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This week on Uprising:

* Special Report from Los Angeles’ May Day Actions: Four Winds Convergence and LAX Disruption
* May Day Activities in New York Lead to 50 Arrests
* The Curious Case of Chen Guangcheng
* Murdoch Not “Fit” to Head News Corp.

* * *

Special Report from Los Angeles’ May Day Actions: A Four Winds Convergence

On Tuesday May 1st, activists around the world took to the streets opposing austerity measures and cuts to public programs among other things, in commemoration of International Workers Day. Hundreds of thousands of people marched in countries like the Philippines, Malaysia, India, Russia, Greece, Spain, France, and the UK. Here in the US, New York saw the biggest marches with tens of thousands of people in the streets and a few dozen arrests. The most violent clashes between police and protesters took place in Oakland and Seattle. In Oakland, as night drew, hundreds of people rallied in Frank H. Ogawa Plaza with a few confronting police – twenty five people were arrested. In Seattle, several protesters are accused of fomenting property damage and assaulting police officers. Here in Los Angeles, tens of thousands of people gathered from four directions, North, South, East, and West, starting in the early part of the day, and converging toward downtown Los Angeles. Marchers included union members, immigrant rights activists, students, teachers, LGBTQ rights activists, and many more. While hundreds of police officers were present, and some clashes broke out, LAPD officers showed relative restraint. The resulting media coverage focused largely on traffic jams, and arrests, according to a report this week by the media watchdog group, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR).

In Southern California where Uprising is based, thousands of activists converged onto Downtown LA from four points, North, South, East, and West while workers and their supporters at LA International Airport demonstrated and went on strike, disrupting operations. About 200 LAX workers under the union SEIU United Workers West and their supporters, rallied at the Bradley International Terminal at before marching down Century Blvd and halting incoming traffic at the intersection of Century and Avion. They were protesting health and safety abuses they say they suffer as employees of airport subcontractors. The employees are baggage handlers, cabin cleaners and others who do some of the most physically demanding and dangerous jobs at the airport. They say they have been forced to perform their duties at an ever increasing pace, while their health benefits are cut and their wages remain stagnant. The demonstration culminated in several union representatives, community leaders, and workers being arrested by the Los Angeles Police Department.

KPFK reporters were all over the region, reporting the actions and today we bring you the voices of some of the people involved, beginning with a special report by Uprising’s Martina Steiner from LAX, followed by a report from Uprising host Sonali Kolhatkar covering the West Wind of the actions.

May Day Activities in New York Lead to 50 Arrests

New York’s May Day actions were the largest in the nation with tens of thousands of people gathering all over Manhattan including in Bryant Park where Rage Against the Machine Guitarist Tom Morello led an “Occupy Guitarmy,” as he called it, down fifth avenue, singing labor protest songs. Various groups marched in different parts of the city, including in front of a Bank of America office where there was a face off with police officers in riot gear. Overall, more than 50 people were arrested.

GUEST: Nathan Schneider, editor of the website Waging Non-Violence. On Monday he wrote a piece for Harpers.org titled Mapping Out May Day and he will have a piece published on YESmagazine.org about May Day events.

Click here to read Nathan’s article in Harpers.

The Curious Case of Chen Guangcheng

Chinese human rights lawyer and activist Chen Guangcheng was released from a Beijing hospital this week after receiving treatment for injuries he sustained while escaping house arrest more than a week ago. Chen had escaped to seek medical and diplomatic assistance from the United States embassy, after his family and he had endured abuse from Chinese authorities at their home during his house arrest sentence since 2010. Chen’s case has received international attention as his stay at the US embassy sparked diplomatic tensions between China and the United States, leading to talks between officials of both nations last week. The talks yielded an agreement from the Chinese government to abstain from reprisals against Chen. Now, however, Chen has claimed that China has gone back on its end of the deal – the activist has claimed that all he wants to do is leave China with his family, going as far as to say “[m]y fervent hope is that it would be possible for me and my family to leave for the U.S. on Hillary Clinton’s plane.” US Secretary of State Clinton has been in China this week and finds herself at the center of the conflicting aims of appeasing relations with China while maintaining a commitment to human rights in China.

Chen has been fighting for many years to expose the coercive population control practices of the Chinese government on its citizens under the One-child Program. The program was founded in 1978 to alleviate social, economic, and environmental problems affecting China. A 2001 report found that quotas of 20,000 abortions and sterilizations were set by the government for a county in Guangdong Province in one year due to reported disregard of the one-child policy. Such coercive family planning methods go against the government’s stated principles, and yet, the Chinese government has shown reluctance in investigating reports of abuses. In 2005, Chen decide to do his own investigations into the matter, leading him to file a class-action lawsuit one year later against a city in another province – Shandong – for forced abortions and sterilizations. Shortly thereafter, Chen was imprisoned but later released to serve out his sentence under house arrest.

GUEST: Jianying Zha, author of Tide Players: The Movers and Shakers of a Rising China, her earlier books include China Pop (in English), and the award-winning book The Eighties (in Chinese) a cultural retrospective of the 1980s in China. She has written for the New Yorker, the New York Times, and various Chinese publications, and spends her time between New York and Beijing.

Murdoch Not “Fit” to Head News Corp.

Rupert Murdoch and his media empire may soon be the subject of a US Senate committee investigation in connection with the phone hacking scandal in Britain that has dogged the media mogul for nearly a year now. US Senator Jay Rockefeller, chairman of the powerful US Senate committee on commerce, science and transportation, asked British officials this week to divulge whether their investigations into News International have turned-up US victims, or collaborators, in unethical or illegal practices. Rockefeller’s inquiry came a day after news that a British Parliamentary report into the practices of parent company News Corporation concluded, “Rupert Murdoch is not a fit person to exercise the stewardship of a major international company.” The scathing indictment of the man at the helm of News Corp, which owns Fox News and the Wall Street Journal in addition to hundreds of media outlets around the world, has major implications.

Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. controls 39.1 percent of the major British broadcaster BSkyB, and Labour Party officials are pressuring regulators to reduce Murdoch’s interest in the company in light of their Parliament’s conclusion. Britain’s broadcast regulator, Ofcom, can remove a media license from an owner who is found to not be “fit and proper.” News Corp. dropped a bid for full ownership of BSkyB last year in the wake of the phone hacking scandal that has led to investigations of more than 40 people, and which caused the 168 year old newspaper, News of the World, to shut down. The family of a slain British teenager whose mobile phone was hacked in the case that made the extent of the practice known, won £3 million from News International in September. Their attorney is poised to begin litigating 6 cases here in the US and recently stated, “There are so many American aspects to this, it is difficult to know where to begin.”

GUEST: Ed Pilkington, is the Guardian’s US correspondent, based in New York

Sonali’s Subversive Thought for the Day:

“The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.” — Winston Churchill