KOUTAGBA, Benin — For as long as anyone could remember, the girls of this village had been forbidden to go to school. They were to be educated instead by the local voodoo priest, in a secret rite of passage not to be spoken about to anyone. When they finished, they were to be married. They and their children were to forever enjoy the protection of the voodoo priest.

David Bacon



Editor's Note: There's another kind of battle being waged in Iraq -- the struggle for worker's rights. Iraqi union organizers say the U.S. authority is working against them.

SAN FRANCISCO--U.S. occupation forces in Iraq escalated their efforts to paralyze Iraq's new labor unions with a series of arrests this weekend.

By SIMON ROMERO

study by a prominent human rights organization has found widespread abuse of labor rights in El Salvador just as final negotiations are to begin for that country and four Central American neighbors to create a free trade agreement with the United States.

The 70,000 grocery workers on strike in Southern California are the front line in a battle to prevent middle-class service jobs from turning into poverty-level ones. The supermarkets say they are forced to lower their labor costs to compete with Wal-Mart, a nonunion, low-wage employer aggressively moving into the grocery business. Everyone should be concerned about this fight. It is, at bottom, about the ability of retail workers to earn wages that keep their families out of poverty.