Since 1998, the Higher Education Act (HEA) has contained a provision that denies federal financial aid to student applicants who have drug-related convictions, including possession of marijuana. According to the U.S. Department of Education, this drug provision has harmed more than 128,000 students, particularly racial minorities and the underprivileged. (Please see www.mpp.org/USA/news_2471.html for one example of the damage done by the drug provision of the HEA.)

Now is the best opportunity to repeal the drug provision, as Congress is required to reauthorize the HEA this year. To that end, Students for Sensible Drug Policy, the Drug Reform Coordination Network, the Drug Policy Alliance, the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP), and other organizations are asking you to call on Congress to repeal the HEA drug provision.

Ohio has lost 233,000 jobs in the last three years thanks in part to the Bush administration recession and free trade policies. Bush’s and Ohio conservative Governor Robert Taft’s solution to jobs in Ohio is to put together a $125 million “wealthfare” package to bring 500 jobs to Piketon, Ohio in the rewarding field of uranium-enrichment. The State of Ohio is paying $250,000 per job to create some of the most deadly polluting jobs on the planet.

Following the Cold War, Ohio had to remove 20 or so feet of soil from the Fernald site where a uranium-producing plant existed. The region has one of the highest rates of cancer in the world and is responsible for most of the radioactive contamination in the Buckeye State.

Governor Taft’s office failed to comment on whether he and President Bush would be bribing other privatized companies producing toxic and hazardous cancer-causing agents to stimulate jobs for the 2004 election.

Ohio University’s (OU) agreement to drop the appeal against Ohio Valley Coal Company’s permit to undermine the old growth forest at Dysart Woods went against its top scientists working on Dysart Woods, the land’s supervisor Brian McCarthy and the land’s caretakers. The decision also went against the OU Ecology Committee decision, and numerous resolutions by Student Senate, Faculty Senate and Graduate Student Senate.

OU Professor Brian McCarthy said that he made it clear to the university, as the lead professor at OU studying Dysart Woods and the supervisor of the land laboratory, that he opposed the university’s dropping its appeal. McCarthy is the expert witness for the Dysart Defenders appeal.

May 1st, International Workers’ Day, commemorates the historic struggle of working people throughout the world, and is recognized in every country except the United States and Canada. Despite the fact that the holiday began in the 1880s in the United States, with the fight for an 8-hour work day.

In 1884, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions passed a resolution stating that eight hours would constitute a legal day’s work from and after May 1, 1886. The resolution called for a general strike to achieve the goal, since legislative methods had already failed. With workers being forced to work ten, twelve, and fourteen hours a day, rank-and-file support for the eight-hour movement grew rapidly, despite the indifference and hostility of many union leaders. By April 1886, 250,000 workers were involved in the May Day movement.

“Dennis Kucinich is the conscience of the Democratic Party” -- UK Guardian, January 13, 2004

According to recent news reports, there’s a growing number of citizens around the world who share a common kinship: their faith that Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich spells “sea change” on a worldwide scale. “Catalyzed by the tenor of the times, they’re reaching out to support a spiritual voice with a practical purpose,” writes Amara Rose in Mobile, Global Citizens Say Dennis Makes the Difference, “Kucinich’s peace platform speaks to all peoples, in a common tongue.”

Another movement described in Will the Kucinich Revolution help Leonard Peltier do for America what Nelson Mandela did for South Africa? urges “Let’s get the Kucinich Revolution going full steam to Free Leonard Peltier and change America like Mandela did South Africa.”