Part 2 of my interview with Labor Notes repoorter Mark Brenner on the 2008 SEIU Convention will air on tonight's episode of Labor Express Radio. For part 1, go here... http://www.archive.org/details/LE6-15-08

As expected, about 2 AM, buses and vans of detainees began to role into the facility. Regulars to these vigils say that dozens of vehicles a night will drop of detainees at the facility on a typically Friday. That’s potentially hundreds of immigrants in one night. I must admit that the scale of the problem has really hit me for the first time. Hundreds of undocumented immigrants are torn away from their families and deported to countries, some may have not seen since early childhood. I think everyone here tonight is sharing my feelings of anger and depression at this pointless injustice. Do those who have pursued this policy really believe they are making our communities any safer by taking factory workers, landscapers, day laborers away from their families? The small van you will see in the pictures below apparently makes the rounds regularly in the La Villita neighborhood, visiting local lock ups in its nightly search for undocumented immigrants to deport. The personal that staff thi...

As I write this, it is shortly after 1 AM. I am camped out in front of the Broadview detention center in Broadview Illinois, a Chicago suburb, with a couple dozen immigrants rights activist. ICIRR, (Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights) is holding an all night vigil outside the detention center to call attention to the increase in raids and deportations over the last year. The goal of the vigil, called “Night of 1,000 Conversations”, is to get people talking about the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) policy of splitting up families and holding undocumented immigrants for long periods of time in detention centers like Broadview all over the country. ICIRR argues that many of the practices of DHS are violations of the immigrant’s basic human and civil rights. Earlier in the evening, husbands, wives and children of detainees described the anguish of being separated from their family members and their uncertainty over their future. About 150 or so individuals listened...

It’s official. The Congress Hotel strike is now the longest active strike in the country. Yet the workers continue to man the picket line everyday. There are no new developments in the strike, and few expect there to be any major breakthroughs soon, but the annual strike anniversary rallys have become a yearly gathering site for nearly all of Chicago’s progressive union activists. Hundreds gathered outside the Congress Hotel in downtown Chicago today, in an almost party like atmosphere, complete with a New Orleans style Jazz band. As fun as the event has become over the past few years, let’s hope it will not need to be repeated next year. Here is some audio from today’s rally… Henry Tamarin, President of UNITE-HERE Local 1, talks about the massive turn out of workers and their supporters at the 5th anniversary rally of the Congress hotel strike in Chicago. The strike in now officially the longest running active strike in the country. http://www.archive.org/details/HenryTamarinAtCongres...