Chicago anti-war activist took to the streets for two days of actions March 19th and 20th to mark the 5th anniversary of the war in Iraq. Some of the loudest voices in the Wednesday night march through downtown Chicago were those of the Chicago chapter of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW). I interviewed the President of the Chicago chapter of IVAW, Aaron Hughes as we marched that night. You can here that interview here… http://www.archive.org/details/IVAWMarch08 Here are some photos from the march. Aaron is the one in the desert camouflage jacket… View the rest of the photos here... http://s207.photobucket.com/albums/bb5/kronstadt2/5th%20Anniversary%20of%20the%20Iraq%20War/ For more info on the IVAW, check out their website... http://ivaw.org/

Some have called Comcast the Wal-Mart of the telecommunications industry. The company is notoriously anti-union. According to government statistics, union workers on average earn 30% more than non-union workers. They are also much more likely to have retirement and health care benefits. But Comcast would like to turn this situation on its head. Since they took over AT&T Broadband in 2002, Comcast has consistently discriminated against the union workers they inherited from that merger. Union members at Comcast make 3 to 8 dollars an hour less than their non-union co-workers according to IBEW Local 21, which represents the organized Comcast employees in Chicago. They have also refused to sign a reasonable new contract with its union workers since last Summer. Union Comcast employees have been working without a contract for more than 6 months now. Poor quality of service and ever increasing rates in many of Chicago’s poorest neighborhoods has convinced many Comcast customers of the ne

Amjad Al-Jawhary has paid a high price for his efforts to organize workers in Iraq. In 1995, Amjad had to flee Iraq and the regime of Saddam Hussein, because of his union organizing work. He took up residence in Toronto Canada, but Amjad stays in close contact with his comrades in Iraq. He travels there frequently, and acts as one of the few voices in the west for the for the Iraqi labor movement. I aired an interview with Amjad on the Labor Express radio program in June 2005, as the representative of the Federation of Workers Councils and Unions of Iraq (FWCUI) and the Union of the Unemployed in Iraq (UUI). He talked on that program about his many years of struggle - first against the Bathh regime, and than against the U.S. occupation forces - to establish a secular, progressive, democratic nation. Since 2005, the Iraq Freedom Congress (IFC), which includes the aforementioned groups, and many other unions, women’s organizations and student groups, has taken up the leadership of this s