Headlines June 2, 2023 from Democracy Now!

In Canada, hundreds of protesters disrupted the opening day of North America’s largest military weapons convention, CANSEC, taking place in Ottawa. Activists on Thursday blocked vehicle and pedestrian entrances as they carried banners saying “Stop Profiting from War” and “War Crimes Start Here.” The peaceful action delayed Canadian Defense Minister Anita Anand’s opening keynote address for over an hour, in which she went on to tout a new cross-border cybersecurity program aimed at protecting Canada’s defense officials, contractors and infrastructure. Anand told the crowd, “Putin’s war on Ukraine has reminded us that the cyber domain is crucial to our national security.” Lockheed Martin is one of the convention’s largest sponsors. Its stock has soared following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

In Iran, the two women journalists whose reporting on Mahsa Amini’s death in police custody last September helped set off a nationwide uprising were tried this week in what press freedom groups blasted as a “sham trial.” Elaheh Mohammadi and Niloofar Hamedi had been prevented from seeing their lawyers ahead of the trial, and the lawyers were reportedly not permitted to present a defense in court during the closed-door proceedings. Last month, the reporters were awarded the prestigious 2023 UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize, alongside a third imprisoned Iranian journalist and activist, Narges Mohammadi.

Thousands of immigrant workers walked off their jobs across Florida Thursday to protest a draconian anti-immigration bill signed by Republican Governor Ron DeSantis that’s set to take effect in July. The new law imposes harsh penalties on certain employers who don’t check their workers’ immigration status, among other measures. In Immokalee, farmworkers and their families led a march denouncing DeSantis as part of nationwide protests dubbed “A Day Without Immigrants.” This is an undocumented farmworker who kept her identity concealed as she spoke at the protest.

Farmworker: “I ask the governor to have, above all, a conscience. All the vegetables and food that arrive at your table go through the hands of an immigrant. And that is all I can say. As mothers, as women, we are honest people who only come to fight for a better future for our family.”

A federal judge in Texas heard arguments Thursday in a lawsuit led by nine Republican states to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA. A new version of the 2012 Obama-era program was presented by advocates as they fight to salvage the relief, which has provided temporary protection from deportation and work authorization to hundreds of thousands of immigrants brought to the U.S. as children. The judge presiding the case, Andrew Hanen, previously declared DACA unlawful in 2021, blocking all new applications while appeals are resolved in court. A ruling deciding DACA’s fate isn’t expected for months, and the case is likely to head to the Supreme Court.

The Chicago City Council voted Wednesday to allocate more than $50 million from a budget surplus to provide emergency humanitarian aid and housing to the thousands of asylum seekers who have been sent to Chicago since last August by Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott. This is Chicago Alderperson Andre Vasquez.

Andre Vasquez: “So, we’ve got around 10,000 asylum seekers coming from South and Central America. Close to a thousand of them are currently living in our police stations, right? We’re talking sleeping on mats on the floor, sometimes on the floor directly. And we’re talking women, children, like whole families. So, the city currently is looking to see how it’s going to tackle it, at a time where we don’t have the funding and resources from the state and federal government to really adequately address it.”

In Seattle, hundreds of workers at Amazon’s corporate headquarters walked out Wednesday during a lunchtime demonstration to call out Amazon’s inaction on its climate goals and labor issues at the company.

Amazon worker: “We want Amazon to do better. We want the warehouse workers to have better conditions. We want responsibility towards climate problems and climate impact.”

Workers also protested layoffs affecting 27,000 people since November, and a recent forced return-to-office policy. Amazon corporate workers in other cities and countries took part in the walkout, many of them virtually.

A federal monitor is investigating the death of 31-year-old Joshua Valles and other “disturbing” events at the Rikers Island jail complex. An autopsy revealed that Valles died of a fractured skull, which appears inconsistent with prison reports. The monitor also accused the city jail of a lack of transparency. This comes as New York’s Department of Correction says it will stop notifying the press when someone dies in one of its facilities. The Legal Aid Society said, “This is another lowlight in the Department of Correction’s campaign to keep outside eyes away from the catastrophe that is the city’s jail system and the harm it inflicts daily on New Yorkers trapped inside its deadly walls.”