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Victory

Julian Assange Is Finally Free

June 25, 2024 Joe Lauria, Consortium News. , , , ,
Julian Assange has agreed to a plea deal with the United States. He left Belmarsh on Monday and is headed to Australia, WikiLeaks said. “He was granted bail by the High Court in London and was released at Stansted airport during the afternoon, where he boarded a plane and departed the UK,” WikiLeaks said in a tweet early Tuesday morning London time. Stella Assange, tweeted: “Julian is free!!!! Words cannot express our immense gratitude to YOU- yes YOU, who have all mobilised for years and years to make this come true. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU.” Assange was released as a result of a plea deal with the United States, the BBC reported.

Hawaii To Decarbonize Transportation In Youth Climate Change Settlement

June 22, 2024 Cristen Hemingway Jaynes, EcoWatch. , , , , ,
On Thursday, Hawaii agreed to settle a lawsuit brought by 13 young people alleging the state had violated their constitutional rights with infrastructure that adds to greenhouse (GHG) emissions, exacerbating climate change. In the settlement, the state agreed to decarbonize its transportation system by 2045. At a news conference, Governor of Hawaii Josh Green, a Democrat, called the settlement “groundbreaking,” reported Reuters. “We’re addressing the impacts of climate change today, and needless to say, this is a priority because we know now that climate change is here,” Green said, as Reuters reported. “It is not something that we’re considering in an abstract way in the future.”

Activists Win Landmark Ruling Over United Kingdom Oil Well Plan

June 20, 2024 Michael Holden, Reuters. , , , ,
Planning authorities should have considered the impact of climate-warming emissions in approving an oil well near Gatwick Airport, the UK's highest court says, a ruling activists say could profoundly affect new fossil fuel projects in Britain. Environmental campaigners had argued that planning permission to retain and expand the oil well site near London's Gatwick was flawed because it had not considered the impact of greenhouse gas emissions from the use of the oil. Supreme Court judges agreed by a narrow three to two majority, and quashed the planning approval which they said was unlawful.

How Belgian Students Forced Their University To Cut Ties With Israel

June 17, 2024 People's Dispatch. , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
The student uprising continues! Students at Ghent University have maintained a Gaza solidarity encampment for over a month, and even after winning a major victory with their university administration agreeing to cut some key ties with Israeli institutions – they are not stopping. Peoples Dispatch spoke to Mingtje Wang of COMAC, who is a masters students at the university and participant in the encampment.

Big Union Win In Virginia Schools Where Bargaining Is Suddenly Legal

June 15, 2024 Joe DeManuelle-Hall, Labor Notes. , , , , ,
Education unions just won a massive victory in the fight to bring collective bargaining rights to Virginia’s public sector. Workers at the Fairfax County Public Schools voted this week to unionize, creating a wall-to-wall union of 27,500 teachers, custodians, teaching assistants, bus drivers, and more. The new bargaining unit is one of the largest K-12 unions on the East Coast, according to the National Education Association. Fairfax County is in Northern Virginia, near Washington, D.C., and the Fairfax County school district is by far the largest in the state. But many teachers, especially newer ones, live outside Fairfax County because housing there is too expensive. And “a lot of custodians do two or three jobs just to provide for their families,” said Ernesto Escalante, a building supervisor at Crestwood Elementary and an activist in the union drive.

27,000 Virginia Education Workers Win Union Recognition

June 13, 2024 Tn Long, Portside. , , , , ,
Around 14,000 teachers and 13,000 support staff will now be represented by an alliance of the Fairfax County locals of the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). This win increases union density in Virginia by at least 15%, per the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The election victories were for the two bargaining units within the FEU: the Licensed Instructional Unit, covering all workers requiring a license, such as teachers, counselors, social workers, psychologists, librarians, and speech language pathologists; and the Operational Unit for workers such as various kinds of assistants, cafeteria workers, custodians, transportation workers, and front office staff.

Educators Celebrate As Judge Strikes Down ‘Banned Concepts’ Law

May 30, 2024 Brett Wilkins, Common Dreams. , , , ,
Education and free speech advocates cheered Tuesday's federal court ruling striking down New Hampshire's classroom censorship law, one of several so-called "white discomfort" bills passed in Republican-controlled states in recent years. U.S. District Judge Paul J. Barbadoro's 50-page ruling says that the New England state's so-called "banned concepts" law is "unconstitutionally vague" and contains "viewpoint-based restrictions on speech that do not provide either fair warning to educators of what they prohibit or sufficient standards for law enforcement to prevent arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement."

A Historic Ruling: NCAA Ordered To Pay Student Athletes

May 29, 2024 Otis Grotewohl, Workers' World. , , , , ,
A historic working-class victory was achieved on May 23, when the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) bosses agreed to settle three federal antitrust cases that were filed by three student athletes. The agreement will allow schools to directly pay student players for the first time in history. In what is known as the “amateurism model,” college athletes have traditionally been excluded from receiving any compensation for their athletic talent, name recognition and labor. The recent settlement is expected to change that super-exploitative practice. The NCAA Board of Governors, as well as the parasitic leaders of its five “power conferences” — the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC), Big Ten, Big 12, Southeastern Conference (SEC) and Pac-12 — agreed to pay more than $2.8 billion in back pay and damages over the next 10 years to both past and current athletes.

Jury Finds Palestine Action Activists Not Guilty Over Elbit Occupation

May 26, 2024 The Canary. , , , , , , ,
Two activists from Palestine Action were unanimously acquitted of criminal damage against arms manufacturer Elbit by a jury in Leicester Crown Court after a deliberation of just one hour and 40 minutes. For six days from 19 May 2021, four people from Palestine Action occupied the roof of UAV Tactical Systems, an Elbit drone factory in Leicester. The action was taken urgently in response to the ongoing bombardment of Gaza at the time. Whilst on the roof, the activists spray painted messages including “Shut Elbit Down” and “Free Palestine”, damaged a skylight to reveal a military drone inside and sprayed the building in blood red paint.

Unicorn Riot Nets Resounding Win For Press Freedom Against Oil Corporation

May 11, 2024 Dan Feidt, Unicorn Riot. , , , ,
Saint Paul, MN — The Minnesota Court of Appeals issued a ruling favoring Unicorn Riot on Monday, May 6, rejecting the oil company Energy Transfer LP’s attempt to obtain newsgathering materials through a subpoena, blunting a three-year legal pressure campaign. In April 2021, the company behind the Dakota Access Pipeline started trying to force Unicorn Riot to give out sensitive and privileged materials developed in the process of covering the controversial fracked oil pipeline and the massive, historic organized resistance against it. (See our full-length documentary, Black Snake Killaz [2017], DAPL category, and Standing Rock and DAPL content tags for dozens of original stories.)

Portland State University Will ‘Pause’ Donations From Boeing

May 2, 2024 Middle East Monitor. , , , , , , ,
Portland State University (PSU) will temporarily halt donations from Boeing, responding to student calls to cut ties with the giant aerospace and missile manufacturer amidst Israel’s war on Gaza. President Ann Cudd stated in an open letter released Friday that PSU plans to organise a forum in May to address student concerns regarding their affiliations with the multibillion-dollar weapons manufacturer. She wrote: “PSU will pause seeking or accepting any further gifts or grants from the Boeing Company until we have had a chance to engage in this debate and come to conclusions about a reasonable course of action.”

Forest Defenders Declare Victory After 22-Day Tree Sit

April 24, 2024 Unicorn Riot. , , , , , ,
Josephine County, OR – Environmentalists are declaring victory after occupying a stand of old growth forest for three weeks to prevent trees from being logged. Forest defenders launched a tree sit on April 1 to prevent Boise Cascade Wood Products, the timber company who bought the logging rights, from cutting a stand of mature trees which represents some of the last remaining intact old growth in the region. For 22 days, community members occupied a patch of old growth forest that sits inside the boundaries of the Poor Windy Forest Management Plan.

UAW’s Chattanooga Victory: Score One For The North In Our Endless Civil War

April 23, 2024 Harold Meyerson , Portside. , , , , , , ,
History—good history, if conditional history—was made last Friday in Chattanooga, as workers at Volkswagen’s factory there voted to join the United Auto Workers by an overwhelming margin of 2,628 to 985, a 73 percent to 27 percent landslide. The vote was historic on any number of counts. It marks the UAW’s first successful unionization of a foreign-owned auto factory after a number of failed attempts; it marks the first unionization in many decades of a major group of workers in the non-union South; it may even mark the rebirth of a powerful union movement, something the nation has lacked over the past 40 years.

Climate Activists In New England Celebrate ‘The End Of Coal’

April 17, 2024 Siobhan Senier, Waging Nonviolence. , , , ,
On March 27, Granite Shore Power, or GSP, announced that it will “voluntarily” stop burning coal at its Merrimack and Schiller Stations in New Hampshire by 2028. Major news outlets have been hailing the news as the “end of coal in New England” and casting GSP as a leader in the transition to clean, renewable energy. Insofar as media have acknowledged the role of outside pressure on GSP at all, they have mainly cited a lawsuit by the Sierra Club and Conservation Law Foundation for alleged violations of the Clean Water Act. But activists know better: Nonviolent direct action gets the goods.

First City-Wide Rent Reduction In The History Of New York Upheld

March 29, 2024 John Mage, Portside. , , , , ,
New York State’s Emergency Tenant Protection Act of 1974 permits the regulation of residential rents (“rent stabilization”) on the declaration of a housing emergency in New York City when the vacancy rate falls below 5%, or by similar declarations in municipalities in the suburban New York City counties of Nassau, Westchester and Rockland. A “Rent Guidelines Board” then has the power to set guidelines for rent adjustments. Today about half of all apartments in New York City are rent stabilized.
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