"Don't get surprised when you see a nice Cintas truck on the road. Keep in mind that behind that truck are workers fighting for their rights. Support them. Behind that nice truck is a labor dispute where workers are fighting for their right to belong to a union." -- Victor Hidalgo, Cintas worker

Jaribu Hill is the director of the Mississippi Workers' Center for Human Rights in Greenville, Mississippi. She spoke with Political Affairs in May 2003.

In this era of right-wing corporate power the fight of Cleveland’s salt miners to stop a vicious union-busting drive by the Cargill Corporation is a rich experience with many important lessons for organized labor and its allies.

Opponents of affirmative action advance the myth that it is a new concept invented by the left during the civil rights movement as a means of creating “reverse discrimination” or “quotas.” Affirmative action is criticized as an unfair punishment for people in the present for crimes of the past. These fabrications are part of the campaign to discredit affirmative action policies.

George W. Bush has given much of the world occasion to reflect on what it means to be irrelevant. The power-grab by which he seized office already raised suspicion that the will of the US voting public had become inconsequential. But this was only the beginning.

The 3-2 ruling by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to further deregulate media ownership has been met with overwhelming grassroots opposition. From trade unions to internet activist groups like MoveOn.org the anger towards and engaged interest in the FCC ruling is unprecedented.

Kathryn Blume, co-founder of the Lysistrata Project, an internationally successful theatrical act of dissent, has written and is performing a new play, The Accidental Activist, the debut production for her fledgling theater company, Mighty Ruckus.

PA: Is theater tackling today’s big ideas and issues?

OE: Perhaps more than some people give it credit for, but never enough...

The classic epic labor epic film Salt of the Earth, filmed on location by blacklisted Hollywood filmmakers, immortalized the strike for the benefit of all who seek to throw off their chains. Salt of the Earth Labor College was founded in the early 1990s in Tucson, Arizona in the copper mining belt.