Virginia

Antiwar Message Is Raised At Norfolk’s Annual NATO Parade

April 23, 2023 Phil Wilayto, Popular Resistance. Resist! NATO, Protest, Virginia, Wars and Militarism

The North American Treaty Organization, or NATO, has two Strategic Commands - one in Belgium, the other in Norfolk, Virginia. And every year Norfolk holds a NATO Festival, complete with a parade, to honor the U.S-led military alliance that supported Portugal in its wars against African anti-colonial liberation movements; led the destruction of Libya and the former Yugoslavia; played leading roles in the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; and helped provoke the present war in Ukraine by expanding eastward to the very borders of Russia. This year, the festival took place on Earth Day - totally ironic, since militaries are the greatest polluters on the planet. But along with the thousands who came out to watch the parade was a small band of antiwar activists holding a bright yellow 5-foot by 10-foot canvas banner that read “Fight Poverty, Racism + Global Warming, not NATO’s Wars!”

Underpaid And Insulted, Maximus Call Center Workers Organize

March 16, 2023 Luis Feliz Leon, Labor Notes. Resist! Kentucky, Labor Unions, Louisiana, Mississippi, Strikes, Virginia, Worker Rights and Jobs

Their effort to unionize really got underway in 2018 when thousands of workers came forward to allege wage theft totaling $100 million. Eventually the Department of Labor found wage and hour violations affecting 2,224 workers. The federal contractor at the time, General Dynamics Information Technology, agreed to pay $553,131 in back wages, according to a CWA spokesperson. Maximus bought the company out in November 2018. But despite the hefty settlement, the organizing began to fizzle because of high turnover. Then last year, workers walked off the job in Louisiana, Mississippi, Kentucky, and Virginia in March, May, and November, demanding voluntary recognition of their union and higher pay.

Transit Workers Have Been On Strike For Three Weeks; No Agreement Reached

February 3, 2023 Tom Roussey, ABC7. Resist! Strike, Transportation, Virginia, Worker Rights

A strike by transit workers in Loudoun County is now in its third week with no clear end in sight. A county spokesperson said service for Loudoun County Transit began being affected by the strike on January 11. As of Friday, commuter buses that travel between various parts of Loudoun County and D.C. and Arlington, Va. had not been running for more than two weeks. “We have prioritized transit services to optimize any available drivers daily, prioritizing paratransit services, local bus routes serving the Leesburg and Sterling areas, and Silver Line bus routes ahead of commuter bus service at this time,” Loudoun County spokesperson Glen Barbour wrote in an email to 7News. “The impact to bus routes and transit services continues to be updated regularly on our website at www.loudoun.gov/buschanges. Subscribers to our notifications are also receiving the updates directly (sign up at loudoun.gov/busbiz).”

Virginia Transit Strikers Fight Privatized Race To The Bottom

January 14, 2023 Courtney Smith and Jonah Furman, Labor Notes. Resist! Labor Movement, Strikes, Transportation, Unions, Virginia, Worker Rights and Jobs

Loudoun County, Virginia - Around 130 workers who operate, fix, and dispatch buses in Loudoun County, Virginia, went on strike Wednesday morning. They’re up against Keolis, a French multinational and one of the largest private operators of public transit systems in the U.S. The company has challenged the union’s right to strike, its right to a contract, and even its existence. The Loudoun County workers join a movement of bus operators, mechanics, dispatchers, and call center operators striking around greater Washington, D.C. It’s the eighth transit job action in the region in just over three years. Hundreds of strikers have faced down major private contractors—not only Keolis but also Transdev, MV Transportation, and RATP Dev. For Amalgamated Transit Union Local 689, these fights are not just over bad behavior from this or that private operator, they’re about whether buses should be a public service or a source of private profit.

Maximus Call Center Workers Contracted To Support ACA Open Enrollment Strike In Four States

November 14, 2022 Maximillian Alvarez, The Real News Network. Resist! ACA, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Strikes, Virginia, Worker Rights and Jobs

Call center workers employed by Maximus went on strike at four locations—in Louisiana, Mississippi, Kentucky, and Virginia—on Tuesday, Nov. 1. Maximus is a federal contractor, and during the open enrollment period, workers there handle a nonstop stream of high-stakes calls from people trying to navigate the Affordable Care Act, Medicare, and Medicaid systems, but they have been pushed to their limit. As stated in a Twitter thread posted by Call Center Workers United, “We’ve been saying for years: during ACA open enrollment, we’re dealing with constant back-to-back calls. Some frustrated callers become abusive and subject us to racist and sexist slurs. We’re paid wages so low it’s nearly impossible to support a family. We’ve had enough.

Walkouts Underway In Virginia Against Attack On Trans Students

September 28, 2022 Brett Wilkins, Common Dreams. Resist! Education, Transgender Rights, Virginia, Youth Activism

Chanting "trans rights are human rights," "DOE, let us be," and other slogans, students at scores of schools took part in demonstrations calling for the rejection of model Virginia Department of Education policies proposed earlier this month by Youngkin that, if approved, would force schools to categorize pupils according to scientifically dubious notions of "biological sex." The proposed changes would reverse existing trans-affirming guidelines that some students have credited with saving their lives. In what some opponents have called another attempt to erase trans people, the proposal limits the definition of "transgender student" to someone "whose parent has requested in writing, due to their child's persistent and sincere belief that his or her gender differs with his or her sex, that their child be so identified while at school."

NLRB Demand For UMWA To Pay Warrior Met Coal Strike Costs Is ‘Outrageous’

August 4, 2022 UMWA. Resist! Mine Workers, Strike, Virginia, Worker Rights and Jobs

Triangle, Virginia - The United Mine Workers of America today made it clear that it will vigorously challenge an outrageous assessment of damages made by the National Labor Relations Board Region 10 regarding the UMWA’s 16-month strike against Warrior Met Coal in Alabama. “This is a slap in the face not just to the workers who are fighting for better jobs at Warrior Met Coal, but to every worker who stands up to their boss anywhere in America,” UMWA International President Cecil E. Roberts said. “There are charges for security, cameras, capital expenditures, buses for transporting scabs across picket lines, and the cost of lost production. “What is the purpose of a strike if not to impact the operations of the employer, including production,” Roberts asked.

The ‘Divisive’ Ban Whitewashing Virginia’s Classrooms

June 15, 2022 Sonia Rao, Scalawag Magazine. Educate! Critical Race Theory, Education, Public schools, Virginia

There's a recent painting that sums up what's happening to public education in Virginia: A white man, white paint roller in hand, is covering up Black historical figures—Harriet Tubman, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X—their bodies whitewashed, faces stoic. The piece by Detroit artist Jonathan Harris, titled "Critical Race Theory," stuck with Cassandra Newby-Alexander, a professor at Norfolk State University, a Historically Black University, since she first saw it online. Newby-Alexander is the former co-chair of the African American History Education Commission (AAHEC), a group of educators and historians brought together by former Governor Ralph Northam in August 2019 to recommend changes to add more Black history to Virginia's K-12 curricula. The state Board of Education implemented their recommendations in the fall of 2021.

Virginia Target Workers Seek To Unionize

May 19, 2022 Michael Sainato, The Guardian. Organize! Labor Unions, Target, Virginia, Worker Rights

Workers at a Target store in Christiansburg, Virginia, have filed for a union election and, if successful, the store would be the first belonging to the retail chain to unionize. Target has long opposed unionization, with anti-union videos to discourage workers from unionizing. Earlier this year, Target training documents for managers to prevent unionization within stores were leaked. Target has already reportedly pushed back on the union organizing effort in Virginia, trying to use union dues as a tactic to deter workers. But workers are seeking to capitalize on a surging energy in the US labor movement after recent union victories at dozens of Starbucks stores and the first Amazon warehouse in the US.

How An Israel Lobby Group Infiltrated US Education

May 8, 2022 Jessica Buxbaum, Mintpress News. Educate! Higher Education, Infiltration, Israel, Virginia

Richmond, Virginia - In 2018, the Virginia Coalition for Human Rights (VCHR) successfully stopped the state from adopting textbook edits made by the Institute for Curriculum Services (ICS), a pro-Israel “educational” institution. The ICS promotes itself as improving the accuracy of K-12 instruction on Judaism and Jewish history in the United States. Yet, backed by the Israel lobby, its strategy appears more in line with advocating a Zionist narrative than enhancing education. Today, ICS boasts that it has helped better public education in all 50 states and impacted 11 million students across the country. With this in mind, MintPress News uncovered how ICS is twisting the truth about Israel in U.S. schools. The Fight In Virginia In January 2018, Virginia activist Jeanne Trabulsi attended a Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA) webinar featuring ICS.

Virginia Caucus Of Rank-And-File Educators Votes To Unionize

April 19, 2022 Left Voice. Organize! Education, Labor Movement, Unions, Virginia, Worker Rights and Jobs

Richmond, Virginia - On Saturday, members of the Virginia Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators (VCORE) voted to unionize schools in Richmond, the state’s capital. The vote took place over two days, with 99 percent of educators in favor. The Richmond Educators Association (REA), of which VCORE is a part, will serve as official bargaining representative. This is a major victory for public-sector unions in the South, and it comes amid a wave of unionization across the United States and labor militancy among educators. A December vote to grant Richmond public school employees collective-bargaining rights paved the way for yesterday’s victory. That month, the city’s school board voted 8-1 in favor, making it Virginia’s first school district to reinstate collective-bargaining rights.

Richmond Educators Are First In Virginia To Win Bargaining Rights

February 25, 2022 Vernon Snow, Labor Notes. Resist! Education, Teachers, Virginia, Worker Rights and Jobs

Teachers and other public school employees in Richmond, Virginia, won a major victory in December when the city’s school board, in an 8 to 1 vote, approved a resolution granting them collective bargaining rights. The victory sets a precedent for other districts and public sector employees throughout the state. Richmond is the first school district in Virginia to reinstate collective bargaining rights, after the legislature in 2020 lifted the state’s 43-year prohibition on collective bargaining for local government workers. Members of the school board had made repeated attempts to delay the vote. Winning took a mass mobilization led by the Richmond Education Association, which convened district-wide workers’ assemblies, held rallies outside school board meetings, and shared dozens of teacher testimonies during public comment periods.

After Sale, Valley Proteins Workers Continue Fight For Workplace Justice

January 18, 2022 Lewis Kendall, Facing South. Organize! Food and Agriculture, Labor Unions, Virginia, Worker Rights and Jobs

Valley Proteins, the Virginia-based rendering company at the center of an ongoing union organizing effort and a large class action lawsuit over alleged wage theft, has been sold. On Dec. 28, sustainable food processing multinational Darling Ingredients, headquartered in Texas, announced it was acquiring the privately owned Valley Proteins in a $1.1 billion deal. But current and former Valley Proteins employees are fighting to ensure that the sale doesn't provide cover for a company they say has long fostered a toxic and abusive work environment that has led to exploitative, unsafe conditions across its plants — a point driven home by the deaths of two workers over the summer.

Defenders Of Homes, Hills, And Heritage Unite Against Pipeline

August 14, 2021 Nicole Greenfield, NRDC. Resist! Mountain Valley Pipeline, Pipelines, Protests, Virginia

Though it’s been under construction for the past three years—and in discussion since 2014—the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) has been somewhat easy to overlook. Easy, that is, for those who don’t live along its proposed route: West Virginia landowner Maury Johnson calls it the “ugly stepchild of pipelines” because, compared to high-profile pipeline fights like that against Keystone XL, for a long time only a small segment of Appalachian residents seemed to be talking about the 303-mile MVP. As Gillian Giannetti, an NRDC attorney who focuses on energy issues at the Federal Energy Regulation Commission (FERC), explains, MVP has likely received less national attention because it passes through a rural, low-income part of Virginia, through places even many Virginians themselves haven’t visited.

Virginia State University Unveils Student Debt Cancellation Initiative

August 10, 2021 News One. Create! COVID-19, Education, HBCUs, Student Debt, Virginia

The debt elimination effort was financed through the CARES Act. For scholars who attended the institution during 2020 and spring 2021, all debt owed to the school will be erased. Donald Palm, Ph.D., who serves as Senior Vice President of Academic and Student Affairs, says the effort will play a pivotal role in shaping their financial futures. He also mentioned students should be solely focused on learning without feeling the burden of unaffordability. “We care about our students and their academic success and want to provide them the privilege of moving forward with a zero balance,” he said in a statement. “We believe that relieving them from these balances will provide much-needed relief that will allow our scholars to focus more intently on their academics and degree completion.”

«1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 »

Daily movement news and resources