Los Angeles    When you read this on Friday, I will be somewhere near Saturday flying across the Pacific to Sydney, Australia as part of the Organizers’ Forum delegation to yet another new country where few, if any, of us have ever been in order to find out what organizing looks like for workers and communities down under.   Blogs for the next two weeks will be all about Australia and Indonesia, so you are on notice.

    Some things are easy to compare though without a smile.  One might call it the ghetto premium.  Today I picked up a prescription so I would be set for this trip.  Last month I was picked it up in the western suburbs of Little Rock as a Gustav evacuee.  Same computer system on the same drug in the same Walgreens, so I assumed it would be the same price.  Wrong.  In Little Rock I paid $94.00 and in New Orleans here in the city at the entry to the 9th Ward, I paid over $100.  The ghetto premium for redlining where I live seems to be about $5.00 or 5%.  Why do we allow Walgreens and other companies to do that?

    Anyway, while we mull that with seething anger, we anxiously await all we have to learn about our work in Australia.

    Cheers!