“About 15 per cent of US households — 17.4 million families — lacked enough money to feed themselves at some point last year, a US Department of Agriculture report says. “The study also found that 5.6 million of these households — with as many as 1 million children — had continuing financial problems that forced them to miss meals regularly. “The number of these ‘food insecure’ homes … was more than triple the one in 2006, before the recession brought double-digit unemployment.
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“The National Front of Popular Resistance (FNRP) expresses its energetic condemnation of the massacre against the campesino community in El Tumbador, Trujillo, in which our companeros Ignacio Reyes, Teodoro Acosta, Siriaco Munozm Raul Castillo and Jose Luis Sauceda were assassinated”, the FNRP said in a November 16 statement.
All of those killed were members of the Campesino Movement of Aguan (MCA). The campesino activists were killed by assassins hired by pro-US oligarch Miguel Facusse, who helped fund the coup that overthrew president Manuel Zelaya last year.
鶹ӳ Weekly spoke to some of the progressive candidates running in the November 27 Victorian state elections.
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Stephen Jolly
Stephen Jolly is the Socialist Party candidate for Richmond. He was elected to the City of Yarra council in 2004. He first came to prominence in the campaign to reopen Richmond Secondary College. He spoke to GLW’s Narendra Mohan Kimmalapati.
What is your platform for the election?
Labor special minister of state Gary Gray must be stupid if he thinks we should feel sorry for him. Gray’s pay went from $675,000 a year to $130,000 when he left Woodside Petroleum to become a politician.
Gray wants to close the pay gap between corporate CEOs and politicians — and not by cutting obscene CEO pay. He would prefer to widen the gap between politicians and the people they represent.
In October, Kevin Harkins, a member of the Labor Left, won the ballot to become the new secretary of Unions Tasmania. Harkins was an electrician and then an organiser with the Electrical Trades Union in Victoria, before becoming ETU Tasmanian secretary in 2000. He spoke to 鶹ӳ Weekly’s Linda Seaborn.
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The recent Unions Tasmania election was the first contested ballot in years. Can you tell me about that?
Triple J did a profile on youth unemployment in Wollongong that was posted on the ABC’s website on October 29.
Five young people were interviewed about the difficulties in finding work, and the reasons for the high youth unemployment rate.
These are the same problems faced by young people all over Australia: a reduction in the number of apprenticeships available, the effects of the financial crisis, the lack of experience young people have and how no-one is willing to give them a chance.
In 鶹ӳ Weekly #861, Solidarity’s Paddy Gibson addressed a debate that from time to time comes up among activists opposing the NT intervention: whether an assimilationist agenda or mining interests are behind the intervention.
The Australian National University’s (ANU) sexuality department not only provides an invaluable support service to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer students on campus (LGBTIQ), it is also unashamedly political.
For example, it has thrown its weight behind the campaign for equal marriage rights.
So perhaps it is not surprising that the department has been challenged by homophobia on campus.
In May during Pride Week, 500 posters were ripped down.
The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) Economic Survey of Australia, released on November 15, called for an increase in the rate and scope of the goods and services tax (GST) and a cut in business taxes.
The rich countries’ economic club also called for higher road tolls, greater labour productivity and a price on carbon.
The OECD’s annual survey congratulated the Labor government for avoiding recession during the global financial crisis but also demanded it undertake further “structural reforms to strengthen productivity”.
The second suicide in little more than two months took place at Villawood detention centre on the night of November 15.
Ahmad Al Akabi, 41, was found by fellow detainees hanged in a bathroom.
After spending more than a year in the Christmas Island and Villawood detention centres, his asylum application had been rejected twice under the off-shore processing system that was found to be invalid in a recent High Court decision.
Two hundred people attended the launch of the National Museum of Labour on November 11, in the old government fitter’s workshop in Kingston, ACT. They heard from union officials, politicians and rank-and-file unionists.
Unions ACT secretary Kim Sattler introduced speakers including: Australian Council of Trade Unions president Ged Kearney; Anna Booth from major sponsors, Slater & Gordon; historian Norman Abjorensen, and federal Labor MP for Eden Monaro, Mike Kelly.
To find out more, visit .
Forty people attended a meeting about the Northern Territory government's attack on bilingual education in remote Indigenous communities on November 18. The government has banned teaching in Indigenous languages during the first four hours of the school day.
The meeting began with a phone link to two people from the Yirrkala community, where the local school is defying the ban. They said teaching children in Yolngu language was vital to maintaining culture and producing better academic results.
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