NEWS

More than 100 organizers and activists from the DC metro area travelled to Detroit to attend the U.S. Social Forum held June 22 – 26th.

The DC delegation included students from local universities, union members from AFGE 2741 and UFCW Local 400, community activists from Empower DC, the Gray Panthers, and the Washington Peace Center, Wings strikers, and Union de Trabajadores members. DC JwJ organized a bus of more than 50 people to travel to Detroit together.
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Benjamin Banneker Summer Fellowship program

DC Jobs with Justice (DC JwJ) is seeking a DC Public School student or recent DCPS graduate for a paid summer organizing fellowship.
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Former director of American Rights at Work, Mary Beth Maxwell (left); ACLU-NCA Executive Director Johnny Ba
es; The Justice at Wings Campaign and Fair Budget Coalition’s Kristi Matthews will be this year’s awardees for the 2010 DC Jobs with Justice “I’ll Be There Awards.” The annual awards ceremony – which will take place on June 10th – honors individuals and organizations for exceptional solidarity work in the Metro DC area.
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The workers compensation program for D.C. gove
ment employees has been fraught with problems for decades, often driving middle-class injured workers into poverty. But in recent years, injured gove
ment workers have made some significant gains, due largely to the work of the Injured Workers Advocates and the DC Employment Justice Center. Now those gains are at risk as the Disability Compensation Program, which serves more than 2000 workers a year, is on the DC Councils budget chopping block.

Between June 22-26, tens of thousands of people will once again gather in Detroit for the second US Social Forum under the banner, “Another World is Possible, Another US is necessary.” The forum comes on the heels of the Greater DC People’s Assembly which took place this past weekend.
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Last month David Krakow, a former history teacher at the Cesar Chavez charter school, reached a settlement with his former employer, which fired him last year shortly after he began organizing with his co-workers. Krakow chose to donate the bulk of his settlement – $10,000 – to DC Jobs with Justice. “I gave to JWJ because they helped me do a lot of the thinking work while we were organizing last year,” Krakow, a local activist and Jews United For Justice Jeremiah Fellow said. ” Building a system where working people have a say in our jobs and in our communities isn’t a one-off project.

“We don’t want a Guantanamo in the Nation’s Capital” said Johnny Ba
es, Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union of the National Capital Area, before a packed audience during yesterday’s community dialogue at the University of the District of Columbia on the Secure Communities progra.m The controversial program, recently implemented by the Metropolitan Police Department without community consultation, runs the fingerprints of everyone arrested in the District of Columbia through the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) database.