Fat, Dumb, and Dead

It's been a tough week for unions. It's been a tough week for teachers. It's been a tough week for working people. I'd like to just tee off on the usual suspects. Limbaugh, Fox News, Republicans, Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, but that's a waste of time. Those people are dancing on the coffin of working people, but they never claimed for one second that they would do otherwise. In New Orleans they dance at funerals. It's called the second line, and it's made up of the folks following the hired band (1st line) on the march to and from the cemetery.




No, I never do things the easy way, so lets talk about the guy in the coffin. Since before there was a labor movement in this country the powerful have been trying to destroy the labor movement. Why did you think the work was done?

• Gorged on the American dream you still flew when Reagan crushed the air traffic controllers ( a EAW friend of mine told me he wasn't ruining his vacation over an illegal strike.(Of coarse if the right has it's way they will all be illegal). 
• When the trucking industry turned almost everyone that was an employee into an independent contractor, who could only sell his services to one place, you circled the wagons to make sure the work that was slipping away went to your people. Keep the death grip on a style long after you've been p'wned is a bad idea.
• You made a big deal about buying American, but the Sonys and Motorolas in your play room (another friend) didn't matter as long as you had a Ford truck with the right bumper sticker.
• When we'd go to a job that should have paid prevailing wage (something we didn't know and our company wouldn't tell), you didn't try to get us prevailing wage. You tried to kick us out and called us scab. I never once in 35 years disrespected a union line. I never once in 35 years ever felt like anything but an enemy at a union site.
• At the convention halls in Boston a bunch of you were drunk back in the 80's when I delivered there. Every time for years and years.
• At Javits in NYC I used to have to pay a "toll" to get unloaded.
• When I worked election sites in Boston in the early 2000's the Carpenters Union would show up, but not know the names of the people whose signs they were holding. 

I never meet Investment bankers. Anything they have done, and they have done plenty, is remote. There is no personal connection there. There is a difference between the anger you feel for an abstract on the television and the anger you feel for a person in front of you extorting money or threatening your safety. Personal is always more powerful. You hear me teachers?

• Everybody that has gone through Americas public schools has had 35 or more teachers. Can you name 10 you really liked? 5 that you liked and taught you something you didn't really want to learn?
• I think 50,000 to 60,000 dollars a year with good benefits is definitely warranted for a collage grad who looks out for my kids even if you do only work 180 work days. I'd vote for that. What? That's not good enough? Other professionals like doctors and lawyers who work 240 days a year get a lot more? I'll have to mill that over at my 50,000 dollar a year job with sparse benefits and a 300 day work year.
• What? you're not respected and working conditions suck? I'll think about that at my unheated warehouse during a New England winter (3 years for me, truth, 20 years for my friend Smiley). 
• ...or maybe while roofing or laying tar in the summer.

I'm not here to pile on. The labor movement gave me almost everything an average american takes for granted. I don't want you dead, I want you back. I don't want to strip a descent living from teachers, I just want you to notice the people around you, maybe quit the crying.

Don't circle the wagons, there are no life boats. The only way to win is at the ballot box and you only win there if you win back the people you have been insulting for the last 30 plus years. Yeah you have, I was there trying not to get angry. Do community outreach. Give talks in schools (not directly about labor, how  about on safety? That's in your wheelhouse.). Fight for prevailing wage for all workers;when folks see it in their paycheck they are going to be a lot friendlier than if they think you are trying to exclude them from work.

Teachers, State workers, stop all the crying. Make sure your union is about the kids first and foremost. (I know that the reason you unionize is about your labor conditions. I know I'm not being fair. It's simple PR though. Act like you are running an assembly line only your product is kids and you will lose. Actually are losing). Make Limbaugh's job harder.

I didn't want to do this post. My own thought is to be like the right wing. Pick your enemy, attack your enemy, crush your enemy. Leave your friends alon If it's ethical, if it's good for society, if it makes things work better is something you consider after you win, not before. I want this blog to be like that, but I won't do it.

You have to own your own behavior. No Election, no law, no occupying army, ever changed 1 mind that wasn't already won over. Limbaugh dancing on your coffin is a sickening image, but the second line at a funeral isn't made up of victorious enemies, it is made up of friends celebrating your life. It's time to celebrate labor 2.0. Screw Scott Walker, we can do it.