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]

Two issues are coming up in Congress that deserve our attention. Both issues have been blocked by Republicans for years. Now we have a chance to pass them.

The much needed minimum wage increase has already been passed by the House with overwhelming, bipartisan support, but is being filibustered by Republicans in the Senate. Funny how the press criticized even the hint of a Democratic filibuster, but ignore a Republican filibuster that is blocking much needed help for America's working poor.

Here is a message from John Edwards (not to be taken as an endorsement of Edwards, but he seems to be focusing on it):

In less than 72 hours, the Senate will likely vote on a proposal to raise the federal minimum wage to $7.25 an hour. It's a long overdue change that will immediately help over 13 million people, many living at or below the edge of poverty. But it will only happen if you speak up.

Last week, the Senate Republicans filibustered a clean version of the proposal, and now they're trying to force Democrats to either pass billions of dollars more in corporate tax breaks or give up raising the minimum wage.

The only way to beat the special interests is to prove to every Senator that the American people are watching. It's time to tell the Senate that American workers deserve a raise - no strings attached:

Click here to sign our petition to the Senate, urging them to pass the minimum wage raise without delay.

In 2006 Americans gave a clear message: stop the war in Iraq and focus on America's security and economy.

The Democrats heard the message as within the first 100 hours of the new Congress, House Democrats passed a minimum wage increase, the first raise the poorest working Americans have gotten in nearly 10 years. Republicans have maximized CEO profits, now Democrats give working Americans a boost. Eighty House Republicans also heard America's message and joined Democrats, indicating that bipartisanship can work. I want to point out that this the minimum wage has not even kept up with inflation, meaning America's poorest have lost ground in the last 10 years. This change is long overdue.

Also within the frist 100 hours, House Democrats voted to implement the bipartisan recommendations of the 9/11 committee, something Bush and the previous Republican dominated Congress failed to do. This is also long overdue.

If Senate follows suit, we will already have gotten our money's worth from the Democratic Congress.

Meanwhile, Bush seems to have completely missed the message sent by voters. His big idea is to immerse us further in the Iraq quagmire he created by sending 21,500 more troops of our already over-extended military to Iraq. So Bush failed to implement the bipartisan 9/11 commission's recommendations to make America more secure, but he wants to continue to fight a war against people who had nothing to do with attacks on America on 9/11.

In the aftermath of Ralph Nader's colossal, nation-damaging ego trip of 2000, I still maintained that his earlier career was a good one and that there were still good aspects of his legacy. I cited the PIRG (Public Interest Research Group) movement as an example of something founded by Nader that has been of great benefit in American politics. Three things have soured Nader's legacy even more: his 2004 attempt at a repeat of the 2000 ego-driven disaster (this time without help from the Green Party, to credit them with learning a valuable lesson); the full scale of disaster that the Nader-enabled Bush administration has proven to be, fully in line with my warnings in 2000 and contrary to the Nader claim that Bush and Gore were equivalent; and finally, the decline of the PIRG movement into an anti-labor, union-busting political machine that seems to be betraying its roots.

I didn't so much come to this story as have it thrust upon me from several sides. A discussion with a new New Democratic Majority member about what kind of canvassing options were available for pay brought up the PIRG efforts, which I knew were paid, and a comment from Michael Bouldin that he had heard they had become horrible to work for, a kind of progressive political sweatshop.

That was the first I heard about PIRG's decline. Some 20 years ago I tried canvassing for CalPIRG in Los Angeles. It was to be a holiday job, combining my need for some income with my interest in politics. I went through their training and trial period. It was hard work, but exciting. I remember coming home each night of that brief period so keyed up that it took a couple of Guinesses to calm me down for bedtime. We worked from a script and started by working with experienced staff. My partnered staff member liked my style and delivery, saying that I seemed to be a natural. I didn't really find canvassing that enjoyable, but with his encouragement I really felt I could do it.

The (presumably small) Republican Jewish Coalition is apparantly suggesting that Jews, particularly Orthodox Jews, join the Repub party in protest of Lieberman's defeat.

The National Jewish Democratic Council has this to say regarding orthodox Jews defecting to the Republican Party because of Lieberman's defeat:

"I'm absolutely astonished by the RJC ad campaign. American Jews need to know that the Republican Jewish Coalition is no friend of Joe Lieberman, and it certainly isn't an advocate for the issues of importance to the mainstream of the Jewish community.

"For years, the RJC has criticized Joe Lieberman. Now they want to use his good name for their own political purposes. These guys have no shame.

"The Connecticut Senate primary was not about Israel or the Jewish community. Joe Lieberman's record on Israel is impeccable. Ned Lamont's pro-Israel position is commendable. Connecticut will have a pro-Israel senator if either Democrat is elected. Any suggestion otherwise is a distortion of the truth."

Is this the first true grassroots insurgency of the 21st century?

The teachers union has been on strike for 26 days. Every year members of Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de la Educación take to the streets to protest their subsistence wage salaries and working conditions in a Mexican state where the governor and his deputies have salaries and perks that reach six figures.

This year they've taken over the center of Oaxaca. Things turned violent last Thursday with the police using force and tear gas to disperse the crowds.