Labor

Barack Obama was there on 1 May 2006. Will you join in on 2008?

AfterDowningStreet.org has an amazing historical overview on why tomorrow there will be massive demonstrations and labor union strikes all across the country : 122 years of the 8 hour week and end of child labor, 5 years of "Mission Accomplished" in Iraq, 3 years since the discovery of the Downing Street Minutes, 2 years since the nation-wide immigration rallies of 2006, almost 2 years ago when Nanci Pelosi and Democrats in Congress and the Senate took the impeachment of George Bush for misleading the country to war, "off the table". Yet in one of the most mindboggling examples of the Bush Administration's information war against Americans, May 1st has been declared Loyalty Day.

And here's the thing : You and I know that when it comes down to it, the war against immigrants is a war against labor which is part of a larger attack from the only people who benefit from the other kind of corporate-led violence like the occupation of Iraq.

As my friend Roberto Lovato said earlier, paraphrasing ActUP, "Silence = Death". If you are like me, you hate marches but you go to them because you know that as a symbol of solidarity in dissent you need to go.

So dust off your walking shoes and get your arse to the streets and square.

I cannot lie : I can't understand the whole concept of prostitution.

I can't understand why I woman would want to get paid by 2, 3, 6, 10 guys (or gals) a night to make rent. I can't understand how people can use their bodies as a tool or an instrument in that fashion.

I can't understand either why a guy would want to pay for sex. Yes, I know, I've heard about the whole "it's about having control and power and no string attached" spiel. Yet whereas many people see that as an exploitative act that gives men an unlimited amount of power, I see it more as a sign of weakness and even impotence. A guy that has to pay for it can't get it any other way and paying it for it is just part of the thrill.

Yet just because I don't understand the psychological dynamics of prostitution does it mean that it should be outlawed. On the contrary, just as with most drugs, I believe that we should follow Holland's lead and legalize prostitution.

Banning prostitution is not going to make it go away. On the contrary, the allure of breaking the taboo would be even stronger. If women and men want to turn sex into a transaction then, by all means, make it safe and make it fair.

Prostitution should be taxed and considered labor.

Prostitutes should be certified by the board of health.

Prostitution houses ought to be licensed and provide security services, along with health benefits and other labor benefits, to all their workers.

Oklahoma is already starting to suffer the consequences of it's tough new anti-migrant workers law :

People are just picking up and leaving :

PARK HILL, Okla. — Autumn had arrived in eastern Oklahoma, and workers at the sprawling Greenleaf Nursery were prepping for deadly frosts. They needed to ship plants, erect greenhouses and bunch trees together to protect them against the cold.

But in late October, about 40 employees disappeared from the 600-acre nursery about an hour's drive from Tulsa. "Some went to Texas, some went to Arkansas," nursery President Randy Davis says. "They just left."

Why did the workers, all immigrants, flee? "Those states don't have 1804," Davis says.

Because most legal residents are children of undocumented parents:

Supporters of 1804 say the state will benefit from illegal immigrants leaving. "That's money in our pocket," says Carol Helm of Immigration Reform for Oklahoma Now.

Not all of those leaving Oklahoma are in the USA illegally. "I've lost two housekeepers out of a staff of 12," says Joe Geis, general manager of the Sleep Inn & Suites in Edmond. "They were here legally, (but) they have family" members who were not.

Immigrant activist Blanca Thames says she has helped more than 1,000 families prepare power-of-attorney papers to protect children in case parents are deported. Many illegal immigrants have U.S.-born children who are citizens.

So Michael R's calls last night to ask if I am still alive. I have been incredibly busy trying to juggle 6 different projects plus the kids plus Xmas and well, he reminded me how guilty I have been feeling about not being able to blog not even part-time these days.

So this morning I was thinking, hmmmmmm, do I use "Staying Alive" or "She Works Hard" for my "I'm not dead yet" post?

I settled for Donna and not the Bee Gees, first because of Travolta and second because my present situation is very 1980's, very recession and Reaganomics with a whiff of Iran-Contra secret war. I get the embed and here's what I got :

I can't believe I had no memory whatsoever of that white woman. "She works hard (for the money)" has never been in my mind a song about "working poor" white women. And the fact that her song is being told by a black woman ... wow.

It's debatable whether Hip Hop won out and took over MTV. At the time it was a big deal to see people like Donna Summers even though she was the biggest female pop vocalist in the United States (if not the world). Prince, Michael Jackson : they were on semi-regular rotation on MTV only because they were the acceptable "poppish" negroes.

I have been meaning to write this one for a while now, but it's not just my blogADD that has kept me away from this discussion. I just so get emotionally pissed off about this subject that it becomes unbearable to try to write everything that comes shooting by my brain. Yet Nance here point to a post by Amanda Marcotte that has pissed me off so royally that I have to respond to it.

In the comments Amanda insists that she allegedly has no problems with either stay at home mothers or homeschoolers; yet in her writing she betrays herself. When she opens up her post with and I quote, "This interview in Newsweek with Laura Derrick, the president of the National Home Educator’s Network, was even fluffier than I expected it would be when I opened the link", you know that her expectation was to see a piece excoriating the "different path" of homeschooling.

It goes downhill from there because she conflates her contempt for xian fundamentalists with homeschooling:

I didn’t expect the interviewer to hammer at Derrick about the issue of whether or not it’s wise for people to homeschool their kids if they are doing so with the intention of teaching them that Noah had a pet dinosaur or that Jesus founded America (and therefore feed them into upper echelon jobs in the Justice Department), but I figured it would at least come up. No luck, though.

In the next paragraph her cluelessness about homeschooling shows with flying color when she claims to know that homeschooling is gaining steam in the left. Ahh ... hmmm ... see ... no!

Homeschooling has never been an either/or proposition for people in the left or right. It has been always a proposition for radicals; especially radicals who have a strong libertarian political background. There's conservative libertarians, Christian libertarians and then people like me, who Chris Nolan has most famously described as Social/Progressive Libertarians.

The problem is that christian fundamentalist homeschoolers in this country have had a well funded public relations machine. That's it. That's all.

The HSDLA was the pet project of Michael Farris, one of the signers of the Manifesto for a Christian Church; which really should be read as a manifesto for a extremist American theocracy.

But you already suspected as much.

On March 25th 1911 (sorry, should have posted this yesterday!), 146 people died in the very building I work in. The result of their deaths was the rapid growth of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union and the real beginning of the fight against sweatshops. It also was the beginning of fire regulations in American cities.

The story of the fire and the missed opportunities to prevent it are chilling. But what is more chilling is the fact that America has forgotten why we need unions. Even some unions have forgotten what unions are all about, but I want everyone who doubts the need for unions to remember the events of March 25, 1911.

I work in what is now known as the Brown Building at NYU. But in 1911 it was the Asch building. The top three floors of the Asch building comprised the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. For the record, a shirtwaist is essentially a woman's blouse. I work a couple of floors below where the factory was. Today I look out my lab's window and I see the annual commemoration of those who died in 1911.

This factory employed some 500 workers, mostly young women immigrants. The working conditions were essentially sweatshop conditions with fourteen-hour workdays and a 60- to 72-hour workweek. It was also a death trap. Workers of course smoked and lighting was from gas lighting...and, of course, the clothing was flammable. But it was even worse due to management distrust of the workers. One of the two exit stairs was locked to keep workers from taking breaks. The fire escape was substandard. And working conditions were crowded.

Here's another good bill that we can thank the new Democratic Majority in Congress for. This comes from Americans for Democratic Action.

Employee Free Choice Act:

The House of Representatives is within days voting on the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA).

Passage of EFCA is an essential step toward empowering American workers to take control of their own lives. EFCA will free workers from the harassment of anti-union employers and the weak National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) election process.

ADAction: Take this time to contact your local newspapers, post to your favorite political blog, and then contact your Representative and urge him/her to support the Employee Free Choice Act [pdf].

We're pushing this a lot today, but that's because this is happening right now in the Senate. We really need to up the pressure to get some action.

The Democrats in the House and Senate backed by some House Republicans are pushing for the first increase in the minimum wage since 1997. Their efforts are being blocked by a Republican filibuster in the Senate and is being held up by no fewer than 121 amendments, mostly benefitting special interests. The pressure has to come from us to get the Republicans in the Senate to stop blocking the first pay raise for America's working poor in 10 years.

This comes from 21st Century Democrats:

Today, the U.S. Senate is poised to vote on finally giving the hard working people in this country a raise. The only thing stopping it… the Republicans are filibustering a final vote by opposing closing debate of the bill and moving to final passage of a increased minimum wage. As of this morning, 121 amendments to the increase in the minimum wage have been filed - largely to benefit special interests or put anti-labor language into the bill. Even though the legislation is enormously popular across the country, the Republicans in the Senate are using this as a way to stall the one thing they don’t want to deal with; the Iraq War...

The fact that this bill sped through the House of Representatives and is only being held up in the Senate by the Republicans as a purely political move is simply horrendous. We cannot stand idly by as they play politics on the backs of hard working people in America.

Two hundred and forty billion dollars in tax breaks for corporations ... but do you think there has been any consideration on the minimum wage? No... What is it about you republicans ... what is it about working men and women that you find so offensive?

Honorable Mention:
Seven Days at Minimum Wage

[Note: I am putting the video after the jump for better loading]