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Announcement :: Labor |
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May Day Reminders |
Current rating: 14 |
by Peter Miller
(No verified email address) |
01 May 2003
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Happy International Labor Day! |
First reminder: Listen to the Illinois Labor Hour, Saturdays at 11 am on WEFT 90.1 FM, Champaign.
Second: What does labor want?
"We want more school houses and less jails,
more books and less guns,
more learning and less vice,
more leisure and less greed,
more justice and less revenge...
We want more opportunities to cultivate our better nature."
-Samuel Gompers in 1893 to the International Labor Congress in Chicago
Third: Look at these sites for reports on global May Day activities. (The corporate-owned US press doesn't have much use for free and independent workers.)
http://chicago.indymedia.org
http://www.labourstart.org
http://www.indymedia.org |
Comments
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About "workers" |
by bfd
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 4
01 May 2003
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Well...most of the "workers" I know acutally own, and like, guns, and are just fine with leaving criminals in jails and away from their childrens' schools. Maybe if you quit telling workers what you think they're supposed to think, and instead started asking them what they think, you might get somewhere. |
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Re: May Day Reminders |
by pm
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
01 May 2003
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My conversations with workers suggests they want the things Gompers mentioned, but the carpet bombing of their minds with right wing mantras makes them shy away from speaking out.
In any case, I'm glad you're spending time with us at the IMC. |
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Re: May Day Reminder |
by bfd
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: -1
02 May 2003
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So it's not enough that most people don't subscribe to your politics, but that everyone that doesn't are brainwashed cowards? That's unbelieveably arrogant, elitist, and offensive. |
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Re: May Day Reminders |
by Jack Ryan
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: -5
02 May 2003
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Dear Workers,
It seems you want alot. My suggestion to each of you is to drain your savings, mortgage your homes, develop a business plan and start your own companies. Then when you are in a position of power give yourself a couple of days off.
If you do not have the balls to take a risk, than you risk working for someone else and following their rules.
Jack |
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Re: May Day Reminders |
by Jack Ryan
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
03 May 2003
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Hell, just for the fun of it, I thought it might be a hoot to fire all my workers, just to see the looks on their face. I said, hey, you lazy ingrates should have saved up a mint off the inflated minimum wage I've been paying you. It's time you got some balls and started your own business.
I tell you, it was priceless.
Happy May Day!
Jack |
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Re: May Day Reminders |
by pm
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 5
05 May 2003
Modified: 09:54:55 AM |
In response to F,
I understand you to say that workers like guns and think full prisons are a sign or a healthy society. I still disagree, and I see no evidence to support your claims.
The fact is that the media in the US are owned by wealthy corporations or families and they allow only an extremely limited range of views--so narrow, in fact, that it mirrors media in totalitarian socieities. Rush Limbaugh on five frequencies in the same listening area without a liberal, much less leftist, alternative at any time of the day is hardly free or open. The choice among TV news programs is like the choice between Corn Flakes and Post Toasties. Their goal isn't to inform, it's to sell viewers to advertisers.
The extreme restriction on the range of views that most people see or hear leads them to believe that if they don't hold those dominant views, they don't have a right to any alternative view. Certainly, they don't have opportunites to rehearse their counter-arguments while conservatives hold non-stop trainings of their messengers. This is one reason why people don't speak out when they disagree with right-wing ideology (not to mention the violence with which supporters of right wing views thrust them into our faces).
When I speak to people who own guns, they view them as a necessary evil. Nobody I know is proud of the fact that the United States imprisons over 2 million citizens, the highest imprisonment rate of any industrialized nation.
As a worker, I want more money for education and less for prisons. I want to live among people who spend more time reading and learning than finding ways to kill. I want fair and equitable funding for a strong and proud public sector (parks, roads, libraries, clinics and hospitals, art, schools, housing, social security, etc.), not publicly-financed gambling and corporate criminals in public office. I want more free time and a living wage for everyone; I don't want anybody to need to work three jobs to make ends meet, and I don't want anybody to be denied the opportunity to work. I want justice and reconciliation, not government-sponsored killing in response to a person's crimes. I want to live in a world that's better than the one we currently have.
I don't think I'm alone. |
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Re: May Day Reminders |
by bfd
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
05 May 2003
Modified: 11:40:15 AM |
That was a very thoughtful response. Let me briefly hit a few highlights:
You are a stuck-up, apple-polishing wanker. You clearly don't afford the people that disagree with you the same self-awarenes that you claim to have. How is it that everyone except you is a shallow, illiterate, media-programmed robot?
You don't offer any evidence other than anecdote, either. I'll add that I, for one, have yet to met a gun owner who described such as a necessary evil.
Lastly, to your list of wants. Those reasons are largeley why hundreds of thousands of people leave planned economies amd emigrate to the US every year. If you're so unhappy, unsuccessful, and alienated, it's pretty likely that the problem is with you.
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Re: May Day Reminders |
by Jack Ryan
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: -2
06 May 2003
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Dear BFD,
You must forgive PM and all of his red friends. To continue to support communism now with all that we know, is like buying a black and white television in the hopes that today's technology is merely a fad.
Jack |
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B F D |
by pm
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
07 May 2003
Modified: 10:10:10 AM |
It seems we've been down this road before. Rather than offering any arguments, the anonymous right-wingers resort to red herrings, name calling, and demands that anyone they disagree with leave the country. News flash: I'm not leaving.
Propaganda plays a strong role in how this country works, and the lack of diverse views in the mass media make the problem worse. CNN, ABC, FOX, etc. broadcast essentially the same message with different heads moving their lips. Does that make people stupid, as F suggests? No, it means that most people have access to only an extremely narrow range of perspectives from which to base decisions. Most people believe that the war in Iraq was about 9-11 while absolutely no evidence has been offered to show any link between Saddam Hussein and the attacks. Nontheless, the corporate networks continue to echo Bush's unfounded assertion that a link exists, and people are deceived. More examples of the corporate media feeding us inaccurate information that promotes their corporate goals is easy to come by.
As for the gun stuff, F is right, I didn't offer any evidence that people who own guns view them as a necessary evil, aside from my own experience. I am glad that we're making progress on that front, though. Despite the NRA's victory in the 2000 presidential appointment, gun ownership is falling. And this discussion gives us the opportunity to point people toward the Million Moms March, which is doing important work to bring sane regulation to the gun industry.
http://www.millionmommarch.org/
For the record, I don't believe guns should be outlawed. I do believe that gun ownership should be better regulated. Should the Timothy McVeigh's and Clayton Lee Wagner's of the world have easy access to firearms? It's time to close the loopholes.
Another question for F: Why do personal weapons supporters target the United Nations as a threat to American liberties, and not the United States government? It appears that the US government (The World's Only Superpower) and its paramilitary forces are the real threat, aren't they?
OK, start firing the insults. |
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I'll Be Nice And Actually Try To Explain This To You |
by bfd
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: -3
07 May 2003
Modified: 11:25:33 AM |
You and many of your cohorts have fired off this gem - it must be on a list of talking points somewhere:
"Most people believe that the war in Iraq was about 9-11 while absolutely no evidence has been offered to show any link between Saddam Hussein and the attacks."
For fun, let's break this down. You suggest that because there is no evidence that the Hussein regime was linked to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks (though, I should add, there's none exonerating him, either), the war in Iraq is not at all related to the events of Sept. 11 and is, therefore, arbitrary and wrong; when in fact, the action to remove Hussein is part of a broader effort to re-shape the Middle East as a response to Sept. 11 and to change the underlying forces (you guys are big on underlying forces, right?) that have led to the rise of terrorism against the US. If you were observing carefully, you'd notice that now that the no-fly zones no longer need to be enforced, we're pulling our bases out of Saudi; the Israelis amd the Palestinians are at the bargaining table; India and Pakistan are renewing diplomatic relations. This is all obvious to everyone but you guys. The anti-war folks who offer up this argument are either incapable of reasoning at that level, or they're being intentionaly deceitful. I think it's the latter |
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I Should Add |
by bfd
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
07 May 2003
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The gun stuff - honestly, I don't care. I just think it illustrates the disconnect between real "worker" people in the real world and Campusland. |
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You're Almost There |
by pm
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 5
08 May 2003
Modified: 02:52:08 PM |
Nice job responding to an argument, F. Unfortunately, it's not an argument that I or anybody else put forward.
The US corporate-owned media mislead people, and apparently you agree. In a failed effort to win popular support for his invasion, Bush claimed repeatedly that it was in response to 9-11. No evidence of a link has been found, but the media continue to echo the official lie from the Bush administration that a link does exist, and now 70% of Americans believe the lie. That's successful propaganda.
Of course, we could accept F's "guilty until proven innocent" doctrine, since we're dumping the rest of the principles that used to distinguish the United States. |
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Wuh...huh? |
by bfd
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: -3
08 May 2003
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Paragraph 2 half way down of "B F D", you said yourself "Most people believe that the war in Iraq was about 9-11 while absolutely no evidence has been offered to show any link between Saddam Hussein and the attacks", to which I responded. Read "I'll Be Nice And Actually Try To Explain This To You" again. |
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Re: May Day Reminders |
by pm
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 3
11 May 2003
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F shows no link between Saddam Hussein and 9-11, aside from his personal Limbaugh-enhanced fantasies.
Bush and his minions lie, the mass media support him, and America is weaker for it. |
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