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Bridges was of course the most influential Longshoreman’s Union organizer of the 20th century – certainly on the west coast. He was also a socialist fellow traveler, and a Woody Guthrie type folk intellectual. Ian Ruskin is the actor. Hopefully someone at HSU will invite the project for a local performance of From Wharf Rats to Lords of the Docks.
You can view all five videos of a performance through this link. Below is a sampling, although it’s really not the best sampling imo. Watch the videos. There are CDs and DVDs available too, through the website.
Robert Reich divides the country into consumers and investors, which once prompted my father to ask, “what about the producers?” This is pretty scary. Calculated Risk is so far the only source I’ve seen covering the non-coverage of the holiday.
With the unemployment rate at 9.1% and almost 14 million Americans unemployed, with the alternate measure of unemployment (U-6) at 16.2%, with 6 million workers unemployed for more than 6 months, and with 6.9 million fewer payroll jobs than at the beginning of the 2007 recession, one might think every major publication would lead with a labor story on Labor Day. One would be wrong.
A quick glance shows zero labor stories on the front page on the NY Times – or on the Business page. Zero. Zip. Zilch. Nada.
LA Times? Same story – no stories.
The WSJ? One story, sort of.
Bleak.
Addendum: TPM brings up another story not being covered by the media – the fact that private sector employment actually continued to expand in August, but that the hemorrhaging is in the public sector. Obviously if the consumer base continues to deteriorate, the private sector can’t maintain its expansion. The media also won’t even interview economists, who are almost universally calling for more stimulus spending from government despite the deficits. But the message need not fall on deaf ears if it’s not even delivered.
It looks like two of the six Republican seats will be held by the incumbents, and probably in a third. Democrats are looking real good in two others, but many votes yet to be counted. The last one may be close, but it’s not looking like it’s going to happen. Still, plenty of votes to be cast (counted – sorry), many of them in liberal Milwaukee.
You can follow the count here.
Five of the six Democratic challengers are women.
Two Democrats face recalls next week. Both are expected to hold on.
Addendum: Okay, hold everything! The Democrats are now ahead in the three races they need. But still plenty of votes to be counted.
The video at the end, with the Republicans walking out feeling good about themselves.
I got it from MYDD, which has some more details.
And this from Joel – Is Walker pulling a Mubarak?
But decided that the demonstrators were just a bunch of irrelevant 60s radicals. At least that’s what he told the faux Koch when he got punked by a liberal blogger (whose blog appears to have been removed from the net).
He also revealed to “Koch” a plan to bring the Democrats back to talk under false pretenses to get them in session, apparently assuming that the Democrats would not realize that the quorum is good once the session begins so that if they walked out again the Republicans could vote as if they were there. I don’t know, maybe it would have worked. But it won’t work now.
Walker later held a lively press conference, which ended on a petty note.
You can listen to the prank phone conversation through the first link above. And this Kos poster has some transcribed excerpts.
And this post may have the whole transcript.
I’m a little behind on the story, but when it’s all over I’m sure someone will put together a comprehensive article. In a nutshell the governor is trying to bust all of the public sector unions. The unions have taken to the streets (along with students). The Governor announced “Cairo has come to Wisconsin” (did he really want to make that comparison?) The bill was pushed in the state legislature where the Republicans hold a majority, but need at least one of the Democrats to have a quorum. The Democrats left the building. The governor sent the state police after them. The Democrats left the state and are holed up somewhere in Illinois.
And a clip of one of the demos.
If anyone has more information than that, please post it.
My mother forwarded a link to this video, a mini-documentary in which Nate Thornton reminisced about the 1934 General Strike.
A, sort of, controversy is brewing about Paul Gallegos at the Arcata Eye and a couple of the conservative blogs. I think the two points being made are that a campaign-related email was sent to the various local media from the D.A. office, and that the email did not only contain the press release itself (consisting of a thank you to his volunteers and supporters), but a string of emails from campaign workers which indicate that Paul had help from his campaign writing a thank you to his volunteers.
Sending a campaign related email from the government office itself may be a violation of campaign laws. Though so far none of the sites has cited a specific provision, my general knowledge is that incumbents are supposed to keep the office itself completely free from campaign related activity, especially anything amounting to fund raising. Kevin quotes Richard Salzman indicating in one of his emails that it will be easier for him to raise money once the thank you notice is published, ergo, it is a campaign fund raising letter.
It was emailed on November 12 at 10:28 a.m. using a government email address. What if the email was sent remotely from away from the office? Is it illegal to use the email address itself? I don’t know. But I think it would be a stretch to say that Richard’s remark (“But getting this out now will make it easier for me to raise money”) transforms a simple thank you into a fund raising letter. I assume that someone will post some text from the applicable laws so we can evaluate it for ourselves. Anyone who is alarmed anyway, as it seems pretty trivial to me.
On the other hand, allowing even trivial violations could lead to bigger ones. So has this happened before? Would anyone have noticed the email address of origin but for the email thread contained therein?
Kevin spends more time on criticism that Paul is not writing his campaign statements by himself because there will be a longer editorial which Michael Evenson will help him write. Apparently Allison and all the other candidates write everything on their own? I guess that’s the implication.
In any case, due to a bit of carelessness we’re treated to a little bit of behind the scenes sausage making.
The Humboldt Mirror has it up, and of course WatchPaul.
Yes, the 2014 campaign has begun!
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Just a little caveat here. Elizabeth Connor, whom I respect, misattributes in her posted email the quote “Don’t mourn, organize” to Mother Jones. It is actually attributed (though slightly misquoting him) to Joe Hill, the IWW organizer accused, probably falsely, of murder and executed. His last letter to fellow organizer “Big” Bill Haywood read in part as follows:
“Goodbye Bill. I die like a true blue rebel. Don’t waste any time in mourning. Organize… Could you arrange to have my body hauled to the state line to be buried? I don’t want to be found dead in Utah.”
I don’t know. Maybe Mother Jones said it too.
One of the more well-orchestrated (literally) flash demos I’ve seen – this one in the San Francisco Westin St. Francis Hotel, which is one among many facing a labor boycott. The group comes together for an adaptation of Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance.
Yes, sometimes I do miss SF.
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