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Mike Elk on GM Strike, Trinity Tran on Public Bankingview post on FAIR.orgPlay Stop
 (image: UAW) This week on CounterSpin: One of the ways corporate media coverage of the now more than three-week-old GM strike is like coverage of every strike is the use, so common as to be invisible, of constructions like “GM strike leaves thousands of outside workers without a job,” “The strike may begin to drag the economy in places like Michigan,” or “In Flint, at least 1,200 truckers and production workers from suppliers have lost their jobs because of the strike.” To describe the intervention—the strike—as the cause of all attendant harms suggests that the status quo (to which the strike is a response) is blameless. Management’s predations—in this case including cutting healthcare, and using tiered wage scales and temporary workers to undercut pay and security—are daily and grinding and deeply unfair. But it’s the strike that’s “disruptive” and damaging and somehow out of bounds. We’ll talk about the strike reality outside media’s frame with Mike Elk, senior labor reporter and founder of Payday Report . Play Stop  (image: CPBA) Also on the show: California’s corporate lobbyists did not want the state to pass the Public Banking Act, but a coalition of non-lobbyists—worker and and climate justice and civil rights and community groups—made it happen, and now the California’s the second state in the country, after North Dakota, to allow jurisdictions to build banks that are local, accountable, environmentally responsible, and invested in the commons rather than profit-making. We’ll hear about that from Trinity Tran, co-founder and lead organizer for Public Bank LA and a founding member of the California Public Banking Alliance. Play Stop Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look back at coverage of Pentagon greenhouse emissions and Bernie Sanders’ heart attack. Play Stop |