Join us on “Sojourner Truth” with host Margaret Prescod.
Tuesday: A proposal from Russia to have Syria hand over their chemical weapons to an international authority has flipped the script on Syria. Syria has accepted the Russian proposal and President Obama is thus far supporting it.
Meanwhile public pressure and protests grow in the US and Europe against a US military Strike on Syria. The largest protest was outside the Vatican in Italy where on September 7th, 100 thousand people joined the Pope in a vigil, prayer and fast for peace and reconciliation in Syria and the Middle East and against military intervention.
We get an update on Syria and reaction to the latest developments from Tom Hayden and Marjorie Cohn former President of the National Lawyers Guild and professor at the San Diego based Thomas Jefferson School of Law.
And 5,000 labor union activists and supporters have descended on the 2013 Convention of the AFL-CIO. Thus far the world’s largest labor federation is in reboot mode, reaching out to community based organizations, featuring domestic and homecare workers and promising focus on issues not traditionally a focus of organized labor including mass incarceration, racial profiling and voter suppression.
And it looks likely today that in the election of officers that Tefere Gebre, a young Ethiopian immigrant, trained in the nuts and bolts of rank and file organizing out of Orange County California will be the new second in command to Richard Trumka the union’s head. He likely will be the new Executive Vice-President.
Are things busting open at the AFL-CIO as the union grapples with unions that have splintered off, loss of membership and influence? Are they shifting from building a labor organization to building an inclusive labor movement? Is it a new day? What will it take to turn a large and relatively conservative labor organization around? We hear from a new, a hopeful and a powerful voice within the AFL-CIO, Mr. Tefere Gebre.
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