Ruby has a busy life as a budding activist. Last night we took her to the 15th anniversary dinner of the Long Island based Workplace Project. This is a worker center--a community organization that helps workers. In this case largely Latin@ workers--landscapers, restaurant workers, day laborers (workers who stand on street corners and hope people will hire them for the day), child care workers, housekeepers and so forth. None of these workers are in a union, a lot of them don't speak English and don't have documents, so they are subject to extreme exploitation--health and safety violations, unpaid wages, low wages, no health care, and so forth. A long sad list--which would be longer and sadder if it wasn't for the Workplace Project, which helps these workers in a range of ways.

Anyways--Ruby had a blast. She spent the whole time running in between everyone's very neatly dressed legs, munching on tortellini and stopping at every single mirror on the wall to leave behind some smudges. I'm sure a few of these smudges made it on to the neatly dressed legs too, because whenever she was about to lose her balance she would simply grab the closest person for support. Everyone thought that was just so cute.

And as for her upcoming activism: Tomorrow Ruby and I will march in the United for Peace & Justice national demonstration against the war in Iraq and next weekend the three of us will be flying to Chicago to attend the Teamsters for a Democratic Union Convention, where David is giving a workshop on running for local union office. As you can see from the photo, Ruby is really excited about going to TDU!