Main Los Angeles area May Day Events

The Multi-ethnic Immigrant Worker Organizing Network (MIWON) is starting a march at MacArthur Park at 2 pm.

The March 25th Coalition is starting their march at Olympic and Broadway at 2 pm.

Both marches will converge at 5th and Broadway for a common rally.

Additional Los Angeles area May Day Events

The Garment Workers Center is gathering at 1 pm in front of their office, 1250 S Los Angeles Street, before joining the main marches. Allies are asked to wear white.

The South Asian Network is having a march in Artesia at 9:30 am along Pioneer Blvd.

People are asked to gather at MacArthur Park from 4 – 10:30 pm to celebrate May Day with free film screenings and free food.

Main Orange County May Day Event

A coalition of organizations is calling a march at Plaza de las Banderas, 10 Civic Center Plaza in Santa …

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GUEST: Marco Simmons, Legal Director of EarthRights International

A new report by EarthRights International has found that state soldiers in Burma, guarding a Chevron pipeline have killed nearby villagers while ordering others to serve as forced labor. Earthrights accuses the Burmese military of murder and rape, and draws its conclusions from interviews with villagers as well as Burmese refugees in Thailand. Chevron Corp co-owns the Yadana pipeline with the French oil company Total, and a Burmese company. The report calls on these companies to shut down the pipeline as a way to pressure the Burmese state into respecting democracy and human rights. Last year Burma was in the spotlight because of a deadly crackdown on pro-democracy activists and the ruling junta has kept democratically elected leader Aung …

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GUESTS: Garrick Ruiz, core volunteer with Garment Workers Center, Shuming Cheer, Civil rights coordinator at South Asian Network, Taina Reyes, Director of the Santa Ana office of Hermandad Mexicana Latino Americana

Tomorrow is May Day and workers around the world and here in the US are marking the workers rights day with rallies, protests, and marches. In Thailand labor leaders are threatening a mass protest over the minimum wage; fifty thousand people are expected to march in Moscow at a rally organized by the Communist Party criticizing President-elect Dmitry Medvedev; Turkish trade unions are planning a rally Istanbul’s Taksim Square, an area where such gatherings have been banned for over 30 years; and fifty thousand Cuban youth are expected to participate in a mass march through …

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GUEST: Victoria Samson, Research Analyst, Center for Defense Information

Dozens of Greenpeace activists occupied a military site south of Prague on Monday where the United States has plans to construct a missile defense radar base. News of the action came as the U.S. State Department informed the Czech Republic that Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice would have to delay signing a missile defense treaty between the two nations. Rice claimed scheduling conflicts as the reason for her unavailability in Prague in early May to finalize the controversial plans, which are opposed by 70% of Czechs. The U.S’ declared rationale for the proposed Czech base is to protect the region from possible attacks from the Middle East. Russia, wary of the proposed base’s proximity to its borders, criticized …

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… about George Washington

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Radio Rootz works in public schools to train teens in media literacy and radio production. Rootz Youth analyze and critique the media, and learn how to create news that reflects their voices, issues, and communities. For more information, visit www.radiorootz.org.

“The ever more sophisticated weapons piling up in the arsenals of the wealthiest and the mightiest can kill the illiterate, the ill, the poor and the hungry, but they cannot kill ignorance, illness, poverty or hunger.” – Fidel Castro

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GUEST: Dalia Mogahed, Senior Analyst and Executive Director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies, coauthor of the book Who Speaks for Islam?: What a Billion Muslims Really Think, member of Women in International Security, serves on the leadership group of the Project on U.S. Engagement with the Global Muslim Community, and is a member of the Crisis in the Middle East Task Force of the Brookings Institution.

Nearly 7 years after the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington DC, and the subsequent US war in Afghanistan, and more than 5 years after the Iraq war, Western perceptions of Muslims and Islam is more distorted than ever. Radio shock jocks routinely spout anti-Muslim hate speech, newspaper Op-eds promote propaganda, and hate crimes continue. …

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GUEST: Michael Eric Dyson, Professor of Sociology at Georgetown University and author of several books including “April 4, 1968: Martin Luther King Jr.’s Death and How it Changed America”

Barack Obama’s former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, confronted the recent controversy over his past sermons at the National Press Club in Washington DC yesterday. Clips from Wright’s sermons have been used in Republican commercials that try to paint Obama as unpatriotic. But now Wright is fighting back. In his spirited rebuttal of the Republican Party and mainstream media’s depiction of him, he contended that the attacks on him were really attacks on Black religious tradition and the Black church. Wright, who himself served six years in the military, shot back at accusations of being anti-patriotic by …

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GUEST: Garrett Epps, Orlando John and Marian H. Hollis Professor of Law at the University of Oregon, author of Democracy Reborn: The Fourteenth Amendment and the Fight for Equal Rights in Post-Civil War America

A week before Indiana’s presidential primary on May 6th, the Supreme Court upheld the state’s controversial Voter ID law. In a 6-3 vote issued yesterday, the high court decided that the Republican crafted legislation requiring voters to produce government-issued photo identification at the polls was not in fact unconstitutional. However, since Indiana passed the law in 2005, Democrats and civil rights organizations have decried it as a means of disenfranchisement. They contend that the photo ID requirements most adversely affect the elderly, minority, and poor sectors of society who also tend …

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… about Rodney King

Produced by Radio Rootz.

Radio Rootz works in public schools to train teens in media literacy and radio production. Rootz Youth analyze and critique the media, and learn how to create news that reflects their voices, issues, and communities. For more information, visit www.radiorootz.org.