Current Issues

Helen Winter, a life-long member of the Communist Party, died Dec. 13. She is survived by a daughter, Michelle Artt, granddaughters Elizabeth Meggison and Ruth Foster, and several great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren. A memorial celebration of her life is planned for Jan. 21.

This week the Senate passed the misnamed No Child Left Behind Act, which gives the federal government an unprecedented say in the standards public school children must meet. Yet it doesn’t provide funding to meet those goals. The main outrage in this bill is the lack of funding for special education.

By any measure, the pharmaceutical business is big business. Last year, retail pharmacies filled 2.9 billion prescriptions, an increase of 7.5 percent over 1999. Sales from the 50 best-selling prescription drugs rose from $730.6 billion in 1999 to $886.6 billion in 2000.

WASHINGTON – Arab and Jewish Americans are speaking with one voice in denouncing terrorism in the Middle East and calling for strong action to defend the peace process based on the co-existence of two states, Palestine and Israel.

Steelworkers from LTV Steel Corporation took the fight to save their jobs, pensions and health-care benefits to Capitol Hill last week.

An excerpt of greetings to the Communist Party USA’s annual holiday party in New York Dec. 20. Sam Webb is CPUSA National Chair.

The struggle to determine who will benefit from the riches of Colombia's natural resources and the wealth created by its people is at the heart of the crisis in Colombia today.

It’s pretty hard to be among the 10 percent or so against Bush’s war in Afghanistan. Even though that’s 11 million of us in the U.S., the corporate media’s pro-war, pro-Bush stance can make you feel kind of lonely.

Fresh from a Dec. 7 victory in bankruptcy court giving them a temporary stay in the battle to prevent LTV Steel Corporation from liquidating facilities in Ohio and Indiana, rank-and-file members of the United Steelworkers of America (USWA) are packing their winter camping gear and heading for Washington,
DC.

In a blatant attempt to stifle growing criticism of the efforts of the Bush administration to amend the Constitution and write new laws by executive fiat, Attorney General John Ashcroft equated political dissent with treason during a belated appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee Dec. 6.

Hundreds of steelworkers, hotel and restaurant employees and others who have lost their jobs in the deepening recession gathered on the U.S. Capitol grounds Dec. 12.

James E. Jackson Jr., a leader of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) for many years, celebrated his 87th birthday Nov. 29.

The question of organizing the unorganized topped this year’s convention agenda and AFL-CIO President John Sweeney minced no words in his call for rededication to the goal of annually adding a million new members to the ranks of organized workers.

Thousands of steelworkers poured into the street in front of the Federal Court House here Dec. 4. The workers were demanding that the bankruptcy court reject a Chapter 7 (liquidation) petition filed by LTV Steel Corporation. During the hearing, at which only LTV testimony was presented that day, workers jammed the hallways and the street.

"You can’t fight terrorism with the military,” Dr. Mazin Qumsiyeh, from Al-Awda, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition, told the World Dec. 4. “Israel has tried to do that for 53 years. It’s an example of what not to do.”

U.S. Representatives narrowly pass Fast Track trade authority bill, 215-214.

Gathered in the union hall and parking lot on East Bay Street, the dockworkers ofInternational Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) Local 1422, mostly African American men, celebrated their hard-fought victory in the case of the Charleston Five.

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said the Nov. 26 announcement that the economy was now officially in a recession confirmed what America’s working families have known for months.

The United Nations convened its first formal talks on a post-Taliban transitional government in Afghanistan Nov. 27. Much of the world, including the Afghan people, is focusing its hope on these talks, being held in Bonn, Germany. They provide a stark to George W. Bush’s pledge to widen the war against terrorism.

The labor and people’s movements face a recovery that is full of complicated questions. The search for solutions goes on in a world changed forever by acts of terrorism. The struggle to recover stretches from Ground Zero in New York City to Capitol Hill, which has become a second “Ground Zero” for working families.