Happy May Day Comrades!

Why Cuba’s Sustainability is Not an Accident

Why Cuba’s Sustainability is Not an Accident

April 23, 2012
2:30 pm

Written by Rachel Cernansky

Cuba gets a lot of attention for sustainable practices it has adopted over the last few decades, but they’re often framed as accidental choices—that embargo restrictions have made it difficult to get things like pesticides and traditional building materials and so has ended up with sustainable architecture and agriculture because it had no other choice.

Although that’s true to some degree, it’s an unfair generalization in many ways.

Cuba is home to the Caribbean’s largest and best-preserved wetland area, the Cienaga de Zapata Biosphere Reserve, and some statistics show that Cuba’s protected lands overall have grown by 43 percent since 1986.

A bicycle culture has taken hold, and whether or not that started accidentally, Havana officials have worked to make the streets safer for cyclists by adding bike lanes and offering a bus to take cyclists to and from the center of downtown so that they don’t have to ride along cars and trucks on busy roads ...

More here: http://houstoncommunistparty.com/why-cubas-sustainability-is-not-an-accident/

In NYC tomorrow (from facebook feed of Occupy Wall St) -

Occupy Wall St.
50 minutes ago (Facebook)

Do you have Student Debt?
Are you tired of Banks profiting off of Education?
Join us tomorrow when Student Debt is projected to reach 1 trillion dollars.

In NYC, Come to the Brooklyn College Quad, 12pm. For Rebel Diaz (political hip-hop), Rude Mechanical Orchestra (radical marching band), Debt Exorcisms! Dancing! And More...

At 4pm, Convergence at Union Square! For Debt Jubilee!!

Fired for not Being Mormon

(This is an employment news story - possibly interesting considering the connection to Bain Capital. Please let me know if there's a better forum for it - it didn't seem like late breaking news scope to me).

Fired for not Being Mormon, Managers Say
By NICK MCCANN
Tuesday, April 17, 2012


EUGENE, Ore. (CN) - Former members of Bain Capital fired six out of seven managers of a senior housing company because they are not Mormon, the fired managers claim in Federal Court.

David McCurdy and his co-plaintiffs sued Sorenson Capital Partners, Care Holding Co., Care Senior Living, and SCP Care Acquisition. The plaintiffs claim that Care Senior Living, which manages assisted-living and other care facilities, hired them in March 2011, and that all six of them "had a proven track record of success in the senior housing industry."

They say the private equity firm Sorenson Capital Partners, which controlled Care's daily operations, fired them because they are not members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

"The principals of SCP, including a number of its managing directors and officers, are former partners or executives at Bain Capital and Bain & Company," the complaint states.

Republican presidential candidate-in-waiting Mitt Romney founded Bain Capital in 1984 after working for Bain & Co.

http://www.courthousenews.com/2012/04/17/45678.htm