Page 28 - Workers World News Today

Print issue returns Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Workers World suspended printing and mailing of the newspaper on March 19. We have continued publishing articles on workers.org, along with a weekly PDF of what would have been the printed version. We are pleased to announce that we have resumed printing and mailing on a monthly basis, for now. Subscribers should have received a printed paper in September and October. Print subscriptions will still be extended in consideration of the temporary ...

Pensacola fights anti-abortion terror Occupied Muscogee Creek land — Pensacola, Fla.  A group of activists, organizers and those in support of reproductive justice held Dec. 27 and Jan. 2 demonstrations at American Family Planning, a reproductive health clinic that provides abortion. The community gathered to oppose anti-abortion reactionaries, who have been terrorizing clinic workers, nurses and patients every day.  These reactionaries, calling themselves “Abortion Abolitionists,” sta...

Houston “I just can’t take it anymore,” Michael Beck told other prisoners at the W. F. Ramsey Unit state prison, in Rosharon, Texas, 33 miles south of Houston. Then during the first week of January, he wrapped a fan cord around his neck and tied the other end of it…

Pa. prisoner on COVID crisis – Guards were the transmitters Since Workers World received this letter, the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections has confirmed nearly 7,000 cases of COVID-19 among prisoners and over 2,500 among staff, who are not subject to mandatory testing. Many prisoners who report COVID-19 symptoms have been placed in restricted housing units, reviled as “the hole.” Prisoners faced with the psychological torture of solitary confinement are less likely to report when t...

What prisons are like during COVID lockdown: interview with a Pennsylvania incarcerated worker By Joe Piette posted on December 27, 2020 Philadelphia Since the start of November 2020, more than 3,000 incarcerated workers and at least 1,200 guards and staff have tested positive for COVID-19 in the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections (PA DOC). Since last March, at least 58 people behind DOC bars have died from the pandemic, the majority of those deaths in the last six weeks. On Dec. 21, Work...

Alabama warehouse workers take on Amazon Amazon workers at a Bessemer, Ala., warehouse took a big step toward organizing the first union ever in that behemoth company, when the National Labor Relations Board green-lighted their request for a unionization vote. Bessemer is a former steel-producing city adjoining Birmingham. On Dec. 18 the NLRB affirmed it was “administratively satisfied that there is a sufficient showing of interest to proceed,” in a statement by Terry D. Combs, assistant d...

Print issue returns Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Workers World suspended printing and mailing of the newspaper on March 19. We have continued publishing articles on workers.org, along with a weekly PDF of what would have been the printed version. We are pleased to announce that we have resumed printing and mailing on a monthly basis, for now. Subscribers should have received a printed paper in September and October. Print subscriptions will still be extended in consideration of the temporary ...

Too little, too late – better than nothing? By Editor posted on December 21, 2020 The reported reaction of many to the CARES Act 2 — which is about to be passed as we write this editorial — is that it’s too little, too late and, sigh, better than nothing.  In truth it is the minimum that a ruling-class dominated Congress could pass — just before layoffs, evictions and a spreading virus were about to cast tens of millions more working-class families into poverty, houselessness and c...

Ramsey Prison Unit: The terror of Texas By Nanon M. Williams Nanon Williams was arrested in 1992 at age 17 for capital murder and spent years on death row. In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled people under 18 could not be sentenced to death. His sentence, along with 70 others, was commuted to life and he is still fighting to prove his innocence. He has earned two associate degrees, a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree; he was about to finish his second master’s, when the prison dec...

Swift Justice: ‘A fight from the inside out’ By Devin Cole posted on December 18, 2020 These slightly edited comments are from a Dec. 10 webinar organized by the Prisoners Solidarity Committee of Workers World Party. Swift Justice is currently incarcerated within the Alabama Department of Corrections system. For more on prison stoppage by the Free Alabama Movement, see Workers World, Dec. 4. Co-moderator Devin C.: What is the Free Alabama Movement? Some have deemed the Alabama prisons as ...