David Bacon: Recently the oil workers union went on strike for two days. What was the strike about?

Faleh Abood Umara: We have many problems in the oil industry. Some time ago we met with the Prime Minister of Iraq, discussed them, and reached an agreement. We asked the minister of oil to implement that agreement, and he refused. He was supposed to organize a special congress with oil workers in the south, to provide land for building workers' homes, to raise our pay, to implement profit sharing, and to suspend the implementation of the new oil law. Our discussions with the oil minister didn't change the situation, so we announced we would go on strike.

Bacon: What objection does the union have to the proposed oil law?

RED SPRINGS, North Carolina -- To organizer Eduardo Peña, "the raid was like a nuclear bomb" -- more precisely, a neutron bomb, that ingenious weapon of the Cold War whose radiation was meant to kill a city's residents but leave its buildings standing. After the immigration raid of January 24 at the Smithfield pork slaughtering plant in Tar Heel, North Carolina, the factory was still intact, the machinery of the production lines ready to clank and clatter into its normal motion. But many workers were gone, and much of the plant lay still.