Activism bill dies while Dems in Okla.

.....A House bill to label many types of environmental and animal rights activism as 'terrorism' "died when the democrats left town" -- this according to a representative of the bill's author, Ray Allen, in Austin.
.....House Bill 1516 sought to define as criminal any case of two or more persons acting to deter others from participating in activities involving animals or natural resources. Such activities would have included hunting and food production. The bill also aimed to outlaw civil disobedience targeting medical research, mining, foresting and other broad activities that might affect what Rep. Ray Allen called "economic value." More.

Republicans cover tracks after Democrats split

.....Texas House Democrats are scrutinizing the Texas Department of Public Safety for calling upon the national anti-terror Department of Homeland Security to help them when Texas House Republicans sounded an alarm over the Texas Democrats' recent walkout. Last week, Texas House Democrats went to Oklahoma to prevent the Texas Legislature, dominated by Republicans, from calling a quorum to redistrict Congressional seats, stacking them in Republican favor.
.....Some of the Texas House Democrats arrived in Oklahoma courtesy a private jet owned by Texas Representative Pete Laney. Sometime after House leader Jim Craddick, a Republican, called the Texas Rangers to retrieve the missing Democrats and escort them back to Austin, a yet-to-be named Texas Department of Public Safety official asked the Department of Homeland Safety to help find the supposed missing plane. At their request, the Air and Marine Interdiction Coordination Center then launched a search for a possible crash of a plane carrying governmental officials. More.

Abortion waiting period bill passes Senate

.....The Women's Right to Know Act passed the Texas Senate today. The Act requires a 24-hour reflection period that both advocates and opponents characterize as a day-long wait for the procedure.
.....As of January 2004, women seeking an abortion will be provided with information about abortion alternatives and procedural risks. Advocates claim the bill is in the interest of women's health, since the information will cite the risk of complications and increased susceptibility to breast cancer. More.

Maxxam asked: 'What price is a tree worth'?

.....Houston-based multinational holding corporation Maxxam - with its subsidiary Pacific Lumber - is linked to several lawsuits won this year by environmental activists.
.....Today, local activists confronted Maxxam CEO Charles Hurwitz at the corporation's annual shareholder meeting in Houston, while long time forest defenders celebrated the designation of May 24 as "Judi Bari Day" in San Fransisco.
.....Bari helped begin a campaign to stop Pacific Lumber's practice of clear cutting old growth and redwood forests in northern California, in large part by Pacific Lumber.
.....Tonight, Renee Feltz takes a look at the ongoing saga of lawsuits, logging and local activists attempts to tie Maxxam to its subsidiary's actions on the east coast.
.....This year's Maxxam shareholder meeting lasted about 15 minutes. In his brief yearly address, Maxxam CEO and majority shareholder Charles Hurwitz stated "last year was a challenging year for the economy. We have right-sized our corporation and cut back where we need to maximize profit."
.....According to longtime nemesis of Hurwitz, Earth First activist Darryl Cherney, this includes laying off all loggers and truck drivers for its subsidiary Pacific Lumber. Cherney:
....."What price is a tree worth, and an activist should be killed in order to extract a redwood for a few thousand dollars. That was the question I asked Charles Hurwitz and the Pacific Lumber Company. And I suggested that they start to engage in preserving the environment as a corporate practice, instead of mowing it down and destroying it. And I realize that of course that is a pipe dream. But the bottom line is, you have to ask - as Saul Alinsky would tell us in 'Rules for Radicals' - we have to ask for what we want. So I put those seeds out there knowing full well that the Maxxam board of directors is very entrenched in their ways, in order that we at least breathe some fresh air into a very stale shareholder meeting atmosphere." More.

Union strikes Dow in Freeport over rollbacks

.....Today, union workers with the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 564 are completing their first full day of a strike against the Dow Chemical Plant in Freeport, Texas.
.....And spokesperson for the Union Charlie Singletary says Dow is simply following a union busting trend in the gulf coast petrol-chemical industry:
....."It's certainly going through the petrochemical industry as a whole. They're really attacking the petrochemical unions. I've noticed in the Gulf Coast, Louisiana, Texas, Florida ... and it's kind of spreading like a cancer right now."
.....The multi-billion dollar chemical giant says the current contract is their "best offer."
.....Dow is proposing to abolish seniority rights, which entitle union members with more work experience first crack at jobs that become available in the plant - a practice that has been in place at the Freeport plant for over 50 years.
.....Dow says it wants to select employees for jobs based on a person's skills and overall quality rather than seniority.
.....The disputed contract would also forbid the Union of Operating Engineers from striking in solidarity with other smaller unions - another practice that has been in place with Freeport unions for many years.
.....When KPFT asked what was needed for the two sides to see eye to eye, Singletary says:
....."Cooling off. I think that the company and unions set their teeth in each other real deep, and there was no way that we could get anything established between both parties at the time. We need some cooling off period, and this strike has done that, everybody has cooled off but you have a lot of union workers who are still mad today but we think time will heal some things and make us think. We came up with a lot of proposals, the union did, and the company just said 'no' to most of them."More.