HUNTINGTON, W.Va. — “We want a fair contract,” said workers on the picket line in front of Special Metals here Dec. 5. Some 450 members of United Steelworkers Local 40 have been on strike since Oct. 1. Special Metals Corp.,…
PHILADELPHIA — John Dougherty, longtime head of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 98 here, resigned the day after he was convicted of “honest services wire fraud” in U.S. District Court Nov. 15. Dougherty, known as “Johnny Doc,” also…
On Nov. 12, the Louisiana Board of Pardons recommended a pardon for Homer Plessy, 129 years after he was arrested for challenging that state’s new Separate Car Act by boarding a “whites only” rail car on June 7, 1892. Four…
Thousands of asylum-seekers are trapped between the borders of Belarus and neighboring Poland and Lithuania, in freezing conditions. Fleeing countries in the Mideast, they are trying to enter western Europe via Belarus. The crisis has sharpened disputes between the imperialist…
Leaders of the reactionary Hezbollah in Lebanon claim the Oct. 14 sniper attack that killed seven and injured some 30 people at a protest it organized was carried out by rival Christian-based Lebanese Forces. Hezbollah, a Tehran-backed group organized in…
As he moves to tighten state control over the Chinese economy, President Xi Jinping is portraying his regime and its policies as the continuation of the teachings of Mao Zedong. Mao commanded the Stalinized Chinese Communist Party, from the late…
BY MARTÍN KOPPEL, MARY-ALICE WATERS, AND RÓGER CALERO NEW YORK — Carlos Fernández de Cossío, head of the Cuban foreign ministry’s department for U.S. affairs, was in New York at the end of September for the opening session of the…
Below is an excerpt from a March 26, 1962, speech by Fidel Castro, the central leader of the Cuban Revolution. In it Castro discusses how Cuba’s workers and peasants were won through the series of revolutionary mobilizations and struggles to…
(For a French version of this article, click here.) Blaise Compaore, the iron-fisted ruler of Burkina Faso for almost three decades, will stand trial along with 13 others before a military tribunal Oct. 11 for the 1987 assassination of former…
El Grito de Dolores is celebrated Sept. 16 as a national holiday in Mexico and by Mexicans around the world. It marks the opening of the independence struggle against Spanish colonial rule in 1810. On that day Catholic priest Miguel…
