Labor Rising?

I tend to be pretty skeptical of the business unions leadership, although some of them are nice folks. But as organizations they are top-heavy, top-down, conveyor-belt for the ruling class, safety-valve against revolt, jingoist war profiteers, democratic patsies, historically racist and sexist, textbook example of recuperation, those “Don’t Bite The War That Feeds You Buttons,etc. [...]

Rage Into The Machine

An overlooked irony in the 2008 US presidential race was that armed-struggler turned professor, Bill Ayers, was now a cog in the same Chicago political machine that empowered his former arch-nemesis (and friend of his father), Richard M.Daley with goons to chase and beat Ayers and the other dissenters outside of the 1968 DNC. This [...]

An Open Letter to the “Anarchists” Who Voted for Obama

In a future revolutionary period, the most subtle and most dangerous defenders of capitalism will not be the people shouting pro-capitalist and pro-statist slogans, but those who have understood the possible point of a total rupture. Far from eulogizing TV commercials and social submission, they will propose to change life… but, to that end, call [...]

“Joe the Plumber” & The American (Pipe) Dream

“I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half.”
-Jay Gould, Robber Baron
The 15 minutes of fame awarded to republican mascot, Samuel Wurzelbacher, aka “Joe the Plumber”, confirms what I have long considered to be the single greatest psychological problem afflicting working people in the US. Not the taste for mass-produced,  [...]

Rob Baran or Robber Baron? (part 3.)

Part 1. Part 2.
Call, write, email, stop in or take whatever action you deem appropriate, to send a message to “co-op” management, letting them know that such conduct is unacceptable, especially from an establishment which sells itself as an alternative to chain stores.
Petty, East End Food [...]

Starbucks: PA Turnpike Actions & No Mansion for its CEO Email Campaign

http://www.starbucksunion.org/Union Spreads News of SBUX Organizing Drive Across PA on Black Friday with Leafleting at Turnpike
Submitted by SWU on Mon, 11/19/2007 – 5:27pm.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contacts: Central PA – Hawa Lassanah
(717) 380-6085
Western PA – Kenneth Miller
(412) 241-1339
Updates on: www.starbucksunion.org
PITTSBURGH, PA — On Black Friday, the traditional start of the holiday shopping season, members [...]

An Open Letter to the “Astroturf” Drink Tax Foes-Retracted

Due to a hasty skimming of a Pittsburgh Tribune Review article, the YT had carelessly and incorrectly associated FACT, with the DC lobbying firm, the American Beverage Institute. They are apparently waging separate campaigns against the proposed drink tax. Despite the fact that the Pennsylvania Restaurant Association, the primary source of FACT’s funding(as in single [...]

Pittsburgh Call to Organize Against the IMF/World Bank

This call was issued several days ago, but due to an awful infection in my writing hand, yinz have been spared my awful prose. My failing health will prevent me from participating in these actions, but that’s no reason for you not to. It’s a shame, as it seems like a genuine attempt to step [...]

SOS-Thomas Merton Center is BROKE!!

Sorry to come back after a health/legal related hiatus, and beg for money, but the Thomas Merton Center is one of the key defensive (as are all formal organizations) structures  for participants the social war, as it is carried out here in Southwestern PA.
The TMC is one of those rare places in North America, where [...]

Free Trade: Parts is Parts?

Human trafficking is an integral component of any free trade agreement. The boilerplate (Warning: That is a link to scary, official gov’t site, the rest are other views) from the defacto North American Union, the Security & Prosperity Partnership (SPP), is heavily laden with language about “legitimate flow of persons…“
The politicians who make noise about [...]