Josh Silver, the executive director of Free Press which last year hosted a convention here in Minnesota on transforming the media is continuing the struggle and will be have an event in Washington, the US capital, on May 14th this year for people from a variety of backgrounds to carry on the struggle to get a real transformation in the US media make sure the USA can have an informed populace. This organization is fighting for net neutrality to keep some of the big business types such as Time Warner and others from charging fees for people simply using the internet, these companies say excessively, as they really don't want a free internet anymore than the US mainstream media big wigs really want a free press. Hell that would mean real competition with the actual facts coming out rather than big business approved hot air which doesn't rattle the cages of these economic con artists and our virtual rulers. But damn the natives in the old USA are getting restive along with the immigrants here, and that scares the hell out of the hot air blowing status quo/quid pro quo crowd and clique.

Hey, Thomas Jefferson once said "A little rebellion is a good thing." In this case, it might be that a lot of rebellion is good thing to get a tranformed media which might restore a democratic form of government to this country so lacking over the last eight years. Let's damn do it! Si se puede!

The event called Free Press Summit: Changing Media will be streaming, and the home page is http://www.freepress.net/. People can check the site to get more information.

Right now in the United States, the United Farm Workers are
pressing California legislators to pass legislation which
would provide that a petition by farm workers in a bargaining
unit signed by over half going into the the state agency regulating
farm workers would give that unit union representation, thus
making it easier to insure farm workers don't suffer the fate of
17 year old Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez, who died of a heat
stroke May 16 this year due to lack of company medical assistance
in time, as doctors at the emergency room treating her said. They
maintained she could have survived if she had got to the hospital
sooner. This legislation is modeled on the federal employee free
choice act, which unfortunately the president hasn't gone near
far enough in pushing to get passed. But California might well
make a breakthrough on this legislation, if people put on enough
pressure. The state's farm workers need this legislation to insure
they have union representation which could protect them from this
and other injustices which have been a pattern for some time for
farm workers in California as well as elsewhere, but this may
be a great opportunity to do something about this outrageous
treatment of farm workers. The California Agricultural Labor Relations
Board would have to certify that over half the employees at said employer
had signed this petition, and with such certification the matter would be
subject to vote of the employees to choose which union they would like
to represent them.

Cases of farm workers not even having decent access to water, bathrooms,
and other necessities have cropped up time and again with non union
growers. Consistently farm workers at non union growers lack decent access
to these necessities often in actual temperatures in the high 90s . This isn't even
human. This was the case with the young woman who just died this May.

A half dozen farm workers apparently died from heat related deaths last year
in California due to growers' callousness and lax state enforcement of laws to
protect the farm workers from such outrages. It shouldn't take anymore deaths such as
these to get justice for the farm workers. Too many growers are putting their green back
dollar worshipping mentality ahead of any consideration of employees' health
and even lives is clearly the problem. That's these growers' market concept "values."
The "great casino capitalist system" continues its reign of oppression over the voiceless.
But the time to bet on the value of a single human life over the "values" of greed and that of
the green back dollar have come. It's time to bring an end to the "Golden Rule" of those
who own the gold make the rules. This has already as happened people have celebrated
in South Africa with the ANC winning again by a huge margin over those who favor the "Golden
Rule." It has happened in Latin America, and it will continue to happen else where including here
in the United States if people can put on enough pressure to get a rule "of, by, and for the
people" which the privileged types are so dead set against. This is now an internationalized
struggle as Martin Luther King Jr in his day said it would have to be. Dr King was so right.

The local district attorney has filed charges of involuntary manslaughter
against the three top officials of Merced Farm Labor, the farm labor
contractor company involved for this young woman's death.

Once employees by petition of over half the employees with that
employer signing it goes into the Agricultural Labor Relations Board,
an election by secret ballot by the employees must be held to allow
them to decide. If over half vote for a certain union, that union then
gets the right to represent and bargain for them. This is simply democracy
in the market place, not that neo cons want it even in politics, but in the
market place they sure as hell don't.

I won't pretend I haven't taken sides, as I have picketed and marched
for the United Farm Workers (UFW) back in the 1960s when I was in college
at Oregon State. As Paul Robeson once put it so well, "Sooner or later
we must either choose freedom or slavery," and I'm glad to have chosen
freedom including in the market place. Wall Mart, of course, wouldn't
approve. Having supported the UFW starting in the 1960s, I've taken
sides and won't apologize for that.