Teaching Assistants’ Assn., AFT Local 3220 and Joseph Rugola, Exec. Dir., Ohio Assn. of Public School Employees, AFSCME The Ohio legislature just passed Gov. Kasich’s union busting bill which nullifies public employee rights. Meanwhile, Gov. Scott Walkers’ rush to cut public sector worker benefits, and bust their unions in Wisconsin has been stymied by court action. But the workers in both states aren’t taking the assaults lying down, we found out how they’re carrying on the legacy of Dr. King by going live to the We are One demonstration in Madison Wisconsin. stream or download

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From Egypt to Wisconsin, Is NY Next?: Breaking the Silence, NYC’s Protests Against Budget Cuts Buoyed by the new spirit of rebellion flowing from Egypt to Wisconsin, thousands of students, workers & community members from a wide coalition of organizations rallied at City Hall Park, followed by a march on Wall Street to demand higher taxes on the rich, to prevent budget cutbacks. This was the first major NYC demonstration, in an otherwise muted budget debate despite the grim consequences of the State & City proposed cuts. **** Arrests Up The Ante On Albany Budget Negotiations with Barbara Bowen, President, Professional Staff Congress, CUNY and James Parrott, Deputy Director & Chief Economist, Fiscal Policy Inst. While Albany budget negotiators are reaching agreement, the real question for the public is how much pain and suffering are legislators prepared to hit us with. We’ll analyze the budget and especially, it’s likely impact on NYC, where Mayor Bloomberg,while sitting on a $3 billion budget surplus is threatening major cutbacks, & thousands of layoffs. Bloomberg, like the Governor refuses to consider a millionaires or a securities transfer tax to prevent a slash and burn policy. In otherwise subdued budget protests this year, the Professional Staff Congress of CUNY led an Albany protest in which 33 people were arrested. They sat down and blocked access to the New York State Capitol's Executive Chamber demanding that Albany not pass an austerity budget that pays for a hefty tax breaks for the wealthy. stream or download

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The New Class War on Unions Spreads to Ohio
with
Joseph Rugola, Exec. Dir., Ohio Assn. of Public School Employees, AFSCME

Following Gov. Walker’s union busting lead, Ohio Gov. Kasich proposes to nullify public employee unionization rights by taking away impartial arbitration of disputes, the right to strike of “non-emergency public employees” and protections against privatization of government jobs. Despite the demonstration by over 20,000, it was politics at its worst, Republican leaders rammed this bill through by kicking opposing members of their own party off key committees.
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NYC Union Rally Blasts Bloomberg and Cuomo Attacks

District Council 37 Locals 375,154, 768 & 1549 demonstrated at City Hall Park in support of the resistance of workers & their unions under attack in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana and other states. On the NYC front, they railed against proposed layoffs by Mayor Bloomberg, despite projections of a multibillion dollar budget surplus and a plethora of costly and often corrupt outside contracts. Both the Bloomberg and Cuomo Administrations oppose continuing the millionaires’ tax to enhance revenue rather than cutting public services and layoffs.

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A Women's History Month Special

Out of the Flames, From The Ashes: TheTriangle Shirtwaist Fire & Its Legacy

Commemorating the 100th Anniversary of the Triangle Fire - March 25, 1911

Tune into our tapestry of archival sound, re-enactments – a docudrama of the “flowering girls” who lost their lives in the Triangle Fire, on this hundredth anniversary, of one of the most important events in the history of the labor movement. Threaded through the sound tapestry are the haunting voices from the fire intermingled with the poetry and songs that arose in the wake of the tragedy. Another thread of the tapestry are the voices of scholar/activists who deliberate on the legacy of Triangle for today - to organize and unionize, to regulate the workplace and create a safe, decent life for working people, to attend to the problems today sadly echoing the conditions at the time of the Triangle Fire. This is a drama of the dilemmas faced by working women, their pathos, & the importance of the fire, in the annals of workers’ history - “not to mourn, but to organize.”

A fire broke out on the top three stories of a relatively new building just east of
Washington Square Park, which housed the Triangle Shirtwaist Company, a
large manufacturer of women’s clothes (a building which today houses New York University classrooms). Though the building was modern and advertised as fire-proof, the cramped layout of the factory space, large piles of flammable materials, locked doors by the employers, an inadequate fire escape, and the inability of New York City fire truck ladders to reach high enough to rescue the people trapped by the flames led to a staggering loss of life. All told, 146 workers died that day, mostly women workers, many still in their teens, some as young as fourteen, killed by the fire or their desperate leaps to the ground to escape the suffocating smoke, the heat and flames. It is the largest industrial tragedy in the history of New York City.

After the fire, & the outraged voices of community residents, workers, labor activists, New York State passed a series of new laws regulating factory safety which, along with unionization,gradually eliminated the worst conditions workers faced. These efforts would reach fruition in the New Deal, in many respects the creation of the coalition of forces that came togetherin the aftermath of the TriangleFire.

If Triangle is an old story, one about a century ago, it is also a very current story. While the U.S. was successful, at least for a while, in eliminating the worst abuses of the sweatshop era and improving the lives of its working people, there are millions of workers today who face conditions not unlike those faced by the Triangle workers. What people sometimes refer to as the global sweatshop is a vast archipelago of workplaces, in many of which young female workers toil long hours in dangerous conditions, very often without union representation or any rights.

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The New Class War in Wisconsin
with
Frank Emspak, Dir.Emeritus, School For Workers, University Of Wisconsin and Exec. Dir. Workers Independent News

In the face of massive protests, Wisconsin Gov. Scott
Walker’s “budget repair bill” proposes limiting collective
bargaining powers of public employees only to base pay
tearing the guts out of the union.The bill also mandates
increases in workers' pension & health care contributions.
And next come the layoffs. We’ll explore Walker’s capital
supported initiative to break the back of organized labor.
What are the politics behind it and forces pushing this
Republican juggernaut? Is this a blueprint for union
busting in other states? And, oh yes, we’ll discuss what is
to be done?
************
See You On the Picket Line
With
Harry Belafonte, the Great Actor, Singer and Social Justice Activist

In his recent speech at City College in NYC, Belafonte
decries what has been the passivity in the U.S. in face of
massive attacks on civil rights and workers rights but
welcomes the recent protests against tyranny in Tunisia
and Egypt and extending to Madison Wisconsin to protect
workers rights.

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Woodlawn Cemetery Alive with Union Protests
With
Chris Silvera, Secretary Treasurer Local 808, Teamsters
And
Local 808 Woodlawn Members - the Band of Brothers
. Todd Brown
. Alex Coss
. Enrique Coss

Landscapers at the Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, where
six Mayors & jazz legends like Celia Cruz, Miles Davis & Duke
Ellington are buried, protested at the cemetery with union and
community allies from throughout NYC . Management plans to
contract their jobs out to a private landscaping firm unless they
take a 35% pay cut. Local 808 Secretary-Treasurer Chris Silvera
called the proposed outsourcing “an act of vengeance against
the workers for choosing a fighting union to represent them.
” It's the latest battle for the workers, "The Band of Brothers",
who for several years have lodged complaints about racism by
supervisors. Then in October, the workers voted over-
whelmingly to switch their union affiliation to Local 808.

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The current struggles of public sector workers rights in Wisconsin and
around the country has galvanized public and worker sentiment and
support to an extent not seen since the battle to organize the Memphis
City sanitation workers in 1968. This was part of the upsurge of the civil
rights movement of the 1960’s and also of the mass unionization of
public workers in that decade.

“Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King’s Last Campaign”
with
Michael K. Honey, Prof. of Ethnic, Gender, and Labor studies, University of Washington, Tacoma

Martin Luther King was in Memphis to add his voice to protests in support of striking sanitation workers – the civil rights movement paralleled with the struggles of organized labor. Professor Honey details the daily evolution of the strike and what it meant to Memphis and the larger civil-rights movement. He chronicles the events that led up to that fateful day at the Lorraine Motel, and to larger social change. Honey’s analysis of King’s role is particularly telling. “King,” he writes, “had qualities that allowed him to lead a mass movement that joined working-class people to the middle class through the black church” until his “Crucifixion.”

Plus Taylor Rogers, a past Pres. of the Memphis Sanitation Workers
Union talks about the 1968 Strike which was Dr. King's last struggle and a selection from King's speech at a strike rally.

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Earl Robinson’s Cantata, Lonesome Train

The Riverside Church in NYC presented the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College, The NYC Labor Chorus and The Riverside Inspirational Choir in Earl Robinson’s cantata The Lonesome Train in honor of the birthday of the great emancipator Abraham Lincoln. The work had not been heard in its entirety for more than 50 years.

The performance featured theatrical direction by LorcaPeress,a narrator played by acclaimed actress Ruby Dee (American Gangster, Steam), a chorus led by a balladeer, Michael Mark (I Love My Wife, Cotton Patch Gospel), barn-dance caller David Amram (composer/Author/Jazz musician), banjo soloist Eric Weissberg (Dueling Banjos, Deliverance) and Sam Waterston (Law and Order) as President Lincoln. The four join gospel preacher Tyrone Aiken and his choir, a barn dance caller and fiddler to honor Lincoln’s message of “a new nation conceived in liberty.”

The Riverside production was introduced by Pete Seeger.

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Bloomberg Stop The Snow Job On Public Schools Closings!
with
. Stefanie Siegel, teacher, Paul Robeson High School
. Lowena Howard, teacher, Paul Robeson High School
. Letitia Ingram-Brown, teacher, Paul Robeson High School
. Lizabeth Cooper, student, Paul Robeson High School
plus
Highlights from the Stop Schools Closing Rally

Bloomberg's Department of Education (DOE) plans to close 26 more schools this year. Despite the DOE's claim that these school closings are aimed at reforming schools, they have instead opened the door to privately-run charter schools and have limited school options for those affected. According to the accounts by parents, students and teachers, DOE policies have had the effect of undermining the schools that are slated to be closed, not "fixing" them. Bloomberg has played a shell game with our most vulnerable children, shuffling them around from closing school to closing school. This process has disproportionately affected students of color, only serving to further perpetuate a separate and unequal school system in New York City. A discussion about and sounds from a rally for quality resources and support for our public schools, not closings and privatization!

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Jeff Halper, An Israeli Campaigner For Justice For Palestinians
with
Jeff Halper, famed author, and Coordinator, Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD)

Since 1967, more than 24,000 Palestinian homes have been demolishedin the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Gaza by the Israeli forces, bringing untold misery to countless Palestinians. Jeff Halper has led a campaign against this abuse through the organization ICAHD. As ICAHD witnessed the brutalities of the Occupation, it expanded its resistance activities to other areas – land expropriation, settlement expansion, by-pass road construction, policies of “closure” and “separation,” the wholesale uprooting of fruit and olive trees, the Separation Barrier/Wall, the siege of Gaza and more. Building Bridges hosts, in studio ICAHD’s Jeff Halper, an Israeli Jew who fearlessly criticizes the state of Israel and has, as a result, been arrested many times, including recently after he sailed into Gaza on a relief boat, for a discussion of ideas & international advocacy to end the Occupation altogether & for a “Free, Free Palestine.”

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The State of the Union
Deficit Reduction and Common Sense:
Invest in the Economy, Reduce the Military Budget & Tax the Rich
with
Joseph Stiglitz, University Professor Columbia University,
Recipient Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics

The ink was hardly dry on the massive compromise federal tax bill
when Republican leaders restarted their call for spending cuts in
the new Congress to close the deficit. But Nobel Prize winning
economist Joseph Stiglitz sets the record straight in his speech
before the Roosevelt Institute. He says that the main cause of the
deficits is the recession which premature deficit reduction would
cause to deteriorate further. He also offers us a way to rebuild our
economy which would also fight the increasing mal-distribution of
wealth in this country by taxing the rich, reducing the military
budget and investing in our cities, our infrastructure and new
technologies to increase our productive capacities to increase
economic growth.

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Bloomberg’s Snow Job and
The NYC Council Inquiry Into The Blizzard Fiasco
with
NYC Councilmember Jumaane Williams, Chairman, Oversight and Investigations Committee

The NYC Council held hearings into how the mayor's administration took nearly a week to clear city streets after a holiday weekend snow storm and we’ll go inside the hearings with Jumaane Williams. Specifically on the agenda, was determining what made the mayor say that streets were plowed while everybody was telling him they weren’t. While, the media blamed the sanitation workers, we know the buck stops with the mayor and the managers he appointed and we dig out their negligence and incompetence and find out why.
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Stop the Layoffs: City Workers Protest Bloomberg’s Budget Madness

DC 37 Locals 1113 and 375 held an angry demonstration at City Hall Park recently protesting the layoff of 129 Dept. of Finance workers which is partof the 889 layoffs announced by Bloomberg for this year. Recent forecasts by the NYC Independent Budget Office and the City Comptroller say that NYC will have a budget surplus in excess of $1 billion this fiscal year. Bloomberg’s credibility has been further eroded by the $80 million fraud in the overbudget $800 million CityTime payroll contract which many speakers mentioned as the tip of an iceberg of waste in the City’s $9 billion budget for outside contracts and high paid consultants. They also called for higher taxes on the rich to prevent layoffs and increase NYC services.

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The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
with
Michelle Alexander, civil rights advocate and litigator, author

Alexander offers a bold and innovative argument that mass incarceration amounts to a devastating system of racial control. “Jarvious Cotton’s great-great-grandfather could not vote as a slave. His great-grandfather was beaten to death by the Klu Klux Klan for attempting to vote. His grandfather was prevented from voting by Klan intimidation; his father was barred by poll taxes and literacy tests. Today, Cotton cannot vote because he, like many black men in the United States, has been labeled a felon and is currently on parole.” In this incisive critique, former litigator-turned-legal-scholar Michelle Alexander argues that we have not ended racial caste in America, we have simply redesigned it. Alexander shows that, by targeting black men and decimating communities of color, the U.S. criminal justice system functions as a contemporary system of racial control, even as it formally adheres to the principle of color blindness.

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Israel’s Building Boom Threatens Palestinian State
with
Richard Falk, prof. of international law emeritus, Princeton University and Special Rapporteur on Occupied Palestinian Territories for the United Nations Human Rights Council.

We’ll explore the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967. And, we’ll examine the implications for Palestinian statehood of the Israeli settlement-building boom in the West Bank, in the months since the Palestinians were forced to withdraw from peace talks, and the construction of predominantly Jewish housing in East Jerusalem, where the Palestinians hope to make their future capital.
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Tell Israeli Diamond Merchant Lev Leviev, Financing Israeli Settlements Has Got To Go!
with
Adalah-NY

The heck with “chocolate” diamonds, there’s blood on Lev Leviev’s diamonds, the profits from which go to financing the expansion of Israeli settlements on Palestinian land. Leviev also continues to support human rights abuses in the diamond industry in Angola. So international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement activists against Israel led a protest against this international merchant of death, at Leviev’s diamond flagship store on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.
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Stop the Layoffs: City Workers Protest Bloomberg’s Budget Madness

DC 37 Locals 1113 and 375 held an angry demonstration at City
Hall Park recently protesting the layoff of 129 Dept. of Finance
workers which is part of the 889 layoffs announced by Bloomberg
for this year. Recent forecasts by the NYC Independent Budget
Office and the City Comptroller say that NYC will have a budget
surplus in excess of $1 billion this fiscal year. Bloomberg’s
credibility has been further eroded by the $80 fraud in the
$800 million CityTime payroll contract which many speakers
mentioned as the tip of an iceberg of waste in the City’s $9 billion
budget for outside contracts and high paid consultants. They also
called for higher taxes on the rich to prevent layoffs and increase
NYC services.

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Georgia Prisoners, In Longest Strike In History Against US Penal System Say Enough Is Enough Is Enough!
with
Edward O. Dubose, The Georgia State Conference, NAACP

On December 9, thousands of men, from Augusta, Baldwin, Hancock, Hays, Macon, Smith and Telfair State Prisons went on strike to press the Georgia Department of Corrections (“DOC”) to stop treating them like slaves and institute programs that address their basic human rights. Some of their demands are: 1) a living wage for work; 2) educational opportunities; 3) decent health care; 4) an end to cruel and unusual punishments; 5) decent living conditions; 6) nutritional meals; 7) vocational and self-improvement opportunities; 8) access to families; and 9) just parole decisions. The Georgia prisoners refused to work, stopping all activities, in a peaceful protest for their human rights. This is a heroic act of resistance to inhuman prison conditions and racism.

Plus
Excerpts fromPrison Labor: Made in the U.S.A.
Produced by Free Speech Radio Newsreporter Karen Miller.

Prison labor is every US Corporation's dream: cheap labor, no sick
leave, no time off, no holidays and employees that can be easily
replaced. For human rights activists however, it's a nightmare for
the very same reasons - but on the other side of the coin: forced
labor, no unions, low pay and no protection for employees. The US
has used or currently uses prison labor for anything from holiday
coffee for Starbucks, cutting airplane components or Boeing,
Game Boys for Nintendo, equipment for war , shrink wrapping
mouses for Microsoft, making dentures, down to sewing lingerie
for Victoria's Secrets. It's a multi-billion dollar business.

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Wal-Mart/Sam Club’s Lawsuit Could Be A Game-Changer For Corporate Gender Discrimination
with
Stephen Tinkler, lead attorney for plaintiffs

Employers everywhere want to see whether the Supreme Court says a single class-action lawsuit can include as many as 1.5 million employees of Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club. Initially six woman filed suit accusing the retail giant of not providing its female workers with the same compensation and promotional opportunities as men. If the court rules this now class action suit can include all 1.5 million workers, it could set a new precedent for how broad class-action suits against businesses, particularly large employers, can become. The suit encompasses workers from nearly 3,400 stores nationwide. The scope of the suit could put tremendous pressure on Wal-Mart to settle and to remedy its offensive practices, as well as seriously affect other employers discriminatory gender behavior.

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Deny Waiver Coalition Rally at Tweed Shows Outrage over Appointment of Cathie Black as Schools Chancellor

The Deny Waiver Coalition gathered hundreds of parents, elected officials educators and community leaders at the Tweed Courthouse, Headquarters of the NYC Dept. of Education, in a broad based demonstration to denounce Bloomberg's appointment of millionaire publishing Executive Cathie Black as Schools Chancellor despite her lack of qualifications for the position. The Coalition, which will not accept Ms. Blacks appointment as a done deal, is filing a lawsuit to challenge the waiver by NYS Education Commissioner Steiner and is continuing demonstrations across the city. The protests, are evolving into a wider movement against Mayoral Control and the capture of educational decision making by business interests to the exclusion of parents and teachers. For 8 long years, NYC children have enduring the destructive education policies of the Bloomberg Administration and the time has come for a parent and educator led movement to fight for & protect the educational opportunities of NYC's 1.1 million public school children.
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Nine AIDS Activists Dressed As Bagels Arrested In Schmear Campaign Of Mayor Bloomberg
with
. Charles King, Pres. & CEO, Housing Works, a/k/a, an aggressive bagel
. Johnny Guaylupo, arrested baked goods

ACTing UpOn World AIDS Day—Police arrested nine Housing Works AIDS activists wearing giant bagel costumes outside Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s annual World AIDS Day Bagel Breakfast at the Brooklyn Public Library. “Mayor Bloomberg’s attitude to poor people with AIDS is ‘Let them eat bagels!’” said Charles “Sesame” King, president and CEO of Housing Works Bagels’ Schmear Campaign. “We bagels refuse to be implicated in the mayor’s World AIDS Day Bagel Breakfast hypocrisy.” The activists chained themselves together and blocked traffic at Grand Army Plaza to draw attention to Bloomberg’s relentless attacks on AIDS housing services for the poor. The brave bagels were cheered on by dozens of others, many wearing breakfast table costumes. AIDS activists are fed up with Bloomberg.
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Emergency Unemployment Protest
2 Million More Are Loosing Benefits in December
with
. Trudy Goldberg, Chair, National Jobs for All Coalition
. Bill Henning, Vice President of CWA, Local 1180
. Jon Bloom, Executive Director, Workers Defense League,
. Noreen Connell, Past Pres., NOW, NY State

The National Jobs for all Coalition held a protest demonstration in NYC to call for extension of unemployment benefits being held up in Congress by a Republican filibuster and to raise public awareness of the need for bold and decisive federal action to create jobs. The action came on the very day when the newly released monthly statistics reported that the unemployment rate increased to 9.8% highlighting the need for decisive action now. Over 5,000,000 workers have already exhausted their 99 weeks of extended benefits and if unemployment benefits are not extended by Congress beyond the basic 26 week limit over 2,000,000 more are loosing their benefits in December. The coalition will be holding vigils for jobs every first Friday of the month when the unemployment statistics are released, hoping to build grassroots support for jobs now!

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Austerity & Lockout Threats Roil NFL & NBA
with
Dave Zirin, author of "Bad Sports: How Owners are Ruining the Games we Love"

The former Indiana guard A.J. Moye starts rehabilitation after having a stroke following a head-on collision with a teammate. There has been an avalanche of media coverage of the helmet to helmet hits, and the cover of Sports Illustrated is about concussions. Meanwhile the response of the owners has been to sue 262 players over their workers compensation, and it still takes at least a 3 year NFL career to get any health care after retirement, and oh yes the League seeks to extend the playing season and threatens drastic cuts or elimination of health benefits to the players.

Plus
Host of Edge of Sports Radio Dave Zirin and former NBA guard Laron Profit speak with NFL Players Association Executive Director DeMaurice Smith about the players standing strong against the league's attempts to break their will. Smith also reveals that the NFL owners share the same legal representation as
the ownership groups in the NBA, MLB, and the NHL. All of these leagues are in labor talks as 2011 marks the year in which the four major sports' collective bargaining agreements expire.

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Emergency Unemployment Protest
2 Million More May Loose Benefits in December
With
Trudy Goldberg, Chair, National Jobs for All Coalition
Bill Henning, Vice President of CWA, Local 1180
Jon Bloom, Executive Director, Workers Defense League,
Noreen Connell, Past Pres., NOW, NY State

The National Jobs for all Coalition held a protest demonstration in
NYC to call for extension of unemployment benefits being held up
in Congress by a Republican filibuster and to raise public awareness
of the need for bold and decisive federal action to create jobs. The
action came on the very day when the newly released monthly
statistics reported that the unemployment rate increased to 9.8%
highlighting the need for decisive action now. Over 5,000,000
workers have already exhausted their 99 weeks of extended
benefits and if unemployment benefits are not extended by
Congress beyond the basic 26 week limit over 2,000,000 more
will loose their benefits in December. The coalition will be
holding vigils for jobs every first Friday of the month when the
unemployment statistics are released, hoping to build grassroots
support for jobs now!

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NYC Unemployed Arrested Protesting Benefits Termination
With
Members of Flashmobs4jobs

Workers who have exceeded the 99 week maximum limit on unemployment benefits (called 99ers) were arrested for blocking traffic on Varick Street at a demonstration outside the NYS Dept.of labor. They were demanding that Congress, in the lame duck session, immediately pass a bill granting benefits to those workers who have passed the 99 week limit. They also called for the reauthorization unemployment benefits extensions set to expire on November 30 and new legislation to create jobs. There are currently 4.5 million 99ers with an additional 50,000 jobless losing their benefits each week - this is an emergency!
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A Fair Wages Act Is A Matter Of Faith For Coalition of Religious Leaders

Clergy members across NYC recently led a procession of congregations, community groups and union members to demand that the City Council pass the Fair Wages for New Yorkers Act. Every year NYC spends approximately two billion dollars, to subsidize development and create jobs. Too often the jobs created with these public subsidies pay poverty wages with no benefits -- whether it's retail and stockroom jobs at shopping centers, mailroom jobs in office buildings, or food service jobs at stadiums. When public dollars are used to promote private enterprise, the public has the right to expect jobs with good wages and benefits.

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Robin Hood In Reverse: Presidential Commission Outlines $3.8 Trillion Theft From The Workers, Seniors, The Disabled, And The Sick
with
Dean Baker, co-director, Center for Economic and Policy Research

A presidential commission’s leaders outlined a $3.8 trillion deficit-cutting plan that would trim among other things Social Security and Medicare, reduce income-tax rates and eliminate tax breaks including the mortgage-interest deduction, the child tax credit and the earned income tax credit. Deficit reduction would also make it harder to emerge from the recession, causing tax revenues to fall further setting the stage for further budget cuts. The Social Security retirement age would rise to 68 in about 2050 and 69 in about 2075. AFL-CIO Pres. Richard Trumka said the panel chairmen “just told working Americans to ‘drop dead.’” In an e-mailed statement, Trumka said, “The very people who want to slash Social Security and Medicare spent this week clamoring for more unpaid Bush tax cuts for millionaires.” While the Commission’s Allan Simpson said the plan was designed to give members of the panel something to “chew on” for further discussions, it’s enough to choke the rest of us.

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Election 2010: The Best Defense Was a Fair Trade Offense"
withTodd Tucker, Research Dir., Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch

That Democrats and the GOP alike ran against the trade policy status quo, highlights the intensity of public ire about our job exporting trade policy -- a phenomenon also seen in national polls. It also reveals the trouble that the White House and GOP leaders should face if they try to pass the leftover Bush trade pacts with Korea, Colombia and Panama. Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch, just released a report illustrating that House Democrats that ran on fair trade platforms in competitive and open-seat races were three times as likely to survive the GOP tidal wave than Democrats who ran against fair trade. We’ll discuss the findings of the report “Election 2010: The Best Defense Was A Fair Trade Offense”.
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Rally to Defend Mumi Abu-Jamal in Philadpehia

On Nov. 9 in Philadelphia, hundreds of supporters of Mumia Abu-Jamal rallied outside a hearing at the federal Third Circuit Court of Appeals where his attorney argued against the reimposition of his death sentence. We go to the Press conference with Mumia's new lead counsel , Judith Ritter, Professor of Law and Director of the Criminal Defense Clinic at Widener University School of Law, Delaware campus and then to a Statement by Professor Johanna Fernandez, of Baruch College; she is the producer of the new documentary "Justice on Trial" about Mumia's case.

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Where The Right to Join a Union Can Make the Difference
Between Life and Death
With
Cecil Roberts, President, United Mineworkers of America
Ricky Polk, Member, United Mineworkers of America

With the deadly explosion in the Massey’s Upper Big Branch Mine in West
Va. which killed 29 miners last April still fresh in their minds, Ricky Polk and
Cecil Roberts blast the Republicans in Congress who have held up mine
safety legislation. Both also make the point that the safest mines are union
mines because of collective bargaining safety provisions but because of
employer intransigence to unionization, we also need Legislation to make
it easer for workers to form unions. We talked with them at the One Nation
Working Together Washington, DC March and Rally.
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Prostrated at the Altar of the Balanced Budget - Sacrificing Economic
Recovery, the Unemployed, Social programs, and Social Security,
with
James Galbraith, Chair in Gov't/ Business Relations, at the School of
Public Affairs, at the University of Texas at Austin

Budget deficit mania is hobbling Washington’s response to economic
recovery. Having a balanced budget is more important they say than
implementing an economic stimulus to create our real bottom line – jobs, and
more jobs. To cut federal budget deficits without first rebuilding the economy
is a sure path to stagnation, to a double-dip recession – possibly to a second
Great Depression!
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NYPD's Crime-Tracking Method, CompStat, Pressures Police To Frivolous Arrests, But Ignores Serious Crime Reports To Doctor Statistics
with
Graham Rayman, reporter Village Voice

Two years ago, police officer, Adrean Schoolcraft in Brooklyn’s 81st precinct, in Bedford Stuyvesant became gravely concerned about how the public was being served. To document his concerns, be began carrying around a digital sound recorder, secretly recording his colleagues and superiors. Graham Rayman, staff writer for the Village Voice reports on the NYPD officer who was told to distort crime statistics and what the revelations in his series hasled to for the public.

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PACIFICA NETWORK SPECIAL:

"Fighting for Jobs, Jobs, and Green Jobs! "
a 58 minute SpecialA production of
Building Bridges: Your Community and Labor Report, WBAI-Pacifica, New York City
Produced by Ken Nash and Mimi Rosenberg

Building a Movement for Green Jobs to Re-industrialize the U.S.
with
Leo Gerard, President of the United Steelworkers

We feature the voice of a labor leader who is building bridges between workers internationally and sees the ties that bind the labor and environmental movements in the U.S. Leo Gerard, President of the United Steelworkers with 850,000 members in the USA and Canada is a co-founder of the Apollo Alliance, whose goal is developing efficient energy alternatives to fossil fuels and jobs, jobs, jobs. Labor & environmental activists are pressing for the creation of green jobs as the way to re-industrialize the U.S., and are fighting to make sure that U.S. trade relations change so that jobs are kept in the U.S.. The Steelworkers recently filed a complaint with the World Trade Organization(WTO), which the Obama administration is investigating, which accuses China of violating the WTO free-trade rules by subsidizing exports of clean energy equipment like solar panels and wind turbines.

President Gerard spoke recently at a forum sponsored by the organization Rekindling Reform and by the Murphy Institute for Worker Education and Labor Studies at the City University of New York.

And then building more bridges

The One Nation Working Together March on Washington

We present excerpts from the One Nation Working Together March on Washington, which brought hundreds of thousands of men and woman from the working class
sponsored by the AFL-CIO, NAACP, La Raza and hundreds of diverse organizations,
to the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC to continue the call 47 years earlier of the
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King for jobs, jobs, jobs and justice.
with
Van Jones, Author, The Green Collar Economy
Mary K. Henry – Pres., Service Employees Intl Union (SEIU)
Arthur Cheliotes, President, Local 1180, CWA
Harry Belafonte, a remarkable call for Jobs, Peace and Justice from the great actor, singer and social justice activist

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Still Fighting for Their Forty Acres And A Mule: The Plight Of Black Farmers
with
. Gary Grant, Pres., Black Farmers & Agriculturalists Assn., N.C.
. Eddie Carthan, Pres., Mississippi Family Farmers Association
. Hezekiah Gibson, Pres. United Farmers, USA , S.C.

It’s been more than a decade since Black farmers filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Agriculture, because of decades of discrimination. Thousands of farmers have not yet had their day in court or been allowed to file a claim even though the second phase of the suit (known as Pigford v Vilsack) was settled in February 2010. The reason for this is that Congress has not provided the $1.25 billion for farmers, who through no fault of their own, suffered discrimination from the same government that now denies them relief.
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Alice Walker Remembers Her Parents:
The Plight of Black Sharecroppers

Recently, author Alice Walker accepted an award from the Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund. Her brief but insightful remarks convey a sense of the real value of life and what we work for, as we continue to build bridges. Alice Walker talks about her parents who were sharecropers, their struggles and the sacrifices they made for her.

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Today part 2 of our special program coverage with speeches and interviews from the Massive Demonstration on Saturday, October 2nd at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC

The One Nation Working Together March on Washington sponsored by the AFL-CIO, NAACP, La Raza and 100’s of progressive organizations 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!

featured on todays program are:

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, Pres., Rainbow Push Coalition
with immigrant righs activist Yves Gomes
Members of the NAACP
Ellie Flores – youth activist
Mary K. Henry – Pres., Service Employees Intl Union (SEIU)

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Building Bridges: Your Community and Labor Report
National Edition
Produced by Ken Nash and Mimi Rosenberg
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We present a special program with speeches and interviews from the Massive
Demonstration on Saturday, October 2nd at theLincoln Memorial in Washington, DC

The One Nation Working Together March on Washington

sponsored by the AFL-CIO, NAACP, La Raza and 100’s of progressive organizations 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!
Featured on today’s program are AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, U.S. Representative Luis Gutierrez, and a remarkable call for Jobs, Peace and Justice from the great Harry Belafonte along with thevoices of American workers for Jobs with Justice.
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to play go to:
http://www.archive.org/download/BuildingBridgesOneNationWorkingTogetherMarchOnWashington/BuildingBridgesOneNationWorkingTogetherMarchOnWashington_vbr.m3u

to download go to:
http://www.archive.org/download/BuildingBridgesOneNationWorkingTogetherMarchOnWashington/onenationntl.mp3

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