The local student anti-sweatshop movement made a return visit to downtown Seattle on Aug. 20, when students from the University of Washington and Seattle University staged a follow-up to their June 2 protest against union-busting in Guatemala's garment industry.

The June 2 protest (which received surprisingly strong local media coverage, gaining front-page above-the-fold placement in both the Seattle P-I and the UW Daily) was staged in front of the Talbots and Macy's stores near Westlake Park to draw public attention to union-busting at two garment factories in Guatemala from which Talbots, Macy's and Liz Claiborne (the latter sold at Macy's) have sourced their apparel in the past. The management at these factories, Cimatextiles and Choishin, have since then continued their union-busting tactics, with no meaningful objection or intervention from Talbots, Macy's or Liz Claiborne. The UW and SU activists were thus compelled to return to Westlake Park on Aug. 20 to maintain public pressure on these retailers to take action to stop the union-busting in question.

According to a group of UW students who have spent the summer in Guatemala to support the Cimatextiles and Choishin workers in their struggle to keep these factories open and fully unionized, both factories have now been officially closed down by management. However, according to the students, production at both factories has in fact continued covertly, using a new, non-unionized workforce. The current goal of the UW and SU anti-sweatshop group is to pressure Talbots, Macy's and Liz Claiborne to once again actively source their apparel from Cimatextiles and Choishin while demanding that union workers are rehired. The students also want company representatives from these retailers to be sent to Guatemala to negotiate directly with the factory management in order to insure these goals are fulfilled by September at the latest. So far, all the students' requests to speak directly with these retailers' respective corporate headquarters have gone unanswered.

For more information and updates on the local student anti-sweatshop movement, visit maquilaemergency.blogspot.com. --Jeff Stevens

In other fair labor activism news, this past summer has seen the emergence of a crucial legal trial as part of the ongoing struggle of Starbucks baristas, in conjunction with the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), to establish a strong, company-wide union.

On July 9, a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) hearing began in New York City which pitted the IWW's Starbucks Workers Union (SWU) against the corporate coffee monolith. The SWU claims that Starbucks has engaged in systematic and illegal suppression of union activity at its stores, including firing baristas who have openly sought to organize at the stores where they worked. Starbucks, of course, doggedly denies this, and has consistently claimed that such firings were for such innocuous reasons as alleged failure "to create a positive work experience for [the worker's] fellow partners."

According to the NLRB, Starbucks has violated US labor law at least 32 times as part of the corporation's ongoing resistance to the unionization efforts of its workers. As the trial has intensified during August, the NLRB called several Starbucks officials for questioning early in the month, then queried several current and former Starbucks baristas during the week of Aug. 13. While the current trial is expected to wrap up sometime in September, the thorough unionization of the 36-year old Starbucks Corporation--a project that began in earnest at long last in early 2004, with the initial formation of the SWU in NYC--remains unfinished business. So far, in spite of Seattle's status as both the birthplace of Starbucks and the historical nexus of the IWW, no attempts to unionize Starbucks workers have taken place here in Seattle--at least as far as we know. The labor movement's work is, apparently and as always, never done. --J.S.

Twenty Western Washington tribes won a major court victory on behalf of salmon last week. US District Judge Ricardo S. Martinez ruled that the state has to fix road culverts that block fish passage upstream to spawn in western Washington. This will effect 2,300 miles of rivers north of the Columbia River and west of the Cascade Mountains. The state says it already has freed about 480 miles of streams since 1991. Well, I did the math, and that amounts to an estimated 30 miles of streams each year, which amounts to--what?--one or two culverts per year? That's not fast enough, according to Judge Martinez who essentially ruled that without salmon habitat, there will be no fish, and without fish there will be no fishing. That would violate the 1974 Boldt decision which ruled that Washington tribes are entitled to 50 percent of every year's salmon catch. What I don't understand is how the state could have spent almost $40 million to restore 480 miles of streams. How are they accounting for these expenses? Are they including only the money to replace one or two culverts each year, or are they including all the money spent on road projects where a culvert is incidentally replaced? If it's the latter, then shame on the Department of Transportation for exaggerating the cost to restore critical salmon habitat. In the meantime, let's congratulate the tribes for a job well done... and write to Governor Gregoire to make sure the state doesn't try to appeal the decision. (Christine Gregoire, Office of the Governor, PO Box 40002, Olympia, WA 98504-0002; 1-360-902-4111; http://www.governor.wa.gov/contact/). --Maria Tomchick

More good news: in another court decision last week, US District Court Judge Sandra Armstrong ruled that the Bush administration is in violation of a 1990 law that requires the federal government to issue updated research plans and impact statements every four years to address global warming and climate change. While the Bushies frequently ignore laws they don't like, Judge Armstrong ruled that this law, which was written expressly for the executive branch to follow, must be obeyed. She set a timeline for the federal government to produce a new research plan for March 1 (the last plan was written during the Clinton administration), and a deadline of May 31 for the impact assessment. The Bush administration can no longer ignore the issues of global warming and climate change; unfortunately, the law has to be enforced by environmental activists. The plaintiffs in the case included the Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the Earth, and Greenpeace. --M.T.

Good news or bad? An Associated Press poll found that one in four US citizens didn't read any books last year. While the media went into a frenzy over American ignorance, I scratched my head in puzzlement. Sure, 25 percent of Americans don't read, but doesn't this also mean in the era of the Internet, video games, TV on demand, ubiquitous i-Pods and burgeoning cellphone addictions, that 75 percent of us still cracked at least one book open last year? Yes, it does. And most of us (58 percent) read 6 or more books last year, with 27 percent of us reading more than 15. I find that very encouraging. Even if many folks, especially midwesterners, only read the Bible last year, I'm guessing they read the whole thing and not just bits and pieces of Leviticus. (I hope.) --M.T.

Robert Weissman's article this issue on the Bush administration's opposition to congressional expansion of the State Child Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) is sobering enough. But there's more. Last Friday, the Bush cabal, inspired no doubt by their parasitic good friends in the insurance industry, took their opposition to health coverage for all kids to a new level. The administration's new policy severely restricts Washington's upcoming expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) for children in middle income families.

Under the direction of the Bush Administration, CMS (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) released new restrictions on SCHIP that threaten many states' laws, including Washington state's. The CMS letter requires states with SCHIP programs above 250 percent of the (grossly underdefined) federal poverty level (FPL) to institute impossible measures, such as creating policy that children must go for a minimum of one year without insurance before getting coverage. Additional requirements would restrict states from expanding SCHIP to children in families above 250 percent FPL unless: at least 95 percent of eligible children below 200 percent FPL are enrolled in SCHIP or Medicaid; drops of private employer sponsored coverage are no more than an impossible two percent over the prior five-year period; and the state is current with all monthly reporting requirements for Medicaid and SCHIP related to "crowd-out" effects.

These requirements are preposterous, and they were intended to be; the idea is to avoid Congress and through federal regulation ban states from providing health insurance for kids. Only a veto-proof act of Congress can override this--raising the question of whether all those sycophantic Republicans who oppose corporate regulation by wrapping themselves in the (probably spurious) mantle of states' rights will stand up for the states on this one. How 'bout it, Dave Reichert? --Geov Parrish

First, the good news: the Pentagon, knowing a PR disaster when one shoots it in the face, has quietly shut down TALON, the internal spy program that attracted unwanted publicity for gathering and keeping data on Quakers, peace activists, and other domestic terrorist threats. According to a Pentagon flack, TALON's "analytical value has declined" (wink, wink). Now, the bad news: the same spokescreature also helpfully pledged that the Pentagon "hopes that a new system will replace [TALON] in the near future". As in, just as soon as they can quietly truck all the files over to the FBI. --G.P.

Something that didn't happen in August strongly solidified the case for a at-grade waterfront boulevard to replace the Alaskan Way viaduct. Namely, during its recent two weeks of construction, northbound I-5 south of downtown was supposed to be a parking lot. And it wasn't. It never happened.

Why? Because people changed their travel habits--they took other routes, used public transit, or simply didn't make the trips. And I-5 was just fine. This suggests that when the Alaskan Way viaduct comes down, hopefully in a planned way during construction, people will similarly adjust. And if no freeway goes back in to replace it, we'll all get along just fine, freight mobility included. Problem solved. --G.P.

You missed the deadline! Monday was the last day for entries in the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee's online contest, whereby the mandarins at the DSCC, defying the fact that Congress is at an all-time low 17 percent approval rating and is just as unpopular among Democrats as among Republicans, invited you, the public, to offer your snappy 40-characters-or-less slogan for electing more Democrats to the Senate in 2008! We can hardly wait for the winners, but our guess is they wouldn't dare release the best ones. Our favorite so far, e-mailed in during Eat the Airwaves by a KEXP listener: "Democrats: We're Not As Blatant!" --G.P.

Have you heard about Green October? It's an almost ridiculous number of Seattle-area sustainability events coming up--so many that they don't all actually fit in October. Here are just a few of the bigger events, beginning with the "10x10x10" event hosted by the NW Ecobuilding Guild on Sept. 21. Then come the annual Sustainable Ballard festival on Sept. 29-30, the Sustainable Industries Economic Forum Oct. 3, Seattle Beaming Bioneers Oct. 19-21, Sustainable Cascadia's Cascadia Convergence Oct. 26-27, and the Mayor's Climate Protection Summit Nov. 1-2. Many other events are being held as well. You can get more details at www.greenoctober2007.com. So if you haven't figured out how to lead a more sustainable life by November, you have no one but yourself to blame. --Lansing Scott