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In Gaza, Al Jazeera is reporting that over the weekend Israeli forces have wounded several Palestinian civilians in just the latest violation of the so-called cease fire put in place in October. Israel continues to limit the flow of food, medical aid and building materials into the beleaguered region that the UN estimates saw 90 seen percent of its civilian infrastructure leveled.
The BBC reports that Israel is pushing back on President Trump's first picks for members to sit on his "Board of Peace" for Gaza including stem former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, who has extensive business dealings in the region.
The Public News Service reports on the widening impact on rural communities from the Trump regime’s increasingly violent ICE mass deportation strategy.
Here in New York City, thousands of nurses with the New York State Nurses Association remain on strike at New York Presbyterian, Mount Sinai, and Mount Sinai Morningside and West to maintain their healthcare benefits, safe staffing for patient care as well as secure improved protections against a spike in workplace violence.
We get a strike update from NYSNA member Beth Loudin, RN.
Dr. Damien Archbold, a physician at Elmhurst Hospital, who is also a union delegate with the Doctor’s Council SEIU, puts the strike in the broader context of the deepening healthcare crisis in which 15 million Americans are set to lose their healthcare coverage.
Management at these three hospitals are also attempting to rollback what the union was able to win for their profession and patient care in the aftermath of COVID.
These nominally non-profit hospitals NYSNA that pay their CEOs as much $26.3 million a year, have reportedly set aside $100 million to hire replacement "traveling" nurses to break the union.
On this Martin Luther KIng Day we will reflect on Dr. King's deep commitment to the union movement. We know that Dr. King's final campaign took him to Memphis to support striking sanitation workers who had just lost two members who were crushed by a malfunctioning garbage truck.
We spoke with FDNY Firefighter Regina Wilson, VP of the International Association of Black Professional Firefighters, and Lt. Vinnie Variale president of DC 37 Local 3621 FDNY EMS officers about the longstanding substandard pay and benefits for the FDNY Emergency Medical Service, that's largely composed of women and people of color.
Wilson and Variale discuss the death of retired FDNY Lt. Michael Lynch, who was fatally shot by the NYPD when they were responding to reports Lynch had barricaded himself in a Brooklyn hospital with a fellow patient and a hospital security guard.
We also had our weekly current events panel with Jim Henry, Yale Global Justice Fellow and Dr. Joe Wilson, union consultant and biographer of A. Philip Randolph, the iconic civil rights and labor leader.
Larry Hamm, the founder of New Jersey's People's Organization for Progress, will also be stopping by to preview POP's MLK march later today in Newark that has garnered the support of 300 grassroots, civic, labor, religious and social justice groups.
