Featured Unity Articles
Along the lower Mississippi
Workers, environmentalists & Black community join forces against toxics by Peter Shapiro The BASF petrochemical plant stands along the lower Mississippi River in the small, mainly African American town of Geismar, midway between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, Louisiana. A generation ago, this was plantation land, producing sugar cane and cotton. Today it’s a “chemical […]
Postal workers fight for child care
A roundtable Unity interview in San Francisco, California SAN FRANCISCO – The mail moves 24 hours a day. In postal facilities across the U.S., thousands of workers — many of them single parents or with young children — work evening and graveyard shifts. Needless to say, child care is often impossible to come by. Five […]
“Break of Dawn” revisited – Justice for Pedro J. Gonzalez
by Evaristo Garza “I am approaching the end of my life, and I do not want to go without first settling this issue. (The official pardon) is so very important, not only to me and my family, but also to all Mexicanos,” Pedro Jose Gonzalez told Alicia Alarcon of the Los Angeles newspaper La Opinion. […]
Arizona’s “English-only” law is unconstitutional
by Richard D. Castro Denver. CO–An Arizona law that prohibits foreign languages from being used in government business was ruled unconstitutional last month by a U.S. district court judge, who said it violates the First Amendment right of free speech. Judge Paul Rosenblatt ruled that Arizona’s official English law, which prohibits the use of foreign languages […]
Mildred Deel: Photograper
Interview by Bernice Wuetrich Mildred Deel, of Southwestern Virginia, is known throughout this Appalachian region as a photographer and friend to hundreds of coal miners and their families. Mildred is a postal worker, a mother, and a grandmother. Her son is a miner, and her husband is a retired miner. Mildred’s photographs, taken throughout the […]
District Elections in Watsonville
A historic milestone for Latino empowerment by Soledad Espita, Contributed WATSONVILLE, CALIF. – On Dec. 5, Oscar Rios be came the first Latino to win a Watsonville City Council seat through court-ordered district elections. On Dec. 12, Rios was sworn in, and the new Council elected him vice mayor during a session at which Chicano/Mexicano families […]
Victory in Georgia textile
News Analysis African American women unionize in the rural South Contributed LOUISVILE & WAYNESBORO, GA. – On Oct. 13, 18 months after voting to join the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union (ACTWU), 600 workers at the Samsons and Delila textile plants here finally won union certification by a unanimous vote of the National Labor […]
Organizing the South’s “Sweatshirt Capital”
First-hand account of in-plant union drive MARTINSVILLE, VA. — In one of the largest industrial organizing campaigns of recent years, 3,000 textile workers at the Tultex Corporation began organizing a union this past June. Tultex and several other companies here produce fleecewear, making this the “Sweatshirt Capital of the World. ” Together with organizers from the […]
National Black United Front: A decade of struggle
NBUF Convention set for Chicago by Tim Thomas Meeting under the theme “A Decade of Commitment and Struggle,” the National Black United Front (NBUF) will hold its 10th Annual Convention in Chicago, July 20-23. NBUF was founded in June 1980, when some 1,000 African Americans from 35 states came together in New York. Since then, […]
High court attacks women’s rights
Jamala Rogers By a narrow 5-4 vote, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld, on July 3, a Missouri law which restricts women’s right to abortion. While not overturning the historic 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion, the court opened the way for each state to pass its own limits on women’s right to reproductive […]
