theweaversweb:

It’s hard to believe that it’s been over 30 years since Labor Day was a day of rest for the laborer.

I worked at a Woolworths in our local mall when it ceased. A reasonably young wife and mother of 2 who, along with my co-workers, was looking forward to that extra day off—and then management announced, “we will be open from noon to six pm on Labor Day.”

One after another each “holiday” fell under the sword of consumerism for those who labor in low wage jobs. Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas were the last to get the ax, but it finally caught up to them too.

That first year they wanted to “see how it would go.” Truth is, that first time at least, it cost them more to be open than they made, but some people did show up and they saw it as “promising”. Figured it might take another holiday or two for the public to realize they could do more than spend time with their families on America’s days of celebration.

They were right.

And so we Americans celebrate a day set aside for the laborer with rah-rah parades that way too many laborers cannot attend because they are busy ringing up that purchase of shoes that just couldn’t wait.

We celebrate America’s independence with patriotic floats rumbling down main street in the morning followed up by a hearty breakfast at our favorite restaurant served up by a waitperson making just over $2 an hour who couldn’t attend the holiday festivities if they wanted to keep their job.

We honor our veterans with speeches and bands playing patriotic songs and solemn prayers while way too many of them stand behind counters willing to serve us yet again while we shop for things that couldn’t possibly be purchased on any other day.

For the low wage earners of America there are no holidays.

theweaversweb:

“Recent advertisements and statements from the campaign of Governor Romney demonize families in poverty and reflect woeful ignorance about the challenges faced by tens of millions of American families in these tough economic times,” stated Sister Simone Campbell. “We are all God’s children and equal in God’s eyes. Efforts to divide us by class or score political points at the expense of the most vulnerable of our brothers and sisters reveal the worst side of our country’s politics.”

And I’m not even Catholic, but the nuns get it!

The one thing that amazes me with middle class and even poor republicans is that they just can’t get it through their heads that people like Mitt Romney and his like have absolutely NO clue how the rest of us live.

And I can say with confidence—they have no desire to learn.

truth-has-a-liberal-bias:

Amy Dean, Truthout: “I spoke with [Barbara] Ehrenreich about this crisis of economic insecurity, about the invisibility of working people in the mainstream media and about the current state of journalism. That working people are chronically underrepresented in the media - even in times of economic downturn - is a sad reality readily apparent to anyone who has surveyed the American news landscape. Given this, I asked Ehrenreich if she thought this problem has been a constant, or if has it gotten worse in recent years.” 

“It’s always been something of a problem,” she said, “for two reasons. The first reason I discovered in my years as a freelance writer in the 1980s and 90s. That is: magazines and newspapers want to please their advertisers. Their advertisers want to think they are reaching wealthy people, people who will buy the products. They don’t want really depressing articles about misery and hardship near their ads.”

“The other reason is that typically the gatekeepers in these media outlets, the top editors and producers, have been from a social class quite far removed from what we are talking about. They have no clue. I found that this could be very, very dispiriting.”   […]

 Read the Article 

occupyallstreets:

Mayor Bloomberg Veto’s Bill To Raise Minimum Wage And Calls It Communism

Michael Bloomberg axed the Prevailing Wage bill last week and vowed to veto the Living Wage bill if passed by the City Council.

“Let them eat cake!”

That’s the message Mayor Bloomberg sent New Yorkers with his veto of the Prevailing Wage bill last Wednesday.

With little patience for any measure that could put even the smallest dent in the private sector’s bottom line, Bloomberg has also promised to veto the Living Wage bill.

“By vetoing this legislation, the administration has turned a blind-eye to the suffering of New York residents who are in desperate need of wage-relief,” said Assemblywoman Linda Rosenthal (D-Manhattan).

Actually income inequality is out of control in Bloomberg’s New York with more than 40% of all income in the city going to 1% of the population.

“The last time we really had a big managed economy was the USSR and that didn’t work out so well,” said Michael Bloomberg, “You cannot stop the tides from coming in.”

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn announced a watered down deal on the living wage agreement Wednesday, which will require businesses receiving $1 million or more in city subsidies and earning more than $5 million a year in revenue to pay their workers at least $11.50 an hour, or $10 with benefits.

Quinn called the bill “the most impactful living-wage law in the United States,” according to Capital New York. After some businesses were exempted from the measure, however, experts say it will effect roughly only 500 New Yorkers.

And yet, Bloomberg has vowed to veto the bill.

Source/Credit

With a net worth of $22 billion in 2012, Michael Bloomberg is also the 11th-richest person in the United States.

socialismartnature:

The strongest argument that can be made as to why all radical activists should study the life and works of Lucy Parsons is that the FBI wants you to know nothing about her.

Lucy Parsons died in 1942, at the age of 89, in a house-fire in Chicago — the city in which she lived most of her life. The ashes had hardly cooled before the Chicago police raided the remains of her home, confiscated all 3,000 volumes of literature and writings on “sex, socialism, and anarchy,” which constituted her personal library, and turned it over to the FBI. Tragically, and despite her comrades’ repeated inquiries, this treasure trove of revolutionary material was never again to see the light of day.

Indeed, the Chicago police had ample reason to want to bury Parsons’ legacy as quickly as possible. In their own words, she was “more dangerous than a thousand rioters.” For virtually the entirety of the last 40 years of her life, the Chicago police tried to bar her from making any public speeches, and routinely arrested her for the ‘crime’ of handing out revolutionary pamphlets on the street. Famed labor historian Studs Terkel even noted how rare of a privilege it was to hear Parsons address a large audience in her later years, owing to the constant police harassment.

Overlooked by History

Partially because so much of her own writings were ‘disappeared’ by the government, and partially because she was a revolutionary woman of color speaking out against the injustices of a capitalist society run by white men, Lucy Parsons is one of the least known of the major figures in the history of revolutionary socialism in the U.S. Much like her long-time comrades and friends, Eugene Debs, William “Big Bill” Haywood, and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Lucy Parsons made a tremendous contribution to the birth of America’s turn-of-the-century, revolutionary working-class movement; a movement which continues to this day to shape the character of class struggle and revolutionary politics in this country.

Historian Robin Kelley argues that Lucy Parsons was not only “the most prominent black woman radical of the late nineteenth century,” but was also “one of the brightest lights in the history of revolutionary socialism.” Historian John McClendon writes that she is notable for being the “first black activist to associate with the revolutionary left in America.”

More often than not, however, if Lucy Parsons is mentioned as an historical figure, she is noted merely as the “wife of Albert Parsons,” a man who had gained international notoriety after he was executed in 1887 by the state of Illinois for his revolutionary activities.

Unfortunately, this slight extends beyond solely ‘mainstream’ historians, including supposedly left-wing intellectuals as well. For instance, in the 1960s, the feminist editors of Radcliffe College’s three-volume work, Notable American Women, decided to leave Parsons out of their study on the grounds that she was “largely propelled by her husband’s fate” and was a “pathetic figure, living in the past and crying injustice” after her husband’s execution.

Even contemporaries of Lucy Parsons, such as the popular anarchist-feminist Emma Goldman (with whom Lucy Parsons became a life-long political opponent), accused Parsons of being an otherwise unimportant opportunist who simply rode upon the cape of her husband’s martyrdom, describing her as nothing more than one of those wives of “anarchists who marry women who are millions of miles removed from their ideas.”

None of this, however, is to diminish the historical importance of Albert Parsons and the events leading up to his execution; and while it is true that Lucy Parsons spent much of her life addressing the crime that was her husband’s murder at the hands of the capitalist state, nonetheless, her political activity and impact on history extend far beyond the scope of that single tragedy. In fact, the work that she lent her energies to in the years following Albert’s execution are of equal (if not greater) importance than anything he had been able to add to the fight for workers’ emancipation in the course of a life that was sadly cut short.

READ FULL ARTICLE»

kileyrae:

“Government by organized money is just as dangerous as government by organized mob.”

(via MoveOn)

socialismartnature:

The strongest argument that can be made as to why all radical activists should study the life and works of Lucy Parsons is that the FBI wants you to know nothing about her.

Lucy Parsons died in 1942, at the age of 89, in a house-fire in Chicago — the city in which she lived most of her life. The ashes had hardly cooled before the Chicago police raided the remains of her home, confiscated all 3,000 volumes of literature and writings on “sex, socialism, and anarchy,” which constituted her personal library, and turned it over to the FBI. Tragically, and despite her comrades’ repeated inquiries, this treasure trove of revolutionary material was never again to see the light of day.

Indeed, the Chicago police had ample reason to want to bury Parsons’ legacy as quickly as possible. In their own words, she was “more dangerous than a thousand rioters.” For virtually the entirety of the last 40 years of her life, the Chicago police tried to bar her from making any public speeches, and routinely arrested her for the ‘crime’ of handing out revolutionary pamphlets on the street. Famed labor historian Studs Terkel even noted how rare of a privilege it was to hear Parsons address a large audience in her later years, owing to the constant police harassment.

Overlooked by History

Partially because so much of her own writings were ‘disappeared’ by the government, and partially because she was a revolutionary woman of color speaking out against the injustices of a capitalist society run by white men, Lucy Parsons is one of the least known of the major figures in the history of revolutionary socialism in the U.S. Much like her long-time comrades and friends, Eugene Debs, William “Big Bill” Haywood, and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Lucy Parsons made a tremendous contribution to the birth of America’s turn-of-the-century, revolutionary working-class movement; a movement which continues to this day to shape the character of class struggle and revolutionary politics in this country.

Historian Robin Kelley argues that Lucy Parsons was not only “the most prominent black woman radical of the late nineteenth century,” but was also “one of the brightest lights in the history of revolutionary socialism.” Historian John McClendon writes that she is notable for being the “first black activist to associate with the revolutionary left in America.”

More often than not, however, if Lucy Parsons is mentioned as an historical figure, she is noted merely as the “wife of Albert Parsons,” a man who had gained international notoriety after he was executed in 1887 by the state of Illinois for his revolutionary activities.

Unfortunately, this slight extends beyond solely ‘mainstream’ historians, including supposedly left-wing intellectuals as well. For instance, in the 1960s, the feminist editors of Radcliffe College’s three-volume work, Notable American Women, decided to leave Parsons out of their study on the grounds that she was “largely propelled by her husband’s fate” and was a “pathetic figure, living in the past and crying injustice” after her husband’s execution.

Even contemporaries of Lucy Parsons, such as the popular anarchist-feminist Emma Goldman (with whom Lucy Parsons became a life-long political opponent), accused Parsons of being an otherwise unimportant opportunist who simply rode upon the cape of her husband’s martyrdom, describing her as nothing more than one of those wives of “anarchists who marry women who are millions of miles removed from their ideas.”

None of this, however, is to diminish the historical importance of Albert Parsons and the events leading up to his execution; and while it is true that Lucy Parsons spent much of her life addressing the crime that was her husband’s murder at the hands of the capitalist state, nonetheless, her political activity and impact on history extend far beyond the scope of that single tragedy. In fact, the work that she lent her energies to in the years following Albert’s execution are of equal (if not greater) importance than anything he had been able to add to the fight for workers’ emancipation in the course of a life that was sadly cut short.

READ FULL ARTICLE»

timetruthhumor:

36 Reasons Why You Should Thank a Union

1. Weekends
2. All Breaks at Work, including your Lunch Breaks
3. Paid Vacation
4. FMLA (Family Medical Leave Act)
5. Sick Leave
6. Social Security
7. Minimum Wage
8. Civil Rights Act/Title VII (Prohibits Employer Discrimination)
9. 8-Hour Work Day
10. Overtime Pay
11. Child Labor Laws
12. Occupational Safety & Health Act (OSHA)
13. 40 Hour Work Week
14. Worker’s Compensation (Worker’s Comp)
15. Unemployment Insurance
16. Pensions
17. Workplace Safety Standards and Regulations
18. Employer Health Care Insurance
19. Collective Bargaining Rights for Employees
20. Wrongful Termination Laws
21. Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 
22. Whistleblower Protection Laws
23. Employee Polygraph Protect Act (Prohibits Employer from using a lie detector test on an employee)
24. Veteran’s Employment and Training Services (VETS)
25. Compensation increases and Evaluations (Raises)
26. Sexual Harassment Laws
27. Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) 
28. Holiday Pay
29. Employer Dental, Life, and Vision Insurance
30. Privacy Rights
31. Pregnancy and Parental Leave
32. Military Leave
33. The Right to Strike
34. Public Education for Children
35. Equal Pay Acts of 1963 & 2011 (Requires employers pay men and women equally for the same amount of work)
36. Laws Ending Sweatshops in the United States

Sources and Information:
AFSCME
Dept of Labor
Timeline
Wikipedia.org
Child Labor Public Education Project
AFL-CIO
SEIU

 

timetruthhumor:

Raise Minimum Wage, Make Lives and Economy Better

Editor’s note: Anne Thompson is a policy analyst for the National Employment Law Project, a nonprofit group that promotes policies and programs for lower-wage workers.

….It’s time to raise the minimum wage. It may sound surprising, but it’s exactly what our economy needs. On the campaign trail, President Obama called for raising the minimum wage to $9.50 by 2011; now is the time deliver on that pledge.

Raising the minimum wage would not only help working families, it also would help power the economic recovery. As the economy has sputtered, wages have stagnated, and even folks with jobs are having trouble meeting their families’ basic needs.

Accounting for inflation, weekly wages have actually fallen by 1.3 percent in the past eight months, and the Commerce Department reported that consumer spending, which makes up 70 percent of the economy, dropped in June for the first time in nearly two years — both deeply worrying economic indicators. […]

timetruthhumor:

Democrats looking to Washington during the long, hot summer for signs of their party’s renewal got little in the way of relief. President Obama’s approval ratings tanked after he compromised away historic Democratic positions in the debt-ceiling fight. The party’s Congressional leaders, who in the spring had seemed prepared to fight off Republican attempts to erode Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, sent so many mixed signals that it was difficult to tell whether the party wanted to fight austerity or embrace it.

Yet beyond the Beltway, a different story has been unfolding. And it holds out promise for a party that needs not just hope but a coherent strategy for the 2012 election season. Dramatic overreach by newly elected Republican governors, who sought to curtail labor rights, undermine local democracy and slash spending for education and local services, has provoked a backlash that draws stark ideological and political lines on fundamental economic questions. And that is winning substantial Democratic victories in unexpected territory, including rural areas where the party suffered its greatest setbacks in 2010. […]