The Georgetown Nike store, 3040 M St. NW, Washington DC, will be the focus of a protest and picket line tomorrow afternoon (see Calendar). Workers at the STAR factory in Honduras have been hit with a massive 400 person anti-union surprise layoff recently, along with documented systemic wage theft and physical and sexual abuse at other Nike factories in Indonesia.Tomorrow’s Georgetown action is part of a coordinated global day of protests in more than 16 US cities along with protests by garment factory unions in five other countries, all coordinated by United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS), the largest student run workers' rights organization. For more information on the DC event click here and for information on the campaign click here and here. Nominations are now being accepted for this year’s DC Jobs With Justice “I'll Be There Awards,” which will be held on October 26. “We are taking nominations in the categories of community, faith, labor, and youth,” says Executive Director Elizabeth Falcon. Click here to submit nominations Update: the awards date has been updated. "As one citizen, I want to make my public protest against this militaristic way of handling a condition which has been brought about by widespread unemployment and hunger." Alabama Senator and future supreme court justice, on the attack on the Bonus Army Vets. July 28 Women shoemakers in Lynn, Mass., create Daughters of St. Crispin, demand pay equal to that of men - 1869 Harry Bridges is born in Australia. He came to America as a sailor at age 19 and went on to help form and lead the militant Int’l Longshore and Warehouse Union for more than 40 years - 1901 A strike by Paterson, N.J., silk workers for an 8-hour day, improved working conditions ends after six months, with the workers’ demands unmet. During the course of the strike, approximately 1,800 strikers were arrested, including Wobbly leaders Big Bill Haywood and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn - 1913 Federal troops burn the shantytown built near the U.S. Capitol by thousands of unemployed WWI veterans, camping there to demand a bonus they had been promised but never received - 1932 Nine miners are rescued in Sommerset, Pa., after being trapped for 77 hours 240 feet underground in the flooded Quecreek Mine - 2002 July 29 The Coast Seamen's Union merges with the Steamship Sailors’ Union to form the Sailors’ Union of the Pacific - 1891 A preliminary delegation from Mother Jones' March of the Mill Children from Philadelphia to President Theodore Roosevelt's summer home in Oyster Bay, Long Island, publicizing the harsh conditions of child labor, arrives today. They are not allowed through the gates – 1903 (The Autobiography of Mother Jones: Mary Harris Jones—“Mother Jones”—was the most dynamic woman ever to grace the American labor movement. Employers and politicians called her “the most dangerous woman in America” and rebellious working men and women loved her as they never loved anyone else.) Nineteen firefighters die while responding to a blaze at the Shamrock Oil and Gas Corp. refinery in Sun Ray, Texas - 1956 Following a 5-year table grape boycott, Delano-area growers file into the United Farm Workers union hall in Delano, Calif., to sign their first union contracts - 1970 July 30 President Lyndon Johnson signs the Social Security Act of 1965, establishing Medicare and Medicaid - 1965 Former Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa disappears. Declared legally dead in 1982, his body has never been found - 1975 United Airlines agrees to offer domestic-partner benefits to employees and retirees worldwide - 1999 |