Feature Archives

On March 8th, several hundred Modesto Junior College students responded to a call for a walkout against budget cuts that would result in the gutting of various departments and the laying off of faculty. Students rallied in the quad in front of the administration building for over half an hour. Also speaking at the rally were several faculty members who expressed solidarity with the students for standing with them. After rallying, students marched around campus then moved downtown, disrupting an event held by the Mayor of Modesto.

On February 11th, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and Republican state legislators introduced legislation to end collective bargaining for public employees on the premise that the attack on unions was motivated by budgetary concerns. Within a week, tens of thousands of public employees and labor supporters were demonstrating daily in the capital of Madison. Protests and solidarity rallies have since spread across the U.S. On February 26th, rallies were held in over 50 U.S. cities as part of a national day of action to demand an end to the attacks on workers' rights and public services across the country.

As the Obama administration moves closer to introducing the NAFTA-style Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (KORUS FTA) to Congress, on January 14th, 2011, citizens and activists joined Kim Kyung-Ran, Director of External Relations for the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, in a rally at San Francisco's new Federal Building to oppose the deal. Labor, faith, environmental, fair trade, and family farm organizations called on Minority Leader Pelosi, Congress and President Obama to stop pursuing the KORUS FTA, an agreement expected to cost American jobs and grant corporations in each country rights to subvert public interest laws.

The California coast, from Davenport south through Santa Cruz, Watsonville and Castroville, is Brussels sprouts country. Most of this vegetable in North America comes from these fields, although a growing harvest now takes place in Baja California, in northern Mexico. In both California and Baja California, the vast majority of the people who harvest Brussels sprouts, like those who pick other crops, are Mexican.

Hundreds of UC students and workers from around the state joined together during the November 16th through 18th Regents meeting to protest proposals that they say will harm the public mission of the University of California. They are demanding no fee hikes for all students and no more cuts to staff, many of whom earn below a living wage. At the November 17th meeting, over three hundred protesters confronted a line of police at the Mission Bay campus in San Francisco, where the regents were meeting. Police used pepper spray and 13 protesters were arrested.

Marc Sapir writes, "The core paid staff (representing perhaps 30-50 staff people at KPFA) essentially seized control of KPFA this morning [November 9th] to rally their listener base to resist efforts that could restore KPFA to financial solvency for the first time in 2 years, and bring it back from the brink of collapse (KPFA does not now have cash income to pay the staff regularly). What goes unstated is that the majority of staff at KPFA—over 150 programmers and producers--the people who keep the station on air 24/7 are volunteers are not represented in these antics."

More than a hundred healthcare workers marched outside Salinas Valley Memorial Hospital on October 21st to draw attention to the potential impact of more than 100 layoffs and employee buyouts ordered by hospital management. Employees decided to hold the picket by a 97% vote. Last May, nearly 900 respiratory care practitioners, licensed vocational nurses, certified nursing assistants, clerical workers and others voted by a landslide to join the National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW) and leave their old union, SEIU.