As part of its nationwide ‘Protect Our Kids, Our Families and Our Communities’ mobilisation, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) has brought together a coalition of educators, parents and community groups to call for urgent investment in public schools, healthcare, and public services.
AFT President Randi Weingarten said: ‘Life is getting harder for working families.
‘Instead of helping kids, families and communities get ahead, the administration is cutting schools, attacking student borrowers, muzzling academic freedom, slashing healthcare and public services, and launching immigration raids that make communities less safe.’
Hundreds of thousands of people participated in over 100 in-person events and online actions on Sunday, and AFT members and community allies marched from New Hampshire to Hawaii.
‘When Education Secretary Linda McMahon tried to erase civil rights protections with the stroke of a pen, the AFT and our allies went to court and won,’ Weingarten told the march.
‘And as this administration uses violence and fear to intimidate Minnesotans and others. Our members are building mutual aid networks and protecting kids and communities.’
Meanwhile, 1,700 Chicago Public Schools (CPS) support staffers have joined the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) after the school district dropped an objection to their organising campaign.
The so-called ‘miscellaneous’ workers won union membership after the Illinois Educational Labour Relations Board certified a petition from Local 73 of SEIU to represent them.
Miscellaneous workers fill in for a wide range of support roles in schools including as tutors and recess monitors.
Local 73, which already represents about 13,000 support staff members in Chicago, points out that they often perform the same work as unionised workers in the city’s schools, but for less pay and no benefits.
Janet Romo, a miscellaneous worker at R.H. Lee Elementary in West Lawn said: ‘We love the job. We wouldn’t be there with the salary or pay rate that we have, if we weren’t so passionate.’
The workers faced a rocky road to union membership. CPS initially opposed their organising effort, arguing they were ineligible to join the union and asking the labour board to throw SEIU’s petition out.
The district later withdrew the challenge.
The SEIU has said it had won the support of around 70 per cent of the workers.
Elsewhere, AFL-CIO trade unions federation President AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler has responded to the February jobs report released by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, on Monday.
Shuler said: ‘This jobs report confirms what many workers already feel: everything is too expensive. This is an economy built for the billionaire bosses, not working people.
‘President Donald Trump’s so called “One Big Beautiful Bill” is coming home to roost.
‘Jobs are down in nearly every sector, and more cuts are coming as funding that industries need dries up.
‘For months, the only growing area has been health care, and those jobs are being ripped away, too – which disproportionately affects women workers, especially women of colour.’
‘At the same time, energy prices are spiking and the cost of living overall is crushing working people.
‘ “One Big Beautiful Bill” alone diverts nearly $4 trillion of public resources through the tax code while cutting Medicaid, food assistance, and other essential benefits.
‘It is also important to note that the healthcare sector is disproportionately staffed by women, particularly women of colour.
‘The unemployment rate for Black women has risen toward 7.1 per cent – while the rate for Black men stands at around seven percent.
- Three men deported by the United States to Eswatini – rather than their home countries – have filed a case against Eswatini’s government with the African Union’s human rights body, claiming their detention was an unlawful violation of their rights.
Two of the claimants, from Cuba and Yemen, have been in prison in Eswatini, formerly Swaziland, for eight months.
The third, Orville Etoria, was repatriated to his home country, Jamaica, in September.
They were among a group of five men deported by the US in July, with another 10 sent in October. Other than Etoria, all remained in prison in Eswatini, their lawyers said.
The US has labelled the men dangerous criminals but their lawyers said they have already served their sentences for any crimes committed in the US.
The men’s complaint was filed with the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR), an African Union body that monitors member states’ compliance with regional human rights agreements.
The Commission can demand that states uphold rights and refer cases to the African court on human and peoples’ rights, but neither body has enforcement powers.
Beatrice Njeri, a lawyer with the Global Strategic Litigation Council, one of the organisations that brought the case on the deportees’ behalf, said: ‘The people in detention have committed no crime in Eswatini and continue to undergo various human rights violations, they are being held indefinitely.’
Njeri said the men had still not been allowed to see their lawyers in person. She said one detainee had gone on a 30-day hunger strike late last year, resulting in signs of organ failure.
Njeri said: ‘They’re totally frustrated with the situation… they just want to go back – some of them home, some of them to the US.
‘It is also important to clarify that these individuals are not detained or imprisoned.
‘They are being accommodated in a secure environment while the necessary administrative and diplomatic processes relating to their repatriation are under way.’
She added: ‘It would be premature to indicate precisely when each individual will return to their respective countries of origin.’
The US has deported dozens of immigrants to third countries, as the Trump administration attempts to carry out mass deportations. US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has detained more than 68,000 people in the US.
Other African countries that have accepted third-country deportees from the US include Ghana, Rwanda, South Sudan and Uganda.
The US agreed to pay Eswatini $5.1 million (£3.8 million) to take up to 160 third-country nationals.
In February, Eswatini’s high court threw out a case from local NGOs that had argued the government’s imprisonment of the deportees was unconstitutional.
The court ruled that the applicants had no right to bring the legal challenge, as it claimed they did not have a direct interest in the matter.
- The US State Department said last Friday that it has approved a possible Foreign Military Sale to Israel of munitions and related support services, including 12,000 aerial bombs.
The deal is worth about 151.8 million US dollars, the department said in a statement.
Israel has requested to purchase 12,000 BLU-110A/B general purpose, 1,000-pound bomb bodies, it said.
A spokesman said: ‘The Secretary of State (Marco Rubio) has determined and provided detailed justification that an emergency exists that requires the immediate sale to the Government of Israel of the above defence articles and defence services and is in the national security interests of the United States, thereby waiving the Congressional review requirements under Section 36(b) of the Arms Export Control Act.
‘The proposed sale will improve Israel’s capability to meet current and future threats, strengthen its homeland defence, and serve as a deterrent to regional threats.’
The package also includes US government and contractor engineering, logistics, technical support services, and other related elements of logistics and programme support.