Allison Kilkenny | The Nation
NYC Bus Strike Kicks Off to Fight Privatization of Yellow Buses
School buses lounge near the Coney Island boardwalk, July 8, 2007. (Flickr/Jan-Erik Finnberg)
The president of the union representing New York City school bus drivers announced earlier this week that a citywide strike will be starting Wednesday morning. This will be the first time in more than three decades that NYC’s largest union for school bus drivers will strike.
Michael Cordiello of Local 1181 of the Amalgamated Transit Union said that more than 8,000 bus drivers and matrons—workers who make sure children get on and off buses safely—would take part in the strike in response to a dispute over job protections in any new bus company contracts for the bus routes.
The city wants to cut transportation costs and has put bus contracts with private bus companies up for bid. The union is criticizing lack of employee protections, fearing current drivers may lose their jobs once contracts expire in June.
Writing for Alternet, Molly Knefel explains how the privatization effort is part of a push for widespread austerity:
The dispute is simple—it’s about saving money. As New York City schools chancellor David Walcott has noted, the city has operated its school-bus contracts without any “significant competitive bidding” for 33 years. During that time, something called “Employment Protection Provisions” ensured job security for senior workers, even if the city changed bus companies—meaning that experienced drivers were rehired year after year. But the contracts have gotten too pricey; more than twice what Los Angeles pays per student—and the city now plans to offer the contracts to the “lowest responsible bidder.” The union representing the school-bus drivers, Local 1181 of the Amalgamated Transit Union, is asking for Employment Protection Provisions to be included in the new contract to protect workers from losing their jobs to newer, cheaper labor. But due to a state court of appeals decision last year, in which the court ruled to exclude the provisions based on competitive bidding laws, the city says its hands are tied.
Part of the significance of this dispute is that while the importance of job protections for current bus drivers is difficult to quantify, the city’s need to reduce the budget is as plain and clear as the budget numbers themselves. In the face of the millions of dollars the city stands to save with cheaper contracts, why should it matter if, for example, 22,500 special-needs students find themselves with brand-new bus drivers one day?
It matters because how we treat those who care for certain children reflects how we value those children. It creates a system in which workers entrusted to be responsible for a child’s safety are utterly replaceable in the name of protecting the bottom line.
Even though under the city’s strike contingency plans, students, parents, or guardians would receive free MetroCards for mass transit, some politicians immediately rushed to condemn the strike and bus drivers.
Fully embracing the false paradigm that school contract disputes pit parents against education employees, Democratic NYC Council member David G. Greenfield tweeted, “School bus strike is 1st major test for NYC mayoral candidates. Whose side will they take: parents or unions?”
Greenfield then goes on to use the example of special needs children—not to illustrate the importance of protecting workers’ jobs as Knefel did in the above passage—but to depict striking drivers as being selfish.
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When a parent responded to Greenfield that she is a parent and supporter of the striking drivers, he tweeted, “That’ very nice. I have dozens of parents of special needs children who have no way to get their kids to school b/c of strike,” and “the victims are the children. Especially the special needs children - many of whom won’t be able to get to school.”
Valdes-Dapena, the mother of a 10-year-old, told the AP, “I’m concerned about what happens if the drivers lose their seniority, if they’re less experienced. You can teach someone to drive a school bus, but what happens when all hell breaks loose behind them?” She added it takes experience to deal with situations like bus breakdowns, medical emergencies of kids with special needs or traffic, when kids get frustrated or unruly. “The drivers we have now—I’d trust them with my own life,” she said.
Any time a labor dispute like this arises, leadership from the top-down rushes to blame selfish workers for putting children in jeopardy rather than addressing issues of job security, privatization and how children are far more likely to suffer under budget cuts and teacher layoffs, while trying to learn in hostile education environments monitored by overworked, under-paid educators, than they are to suffer during a hiatus to settle a labor dispute.
Mayor Bloomberg perfectly demonstrated the “think of the children!” concern trolling when he remarked, “We hope that the union will reconsider its irresponsible and misguided decision to jeopardize our students’ education.” (Note: This concern for the children was missing when Bloomberg cut millions from after school programs.)
Herein lies the false choice. It’s not the children versus the bus drivers, but a choice between living wages and jobs with dignity, and the forces of privatization threatening workers everywhere.
For more on less-than-stellar job standards, check out Josh Eidelson’s post on Walmart’s “benefits” for veterans.
Idle No More: Global Protests for Indigenous Rights
Idle No More activists hit the streets on December 21, 2012. (Flickr/Mary Kosta)
Late last year, a movement named Idle No More sprung up in Canada and quickly spread across the continent in response to attacks to indigenous rights and damage to the environment. Environmentalist Bill McKibben recently encouraged his readers to think of INM as the Occupy movement, “but with deep, deep roots.”
It feels like [Idle No More] wells up from the same kind of long-postponed and deeply-felt passion that powered the Arab spring. And I know firsthand that many of its organizers are among the most committed and skilled activists I’ve ever come across. In fact, if Occupy’s weakness was that it lacked roots (it had to take over public places, after all, which proved hard to hold on to), this new movement’s great strength is that its roots go back farther than history. More than any other people on this continent, they know what exploitation and colonization are all about, and so it’s natural that at a moment of great need they’re leading the resistance to the most profound corporatization we’ve ever seen. I mean, we’ve just come off the hottest year ever in America, the year when we broke the Arctic ice cap; the ocean is 30 percent more acidic than it was when I was born.
Whereas Occupy had a whole host of entirely valid grievances, INM is more focused with an agenda of two goals: sovereignty and sustainability.
INM states at its website:
On December 10th, Indigenous people and allies stood in solidarity across Canada to assert Indigenous sovereignty and begin the work towards sustainable, renewable development. All people will be affected by the continued damage to the land and water and we welcome Indigenous and non-Indigenous allies to join in creating healthy sustainable communities. We encourage youth to become engaged in this movement as you are the leaders of our future. There have always been individuals and groups who have been working towards these goals – Idle No More seeks to create solidarity and further support these goals. We recognize that there may be backlash, and encourage people to stay strong and united in spirit.
Their plan of action includes supporting and encouraging grassroots movements to create their own forums to learn about Indigenous rights, building networks across all of Canada and a relationship with the United Nations to raise awareness about these issues, all while acknowledging they are drawing from a tradition of indigenous and environmental activists who helped pave the way for INM.
Though First Nations (sometimes referred to as “Natives,” “Indians,” or “Aboriginals,”) make up only three percent of Canada’s population, First Nations people under the age of 18 are the fastest growing segment of the Canadian population, according to the latest census data.
The Christian Science Monitor reports that First Nations people increasingly live in urban centers, but many continue to live on remote reserve communities that suffer from inadequate housing and utilities, access to schools, extremely high food prices, epidemics of suicide, and other serious problems.
INM emerged from online conversations between four women in Saskatchewan who were concerned about the implications of Bill C-45, a sweeping piece of budget legislation that critics felt would imperil the protection of thousands of Canadian streams and lakes and, by amending Canada’s Indian Act without consulting First Nations, further erode their sovereignty.
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Of course, this is only one of many grievances First Nations have with the Harper government. There is growing concern among the First Nations community that the Harper government intends to do away entirely with the First Nations’ collective rights.
Prominent native activist and scholar Pam Palmeter told CSM that “It’s an assimilatory agenda. That’s the whole basis for assimilation and colonial policies, and none of that has changed over time.”
“They have a whole suite of legislation ever since they’ve been in [power] that has been very nearly unanimously opposed—certainly by First Nations groups anyway,” she says. “And they all have a very, very similar theme, focusing on individual rights, disbanding communal rights, and focusing what will benefit Canadians, as opposed to what will benefit First Nations.”
There have been dozens of INM actions in Canada, including the blockade of the Toronto/Ottawa/Montreal track of CN Rail, occupation of major highways, and traditional circle dances by thousands of First Nation members and their supporters that clogged major tourist and shopping districts from Toronto to Calgary.
Now, INM has come to the United States. The US is one of many countries holding #J11 Global Day of Action events (#IdleNoMore on Twitter) in which allies have planned protests in support of the Canadian movement. Actions are planned in New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Egypt, Finland, Germany, Hawaii, Italy, Puerto Rico, Sri Lanka and the United Kingdom.
“The goal is to raise the profile of the movement, demonstrate our global presence, and give visibility to the growing momentum as a people’s movement first,” one of the solidarity groups states on a Facebook event for today’s protest.
I’ll be covering the INM event in New York City today on Twitter.
Occupy Steubenville: Anonymous Takes On Ohio Sheriff
The word “occupy” has taken on a new meaning since September 2011. Of course, it still means to physically reside in a space—to seize or hold property otherwise denied to the public in the cases of Occupy Wall Street and its various chapters—but now the word is also used as a euphemism when protesters seek justice in the wake of institutional failure. Occupy Our Homes arose when the government failed to help underwater homeowners remain in their houses, and Occupy Sandy emerged in the aftermath of a hurricane when the state failed to provide timely aid for thousands of New Yorkers.
Following the horrific assault of a 16-year-old girl in which the alleged rapists, Trent Mays and Ma’lik Richmond, dragged the extremely drunk girl to three separate parties during the course of the night as their personal rape toy, hundreds of protesters descended upon the city of Steubenville, Ohio, demanding justice. The New York Times discovered that many local members of the community, including the football coach, have been extremely defensive and wary of assigning blame for the alleged rape, apparently because the community assigns something like a God-like status to football players.
The hacking collective Anonymous has taken a keen interested in the sheriff investigating the case, accusing him of being close with Steubenville High’s football coach, deleting video evidence, and running “the largest illegal gambling operation in Jefferson County.” Anonymous is convinced, rightfully so, that the case isn’t being taken seriously enough by the community or the justice system, and so some Anonymous activists have taken it upon themselves to start a local leaks page to release information gathered on people they believe are involved in covering up the full extent of the alleged assault.
Steubenville’s Sheriff Abdalla recently responded to Anonymous’s accusations by telling WTRF that he was “coming after” Anonymous.
Anonymous clearly didn’t take that threat seriously:
And Abdalla seemed to have a change of heart after that interview when he appeared at the Occupy Steubenville gathering to try and convince the crowd that he’s “not the bad guy.”
As The Atlantic diplomatically phrased it, “The crowd didn’t receive him that well.”
The rally consisted of many rape victims offering extremely moving testimonies about their own experiences being raped. One woman gave a tearful speech while wearing a Guy Fawkes mask, only to dramatically remove it and declare she didn’t want to hide anymore.
While it’s heartening to see Anonymous rally around this case, setting off a larger (and badly needed) discussion about rape and rape culture within the United States, Slate’s Amanda Marcotte is right to urge caution about these leaks. The potential to name and shame innocent people during the frenzy to obtain justice is high right now, especially when the traditional institutional channels appear to have failed in Steubenville. Take a lesson from director Spike Lee, who retweeted a Florida address said to be that of George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watch captain who fatally shot teenager Trayvon Martin, to his more than a quarter-million Twitter followers. Turns out, in his rush for vigilante justice, Lee posted the wrong address. David and Elaine McClain, whose son is named William George Zimmerman, were forced to flee their home. Lee later apologized to the McClains and agreed to compensate them for their loss and the disruption to their lives.
It’s a tough balance to find between direct action and vigilantism, particularly when it comes to Anonymous, but what’s clear is that Anonymous is one of the only forces taking a vocal interest in obtaining justice for the Steubenville rape victim. When the legal system experiences total paralysis, perhaps what’s needed is a shock to bring the public’s attention to systemic rot.
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Occupy Steubenville is a particularly interesting phenomenon given that so much media interest has been devoted to the no-less-horrific gang rape of a young woman named Jyoti Singh Pandey in India. Establishment pundits rushed to condemn the rape, and the rape culture that permitted the attack, when it came to exotic Indian folk in a faraway land, but seem more hesitant to address rape culture within the United States, even though a shining example of women’s second-class status is on display in Ohio.
Men who rape—and rape culture contributors who laugh about it later on Twitter and YouTube—do so precisely because they either don’t think rape is wrong (or, at the very least, raping a drunk girl “doesn’t count”) and/or they know they can rape with impunity. The “justice system” can’t work if there’s a two-tier structure where someone people get punished for raping teenage girls, and others don’t simply because they happen to be football players.
But this is the example set by the highest echelons of the NFL, mirrored down the ranks through college football, extending to small communities like Steubenville. Some members of our society are permitted to rape because we like watching them run a ball down a field, and that skill is deemed more culturally valuable than the lives and dignity of women.
With that massive institutional failure—the failure to protect women—in mind, it’s no wonder that Occupy Steubenville arose quickly in the aftermath of the Ohio rape case.
“Make no mistake, all you need is a Google search engine to realize we are serious in what we do. You can hide no longer. You have attracted the attention of the hive,” an Anonymous activist said in a video. “We will not sit tightly and watch a group of young men who turn to rape as a game or sport get the pass because of athletic ability and small town [inaudible].”
In response to the Anonymous-led campaign, the city of Steubenville set up a new site called Steubenville Facts that claims to include facts to clear up any confusion about their community.
Cathy Davis, the city manager, said the site is meant to combat the perception that “everyone in Steubenville is acting or is like the individuals that are involved in the case. That we are a community that is run by football. That is not the case.”
As Dave Zirin writes this week, women have also been harshly victimized by varsity-blues-gone-wild at Notre Dame.
GOP Demands More Cuts in Wake of Fiscal Cliff Deal
The House approved a deal that Democrats claim will stave off the harshest and most immediate consequences of the fiscal cliff, even though the Senate bill delays the onset of the “sequester”—those swift, automatic spending cuts—for only two months.
Now is when the establishment media may turn their focus away from the real effects of the fiscal cliff negotiations, which would be a disservice, considering that House Speaker John Boehner, erroneously depicted by the left as hapless and bumbling during the talks, is now laying out the GOP’s vision for a post-fiscal cliff America.
“Now the focus turns to spending,” Boehner predictably said in a statement following the House vote, as though slashing programs likes Social Security and Medicare will, in any way, lead to a balanced America.
Boehner and Company didn’t surrender ground during the negotiations. The fiscal cliff deal leaves in lucrative loopholes enjoyed by hedge-fund and private-equity moguls, along with a whole host of other gifts to Midwestern ethanol producers and Puerto Rican rum merchants (seriously).
The research and lobbying organization Citizens for Tax Justice released a report showing that the tax deal approved by the Senate would save less than half as much revenue as President Obama’s original proposal.
The New Yorker’s John Cassidy dissects the report:
Taxpayers in the middle quintile of the income distribution will get an annual income tax cut of $880 relative to what would have happened if the expiration of the old law had been maintained. Taxpayers in the top one per cent, those poor benighted souls who will be forced to pay the higher top marginal rate, will still benefit from the Bush rate on the first $400,000 of their income; each will save $17,840 relative to a world in which the Bush tax cuts had been allowed to lapse.
“So much for Obama crushing the rich,” Cassidy writes before segueing into handwringing about deficits.
Economist Dean Baker writes that this entire debate has been part of a larger distraction “at a time when by far the country’s most important problem remains the economic downturn caused by the collapse of the housing bubble.”
“The obsession with budget deficits is especially absurd because the enormous deficits of recent years are entirely the result of the economic downturn,” he writes at CNN.
Furthermore, profits have returned to prerecession levels. Bakers points to the Campaign to Fix the Debt, an organization comprised of many of the country's richest and most powerful CEOs that pushes the case for cutting Social Security and Medicare as well as lowering the corporate income tax rate.
Boehner met with Fix the Debt in November and reminded the campaign’s leaders that entitlement reforms must be part of the solution to the fiscal cliff. The list of Fix the Debt members reads like a Justice League (or Injustice League?) of the world’s richest people and their cronies, including Chairman and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt, Honeywell CEO David Cote, Erskine Bowles, Alan “Greedy Geezers” Simpson, and Governor Ed Rendell, among others.
“CEOs from both political parties have openly come together to demand cuts in Social Security and Medicare, two programs that enjoy massive political support across the political spectrum,” Baker writes. “The wealthy are joining hands without regard to political affiliation to cut benefits that enjoy broad bipartisan support among everyone who is not rich.”
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Baker reiterates that we dot not have a chronic deficit problem, and the big deficits are the results of a collapsed economy, which can only be fixed by the president and Congress supporting programs that will put people back to work and bring the economy back up to speed. The 99 percent having money to buy goods is the only way to get the economy rolling again, which won’t happen by Congress giving massive tax breaks to a handful of billionaires who don’t create jobs for anyone other than themselves when they create nefarious Fix the Debt committees.
In fact, Baker writes, it’s necessary for the government to run large deficits!
Ideally, the money would be spent in areas that will make us richer in the future: Education, infrastructure, research and development in clean energy, etc. There is just no way around a large role for the government given the economy’s current weakness.
Actually, that last point isn’t true. There is a way around that role, and that’s Boehner and Company’s plan: the anti-state—the resource vacuum that slashes earned benefits, worsens the recession and leads to infinitely more suffering for the 99 percent.
Boehner made his intentions clear following the fiscal cliff deal:
“The American people re-elected a Republican majority in the House, and we will use it in 2013 to hold the president accountable for the ‘balanced’ approach he promised, meaning significant spending cuts and reforms to the entitlement programs that are driving our country deeper and deeper into debt.”
Was Congress' compromise a win or loss for progressive politics? Check out George Zornick on "The Good and Bad of the Fiscal Cliff Deal."
Occupy the NRA
In recent months, Occupy Wall Street has proven to be a versatile force capable of tackling a variety of issues from inequality to Hurricane Sandy to crippling debt. Occupy’s Rolling Jubilee raised somewhere around $450,000 to abolish millions of dollars worth of personal debt, and Occupy Sandy and Occupy Our Homes were able to get aid into the hands of New Yorkers and arrange temporary shelter for displaced families much faster than the state or federal government or prominent charity organizations like the Red Cross.
Respond and Rebuild, a volunteer group, joined forces with Occupy Sandy to bring resources and volunteers to devastated NYC communities:
Now, an offshoot of the original movement says it plans to unleash the power of the 99 percent on the National Rifle Association.
In the wake of the tragic elementary school massacre in Connecticut, the group launched Friday afternoon with a Facebook page, “Occupy the NRA,” which currently has over 3,300 likes.
The group’s first post was a picture of an assault weapon with overlaid text: “The US has 5% of the world’s population, but accounts for half of all firearms worldwide and 80% of the gun deaths in the 23 richest countries.” The image has been shared over 8,300 times and liked by 655 people.
Another post lists the contact information for every NRA board member and encourages the page’s followers to write, e-mail, call, and “ask them how many more children, parents, sisters, and brothers must die before they’ll agree to truly effective gun control.”
Organizers told Current that early objectives include disseminating useful facts and figures about guns in the United States.
“We want to put the gun control debate front and center and get the facts out there,” co-founder Mark Provost, 32 years old, told Current. But their longer term goals (perhaps by next week) include directly targeting the NRA.
“We will be protesting NRA meetings where they happen and we will be putting public pressure on Congress,” Provost said.
Provost added there will be an organized call-in to state and national politicians starting on Monday lobbying for gun control efforts.
Provost is part of the New Hampshire Occupy movement, a chapter of the larger Occupy movement that, as Current points out, has a long, complicated relationship with guns. In October, a New Hampshire Occupy member brought a handgun to one of the group’s meeting, and The Huffington Post wrote up the incident under the headline, &#a20;Occupy New Hampshire: Hot Dogs, Guns and No Leaders.”
The debate over guns’ role in the group came to a head in July, causing a schism in the state’s movement, Current reports. A week later, James Holmes walked into a move theatre in Aurora, Colorado and murdered twelve people, injuring fifty-eight others.
Needless to say, Provost rests firmly on the anti-gun side of the debate.
“I was adamant that guns had no place in a peaceful movement,” he told Current.
Additionally, there have been other various calls to protest the NRA outside of the Occupy community. CREDO Mobile tweeted a call to protest the organization on Monday, and a posting on Craigslist calling for a flashmob to decent upon the NRA headquarters in Washington, DC.
Peaceful candlelight vigils began almost immediately after the Connecticut massacre, popping up in Times Square and in front of the White House, and of course in Newton.
At the White House vigil, a protester carried a sign, “If a pre-school child hits another child with a rock, the solution is not for every child to have a rock!”
“Mr. President: We are praying for your action,” a sign read.
Another stated: “#TodayIsTheDay, #TodayIsTheDay, #TodayIsTheDay.”
The NRA isn’t the only organization keeping us from addressing gun violence. Check out John Nichols on how ALEC obstructs an honest debate about gun control.
Thousands Descend on Michigan Capitol to Protest Anti-Worker Bills
While thousands of union workers and their supporters protested outside the Michigan Capitol Tuesday, Governor Rick Snyder signed into law two bills that dramatically limit labor rights.
“This isn’t about us versus them. This about Michiganders,” Snyder said at a news conference in which he announced signing the legislation.
However, the events unfolding outside and inside the Capitol couldn’t have contradicted his statement more sharply. A very real ideological battle is occurring in Michigan right now between labor and the forces that wish to destroy the power of collective bargaining.
From the first rumblings of a potential protest within the Capitol, law enforcement officials have made it very clear they don’t intend to allow Michigan to become another Wisconsin, and police donning riot gear and armed with tear gas canisters, pepper spray and batons patrolled the corridors, determined to prevent a similar occupation to the one that lasted in the Wisconsin Capitol for nearly three weeks. (photo by @JeffRae)
State Police officials confirmed that one of their troopers used pepper spray on a protester (the AP bizarrely reports the pepper spray was used to “calm the protester”), and even though police claim the man “grabbed a trooper,” he wasn’t arrested. Two other people were arrested after they reportedly tried to force their way into another building on the grounds where Snyder has offices.
Mark Schauer, a Democrat who previously represented the state in the US House, told Lansing news services MIRS that he was pepper-sprayed in a separate incident while protesting.[…]
“Unfortunately while people were exercising their first amendment rights, I among them got pepper sprayed by police officers,” Schauer said in a MIRS video. “We were not endangering the building in any way but we wanted to make sure, since the Republicans have not provided for any public hearings or opportunities for people to speak on these bills, that they can hear how the people really feel. Unfortunately, some of us are paying a price for it.”
Mounted police rode into a crowd of protesters and used the bodies of their horses to push the crowd back as the protesters booed and screamed at the police.
Ryan Knight of Ann Arbor was among those near the front. He got pushed back by a horse, which he said also stepped on him.
“This was a peaceful protest,” he said, holding a protest sign. “I don’t know why they decided to do that.”
Knight said that he is not a member of a union, but came to support them.
(photo by @roopraj)
A tent set up by Americans for Prosperity, a group supporting Snyder’s anti-worker bill and that fronts special interests championed by the oil billionaire David Koch, collapsed during the protest, and there are varying reports explaining the events leading up to the tent falling. Authorities described “pushing and shoving” among protesters before the tent being torn down, while other reports described belligerent behavior from AFP supporters beforehand, including reports that AFP supporters threw pennies at union protesters saying, “Your work isn’t worth these.”
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Even though the tent collapse has now been seized by the right-wing media as evidence of “violent union behavior”—one report hilariously described the parties involved as “rabid union members”—authorities report no one was hurt.
AFL-CIO representative Eddie Vale distanced the pro-union supporters from the particular group that was involved in the tent being torn down, but also accused the AFP supporters of being “disciples of James O’Keefe,” who were “attempting to instigate the crowd all day.” Indeed, the few videos that emerged in the immediate aftermath of the incident appear to be heavily edited, with large chunks of footage having obviously been deleted.
Naturally, obsession over an incident in which no one was hurt distracted from the larger purpose of the protest, which is that Michigan has become the twenty-fourth state to adopt laws to prohibit requiring union dues as a condition of employment. Of course, by making the payment of union dues voluntary for private-sector unions, many may opt to save their already meager means instead of paying into a union, thereby further weakening their options to collectively bargaining for things like higher wages, and fulfilling their downward spiral into disempowerment and poverty. Passing so-called right-to-work legislation in Michigan is particularly symbolic given the state’s long history of being the center of American labor activity.
Valerie Constance, a reading instructor for the Wayne County Community College District and member of the American Federation of Teachers, sat on the Capitol steps with a sign shaped like a tombstone. It read: “Here lies democracy.”
“I do think this is a very sad day in Michigan history,” Constance said.
ABC News reports that voters will have the option to invoke a referendum to “approve or reject” the law, and opponents of the law will have ninety days after the legislature adjourns to gather 8 percent of the total votes cast in the last gubernatorial race, which were more than 3 million. If they succeed, the law will be placed on the ballot and subject to a statewide vote.
TAKE ACTION: Help defend the rights of Michigan workersThousands Are Expected to Protest Anti-Worker Legislation in Michigan
Large numbers of Michigan State Police officers have surrounded the Capitol this morning in anticipation of a day of protests in response to so-called right-to-work legislation currently being processed through the state Legislature.
No doubt, the anticipatory police presence is related to the huge backlash to similar anti-worker legislation signed by Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker that led to union activists occupying the Capitol building in February and March of 2011.
If passed, Michigan will be the twenty-fourth state with laws to prohibit requiring union dues as a condition of employment.
Ironworkers from the Upper Peninsula and Wisconsin will travel to Lansing this week, and over the weekend, hundreds of working people gathered into UAW Local 600 in Dearborn to learn about peaceful civil disobedience, a tactic they plan to use in the fight against the anti-worker legislation. (photo via Teamster Nation)
The union hall reportedly couldn’t hold all the nurses, autoworkers, Teamsters, teachers, members of SEIU, AFSCME, UFCW, ISO and other unions who attended the meeting.
“Humanize the situation. Be clear with your intentions. Introduce yourself,” national labor activist Lisa Fithian, of Austin, Texas, said through a megaphone. “They’re going to do everything they can to criminalize us.”
…
“We are not the violent ones,” Fithian told the crowd. “What is it that the police are going to do? What is it that the governor is going to order?… We have to remember: The police are not our enemy in this fight. They’re doing a job. It’s our job to convince them that they should put their guns down and join the people.”
Additionally, the NFL Players Association put out a statement opposing the bill:
“We stood up against this in the past, and we stand against it in its current form in Michigan,” George Atallah, the association’s assistant executive director for external affairs, told ThinkProgress in a phone interview. “Our leadership and players are always proud to stand with workers in Michigan and everywhere else. We don’t think voters chose this, and we don’t think workers deserve this.”
On Tuesday, thousands of union activists are expected to converge at the Capitol, and congressional Democrats are meeting with Governor Rick Snyder this morning to discuss the anti-worker legislation.
The Michigan Nurses Association plans to demonstrate on the Capitol steps this morning, and protesters will wear duct tape over their mouths.
Detroit Free Press:
“This politically motivated legislation will only give corporations and CEOs more power to silence workers, including nurses,” spokeswoman Dawn Kettinger said in a news release.
Eight people have already been arrested at the Capitol Thursday after demonstrators reportedly attempted to rush on the Senate floor and state police first pepper-sprayed the protesters and then sealed the doors to the Capitol for several hours afterwards.
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The legislation has been challenged in court by a union activist who claims the state Open Meetings Act was violated when police barred the doors to the Capitol on Thursday, ABC News reports. Ari Adler, a spokesman for Republican House Speaker Jase Bolger, told the Detroit Free Press the lawsuit was “baseless and frivolous” and “more about receiving attention than getting justice.”
Michigan State Police sent out a reminder notice Sunday about rules of use at the Capitol:
The department said that on weekdays when the Legislature isn’t in session—such as Monday—public visiting hours inside the Capitol are from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. When the Legislature is in session—such as Tuesday—the building would remain open longer if lawmakers remain in session. The building would be open to the public until 30 minutes after the last chamber of the Legislature or committee hearing adjourns.
The grounds outside the Capitol are listed as open for events and exhibits from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m.—or longer, if the Legislature remains in session outside those times.
For more on Michigan’s anti-labor legislation, check out John Nichols’s coverage here.
Citizens Protest Looming 'Fiscal Cliff' Budget Cuts
For the past several weeks, clusters of citizens have been protesting the opportunistically named “fiscal cliff” budget cut talks. Even though the “fiscal cliff” is really more of a fiscal curb or fiscal slope, conservative lawmakers have seized upon the media-generated panic surrounding the doomsday January 1 cutoff date as an excuse to inflict further cuts and steer the conversation away from ending tax breaks for the one percent.
The push back from citizens began when activists from ACT UP protested the possible inclusion of cuts to AIDS funding during the negotiations. Activists arranged a table and chairs outside Senator John Kerry’s home in Boston as part of a mock Thanksgiving meal during which they put pill bottles on plates instead of food, saying they want Kerry to fight to fully fund AIDS programs during the negotiations.
The following week, three AIDS activists from Vocal-NY were arrested after they stripped naked in the outer office of House Speaker John Boehner.
“We wanted to strip away the rhetoric of the fiscal cliff,” the director, Sean Barry, told The Washington Post, adding that the cuts could leave tens of thousands without the ability to treat their disease.
In Tennessee, protesters say they are preparing to gather in downtown Jackson in order to support the Obama administration’s request to put pressure on Republicans.
“He asked us to be behind him, the same message that got him elected. He needs supporters,” said resident Alma Jones to an ABC affiliate.
The federal budget fight also has a local component for Tennessee residents, who have been watching their own state government wage a budget battle in the Capitol. Residents have written hundreds of letters to Congress, demanding a bill that extends tax cuts for the middle class and raises taxes on households that make more than $250,000 a year.
Anne Nesse, a former Democrate candidate for Idaho’s Senate District 4, delivered a letter to Senator Mike Crapo’s office as part of a nationwide move pushed by MoveOn.org to oppose the GOP’s effort to extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy and cut Social Security (which does not contribute to the deficit), Medicare and Medicaid.
Nesse wrote:
By a ratio of roughly 9 to 1: voters of all income levels here do not believe in “trickle down economics”. Voters here understand that unless the wealthy are actually creating jobs at which citizens can make a livable wage, that giving a tax cut to this group does NOT help our economy, or help to pay off our federal deficit that we owe primarily to ourselves in entitlements like medicare and social security.
In Maryland, activists protested Congressman Andy Harris.
“Andy Harris has never done a vote for the Eastern Shore,” said Carl Widell, regional leader for Organizing For America Eastern Shore. “He’s never done a vote for the Chesapeake Bay. He’s never done a vote for the middle class. He doesn’t live here, he doesn’t understand us [and] he doesn’t really represent us very well.”
Harris’ office responded with the tired “raising taxes on the wealthy stifles job creation” soundbite. Corporations have been enjoying tax breaks and exploiting tax loopholes for decades, and they’re still outsourcing labor and shutting down factories to ship operations overseas, so clearly tax cuts aren’t inspiring them to keep hiring American.
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Protesters in Wisconsin lined the sidewalk outside Congressman Sean Duffy’s office last week in response to looming cuts. Wisconsin Action’s press release stated their action was meant to “send a clear message: put the middle class ahead of millionaires and end tax breaks for the top 2 percent.”
“I’m here today and I’ve been coming to Duffy since he got elected,” said protester Joel Lewis to WEAU. “I’m very concerned about the disparity of wealth in our country and I think a lot of the GOP’s policies have led to that over time.”
Duffy’s spokesman John Gentzel responded that the congressman has always supported “limiting deductions especially for higher income earned,” but “the Democrats have to put real, immediate spending cuts on the table, too.”
Over the weekend in New York, activists from labor, community, student and faith organisations called on the US House members to end tax cuts for the rich.
“We want a clear statement from US Representative Michael Grimm,” the Strong Economy For All Coalition, one of the groups involved in the protest, stated on its website. “Will you stand up for regular New Yorkers who need help? Or do you stand with the millionaires and billionaires?”
The Hill asked a “source close to the White House” if Obama will anger his base by compromising on “entitlements” and the source responded, “So what? He will do what’s best for the country, period. He did that with healthcare. He’ll do it again here.”
Group in Peoria, Illinois hangs a “fiscal cliff” protest banner over a highway:
Find out more about the CEOs lobbying for austerity cuts, while asking for a lower corporate tax rate.
'No Services, No Rent': NYCHA Residents Call For Action in Sandy's Wake
Following the devastating wrath of Hurricane Sandy, hundreds of thousands were left without basic services like power, heat and running water. And even though the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) didn’t respond to complaints and pleas for help for an entire week, and many public housing residents remain without basic services, residents are still expected to pay rent.
Finally, on November 19, three weeks after the storm, the NYCHA held a hearing on the matter in Red Hook. Angry residents asked the board about the lack of a swift response, and dozens of others left the hearing, instead opting to attend a community assembly organized by participants of Occupy Red Hook and Occupy Sandy down the street.
Occupy protesters documented some of the comments made by residents at that hearing:
“How are we supposed to buy food and Christmas presents?” said one neighbor, “We need a rent credit for now, not January 1st.”
“No services, no rent,” another affirmed.
“When Obama won, I didn’t hear any jubilation–because the projects were dark,” noted another.
Red Hook West NYCHA Residents Speak Out at “Community Power Meeting”:
Around fifty Red Hook residents reached a consensus, putting out a call for NYCHA residents from Red Hook and across the city to gather at NYCHA’s front doors and demand cancellation of two months’ rent. The residents put out a call for all New Yorkers to come join them this morning at NYCHA’s headquarters to accomplish the following goals:
1. Immediate demand: Cancel 2 months’ rent for both November and December (speed up and extend NYCHA’s promised rent credit for January).
2. From a list of Long-term demands: Hold moratorium on evictions. Increase and ensure sufficient federal disaster relief funding to NYCHA. Replace NYCHA board with a community-led board. Employ NYCHA residents for intensive building repairs instead of outsourcing jobs. Implement long-term alternative power and weather-prepared solutions. Enact general accountability and transparency to residents.
3. Next step: pressure NYCHA board meeting on December 5, 10 am, same location.
Occupy Wall Street advertised the protest on its website, and added that NYCHA has been deeply defunded under Governor Cuomo’s tenure.
“Occupy Sandy and its many partners on the ground have filled the void through mutual aid, but we are not a band-aid movement and we are not here as a proxy for the State. This is the first instance of self-organization in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy that is calling out one of the roots of the problem—austerity measures and the defunding of public institutions. The foundations of the so-called “austerity crisis” are in the bank vaults lining Wall Street. The root cause of the rising sea levels that led to Hurricane Sandy, can be found in Wall Street’s bankrolling of fossil fuel companies and climate change,” the group states.
Occupy also stresses the need to support neighbourhood allies “as they take the lead in identifying their needs and their means of action.”
Perhaps as a way to acknowledge public housing residents’ grievances, NYCHA recently promised there will be no evictions for the rest of the year. NYCHA Chairman John Rhea previously came under criticism from tenants, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio and the Daily News after he called the January rent credit “a nice little Christmas present.”
Tenants who lived without heat, hot water, elevators and power for as long as three weeks wanted a rent discount right away, worried that they would fall behind in December’s rent because of extra expenses incurred after Sandy.
Last week, the Legal Aid Society and the New York Legal Assistance Group pressed NYCHA for the eviction moratorium for affected tenants.
On Friday, NYCHA caved, agreeing not to pursue evictions of or default judgments against Sandy-affected tenants who don’t pay or are late with next month’s rent.
The break will remain in place until Jan. 1—the date the rent credit kicks in. The agency also agreed to postpone Housing Court cases that predate Sandy for tenants hurt by the hurricane.
De Blasio told the Daily News tenants still should get an upfront break, and not face late fees if they can’t pay. “Until NYCHA makes those changes, it’s not doing right by its tenants.”
Rhea and the Housing Authority have also been criticized for putting a gag order on workers to prevent them from giving information to elected officials in the chaotic days following Sandy. Four days after Sandy knocked out services, Cecil House, the general manager, sent a memo to the agency’s 11,500 staffers ordering them to clam up if a public official wanted to know about a particular development.
For more on Occupy Sandy's work in the wake of the storm, check out Allison Kilkenny's coverage here.
Occupy Shows Solidarity With Walmart Employees
All photos by Allison Kilkenny
A coalition, including Occupy Wall Street, 99 Pickets, ALIGN, Rev. Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping, and the Retail Action Project gathered in Secaucus, New Jersey today as part of nationwide protests against Walmart and in solidarity with the company’s employees, who have reported widespread abuse and intimidation.
While some brave Walmart employees joined protests in other locations (a Chicago Walmart worker who walked off the job declared, “My ends ain’t meeting) and others expressed reticence to join the protests (a California employee said her co-workers wouldn’t strike because “they think we’ll never win” and “they didn’t want to lose their jobs”), the protest in Secaucus was more about offering solidarity and basically mirrored Occupy’s system of jail support.
In short: Occupy wants to provide support for people risking a lot to fight for their rights. Sometimes, that means offering jail support to activists willing to get arrested. Today, it took the form of performing a mic check inside a Walmart and then conducting a protest outside to show Walmart employees, perhaps some of whom are intimidated by the union-busting practices of the corporation, that they’re not alone.
As OWS stated on its website: “Getting fired for demonstrating is a scary thing.”
We at the Occupy Solidarity Network would like to help alleviate that worry for anyone who is fired in retribution for organizing or demonstrating at Walmart. Walmart workers decided in October 2012 to strike on Black Friday after they were targeted for retaliation for speaking out against substandard work conditions and treatment in the first ever walk out in the history of the company. Now we are looking at a world in which the bravest workers of Walmart are being fired so they may be silenced.
We will support the workers participating in organizing efforts and nonviolent demonstrations in support of the fight for economic civil rights of the Walmart worker effort. Money raised will go towards paying stipends and living expenses for workers fired for organizing and participating in acts of peaceful civil disobedience.
Photo of protest crowd outside Secaucus Walmart 
OWS also provides links to support the Walmart organizers and to donate to the Walmart Workers Food Fund.
Before the action in Secaucus, organizers stressed that today was not about creating even more misery for Walmart workers who are already asked to work brutally long hours during the Black Friday frenzy. They reminded protesters to be polite and courteous and to hand out fliers if asked about why they’re protesting Walmart.
Mic check inside a NJ Walmart
Protesters marching through Walmart
At one point, a protester accidentally toppled a display of toys at the store and a handful of activists rushed forward to help put it back together. All of this was part of a strange, delicate balance the protesters were trying to find: they wanted to be disruptive, but not cumbersome for the wrong reasons—they wanted to interrupt the machinery of Black Friday sales without becoming a burden for Walmart’s workers, who already suffer under low wages and union-busting. (photo of a mic check inside a Walmart store)
A protester named Louisa said she joined the protest in solidarity because “the way Walmart treats its workers affects how the rest of companies in America treat their workers.”
“It scares me,” Louisa said, referring to the low bar for wages and workers’ rights set by the Walmart company. “If nothing is done about the way they treat their workers, then it’s going to be a bleak future.”
Walmart initially dismissed the Black Friday protests by claiming the strike involves only a “handful of associates, at a handful of stores scattered across the country that are participating in these…made for-TV events,” even though the company then filed a National Labor Relations Board charge alleging that the pickets are illegal and asking for a judge to shut them down, and Our Walmart now alleges Walmart’s national headquarters “told store-level management to threaten workers with termination, discipline, and/or a lawsuit if they strike or engage in other concerted job actions on Black Friday.”
Security at stores was excessive, even taking into consideration the sometimes chaotic scenes associated with Black Friday sales. After the morning crowd surge had come and gone, a weird mix of local police, state police and officers from the Sheriff’s department still patrolled the aisles of a Walmart in Kearny, New Jersey, occasionally communicating with store management about the presence of pesky protesters.
Walmart was definitely the largest private recipient of taxpayer-funded policing today.
Quadeer Porter organized the smaller protest in Kearny and said he felt compelled to do so because “when you see a cause that’s dear to you, especially collective bargaining, union rights, I knew I had to do it.”
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“Independent studies show that the average Walmart worker makes $9 an hour,” said Porter. “If you work forty hours a week, seven days a week, throughout the year, you’re only going to get roughly $19,000, which is below the poverty line. So these people in poverty have to be on welfare and use Medicare and Medicaid because they’re in poverty, so that’s putting the pressure on taxpayers while the Walton family is making billions of dollars in profit. And these employees are what make Walmart, Walmart.”
As for targeting Walmart workers instead of abusive management, Porter says, “People on food stamps are not the people you want to attack. We want to attack the individuals that are not giving these people fair pay…. It doesn’t make any sense, one person making billions of dollars while other people are trying to get scraps. It’s not fair.”
What do the historic Walmart strikes mean for labor organizing? Check out Josh Eidelson's coverage here.
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