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How Labor Can Win the Next Shutdown |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=47157"><span class="small">Hamilton Nolan, Splinter</span></a>
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Wednesday, 30 January 2019 09:28 |
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Nolan writes: "The (temporary) end of the government shutdown has been celebrated, understandably, as a victory for working people. But for organized labor, this grim episode should be taken as a lesson on what we need to do differently next time."
Labor protest. (photo: Getty Images)
How Labor Can Win the Next Shutdown
By Hamilton Nolan, Splinter
30 January 19
 he (temporary) end of the government shutdown has been celebrated, understandably, as a victory for working people. But for organized labor, this grim episode should be taken as a lesson on what we need to do differently next time.
Let’s review what just happened. As a result of petty, stupid, racist brinksmanship, the government was shut down for five weeks. Five weeks. Hundreds of thousands of government employees were not paid, and millions of private sector employees suffered severely from the ripple effects. Predictably, the system began to fall apart. More and more unpaid employees began calling in sick, or just quitting in order to seek paying jobs. This dynamic affected many agencies and industries, but was felt most immediately in aviation—an industry full of unionized public and private employees that is subject to breaking down if any single part of the work force stops working. Midway through the shutdown there were already serious delays at various airports due to low TSA staffing; by the final week of the shutdown, Sara Nelson, the head of the flight attendants union, was calling for a general strike; by the final day of the shutdown, a lack of adequate air traffic controllers made LaGuardia airport halt all flights. Trump’s decision to end the shutdown was reportedly finalized the night before the final crescendo of the full airport shutdown, but there is no question that the drumbeat of growing chaos within the aviation work force did contribute to the atmosphere of urgency that finally brought about the temporary end of the shutdown.
This is not an occasion for great celebration. Millions of working people were hurt by this shutdown. They were hurt more than necessary. And while the anger and frustration of those working people (and the decision of a portion of them to stop working) propelled much of the public opposition to what was happening, let’s also be clear about what we did not see during this five week period when people were working without pay: An organized strike, general or otherwise. There are understandable reasons for that—public unions are barred by law from striking, and everyone seems to have been caught off guard by how long the shutdown dragged on—but organized labor must take this experience as a lesson. This is not the time to sit around patting ourselves on the back. It doesn’t have to happen like this again.
Everyone knows that this shutdown was a farce, created and perpetuated by an idiot. Lawmakers may outlaw shutdowns altogether in response. Then again, they may not. And in just a couple of weeks, when this temporary truce expires, we could find ourselves in another shutdown. What should labor do then?
The private unions in aviation should plan to walk out on the first day of the shutdown. Airline pilots and flight attendants and others who rely on the safety of a system staffed in part by unpaid government employees have issued dire warnings about the most recent shutdown’s effect on safety. They should not be forced into that position again. As soon as the government shuts down and the TSA officers stop getting paid, the private aviation unions should stop working. They should do this in the name of safety, and they should also do it because (while it is not easy) it is easier for them to do it than it is for their government-employed brethren. A work stoppage by these private aviation unions would halt flights, and cause an immediate crisis, which would in turn cause a fast end to the shutdown. In fact, if lawmakers know that this will be the response to a government shutdown, they will not shut down the government. That is how powerful the threat of an organized labor stoppage at this economic choke point is. That is labor power in action.
Walk on day one. On day one. Make the plan now.
The federal employee unions are not legally allowed to strike. But that doesn’t mean that their hands are tied. Make a plan for a concerted work slowdown. Put it in a drawer. Most importantly, start organizing and training and rallying the tens of thousands of low-paid government employees who may be wondering if their unions have any power. No one can blame individual TSA workers, for example, for not walking off the job. But if their union had trained them in advance on how to slow down their work in response to a shutdown—given the safety issues it raises, among other things—they could be an important part of an organized labor response to a shutdown, rather than just the shutdown’s victims. That goes too for unionized workers at agencies across the federal government. (IRS workers may suddenly find it very, very time-consuming to process a single tax return.) Work slowdowns, mass sickouts, and other tactics can add pressure similar to strikes without being formal strikes. Like strikes, these things take a lot of organizing in advance. The time to start organizing and planning for this is now. Unions will most certainly find enthusiasm for these things in the ranks of members who were just screwed out of their paychecks for five fucking weeks.
Donald Trump is not going to pull a Ronald Reagan and fire thousands of government workers who stop working if the reason they have stopped working is that they’re not getting paid. Donald Trump and his shutdown are far more unpopular than the workers are. That equals leverage for bold union actions. Furthermore, America needs a functioning aviation system, all the time. Stopping flights for a single day amounts to a serious crisis. Everyone knows these workers have power. The private unions should exercise that power freely. The government unions should have a plan for exercising it as well, even if they need to be a little more creative about it. “No work without pay” is a floor-level standard that organized labor should be prepared to uphold. Americans of all political persuasions will support that principle.
Like Sara Nelson, I’d love to see a general strike. But we are not prepared for a general strike yet. Fortunately, ending the next shutdown won’t take a general strike. It will only take a single, well-organized work stoppage in a vital industry. And that power is already in union hands, if they are prepared to use it.
On day one.
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In Ominous Development for Trump, Roger Stone Gets Mueller Tattoo |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=9160"><span class="small">Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker</span></a>
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Tuesday, 29 January 2019 13:57 |
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Borowitz writes: "In a potentially worrisome development for the White House, Donald Trump's longtime political adviser Roger Stone spent the weekend getting a tattoo of the special counsel, Robert Mueller, on his back."
Robert Mueller. (photo: NBC)
In Ominous Development for Trump, Roger Stone Gets Mueller Tattoo
By Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker
29 January 19
 The article below is satire. Andy Borowitz is an American comedian and New York Times-bestselling author who satirizes the news for his column, "The Borowitz Report." 
 n a potentially worrisome development for the White House, Donald Trump’s longtime political adviser Roger Stone spent the weekend getting a tattoo of the special counsel, Robert Mueller, on his back.
Minutes after being released on bail, Stone was reportedly driven to a tattoo-removal specialist in Jersey City, who spent nine hours removing his notorious back tattoo of Richard Nixon to make room for the newly minted Mueller tat.
News of Stone’s Mueller tattoo sent a wave of panic through the White House, where top aides attempted to predict what the tattoo portended for Stone’s loyalty to Trump going forward.
For his part, Stone downplayed the significance of the tattoo as he stripped off his shirt to display it for reporters. “I will have no comment at this time, other than to say that Robert Mueller is a kind, fair, and extremely handsome man,” Stone said.
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FOCUS: The 'Extinction Rebellion' Wants You to Wake Up |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=50044"><span class="small">Ellie Scechet, Rolling Stone</span></a>
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Tuesday, 29 January 2019 12:47 |
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Scechet writes: "At around 1 p.m. ET in Midtown Manhattan on Saturday, protest puppeteer Elliot Crown twirled a paper mache planet over a bed of flames, playing a silent violin."
Nine arrests were reported at the US Extinction Rebellion (XR), the first major New York City civil disobedience action of a dynamic, bold new environmental movement. (photo: Erik Mcgregor/Pacific Press/ZUMA)
The 'Extinction Rebellion' Wants You to Wake Up
By Ellie Scechet, Rolling Stone
29 January 19
A dispatch from the environmental group’s New York City protest, featuring “die-ins,” Trump Tower and Fifth Avenue glitz
 t around 1 p.m. ET in Midtown Manhattan on Saturday, protest puppeteer Elliot Crown twirled a paper mache planet over a bed of flames, playing a silent violin. Around him, a neon-dotted crowd gathered next to the Plaza Hotel to protest the collapse of life on Earth. Numbers soon swelled to around 300, a solid local turnout for the Extinction Rebellion’s first national day of action in the United States. A marching band began to play, and activist performance group Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir hopped around the perimeter of the crowd, harmonizing about the end of the world. “Only so many beautiful days… are le-e-eft!”
It’s a bit unnerving to have one’s quietest and most urgent fears sung through a megaphone by a group of performers wearing giant orange toads strapped to their heads (commemorating the now-extinct Golden Toad), but therein, perhaps, lies the power of the Extinction Rebellion. The movement attracts people who want to fully grapple with the horrifying implications of scientific data about our climate, carrying the assumption that this will eventually appeal to a critical mass. The most recent IPCC report warned that CO2 emissions would have to plummet dramatically over the next 12 years in order to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees celsius, a push that would require “rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society.” Even at our current 1 degree of warming, things are getting rather grim: an ongoing record-breaking heat wave in Australia, recent deadly fires across the Northern hemisphere, the reverberating astronomical death toll of Hurricane Maria, an “insect apocalypse,” mass migrations across the globe.
“The science is so bad that you don’t really have to know too much,” Gregory Schwedock, a New York-based Extinction Rebellion organizer, tells Rolling Stone. “Just having the broad picture is enough, because we are so far behind, we are so fucked.”
The Extinction Rebellion (or XR) is a grassroots direct action movement that kicked off in the UK in October 2018, gaining international attention and the backing of people like Naomi Klein, Noam Chomsky and Bill McKibben after thousands of protesters shut down five London bridges in a highly publicized act of civil disobedience. Since then, over 200 Extinction Rebellion outposts have emerged around the world. The IPCC report’s findings have spurred less legally-risky action, as well: the “Green New Deal” championed by the Sunrise Movement and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has become a must-endorse policy for progressive Democrats, tens of thousands of students inspired by 16-year-old activist Greta Thunberg have walked out of classrooms in Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, Australia and elsewhere over the past few weeks to protest climate inaction and 70,000 people marched in Brussels on Sunday.
After five weeks of rapidfire organizing, Saturday’s demonstration was slated to be part of the build-up to an international week of action in April, and a coming-out event, of sorts, for growing chapters in cities across the U.S.
“I think that people need to see other people putting themselves on the line as much as possible,” says Megan Marohn, 39, a teacher from Troy, New York, who’d come down to participate in “Rebellion Day 1.” “We’re in dire circumstances,” she adds, citing a recent New York Times report that oceans are heating up 40 percent faster than expected.
Or, as Leah Francis, a national XR organizer based in Portland, Oregon, put during a phone call, “We are all going to die, and we need to shout it from the rooftops.”
According to Francis, organizers in the U.S. are still tailoring the UK’s model. “Our intention is to provoke an uprising on a scale that’s never been seen before in the U.S., a national coordinated economic and government disruption that will be maintained until the government is forced to negotiate with us.”
Utilizing strictly nonviolent tactics and operating within a largely decentralized structure, the Extinction Rebellion has three ambitious demands: to push governments to communicate the truth of the ecological crisis to the public, to reduce carbon emissions to net zero by 2025 and to allow the formation of a democratic “citizens assembly” to oversee the massive changes this would necessitate. The New York City chapter of XR also includes a demand for climate justice, or “a just transition that prioritizes the most vulnerable people and indigenous sovereignty.”
On Saturday, the sun was out but the air was frigid, and attendees, ranging from small children to septuagenarians, bounced and clapped and danced to stay warm. This, along with the bright neon colors and the singing and the camaraderie, gave the event a surreally festive air, considering the subject matter. But looking the worst-case scenario in the eye — and doing something about it, no matter how herculean — seems to provide a certain amount of existential relief.
“Oh man, I’ve been pretty numb about this issue for a few years, and something in the last few months has just made me realize how terrified I am,” Jesse Marshall, 29, tells Rolling Stone. “I feel the need to do something, and this is happening, so I want to be a part of it.”
“I feel like I’ve been waiting for something like this to happen,” says Kurt Wheeler, a 28-year-old urban planner with a bright expression.
Melanie, a 21-year-old student who declined to give her last name, says she was attracted to Extinction Rebellion because “everything is just lip service right now from what I’m seeing, I need action.” She’d been involved in Black Lives Matter, but found it was harder to organize people around the environment. “I think people aren’t ready to confront the issue, it’s a massive issue and it overwhelms people,” she mused. Like many at the event, including its organizers, Melanie thought the movement needed to work to engage frontline communities. “I think we need to do a lot more community outreach to actual people, the vulnerable people who are exposed to the worst effects of climate change.”
Around 2 p.m., attendees were asked to organize themselves based on their willingness to get arrested; noncitizens and others looking to avoid arrest would head to the front, and those willing to participate in a series of “die-ins” were instructed to move towards the back. A pair of teenage girls conferred nervously. “Let’s just do it,” they decided. Haley, 18, and Yasmin, 17, had crossed paths at the first NYC Extinction Rebellion meeting in December, bonding over their desire to see more people their age get involved.
“I’m really passionate about the environment and I’m really tired of feeling guilty and not doing anything about it, so I just want to finally do something about it,” Haley says.
“Practice-what-you-preach kind of thing,” Yasmin agrees, nodding.
Soon, the crowd marched down Fifth Avenue, stomping past Bergdorf Goodman and Trump Tower and Harry Winston and Victoria’s Secret with wide-eyed shiny-haired tourists Instagramming this eccentric NYC moment. A protester in a bright pink wig and a stern expression tells me “Americans are gluttons.They think the world is their pig pen. It’s disgusting.”
When the march reached the skating rink at Rockefeller Center, the group fanned out. Some laid down on the sidewalk in Extinction Rebellion-labeled smocks representing climate-related tragedies; others rented skates and arranged themselves face-up in the middle of the rink in a circular pattern that mimicked the Extinction Rebellion logo. A John Mayer song beamed over the loudspeaker as a figure skater in a fur vest spun determinedly around the prone rebels.
Back on Fifth Avenue, eight protesters were eventually arrested after blocking traffic. Schwedock was arrested, too, after climbing up the famed Prometheus statue to hang a black banner reading “CLIMATE CHANGE=MASS MURDER.” Behind him, a quote carved into the granite read: “Prometheus, Teacher in Every Art, Brought the Fire That Hath Proved to Mortals a Means to Mighty Ends.”
As Schwedock made his descent to cheers, a protester next to me briefly stopped banging on a pink plastic bucket with a wooden spoon to raise her eyebrows conspiratorially. “Can you imagine if you were here and you just go on skating?”
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FOCUS: The Masters of the Universe Are Terrified of Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=11104"><span class="small">Charles Pierce, Esquire</span></a>
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Tuesday, 29 January 2019 11:43 |
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Pierce writes: "They're not afraid that Senator Professor Warren or Bernie Sanders 'can't win,' but, rather, they're struck into incoherence that one of them can."
The universe may be shopping for new masters. (photo: BuzzFeed/Getty Images)
The Masters of the Universe Are Terrified of Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders
By Charles Pierce, Esquire
29 January 19
Wall Street wants a "centrist." Does anyone else?
 ou have to hand it to Politico. Howard Schultz's vanity exercise is still theoretical, but Politico has tracked down every single member of his fundamental constituency who cannot be found in Howard Schultz's mirror every morning while he's shaving.
Early support from deep-pocketed financial executives could give Democrats seeking to break out of the pack an important fundraising boost. But any association with bankers also opens presidential hopefuls to sharp attacks from an ascendant left. And it’s left senior executives on Wall Street flailing over what to do.
“I’m a socially liberal, fiscally conservative centrist who would love to vote for a rational Democrat and get Trump out of the White House,” said the CEO of one of the nation’s largest banks, who, like a dozen other executives interviewed for this story, declined to be identified by name for fear of angering a volatile president. “Personally, I’d love to see Bloomberg run and get the nomination. I’ve just never thought he could get the nomination the way the primary process works.”
Oh, dear. What's a master of the universe to do when the universe turns against him?
After mentioning Bloomberg, Wall Street executives who want Trump out list a consistent roster of appealing nominees that includes former Vice President Joe Biden and Sens. Cory Booker of New Jersey, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Kamala Harris of California. Others meriting mention: former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, former Maryland Rep. John Delaney and former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke, though few [re]ally know his positions.
Bankers’ biggest fear: The nomination goes to an anti-Wall Street crusader like Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) or Sanders. “It can’t be Warren and it can’t be Sanders,” said the CEO of another giant bank. “It has to be someone centrist and someone who can win.”
Clearly, they're not afraid that Senator Professor Warren or Bernie Sanders "can't win," but, rather, they're struck into incoherence that one of them can. Somewhere in the gated community holding their souls, they know that there still is a considerable reckoning out there for what they did throughout the Aughts, and that scares them to death. And now, there are popular vehicles through which that reckoning can be wrought. The universe may be shopping for new masters.
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