In a victory for free speech and public access rights, hundreds of protestors jubilantly demonstrated yesterday in front of the new Trump International hotel. Trump had attempted to push the protest off the plaza in front of the hotel, taking advantage of the unusual leeway to control public space granted by the federal government when Trump leased the Old Post Office for his $212 million-dollar hotel. However, the Metro Labor Council had already applied for a permit to hold a picket, and the feds honored the request, allowing picketers to press their demand that Trump negotiate with his workers in Las Vegas.
There will be another protest at the Trump hotel today at 12:30, catch this week's ediiton of Your Rights at Work at 1pm here on WPFW and metro workers will speak out on safety issues at a 1pm Metro hearing. Complete details on all the latest local labor calendar listings are at dclabor.org; click on Calendar. Here’s today's labor history: On this date in 1904, the New York City subway, the first rapid-transit system in America, opened. More than 100 workers died during the construction of the first 13 miles of tunnels and track. In 1935, three strikes on works-relief projects in Maryland were underway today, with charges that Depression-era Works Projects Administration jobs were paying only about 28 cents an hour—far less than was possible on direct relief. Civic officials in Cumberland, where authorities had established a 50-cent-per-hour minimum wage, supported the strikers, And in 1951, the National Labor Council was formed in Cincinnati to unite Black workers in the struggle for full economic, political and social equality. The group was to function for five years before disbanding, having forced many AFL and CIO unions to adopt non-discrimination policies. Today’s labor quote is by Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, a lawyer who frequently argues on behalf of First Amendment rights, who was worried this week that Donald Trump might use the Secret Service to keep protesters at bay, and, quote, “sanitize their event from the reality of public dissent,” unquote.
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