[ Reader Comments: Economy Not Fine, Half Work Low-Wage Jobs;
Reparations; Centrist Dems; Work at Amazon; Chicago Teachers Strike
Lessons; UAW GM Strike Was Significant; Resources: Bullies in Blue;
Multicultural Childrens Books; "I Am Troy Davis"....]
[[link removed]]

TIDBITS - DEC. 5, 2019 - READER COMMENTS: ECONOMY NOT FINE, HALF WORK
LOW-WAGE JOBS; REPARATIONS; CHICAGO TEACHERS STRIKE LESSONS; UAW GM
STRIKE WAS SIGNIFICANT; RESOURCES: BULLIES IN BLUE; MULTICULTURAL
CHILDREN'S BOOKS; "I AM TROY DAVIS"; MORE  
[[link removed]]

 

December 5, 2019
xxxxxx

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_ Reader Comments: Economy Not Fine, Half Work Low-Wage Jobs;
Reparations; Centrist Dems; Work at Amazon; Chicago Teachers Strike
Lessons; UAW GM Strike Was Significant; Resources: Bullies in Blue;
Multicultural Children's Books; "I Am Troy Davis".... _

Tidbits - Reader Comments, Resources, Announcements AND cartoons -
Dec. 5, 2019, xxxxxx

 

Re: 'Everything Is Not Fine': Nobel Economist Calls on Humanity to End
Obsession With GDP (James Vokac; Joe Maizlish)
Re: Almost Half of All Americans Work in Low-Wage Jobs (Kenneth
Sullivan; Domingo Soto)
The Three Wise Guys  --  cartoon by Mike Luckovich
Re: Ilhan Omar Asks for Restorative Justice for the Man Who Threatened
Her Life (Deborah Gerson)
Re: New Poll: Billionaire Tax Is Really Popular (Claire O'Connor)
Re: Nancy Pelosi Pushes the House to Pass USMCA, but Neglects a Bill
With Broad Support to Strengthen Unions (Leonard Polletta; Janet
Bayer)
Reflecting on Immigration (Arlene Halfon)
Re: Ruthless Quotas at Amazon Are Maiming Employees (Joe Grogan)
Re: The Chicago Teachers Strike Was a Lesson in 21st-Century
Organizing (Frank Joyce)
Re: The Army Built to Fight ‘Medicare for All’ (William
Leffingwell)
Where we care about corruption (and where we don’t)  --  cartoon
by Joel Pett
Re: Remember the Oath of the Elbe (Leonard J. Lehrman)

RESOURCES:

Bullies in Blue: The Problem with School Policing [Infographic] (ACLU)
EPI Workshop Series Explores Racial and Economic Justice Issues
(Economic Policy Institute)
40+ Multicultural Children's Books About Christmas & Kwanzaa (Colours
of Us)

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

"I AM TROY DAVIS" - Protest Performance & Community Discussion - New
York - December 8 (Donkeysaddle Projects)
See you on the dance floor! - New York - December 14 (United Students
Against Sweatships (USAS)

 

RE: 'EVERYTHING IS NOT FINE': NOBEL ECONOMIST CALLS ON HUMANITY TO END
OBSESSION WITH GDP
 

see "Doughnut Economics" by Kate Raworth for a well developed
alternative to GDP and guidelines to a sustainable future.

Why a Just and Sustainable Economy Looks Like a Doughnut
[[link removed]]

This is the real-world economy for a living Earth that we must learn
to structure and manage to provide a safe space for humanity

James Vokac

     =====

Sometimes the things that count the most are the things that are most
difficult to count.

Joe Maizlish,
Los Angeles

 

RE: ALMOST HALF OF ALL AMERICANS WORK IN LOW-WAGE JOBS

(posting on xxxxxx Labor
[[link removed]])
 

Wage slavery in the U.S.A.

Kenneth Sullivan
Posted on xxxxxx's Facebook page
[[link removed]]

     =====

And that is in the continental USA, imagine in Puerto Rico which
depends on 80% of goods imported from USA. Wages here in Puerto Rico
are the lowest of any incorporated state, even though we're citizens
and a Commonwealth of the US for over a century: We are not treated
fairly! Puerto Ricans matter!

Domingo Soto
Posted on xxxxxx's Facebook page
[[link removed]]

 

THE THREE WISE GUYS  --  CARTOON BY MIKE LUCKOVICH
 

Mike Luckovich
December 4, 2019
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
[[link removed]]

 

RE: ILHAN OMAR ASKS FOR RESTORATIVE JUSTICE FOR THE MAN WHO THREATENED
HER LIFE
 

A moving response to the violent threat.
May she be an example, a step in the path we need.

Deborah Gerson

 

RE: NEW POLL: BILLIONAIRE TAX IS REALLY POPULAR
 

Billionaires should be required to may restitution to the total 99%.
Reparations first for decedents of enslaved people, second for all
descendents of Native and Indigenous people who's land and resources
were stolen and finally for everyone who is not a millionaire or
billionaire. Proposed form of reparations.

For decedents of enslaved people. Give all income tax on income below
$50,000 per year per person

For decedents of Native and Indigenous people: Return to terms of all
treaties

For the rest of us: Free college for life, Free universal, single
payer health care, repair infrastructure and public education to match
the best in the world.

A 2 % tax is no where near what they owe us for the devastated
environment, wasted lives and fractured communities. The cost we have
been paying for their greed.

Claire O'Connor

 

RE: NANCY PELOSI PUSHES THE HOUSE TO PASS USMCA, BUT NEGLECTS A BILL
WITH BROAD SUPPORT TO STRENGTHEN UNIONS
 

And on issues that matter to workers the Democrats are stalling!

Leonard Polletta
Posted on xxxxxx's Facebook page
[[link removed]]

     =====

Centrists couldn't care less about our struggles.

Janet Bayer
Posted on xxxxxx's Facebook page
[[link removed]]

 

REFLECTING ON IMMIGRATION
 

I would like to find a word in any Native American Language that is
the equivalent of "catastrophe" or "Nakba" to "commemorate" on the day
many people "celebrate" "Thanksgiving." 

Arlene Halfon 

 

RE: RUTHLESS QUOTAS AT AMAZON ARE MAIMING EMPLOYEES

(posting on xxxxxx Labor
[[link removed]])
 

Thank you for this information that reveals the "Beauty of Work" at
Amazon. This is another example of the use of technology to enhance
production to the detriment of people.  I am sharing this info with
some politicians in my community so that when various  additional
warehouses are proposed here, they will know what some of the
implications are for people.

Joe Grogan/Bolton,
Ontario-Canada

 

RE: THE CHICAGO TEACHERS STRIKE WAS A LESSON IN 21ST-CENTURY
ORGANIZING
 

Apologies for the length, but please consider the following comment to
The Chicago Teachers Strike Was a Lesson in 21st-Century Organizing by
Sarah Jaffee. Thanks to Sarah Jaffee for shining the light on the
Chicago Teachers Union. For those interested in trying to build a
labor movement for the present and the future there is much to be
learned from the CTU and the article. 

With regard to the UAW though I think her perspective is somewhat off
kilter. Yes, is entirely possible that the UAW is so hell-bent on
overcoming every obstacle between it and further ignominious decline
that little can be done. But it doesn’t have to be that way. The
General Motors strike was encouraging. It’s true that disgraced
former President Gary Jones might have welcomed the strike as a
distraction from his own corruption problems. And it’s true that the
UAW is already weakened to point that the settlement leaned more
status quo than breakthrough. Still, that’s not the whole story. It
certainly was not Gary Jones’s strike. It belonged to the members.
As such, it was one of the more inspiring rank and file actions in the
history of U.S. organized labor. 

Based on conversations I had marching on the GM Local 22 picket line
on several occasions I saw many signs of hope. (Disclosure: I am a
member of UAW Local 1981. It’s the fourth UAW local I have belonged
to going back to the 1970’s. I was also the Director of the UAW
Communications Department from 1990 to 2002.) Broadly speaking, I
found older top tier wage members who believed they were striking on
behalf of younger, lower paid workers. They were joined by younger
workers who felt they were striking not only for themselves but also
for the idea of the visionary social justice union the UAW once was. 

And in fact some gains for younger and lower-tier workers were
achieved. This is more meaningful than it might seem for several
reasons. Among other things, it represented a reversal of a long
standing bargaining priority that favored retirees. Beyond the GM
strike, there are current national and local leaders who are calling
for reform. The point is this. The membership of the union, all of it,
not just the auto sector, represents a significant potential force
from which to build UAW 2.0, a union for the needs of today’s
workers, not those of the 20th century. Make no mistake about it, the
appalling culture of corruption is the symptom, not the disease. It is
evidence of how seriously the UAW has lost its way. The disease
includes decades of nepotism; devotion to a code of silence; top down
sexist, racist one-party rule and an obsolete economic/political
analysis. Making the UAW clean again is necessary but not even close
to sufficient. Far deeper change is needed. New partnerships,
alliances and leadership are essential. Hard to accomplish? Sure, but
so was founding UAW 1.0.

Frank Joyce

 

RE: THE ARMY BUILT TO FIGHT ‘MEDICARE FOR ALL’
 

Medicare for All is not the enemy. We have to have a good transition
to something like that, minus the campaign slogans.

William Leffingwell
Posted on xxxxxx's Facebook page
[[link removed]]

WHERE WE CARE ABOUT CORRUPTION (AND WHERE WE DON’T)  --  CARTOON
BY JOEL PETT

Joel Pett
November 26, 2019
Lexington Herald-Leader
[[link removed]]
(KY)

_[Four-time Pulitzer finalist and 2000 Pulitzer prize winner Joel Pett
has been at the Lexington Herald-Leader since 1984. His sharp-edged
political cartoons have appeared in publications worldwide, including
the Washington Post, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Times of
London, USA Today and the Katmandu Times.]_

 

RE: REMEMBER THE OATH OF THE ELBE
 

I was there, in Torgau, April 25, 1985, commemorating the 40th
anniversary of that meeting on the Elbe.

Marc Blitzstein had written a song about it, as part of his
American-Soviet friendship musical, GOLOOPCHIK.

At that meeting, it seemed like an end to the Cold War could be
possible, and of course, 4 1/2 years later it was.

Only now we have to stop it from starting again, somehow.

Leonard J. Lehrman

 

BULLIES IN BLUE: THE PROBLEM WITH SCHOOL POLICING [INFOGRAPHIC]
 

Over the past 50 years, our schools have become sites of increased
criminalization of young people—a disturbing fact that is even truer
for poor Black and Latino communities. Today, police officers assigned
to patrol schools can legally use physical force on students, arrest
and handcuff them, and bring the full weight of the criminal justice
system to bear on kids who are simply misbehaving. The primary role of
police in schools is to enforce criminal laws, and virtually every
violation of a school rule can be considered a criminal act if viewed
through this police-first lens. Though these police are often referred
to as “school resource officers,” their legal power and attending
actions reveal that this designation only serves to mask that their
presence has transformed schools into another site of concentrated
policing. Such policing marks the start of the school-to-prison
pipeline—the entry point to the criminal justice system for too many
kids—and fuels mass incarceration.

Related Issues

* School-to-Prison Pipeline
[[link removed]]
* Juvenile Justice
[[link removed]]

DOWNLOAD INFOGRAPHIC
[[link removed]]

ACLU [[link removed]]  
125 Broad Street, 18th Floor
New York NY 10004

212-549-2500
 

 

EPI WORKSHOP SERIES EXPLORES RACIAL AND ECONOMIC JUSTICE ISSUES
 

Patrice Kunesh, Director of the Center for Indian Country Development
(CICD), speaking at EPI's PREE workshop. 
EPI’s Program on Race, Ethnicity and the Economy (PREE), in
partnership with the Groundwork Collaborative and the Center for
Popular Democracy, is hosting a series of workshops
[[link removed]] to
cultivate constructive engagement on issues related to racial and
economic justice among Washington, D.C.-based policy analysts,
advocates, and researchers. At the most recent of these workshops,
Patrice Kunesh
[[link removed]],
director of the Center for Indian Country Development
[[link removed]]
(CICD) at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, talked about how
the social and economic histories of Native communities in the U.S.
relate to contemporary economic, social, and political issues
affecting those communities. Participation in the workshop series is
by invitation only, but recordings
[[link removed]]
of the sessions will be available online. WATCH PAST PREE WORKSHOPS »
[[link removed]]

SHARE THE WORKSHOP SERIES:

EPI workshop series explores racial and economic justice issues

Economic Policy Institute [[link removed]]
1225 Eye St. NW, Suite 600
Washington, DC xxxxxx
Phone: 202-775-8810 • [email protected]

 

40+ MULTICULTURAL CHILDREN'S BOOKS ABOUT CHRISTMAS & KWANZAA
 

This year the holiday season really sneaked up on us! Not too late to
share some of our Christmas and Kwanzaa books though!

24 Multicultural Children's Books About Christmas
[[link removed]]

Top 10 Children's Books About Kwanzaa
[[link removed]]

Colours of Us [[link removed]]

 

"I AM TROY DAVIS" - PROTEST PERFORMANCE & COMMUNITY DISCUSSION - NEW
YORK - DECEMBER 8
 

For the first time in 16 years, four federal executions are scheduled
to take place Monday, December 9th. To protest these executions, next
[[link removed]]
Sunday, December 8th at 3:00PM EST, the story of Troy Davis will be
performed at the Rattlestick Theatre in New York City by people who
have been directly impacted by the death penalty, mass incarceration,
state and racial violence.
[[link removed]]
I Am Troy Davis (by Phil Montgomery, based on the book by Jen Marlowe
and Martina Davis-Correia with Troy Davis) tells the story of Troy
Davis, an innocent man executed in Georgia in 2011. Check out the
performance via livestream: www.donkeysaddle.org
[[link removed]]
 
Donkeysaddle Projects is producing I Am Troy Davis in partnership with
Amnesty International USA, Blackbird, Death Penalty Action, the Jordan
Davis Foundation, Legal Defense Fund,  the Mamie Till Mobley Memorial
Foundation, the People’s Forum, Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre, and
Witness to Innocence. The performance draws connections between
capital punishment and wider systems of state and racial violence and
will be followed by a community discussion with the family members of
those who have been impacted.
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 8, 2019

3:00 PM – 5:00 PM EST

Rattlestick Playwrights Theater*
224 Waverly Place
New York, NY 10014

View Map
[[link removed]]
*NOTE: Rattlestick Theatre is not an ADA facility

Suggested donation: $15/ticket

Ticket WAITLIST
[[link removed]] 

I AM TROY DAVIS

By Phillip Montgomery, based on the book by Jen Marlowe and Martina
Davis-Correia with Troy Anthony Davis

Suggested donation: $15/ticket

WATCH THE LIVESTREAM AT WWW.DONKEYSADDLE.ORG
[[link removed]]!!!!

A staged reading of _I Am Troy Davis_ will be performed in NYC on
Dec 8 to protest the death penalty. Troy was an innocent man on
Georgia’s death row, who was executed in 2011. _I Am Troy
Davis_ takes us inside a violent criminal justice system where life
and death hang in the balance. It is also a testament to the power of
love and resilience of family. The performers are all death row
survivors, family members of death row prisoners and wrongfully
convicted people, family members of those killed by police and racist
violence—those most impacted.

PERFORMERS

*
AIRICKCA GORDON-TAYLOR (cousin of Emmett Till, lynched in Mississippi
in 1955)

*
AISHA SALAAM-MALONE (sister of Yusef Salaam, from the Central Park 5
case)

*
AKEEM BROWDER (brother of Kalief Browder, a teen held in Rikers in
pre-trial solitary confinement)

*
CEPHUS “UNCLE BOBBY” JOHNSON (uncle of Oscar Grant, killed by
BART police in 2009)

*
DELIA PEREZ MEYER (sister of Louis Castro Perez, on TX death row
with an innocence case)

*
ERIC TAYLOR (actor-activist)

*
GWENN CARR (mother of Eric Garner, killed by NYPD in 2014)

*
LAWRENCE HAYES (former death row prisoner in NY State)

*
LEE WENGRAF (organizer and author)

*
PHYLLIS PRENTICE (married to death row exonoree Shujaa Graham)

*
RON DAVIS (father of Jordan Davis, a 17-year-old shot and killed in
2012 in Jacksonville, FL)

*
SABRINA BUTLER (exonerated from MS death row)

*
SERA-LYS MCARTHUR (actor-activist)

*
SHUJAA GRAHAM (exonerated from CA death row)

*
YVETTE ALLEN (sister of Billie Allen, an artist on federal death row
with an innocence case.)

"I AM TROY DAVIS" will feature the artwork of Billie Allen who is
currently on federal death row with an innocence case
[[link removed]].
If you are unable to attend the performance in person, check it out
via livestream generously provided by Spark Street Digital on
Donkeysaddle Project's homepage: WWW.DONKEYSADDLE.ORG
[[link removed]]

PARTNER ORGANIZATIONS:

Donkeysaddle Projects is producing the _I Am Troy Davis_ event in
partnership with Amnesty International USA, Blackbird, Death
Penalty Action, the Jordan Davis Foundation, Legal Defense
Fund, Love Not Blood Campaign, the Mamie Till Mobley Memorial
Foundation, the People’s Forum, Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre,
Sankofa, and Witness to Innocence.

This project has provided transportation, accommodations, and an
honorarium for each participant and is still $6,000 away from its
fundraising goal. Please help us reach it by donating here
[[link removed]].


Please help us spread the word by sharing through your networks and
social media [[link removed]]using #IATD
#IAMTROYDAVIS

 

SEE YOU ON THE DANCE FLOOR! - NEW YORK - DECEMBER 14
 

 

USAS "PARTY LIKE IT'S 1997" RSVP

Please join us on Saturday December 14, 2019 at 8pm at LiUNA’s
rooftop space (905 16th St N.W.) for a benefit in support of United
Students Against Sweatshops (USAS). www.usas.org
[[link removed]]

This isn’t your typical labor movement fundraiser, it’s a dance
party! “Party Like It’s 1997” is a cross-generational space to
gather folks from across the labor movement to let loose and dance the
night away to 90's tunes and classic hits.

Light appetizers are provided and drink tickets will be available for
purchase to use at the bar.

For more information email [email protected]

Door Entry Ticket Designations:
College Students: $10
Rank & File Workers: $20
Union/Org Staffers: $30
Union/Org Leadership: $40
(Preferred payment: cash, check, Venmo)

If your union or organization would like to purchase a block of
tickets in advance please email [email protected]. The advance purchase
block rate amounts to $25 per person, regardless of designation.
Checks can be made out to “Alliance for Global Justice-USAS” and
mailed to USAS at 1155 Connecticut Ave NW Suite 500 Washington, DC,
20036. More information including an invitation letter for
unions/orgs: [link removed]
[[link removed]]

UNITED STUDENTS AGAINST SWEATSHOPS [[link removed]] (USAS,
pronounced 'you-sas')
1155 Connecticut Avenue NW 
Suite 500 
Washington, DC 20036

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INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

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