On the Line.

• Position: Political activism - Brief Article

Unions Demand Health Care for All

New York City

On April 1, members of the Office and Professional Employees International Union and the New York State Nurses Association gathered in New York's Washington Square Park to rally against managed health care and in support of universal health coverage. "A fragmented system that has too many billing clerks and too few nurses yields poor access and poor quality," says Bob Piemonte, president of the Nurses Association. "It's time for a change."

For more information, call the New York State Nurses Association at (518) 782-9400 or go to www.nysna.org. The Office and Professional Employees International Union's web site is www.opeiu.org.

Hands Off Our Food!

South Pasadena, California

On April 8, demonstrators dumped genetically engineered food outside Trader Joe's Food Market, a grocery chain that caters to consumers of natural foods. The protesters urged Trader Joe's to remove all "Franken-foods" from its shelves. The action was part of an international week-long effort entitled "Resistance is Fertile," which aims to ban genetically modified organisms.

For more information, send an e-mail to G.E. FREE LA at GEFREE@oxy.edu or to "Resistance is Fertile" at action @resistanceisfertile.com.

Greenpeace Camps Out to Save Ice Cap

Seal Island, Arctic Ocean

On April 11, Greenpeace activist Phil Dunn placed his portable "apple hut" in front of the construction site of BP Amoco's Northstar offshore oil project on man-made Seal Island. Dunn is one of eight Greenpeace members who have camped out since February 28 on the frozen Arctic Ocean. The group contends that BP Amoco's plans to drill trenches under the melting Arctic ice cap will expose the fragile region to the risk of a...