Progressive Media Advocates
May Day was observed all over the nation with marches, rallies, sit-ins and demonstrations occurring simultaneously in all of the major metropolitan areas including Los Angeles. Dick and I spent a good deal of the day in the streets of downtown Los Angeles.
This week, an article by Mark Naison, “How Attacks on Teachers and Government Workers Will Impact All Our Lives,” drew the following exchange between Ryder and Steve Wider.
Art Frias: As a public-private partnership Sempra has an obligation to treat its customers and workers fairly. Instead they make billions, pay themselves millions while cutting services to customers.
Jasmyne Cannick: When I think about it, the only thing that has changed since those stores were taken over by Ralph’s in the early 1990’s, are the increase in prices and the sign on the outside of the building.
Elizabeth Knipe: The movement to organize labor is filled with colorful characters and none more so than those who led the International Workers of the World, more popularly known as the Wobblies.
Robert Reich: Every CEO of every company that continues to squeeze payrolls (Verizon, are you listening? Ford?) needs to understand they’re shooting themselves in the feet. Where do they expect demand for their products and services to come from?
Caitlin Vega: In these times of unprecedented income inequality, all the Republicans want is to cut worker pay and protections and reward corporations, even if they break the law. It’s taking from those who have the least and giving to those with the most.
Lydia Howell: Whether it’s debt-ridden college graduates working as baristas or small town youth with only fast-food and Wal-Mart as post-high school career options, high unemployment keeps a volunteer military ranks full.
Brent Budowsky: The economic and political shock wave will be momentous as budget politics will increase joblessness and reveal with brutality that Washington is out of touch with heartland America and dominated by special interests that voters deplore.
Steve Hochstadt: As grass-roots organizations, unions are feared by dictators. All of the world’s dictatorships, whether left or right, have banned free unions.
Tina Dupuy: Over 16.5% of Americans are employed by the government, about 22 million of the 135 million payroll jobs. And they’re not just pencil-pushing, useless cushy benefit collectors – but scientists.
David Love: Scrooge arrived just in time for the holidays, with Social Darwinism, bootstraps, slashing and cutting as a prescription for all our woes.
Randy Shaw: After his decision to freeze federal salaries – not as part of any broader budget and tax deal, but unilaterally – it’s clear that the President is far more politically clueless than previously thought.
Marian Wang: Not extending federal unemployment insurance, it noted, would cause 2 million unemployed workers to be cut off from federal unemployment benefits by the end of the year.
Berry Craig: Never before have so few with so much promised to take away so much from so many and then laugh their asses off as the so many with so little vote for the so few with so much.
Randy Shaw: The SEIU must convince 44,000 Kaiser Hospital workers that the NUHW leadership team that brought them the best contracts in the industry when they previously ran SEIU-UHW should be replaced by out-of-state staff with no such track record. It’s a tough sell, which is why SEIU is avoiding public debates.
Sylvia Moore: These protests were just the latest expression of outrage among the working classes across the country, who have suffered massive job losses and wage stagnation, while failing bank behemoths who wrecked the economy got bailed out to the tune of billions of dollars.
Robert Reich: Higher corporate profits no longer lead to higher employment. We’re witnessing a great decoupling of company profits from jobs.
Democratic politicians facing town hall disruptions should seek the help of their working-class supporters. Make sure large numbers of people from the local unions come to these events. Then we’ll see if the Tea Bagger thugs can continue their bullying tactics on behalf of corporations seeking to block progress on health care.
by Gene Rothman – A new Goldilocks gauge has gripped the Guardians of Greed. Too Big to Fail (TBTF) used to be one size fits all. Big corporations would be bailed out only if they were Big Enough. But now, the fickle public has grown Leery of the Too Large. It may now be seen [...]
by Charley James – In the 1950s, “Engine” Charley Wilson – then chairman of General Motors – said “What’s good for GM is good for America.” We’re about to find out that the reverse is also true.
Who says there are no slaves in America? The greatest domestic issue facing President-elect Obama is not the bailout of the bankers and insurers but the task of lifting tens of millions of hard-working American wage-slaves out of dire poverty. These are the folks who hold one – and sometimes two or even three – [...]
Once again the Bush Administration and Congress are shilling for big business at the expense of labor. Labor much like capital is ruled by the law of supply and demand. According to the UFW website , last month more than 5,000 UFW supporters sent e-faxes to the Department of Labor (DOL) telling them instead of [...]
Randy Shaw: Obama could regain young people’s support by lowering student loan rates, enacting immigration reform and rejecting the Keystone XL Pipeline, but time—and his political capital—is running out.
Steve Hochstadt: The women’s liberation movement of the 1960s and 1970s finally made an issue of fathering. If women were going to get out of the house and into the workplace, men had to change their roles, too.
The Frying Pan: A successful mayor and council cannot be satisfied with merely coping as issues arise, but must be able to anticipate and define the city´s needs for the next four years. As our newly elected leaders prepare for their roles, we´ve asked writers to share their thoughts about what lies ahead for Los Angeles.
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