Help Create a New Army of Progressive Journalists
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Powerful corporate interests like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are spending millions to block real change in health care, climate change policies and workers’ rights. They are aided by the corporate-controlled media and its budget slashing for reporting and investigative staff.
Workers are fighting back against the lack of real news by looking for ways to preserve investigative journalism and get the truth out to the public. Recently, the Huffington Post launched its Investigative Fund to hire seasoned journalists who have been laid off or forced into early retirement. Bloggers and citizen journalists also are valiantly trying to fill the media vacuum.
Now, the Institute for Southern Studies (ISS) is launching the Freedom Journalism School—a pioneering program to train an army of 50 new media muckrakers across the South.
Katrina Four Years Later: Iraq Being Rebuilt Faster
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Four years after Hurricane Katrina killed more than 1,800 people and left thousands homeless along the Gulf Coast, many residents, especially those displaced in New Orleans, still cannot come home, because there are no homes to come back to.
From the beginning, the union movement has sought to aid in rebuilding the communities, with the AFL-CIO’s Gulf Coast Revitalization Program early on committing to spending $1 billion to produce new housing, fund economic development projects and create thousands of new jobs. Already more than 400 workers have been trained to fill those jobs.
But outreach efforts continue to be stymied. Robert “Tiger” Hammond, president of the Greater New Orleans AFL-CIO, tells Press Associates that local and state officials keep putting up “roadblock after roadblock after roadblock” to building housing for displaced residents.
