AFGE Local 2978 – which represents workers at the DC Department of Health – plans a noontime rally Monday to protest the closure of DC Healthy Start. “The District’s infant mortality program has significantly reduced the numbers of babies who have died during their first year of life,” says DC Nurses Association Acting Executive Director Ed Smith. DCNA will also be supporting the rally. "Queries to Mayor Gray about this program remain unanswered,” adds Smith. “Specifically, who is going to take care of the mothers and children that DOH is forcing nurses to abandon?" There are also concerns about the pending privatization of the well-established program. Details of the rally will be posted on the Council’s calendar.
Letisha Coplin's been driving a taxi in the nation's capital for 48 years. If her new union, Teamsters Local 922, wins its battle against unregulated car services such as Uber and Lyft, she'll be able to keep driving. Unfortunately for Coplin and other D.C. taxi drivers, who earlier this week staged their third mass protest in front of the Wilson Building, this year they didn't win. The Inter-American Court for Human Rights ordered the Dominican Republic to reform all national laws blocking the recognition of citizenship for children of undocumented parents born in the country. In September 2013, the Dominican Republic’s Constitutional Court revoked the citizenship of individuals born in the country since 1929 who could not prove their parents’ regular migration status. The law disproportionately affected individuals of Haitian descent living and working in the Dominican Republic. Read more at the Solidarity Center. An investigation is underway into an accident during a snow plow run in the District on October 24. A city worker was severely injured. AFGE Local 1975 President Clifford Lowery tells NBC News4's Tom Sherwood that union officials are now questioning the safety procedures in place during the event. Click here for the video. |