FRONT AND BACK PAGES

Bugs, spies and surveillance tape...
George Bush has his eye on your rights
Even mainstream politics has been shaken up by revelations that the White House okayed illegal wiretaps on U.S. citizens and the Pentagon has been spying on activist groups.

Iraq's sham election deepens ethnic and religious divisions
U.S. fans the flames
Residents of Baghdad spent New Year's Eve in darkness, filling many with gloom about their prospects in the coming year.

SW SPECIAL FEATURES

Transit workers show their power
The strike that shut down New York
The New York City transit strike became a three-day battle between working-class New Yorkers and the bosses, politicians and ruling elite of the city.

TWU members speak out:
"We showed that striking does matter"

Fifteen months in 1980-81:
The story of Solidarnosc
The Solidarnosc workers rebellion in Poland in 1980-81 stands with the great revolutionary upheavals of the past in showing the promise of a new society based on workers' power.

WHAT WE THINK

Unnecessary concessions mar gains in NYC transit strike
A glimpse of labor's power
A transit strike stunned New York City with a demonstration of workers' power in the 21st century--and provoked a 19th century-style backlash by politicians and the media.

NATIONAL NEWS

Alito likely to sail through hearings
Dream come true for the right wing
Confirmation hearings will begin early in January for Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito, and the Christian Right believes he will be their dream come true if confirmed.

A 1960s Black radical fights extradition to the U.S.
Why they want to put Gary Freeman on trial
Just north of the border, in the Canadian city of Toronto, African American Gary Freeman is fighting to stay in the country he fled to 35 years ago.

Marines detain Vietnam resister
The Marines have decided to prosecute yet another war resister. But this case has a twist: It's 40 years old.

ON THE PICKET LINE

Reformer Tom Leedham to challenge Hoffa
High stakes in Teamster vote
The year ended with increasingly bad news for the reelection campaign of Teamster General President James P. Hoffa.

UAW rebels keep up the pressure
The fight against concessions by rank-and-file activists in the United Auto Workers is heating up amid a dispute over last month's vote that allegedly ratified concessions at Ford.

NEWS OF OUR STRUGGLE

News and reports
In memory of Stan Tookie Williams; Defend civil liberties

VIEWS AND VOICES

California death row prisoner Kevin Cooper explains...
Why clemency is a joke
The powers that be in California have shown that they will not be there for the poor folks who called upon them to save a life.

Abandoned in New Orleans
Driving into New Orleans is what you might expect to find when driving into a war zone--or more aptly, a city after it's been through a war and is now deserted.

Views in brief
"Labor needs a victory"; War resisters on film; Iran and the nuclear threat

REVIEWS

Brokeback Mountain's powerful story
Love and repression in the American West
It's rare that a film lives up to the media hype that precedes its release--and rarer still when the film is so much better than promised.

King Kong: Is racism irrelevant?
Peter Jackson's lavish remake of King Kong attempts to put a liberal veneer on a deeply reactionary film, but ultimately falls back on an old script that can only be described as racist.

OBITUARY
Clinton Jencks
Clinton Jencks, a principal actor in the movie Salt of the Earth and in the real-life union struggle in New Mexico's mines, died at the age of 87.

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