wanted WLUW to once again become a University radio station, incorporated into the University's Communications Department. The decision raised concern among many involved with the station that the community oriented programming would be dropped. Shortly following the University's announcement of its plans to resume management of the station, the station manager and program manager were replaced, creating even deeper suspicions about the future of the station's programming. When the transfer of management became official in the summer of 2008, dozens of station staff left the station, mostly those involved in music programming. So far, the community programming at WLUW has not changed and the new station management has indicated that no major programming changes will be coming for the foreseeable future. Jerry Mead-Lucero takes over as host/producer In February 2004, Wayne Heimbach decided to retire as the host/producer of Labor Express. His replacement was Jerry Mead-Lucero, a long time Chicago labor activist. Mead-Lucero is a member of the National Writers Union (NWU, UAW Local 1981) and the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). He had worked for a short period as an organizer with SEIU Local 880 and has been active with Jobs with Justice, a labor/community coalition, since the mid-1990s, including a few years as the chair of the organization's Global Justice Committee. Besides labor activism, Mead-Lucero has worked extensively in the Latin American solidarity movement since the late 1980s and in the immigrants rights movement since the mid-1990s. Since 2000, he has been active in both anti-gentrification and environmental justice struggles in the Pilsen neighborhood, a working class, Mexican immigrant neighborhood on Chicago's south side. Despite his lack of experience in radio broadcasting, Mead-Lucero agreed to take over as host of the program when Heimbach's departure threatened to end the programs existence. During Mead-Lucero's tenure as host/producer, Labor Express has sought to continue Heimbach's legacy of covering important developments in the Labor movement locally, nationally and globally. Some of the more important issues addressed by the program in recent years include the 2005 split in the AFL-CIO, the race and class dimensions of the Hurricane Katrina disaster, the Congress Hotel strike, labor opposition to the war in Iraq, the struggle for a living wage ordinance in Chicago, labor struggles in Latin America, the growth of the immigrants rights movement, Renaissance 2010 (a plan to privatize 10% of Chicago's public schools), the CFL's involvement in the 2006 municipal elections