Homeless, Friendless, and Penniless: The WPA Interviews with Former Slaves Living in Indiana.
By Ronald L. Baker. (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, c. 2000. Pp. xx, 341. $29.95, ISBN 0-253-33803-4.) The intent of Homeless, Friendless, and Penniless is to make "available for the first time in a single volume all the WPA interviews with former slaves living in Indiana...

Farm survey describes women's roles. (Update).
The USDA'S National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) surveyed adult women on U.S. farms and found that 81 percent are involved in the operation. However, less than half of those responding -- 46 percent -- were raised on a farm or ranch. The study, conducted in...

Rice is life: corporations are moving in to control Asia's most vital food crop. But, as Devlin Kuyek reports, their assault is not going unnoticed--or unresisted. (Rice).
A COUPLE of years ago I spent time with two farming communities on the island of Luzon in the Philippines. Although both were poor, one was much better off than the other. The first, in the province of Laguna, has successfully fought for control over their lands, farming their...

How the Germans got the land. (Feature: Namibia).
Land forever a hot issue in Southern Africa has become even hotter. In this instalment of The Blue Book on Namibia (which was published by the British government in 1918 but destroyed in 1926 because Berlin complained that it was a "great wrong" not only against Germany but "against...

Orishas Emigrante.
(Surco/Universal) When Orishas, the premier Cuban rap group, emerged from the Parisian underground in 2000 with A Lo Cubano, the world embraced them. The album went gold in Europe and sold about 50,000 copies in the U.S. On their follow-up, Emigrante, they show that in Latino rap...

Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker Movement: Centenary Essays.
Edited by William Thorn, Phillip Runkel, and Susan Mountin. Milwaukee, Wisc.: Marquette University Press, 2001. 615 pp. $30.00 paper. As the title suggests, this remarkable collection of essays tells two stories. The first is about Dorothy Day: radical journalist turned Catholic mystic, champion of the poor and...

World's children". (Child & Family).
DISCRIMINATION: A representative from the Republic of the Congo went before the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women to answer questions about employment, unequal wages, access to education and family law in her country. UNICEF: UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy announced that her agency...

Organics: one hand clapping. (Updates).
The U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) organic labels hit the shelves on October 21 (see "Food Porn," Currents, May/June 1998). A week earlier, the Center for Food Safety and others filed a legal petition to force the USDA to create a peer review panel to supervise organic certifiers' accreditation....

The ESH Division: cosmetics or real progress?
As many know by now, the former T-15 Ergonomics, Safety, and Health Committee (ESH) became a Division within ASAE effective with the close of the 2003 Annual International Meeting. Division status for ASAE members working in agricultural safety has been a long journey. Records show that organized safety committees...

Brazilians say no. (Currents).
Approximately 98 per cent of the 10.1 million people who responded to a survey conducted at the beginning of September in 3,894 municipalities throughout Brazil gave a resounding 'no' to the question: 'Should the Brazilian Government sign the FTAA treaty?' The treaty was proposed by the United...