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Labor and Grassroots Organizations Rally Today Against Trans-Pacific Partnership and Other 'Fast Track' Deals
As Congress pushes legislation to "fast track" the Trans-Pacific Partnership - a secretive agreement between government bureaucrats and more than 600 corporate lobbyists - a broad range of national labor unions and grassroots organizations will rally today against these measures. These organizations argue that "fast tracking" has been used to pass trade deals that kill jobs for America's workers, lower wages, increase pay disparity and limit public discussion about key economic issues in our country.
WHAT:
WASHINGTON
As Congress pushes legislation to "fast track" the Trans-Pacific Partnership - a secretive agreement between government bureaucrats and more than 600 corporate lobbyists - a broad range of national labor unions and grassroots organizations will rally today against these measures. These organizations argue that "fast tracking" has been used to pass trade deals that kill jobs for America's workers, lower wages, increase pay disparity and limit public discussion about key economic issues in our country.
WHAT:
Rally against the Trans-Pacific Partnership and other "fast track" deals
WHO:
Sponsored by: POPULISM 2015, National People's Action, USAction, Campaign for America's Future, Alliance for a Just Society
WHEN/WHEN:
Today, April 20, 2015
Assemble at 11:30 am at AFL-CIO Headquarters, 815 16th Street NW, Washington, DC
Rally at noon at the DC Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, 600 17th Street NW, Washington, DC
People's Action builds the power of poor and working people, in rural, suburban, and urban areas to win change through issue campaigns and elections.
LATEST NEWS
'Unimaginable Cruelty': ICE Denies Father's Request to Attend Son's Funeral
One family member blames ICE for Wael Tarabishi's death from a degenerative genetic disease. "They killed him when they took his father away," she said.
Jan 28, 2026
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials denied a detained Texas man's request for temporary release to attend this Thursday's planned funeral for his American son, whose death relatives have attributed to ICE's arrest of his father, who was also his primary caregiver.
Ali Elhorr, an attorney for Arlington resident Maher Tarabishi, told People that his client's request for humanitarian release to attend his American son Wael Tarabishi's funeral was denied Tuesday.
Maher Tarabishi, 62, was arrested by ICE enforcers last October 28 amid the Trump administration's deadly anti-immigrant crackdown. Originally from Jordan, he came to the United States on a tourist visa in 1994 and sought political asylum after the visa expired. He is currently being held in Bluebonnet Detention Center in Anson, Texas.
"He had check-ins with ICE every year," said Elhorr. "Never missed a single one. Was never late to one."
Maher Tarabishi was detained in October during a scheduled check-in at an ICE facility.He was the primary caretaker of his son, who died last week.The family is seeking Maher's release so he can attend his son's funeral.ICE reportedly denied the request.Unimaginable cruelty.
[image or embed]
— Robert Reich (@rbreich.bsky.social) January 28, 2026 at 10:31 AM
However, the Trump administration accused Maher Tarabishi of being a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the internationally recognized representative of the Palestinian people in the occupied Palestinian territories and a recipient of millions of dollars in US assistance.
However, the PLO is also considered a terrorist organization by the US government. Maher Tarabishi, his relatives, and his lawyer say he is not affiliated with any terror group.
Wael Tarabishi was diagnosed with Pompe disease—a rare progressive genetic disorder—when he was 4 years old. At the time of his arrest, Maher Tarabishi was his son's primary caregiver.
On November 20, Wael Tarabishi was hospitalized and diagnosed with sepsis and pneumonia in both lungs, according to Shahd Arnaout, who is Maher Tarabishi's daugther-in-law.
"Maher was his caregiver, his father, his best friend, his everything," Arnaout told People Wednesday.
Wael Tarabishi was in and out of the hospital until his death last Friday.
“I blame ICE,” Arnaout told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram Wednesday. “Maybe they did not kill Wael with a bullet, but they killed him when they took his father away.”
Arnaout said her family initially requested that Maher Tarabishi be freed so he could continue caring for his son at their home—which she said is equipped like a mini-hospital—and keep on fighting their insurance company to get critical care.
“Wael is a US citizen, and he was asking for his dad to be next to him while he’s dying,” Arnaout said. “His country failed him.”
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Facing Imminent Death, Final Palestine Action Prisoner Ends Hunger Strike in UK
"If David Lammy wishes to see me dead, if Keir Starmer wishes to see me dead, they can come and do it themselves," said 22-year-old activist Umer Khalid.
Jan 28, 2026
After 17 days without food and three without water, the 22-year-old British pro-Palestine activist Umer Khalid ended his hunger strike after being hospitalized on Monday.
Khalid is the last of the eight young activists with the group Palestine Action to remain on hunger strike to protest their imprisonment without trial and the criminalization of pro-Palestine speech in the UK.
“At the hospital… I was given a choice between treatment and likely death within the next 24 hours due to kidney failure, acute liver failure, and potential cardiac arrest,” said Khalid, in a statement shared by the Prisoners for Palestine group, which is supporting the strikers. He said that he decided to end his hunger strike because, “I am too strong, too loud, too powerful… and there is so much we can do to effect change.”
The activists are being held in prison on remand, meaning they were denied bail and have not yet been given a trial for vandalizing military equipment used to support Israel's genocidal war in Gaza.
Earlier this month, several of the strikers, some of whom had refused food since November, ended their strike after the UK rejected a $2.7 billion contract for a subsidiary of Israel’s largest weapons maker, Elbit Systems.
Four of them were arrested after allegedly breaking into an Elbit facility and destroying equipment. Khalid is among four others accused of trespassing at a British Royal Air Force base and vandalizing airplanes.
Khalid, who suffers from Limb-Girdle Muscular Dystrophy and suffered multiple organ failure during the strike, ended his protest after Amy Frost, the governor of the Wormwood Scrubs prison where he is being held, agreed to meet with him to discuss the conditions of his confinement. After the meeting, he received mail and clothes that the prison had withheld from him, and restrictions on outside visitors that had been in place since July were lifted.
A spokesperson for Prisoners for Palestine said Khalid "absolutely must have compassionate bail in order to heal, all the hunger strikers should."
In addition to protesting the restrictive conditions of their confinement, the strikers were seeking to draw attention to the criminalization of Palestine Action. The UK government, currently led by Labour Party Prime Minister Keir Starmer, added the group to a list of banned "terrorist" organizations in July, meaning that even peaceful support for the group or identification as a member can result in imprisonment.
Since the ban went into effect, more than 2,700 people have been arrested across the UK over support for or involvement with Palestine Action, in many cases for actions like holding a sign or chanting a slogan in support of the group.
The British government has been repeatedly pressed to intervene on behalf of the strikers, who have alleged mistreatment and neglect while in confinement.
Khalid previously went on a 12-day hunger strike, which the Canary reported "made Khalid seriously unwell and unable to walk." According to the outlet, "the prison mismanaged his refeeding by giving him protein shakes and biscuits, dangerously unsuitable."
Other strikers have said recovery from weeks or months without food has been exceedingly difficult. Shahmina Alam, a healthcare worker and the sister of Kamran Ahmed, who refused food for 67 days, said the strike showed that "the prison healthcare system is not fit for purpose" and that "there are systemic failures to provide care which is dignified, timely, or even lifesaving."
"These prisoners are not treated as patients or even humans," she continued. "They are dehumanised, handcuffed in their sleep and in the shower, and are given no privacy, confidentiality, or respect."
Despite calls from medical experts and members of Parliament, David Lammy, the secretary of state for justice, has refused calls to meet with the strikers to discuss their demands, which have included immediate bail, an end to the censorship of their communications, and an end to the ban on Palestine Action.
Khalid said he made his decision to end the strike in part because members of the government "have shown without a doubt that they have no concern for our lives and they do not care if we die in these cells."
He said, "If David Lammy wishes to see me dead, if Keir Starmer wishes to see me dead, they can come and do it themselves."
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Indication That Alex Pretti Was Known to Federal Agents Raises New Questions Over Protester 'Database'
The Department of Homeland Security has denied it has a database of protesters or legal observers, but the agency sent a memo to agents asking them to collect data on dissenters in Minneapolis.
Jan 28, 2026
About a week before Alex Pretti was fatally shot by US Border Patrol agents in Minneapolis, he had another encounter with federal officers who objected to him observing an immigration raid, and his name was known to them—raising new questions about the "database" that Trump administration officials and agents on the ground have threatened dissenters with recently.
CNN reported Tuesday that Pretti, the Minneapolis nurse who was fatally shot by Border Patrol agents while acting as a legal observer and trying to help a woman who had been pepper-sprayed by one officer, was known to federal officers before his killing last weekend. About a week earlier, he had been tackled by a group of agents who broke his rib when he was protesting the detention of a community member.
The outlet reported that earlier this month, the US Department of Homeland Security sent a memo to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents deployed in the Minneapolis area that provided a form called "intel collection non-arrests," urging them to fill in personal data about protesters and people the department labeled as "agitators."
"Capture all images, license plates, identifications, and general information on hotels, agitators, protestors, etc., so we can capture it all in one consolidated form,” the DHS guidance read.
It was not clear whether Pretti's information was gathered on one of the forms or if the Border Patrol agents last Saturday knew who he was when they fatally shot him after throwing him to the ground on a Minneapolis street.
But the news that he had had a previous encounter and that officers in Minneapolis knew his name came amid numerous reports of federal agents behaving aggressively toward nonviolent protesters, and as top officials in the Trump administration as well as officers on the ground have issued threats to demonstrators and legal observers that DHS would be collecting information about them.
After a video taken by a Maine resident went viral last week, showing a federal immigration agent telling her that she would be considered a "domestic terrorist" by the Trump administration and included in a "nice little database" for filming him, Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Tricia McLaughlin denied that such a database exists.
“There is NO database of ‘domestic terrorists’ run by DHS," McLaughlin told CNN when asked about the video taken in Maine. "We do of course monitor and investigate and refer all threats, assaults, and obstruction of our officers to the appropriate law enforcement. Obstructing and assaulting law enforcement is a felony and a federal crime.”
Her response didn't explain why the agent in the video threatened a woman who was merely filming him, an activity that is broadly protected by the First Amendment.
Despite McLaughlin's denial, President Donald Trump's own border czar, Tom Homan, told Fox News earlier this month that he aimed to "create a database where those people that are arrested for interference, impeding, and assault, we’re going to make them famous."
🚨 BREAKING:
Tom Homan says the Trump admin is building a database of people attacking ICE and plans to broadcast their names and faces publicly.
Then he says they’ll contact employers, schools, and neighborhoods to expose them.
“We’re gonna MAKE ‘EM FAMOUS!”
That’s not law… pic.twitter.com/nrhtABt687
— Brian Allen (@allenanalysis) January 16, 2026
The White House has frequently claimed that there's been a "more than 1,000% rise" in assaults against federal immigration agents, but an analysis of federal court records by Colorado Public Radio showed in September that the reports of attacks on officers appeared exaggerated, with the increase closer to 25% from the previous year.
In Pretti's first encounter with federal agents, he told the source who spoke to CNN that he had stopped his car and began blowing a whistle and shouting when he saw ICE officers chasing a family on foot.
The agents then tackled him and leaned on his back, breaking his rib.
"That day, he thought he was going to die,” said the source, who spoke anonymously with CNN out of fear of retribution.
DHS told CNN it had "no record" of the initial encounter with Pretti.
Journalist Jasper Nathaniel said the revelation about Pretti's earlier encounter showed that it is "completely urgent to identify his killers and investigate whether they had access to the database" that officials have alluded to.
Questions about how the alleged database has been used in Minneapolis and elsewhere were raised as another viral clip taken by a legal observer in the city showed an ICE agent telling him, "You raise your voice, I will erase your voice.”
WOW! An ICE agent in Minneapolis tells an American citizen "If you raise your voice, I will erase your voice."
Stop telling me that the Trump administration isn't Fascist. They are threatening people for "raising their voice," and how exactly will ICE "erase our voice?"
Kill… pic.twitter.com/h0pRcWrsc1
— Ed Krassenstein (@EdKrassen) January 27, 2026
In Maine, legal observers have reported that ICE agents have shown up at their homes to confront them about filming and monitoring immigration enforcement.
One observer, Liz Eisele McLellan, told the Portland Press Herald that one agent said to her: “This is a warning. We know you live right here.”
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