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UPDATE: Protests aimed at disrupting Black Friday sales events at Walmart stores around the country began yesterday, Nov. 15th, with walk-outs at a number of stores. Employees at six Seattle area Walmart stores walked off the job protesting what they say is low pay, too few hours and retaliation by managers against workers who speak out. Go here for more.
This just in: we’re not the Wisconsin of the West. There were some big winners and losers in last week’s election and the principal players themselves have gotten the bulk of the attention. Here are a few of the most noteworthy victors and flops besides the candidates themselves. Let’s start with the triumphs:
1) Labor-Community Alliances:San Diego elected the first genuinely progressive mayor in its history even though the Filner forces were outspent.
It was in the middle of April back in 2011, and a couple hundred local Republican bigwigs were holding a gala “unity night” at the Kona Kai on Shelter Island. Mayor Jerry Sanders was joining Republican Councilman Kevin Faulconer, other honchos and establishment types from the San Diego Chamber of Commerce, the Lincoln Club, the Taxpayers Association, plus cadres of right-wing activists – all coming together in an orgy of unified puffery.
“We have a conservative movement that has learned, over the decades, to mimic many of the characteristics of its enemies.” ~ Thomas Frank
During the run-up to the June primary Carl DeMaio used a quote from one of my OB Rag columns in a mailer attacking Nathan Fletcher that implied the Rag’s support for his candidacy. My response was a column, “Carl DeMaio is a Dangerous, Mean-Spirited Liar and Other Tales of Fear and Loathing in San Diego” where I observed:
>As Frank Gormlie noted in an OB Rag piece last Saturday, Carl DeMaio used a pull quote from one of my OB Rag columns describing Nathan Fletcher as a “Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing” . . . What is not at all surprising here is that DeMaio uses my piece and the OB Rag logo out of context, without permission, implying our endorsement of him. That kind of sleazy, unethical behavior is his raison d’etre.
From BillMoyers.com and AlterNet /October 19, 2012
The One Percent is not only increasing their share of wealth — they’re using it to spread millions among political candidates who serve their interests. Example: Goldman Sachs, which gave more money than any other major American corporation to Barack Obama in 2008, is switching alliances this year; their employees have given $900,000 both to Mitt Romney’s campaign and to the pro-Romney super PAC Restore Our Future. Why?
By Joshua Holland /Alternet
On the day before an election that’s supposed to hinge on jobs, taxes and the middle class, Bain Capital, the company Mitt Romney founded, will close the doors of a factory in Freeport, Illinois, and ship 170 good, high-tech jobs to China.
The employees of Sensata Technologies were forced to train their Chinese replacements, and the American flag that long flew over the factory was reportedly removed while the Chinese engineers were visiting the site. A group of workers have set up camp across from the factory — calling it “Bainport” — and some supporters have tried to block the trucks hauling equipment out of the plant. According to Dave Johnson, there have been several arrests.
In a recent column, I outlined the connections between the advocates and funders of Proposition 32 and opponents of Proposition 30, noting the central role of Proposition 38 backer Molly Munger’s brother, Charles Munger, who has donated over $20 million of his own money to a campaign fund to gut unions and defund education. Charles’s main allies in this effort, as I pointed out in that column, are also big supporters of the privatization of education and other forms of profiteering at the expense of public schools.
By Vincent deBaca
Tina C. de Baca (mother, friend, sister, and compañera) is now at peace and she sits happily with our ancestors in heaven where the world cannot hurt her. She requested the sacraments to the end and she knew God’s love, patience, and forgiveness. Compounding other illnesses, Tina fell into unconsciousness after suffering two strokes on October 3rd and she passed away peacefully on Sunday, October 14, 2012.
She was born Celestina Maria Marquez at the family ranchito in Anton Chico, New Mexico. Family teased her as “The Slick Chick from Anton Chic.” She was the only woman ever seen walking UFW picket-lines in the 1960s dressed stylishly “to the 9s” in high heels. A stunning beauty, Tina possessed a great sense of humor and a strong dedication to human rights in good and bad times.
Yet another person has been injured in a fall off Sunset Cliffs. Late Sunday night – early Monday morning around 2 am, lifeguards got the call about injuries from people falling off the cliffs near Ladera Street.
Last week in the New York Times Adam Nagourney noted in his article on Proposition 32, “California Is Latest Stage in the Battle Over Unions,” that:
By design or not — and some union officials said they believed it was by design — the fight has forced unions to divert money from what had been their top priority: winning approval of an initiative by Gov. Jerry Brown to pass temporary tax increases to head off nearly $6 billion in new cuts in state spending.
“Labor has to stop everything it is doing to defend against this,” said Peter Dreier, the director of the Urban and Environmental Policy Department at Occidental College. “It’s pretty effective in forcing the unions to spend a lot of their resources to stop this from passing.”
And labor certainly has gone all in to defeat Proposition 32, making that their top political priority this fall, not the passage of Proposition 30.
The Center on Policy Initiatives (CPI) released a new report on poverty, earnings, and income inSan DiegoCountythat revealed the sad fact that “more than a third of San Diego County’s population” lives “in economic hardship.” Nearly one out of five children in our city live in poverty with 16% of women, 21% of Latinos and 23% of African Americans joining them—and we are losing ground “as the quality of jobs created by major industries in the region failed to keep pace with the cost of living.”
Some people go on and on about labor unions as if they’re some kind of STD, so un-hip to the reality that the Labor Movement is us, We the People.
Who else labors?
As far as my relations with unions is concerned, if it hadn’t been for the San Diego Teachers Union I wouldn’t have enjoyed the time of a lifetime, a period of three years where I put work aside and took a “Parental Leave,” the first such leave taken by a man in the school district.
I don’t know how that wonderful opportunity made it through all the stancing and dancing required to get a contract signed. I think it must have happened as kind of an after thought, something put on the table as part of a tooth fairy like wish to mess with management’s mind, and the district must have gone along with it in a “Whatever, if it sails your boat” frame of mind, knowing they weren’t going to give up much more. That’s how negotiations go in the labor movement sometimes.
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