Month: February 2012

Source: The Indypendent

The acrid fumes of tear-gas hung in the air as a young woman, her face swathed in black fabric, readied to heave a newspaper box through the plate-glass window of the Nike Store.

It was the afternoon of November 30, 1999 and the “Battle of Seattle” was on. Tens of thousands of people had traveled from across the globe to the Northwest United States to protest the World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference, which was on track to reinforce the injustice of corporate globalization and the perils it posed to indigenous societies, labor standards, human rights, civil liberties and the environment. read more

Source: Al Jazeera

One of Iraq’s only working filmmakers, Oday Rasheed – whose brilliant film Underexposure (2005) followed a group of characters in Baghdad after the United States-led invasion in 2003, and whose new film Qarantina is now premiering – is in Manhattan. The glamorous settings in which he is now showing Qarantina – a screening at the Museum of Modern Art, for example, and in the private homes of American directors and stars – could not be further removed from the violence-riddled context of his daily life. read more

Source: Democracy Now!

The Coalition of Immokalee Workers has announced a major victory in reaching an agreement with the grocery chain Trader Joe’s ensuring humane working conditions for farmworkers harvesting tomatoes sold inside its stores. On Thursday, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers said Trader Joe’s had finally agreed to join the group’s Fair Food Program after a lengthy public campaign that included protests in front of the chain’s locations. Before the deal, the farmworkers said their wages had remained stagnant since 1978, with tomato pickers having to put in 10-hour days just to make the minimum wage. read more