2003 - October

Doroteo Garcia works the night shift cleaning classrooms at Stanford University, one of the largest employers in California’s Silicon Valley. As a steward for Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 1877, Doroteo has been active in his union’s efforts to lift janitors out of poverty in the San Francisco Bay Area, as part of SEIU’s national Justice for Janitors campaign. He is also involved as a community leader, organizing for amnesty and immigrants rights.

The Immigrant Worker Freedom Ride is an important opportunity to learn from and honor civil rights movement history in the U.S. The 1961 Freedom Rides were incredibly courageous acts of resistance led by many women and men, who still to this day, are leaders in the struggle for civil rights and racial justice. What follows is a short bibliography of excerpts and resources to educate yourself and others about the legacy of the Freedom Rides.

As of the 2000 U.S. Census there were seven million undocumented immigrants in the United States. Since then the number has undoubtedly grown and will continue to grow. These immigrants, predominantly from Mexico, are here to find a better life, but end up doing the jobs that most citizens are unwilling to do. They work mainly in agricultural industries or in low-paying jobs in the hotel and restaurant industry.

I and seventy other U.S. youth and students arrived in Havana on July 23 as the Youth United Delegation to the Third US / Cuba Youth Exchange. Part of a larger group of around 300 Americans, the Youth United delegates traveled to Cuba to learn as much about this small socialist island as we could in one short week. Even more importantly, we came to show that despite the U.S. blockade against Cuba, the peoples of the two countries will continue to work together toward common goals.

The threats to human lives on the U.S./Mexico border have increased in the recent years. It is the great indifference of the two nations, the U.S. in particular, which bred these conditions. The governments on both sides feel it is up to the other to prevent these deaths, when both are to blame.

You Back the Attack! We Bomb Who We Want!: Remixed War Propaganda, a new book by Micah Ian Wright is unlike any peace book you’ve ever read. Published by Seven Stories Press, Back the Attack is actually a unique picture book that takes historical propaganda posters from World War II and alters them into satirical critiques of the “War on Terrorism� and the Bush domestic policy.

The International Union of Students (IUS) was joined by regional students\' organizations from around the world for the September 13, 2003 Global Student Day of Action to Defend Public Education. The action was aimed at the World Trade Organization (WTO). Students around the world are calling for all levels of education to be removed from the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), a set of rules about international trade in the service sector adopted by the WTO. GATS forces developing countries in particular to open public services, health care and public education to privatization by giant corporations.

March 10 of this year, Texas country-pop stars Dixie Chicks became infamous when their lead singer Natalie Maines declared that they \"are ashamed the President of the United States is from Texas,\" in criticism of the imminent U.S. invasion of Iraq. This comment brought an onslaught of criticism, caused their No. 1 song \"Travelin\' Soldier,\" a sad lament about the victims of war, to fall off the charts completely, and even spurred some Deep South radio stations to boycott their songs completely. But do these young women deserve so much controversy?

Erase una vez
terminando con un “sweet kiss�
Más nada aprendimos de ellas
Las Evas
Las Malinches
Las Helenas de Troya
Todas seductoras, hechiceras, traidoras
…más que eso no hace falta
…más que ellas no importan
los nombres cambian
los hombres a todo superan
es aquella vieja historia
de la misma excluida

We live only two generations after racial segregation laws were outlawed in this country. We are only a few more generations removed from chattel slavery. Racial and gender disparities still abound in nearly every aspect of our society. Yet the Supreme Court took up a case this past summer to test the constitutionality of affirmative action in higher education admissions.

To Huu was Viet Nam’s most famous revolutionary poet, who for decades inspired the Vietnamese people with literary and political leadership. Huu was born as Nguyen Kim Thanh in the cultural capital of Viet Nam in 1920 and joined the Communist Party of Indochina at seventeen year of age in 1937. He was jailed for his anti-colonial and revolutionary activities from 1939 until 1942 when he escaped from French prison.

The events following 9/11 have been harried, and often times overwhelming. There has been a flood of new publications since that year trying to piece together a comprehensive analysis of what occurred, what is presently going on and most importantly, why?

As I enter the sterile confines of work I’m greeted by 90 pre and post pubescent voices chiming endearments, “Mama Chula!� “Aute� “Curly Sue� and variations of my name “Mel� “Missy� “Lissa�.

Over the last several years, hundreds of labor, community and student activists have been engaged in campaigns pushing for living-wage ordinances. Living-wage ordinances implemented at the municipal and county levels raise the minimum wage (that ranges from $5.15 to $6.50 per hour) to a more livable wage for workers that are paid from public funds.

Shoshanna Johnson is a single, Black mother who was one of the first Prisoners of War in the immoral and illegal invasion of Iraq.

I'd like to thank Dynamic Magazine for covering so thoroughly the Bush Administration's drive to war and empire, and the peace movement's struggle to curtail it.

Immigrants have repeatedly been the scapegoats for capitalism’s economic and social problems. Land owners, industrialists, politicians and vigilantes have always blamed immigrants and subjected them to violence and terror at the same time that their labor was being exploited for profit. Unfortunately the U.S. labor movement was sometimes caught up in anti-immigrant hysteria, blaming the foreign-born for taking “American jobs.�