Featured Unity Articles
Let McFarland’s children live!
Rural town faces childhood cancer and poisoned water Evaristo Garza McFarland, California Amidst the fields and orchards of the San Joaquin Valley lies this small Kern County town where at least 17 children have contracted cancer in the past five years. So far, eight children have died. Yet local, state and federal authorities have failed […]
Mexico elections … Left-patriotic forces defend popular vote against fraud
Eyewitness Report Election crisis shakes country Who really won the vote? Oscar Rios Mexico City – Although Mexico’s Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) claims to have won the July 6 presidential elections, mounting evidence points to Cuauhtemoc Cardenas of the National Democratic Front (FDN) as the real winner. The country is in turmoil, as many denounce the official results as a […]
The 1968 Chicano High School Blowouts
Roberto Flores Contributed On March 7, 1968, 20,000 Chicano high school students went out on strike for respect, equality and an end to racist treatment in the Los Angeles public school system. The “Blowouts” were the kettle whistle signaling that the simmering 120-year struggle of the Chicano people had reached a boiling point — a […]
Sunbelt meat packers strike for justice
Evaristo Garza When Jesse Jackson came to Greeley, Colorado, on April 2, 2,000 people greeted him as he stood with striking workers from Monfort Portion Foods. The rally focused national attention on the five-month strike of 115 mostly Chicana meat packers, members of United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 7. Greeley is like many […]
Jesse Jackson and the Significance of Super Tuesday
Commentary – March 21, 1988 By Amiri Baraka Jesse Jackson’s victories in the Super Tuesday primaries pageant are a “symbolic” reference to the existence of the African American nation in the Black-belt South. The five states won approximate the core and outer limits of that nation, so that even in the dregs of U.S. bourgeois democracy, an […]
Janitors’ rights stand above Atlanta highrises
Black women’s union drive demands dignity in heart of New South Atlanta — when people talk about the “New South,” they often mention Atlanta — one of the region’s biggest and most modem cities. Yet much of this image masks the racism and new forms of “plantation labor” which were hallmarks of the Old South. […]
Gov. Kean’s Evil Still Undead
Amiri Baraka Newark, N.J. — New Jersey’s Governor Kean, like his lame duck Presidential misleader, Ronald Reagan, wants to leave the people a monument of his “white supremacy – make-the-rich-richer” ideology when he moves on to other evils. Kean’s once-defeated, now revived (like most recent movie-monster blobs) ‘School Take-Over’ ploy is an attempt to maintain control over rising urban education budgets (Newark […]
New phase in East Los Angeles child care struggle
Chicana workers and community wage three-year struggle. If the union wins, parents and children win, too Humbert Camacho, Contributed LOS ANGELES — In a ground-breaking agreement, child care workers at the Los Angeles Child Care Development Council (LACCDC) ratified a three- year union contract on January 7. It covers the mostly Chicana workers at four […]
Chicano cannery workers get set for ’88
Year begins with solidarity, inspired rank and file action Alfredo Castillo Contributed WATSONVILLE, CA. — Cannery workers throughout California are gearing up for the new year. Frozen food workers from United Foods in Salinas and Modesto are continuing their strike, which just passed the half-year mark. Their goal is to at least maintain the prevailing wage and benefits levels […]
John Oliver Killens
1916-1987 A tribute in his memory By Amiri Baraka JOHN KILLENS WAS A BLACK writer who not only sought to describe and analyze U.S. imperialist society as it has repressed and deformed Black life, but also how this world girdling blood sucker has terrified human life internationally. In Youngblood and And Then We Heard the Thunder, he shows the galling portraits of Black […]
