#chris smalls

[iww-gnv]

Without devaluing the heroism of Smalls’ crusade or underselling the general inhumanity of Amazon’s treatment of its lowest-level workers, Union sets out to be something closer to a warts-and-all process documentary. Using unobtrusive direct cinema techniques, the documentary takes us inside the fledgling union, capturing the frustration and elation of trying to do the right thing in an impossible historical moment. It’s a nuanced portrait of the challenges of leadership and a revealing celebration of the values of persistence, solidarity and free weed.

[antiwaradvocates]

(6/25/23) Chris Smalls speaking in DC at the rally to take Cuba off the so called State Sponsors of Terror List. “Joe Biden keeps asking me to come to the White House, most recently I had an invitation for Juneteenth. I declined. They better hear this now, don’t invite me to the White House until Cuba is off the list!”

[thundergrace]

He was eating 'em up on the hill in this Eat the Rich jacket

[jechristine]

Happy Labor Day!

[goblincow]

Guess who met Chris Smalls the other night? As ever he's the most fashionable guy in the room. Excuse my weird grimace, I didn't want to make him wait around until I got a good photo haha

[sinnamonscouture]

Chris Smalls Covers New York Mag 07.2022

[theprogressivesadist]

aesthetic

[thoughtportal]

the people are the ones who make this company operate.

[kaydub80]

The professional managerial class likely got in the ear of Smalls and told him to let bygones be bygones with AOC after she no showed an ALU rally last August

I can say that he's been coopted beyond a shadow of a doubt

The PRO Act was already a bastardized version of the failed card check bill of '09. Finding out that it would have squashed smaller unions tells me that the major union bosses and their Dem Party backers are afraid of independent unions popping up and uniting people across the political spectrum

More evidence that one cannot work within the system without being coopted (Medhurst nailed it!)

Whether it's Chris Smalls or Gabriel Boric, the message anyone who says they're on the left should be getting is that these guys have been deemed "safe" by the mainstream press--which is to say, they have been deradicalized

Unless the dude has a medical condition, Smalls keeping the sunglasses on at all times tells me that he himself has gone the AOC route of becoming a brand

Very sloppy organizing when it comes to other Amazon plants

The celeb stuff could be the establishment's way of distracting Smalls--and it's proving to be very successful at this point

We don't need to wait until 2024 for a general strike. We need it right fucking now!

[worshiptheglitch]

This is what we did in the last election. It's a HUGE thing. We ditched a guy who wouldn't have blinked at having the Eat The Rich guy (Chris Smalls) shot to one who'll stand next to him in the oval office.

As Angela Davis said before the election, "If we want to continue [our] work, we certainly need a person in office who will be more amenable to our mass pressure. And to me, that is the only thing that someone like a Joe Biden represents."

Biden is not doing nearly enough. But by getting him into office, *we* did a lot. Because we got him into office, we still have a chance to do what we need to do.

Voting matters. A lot. But right now, presidential elections are about doors being open vs shut. Right now the door is open.

It's time for us to walk through.

[defensefilms]

A Brief Appreciation Of Richard Wolff

When I was younger, I remember attempting to explain to an entire classroom of stoners, how it was impossible to solve a lot of the problems of the wider world in our current dominant economic system.

I didn’t quite have the dialouge to explain how we were hindered by an economic system that doesn’t prioritize any of the things that actually benefit the people in it.

Among the many difficulties of articulating that, is the fact that there aren’t many solutions or alternatives that are discussed in the open.

 Whether it be in mainstream media, academia, or by the politicians of almost any country in the world. All these supposed cornerstones institutions, which supposedly exist to guide their country’s, and concern themselves with the well-being of it’s populous, and none are interested in looking at alternatives to an economic system that does not help to accomplish any of it’s people’s goals.

Guys like Richard Wolff are the kinds of speakers that help with that.

Surely, among the most important speakers of our lifetime and a staunch anti-capitalist and as the years have gone, Richard’s works seem to hit closer and closer to home regarding what is looking more and more like the downfall of an economic system that is so obsessed with growth, it has begun eating itself.

This is what I struggled to explain to my peers as a youth.

Does capitalism solve any of socitey’s major issues?

Starvation and malnutrition? Nah

Does it help house all people ? Nah, and in a lot of situations, like what you see in countries like Finland, is that it’s governments that end homelessness in their respective countries. On top of thar, I hate to break it to you, but housing poor people, isn’t profitable, so the real estate tycoons don’t even tangentially help with that.

What about unemployment?

I mean businesses and industries compensating workers and thus being able to increase profits, expand operations and hire more workers, is supposed to be this magic pill that ends unemployent, right? That way the existence of several large enterprises spread out across industries throughout the economy is supposed to solve that probelm right?

Only it doesn’t, because no one hires more workers than what they need, because that just bad business, and employing people isn’t the point of business, being profitable is.

Here’s the real twist though, through years of schooling, you’ve already been conditioned to believe that a lot of the things you have as recourse and protection are bad for you, or not in your personal interest.

For instance, do you want better conditions at work? Would be a whole lot easier if you could hold the people in charge accountable, kind of like what a union is supposed to do.

Only wait, you don’t believe in unions do you?.

In 2022, I no longer roll my eyes in despair, being stuck trying to explain this, while also not having any sources of information or media to help my case. In 2022, I can finally let go of feeling like the only man on earth that sees this bullshit.

Richard Wolff’s work undertakes the daunting task of undoing years and generations of misinformation and miseducation regarding an economic system that is the only thing people have ever known, and on top of that, contending with misappropriations like “Marxists want to take your property”.

What Richard Wolff’s work does is peel back at layers worth of information noise, that really came about in the 1950′s, back when capitalism had to protect itself against Soviet communism.

Most of what you believe about Marxism, socialism and stateism, were ideas first created during that time. Ideas created at a time when both capitalist and communist powers utilized propaganda to ensure their people didn’t consider alternatives.

What you missed in all that though, is that niether capitalism nor communism arbitrates or advocates for the workers owning the means of production and keeping the proceeds from what they create.

Among the most helpful of the ideas of which Wolff is a big proponent of, is that of worker-owned co-ops.

A worker owned co-op is the idea or structure, by which each and every worker of a company being entitled to an equal share of the profits, where as in a normal company structure only the ownership are entiled to a share of the proceeds.

If you think this stuff is pie in the sky, you need to wake up and smell the coffee.

The old capitalist structure and the businessman that built their fortunes in it, are failing everyday people, and alternatives aren’t an idea to be tried at a more opportune time, they are a neccesity right now, and people worldwide are noticing.

An article by the Labour Research Service about a printing company in Cape Town, South Africa, named the Finger Printing Co-operatice Ltd, that had to improvise when their printing machine (thier means of production) was siezed.

Of all the countries in the world, none are a better place to export the idea of worker owned co-operatives, than South Africa.

We have a large agricultural sector, mining and farming sectors, as well as manufacturing, but most importantly, we have people, the most important resource there is, is the human resources.

Allowing workers to collaborate to firstly own the materials, equipment and instruments they would need to do this work, and then share in the profits of whatever goods they create, services they provide, or whatever raw materials they mine/farm. 

This may be the best way to reach down to a sector of the economy that is even below the small businessman.

In short, South Africa is tailor made for worker owned co-operatives, and as stated in the Labour Research Service’s artice, the country already has a history of worker owned co-ops, going back to the 1980′s when manufacturing plants wouldn’t hire union employees.

Wolfe’s contributions to articulating the need for an alternate economic system have helped greatly in helping understand how the goverments, business and globalism have all created an economic system that only helps those at the top.

This was, and still is, no easy feat.

A lot of academic speakers that speak against capitalism, must couch their commentary or risk being seen as a pariah, a social miscrient, or a derelict. Sufficient to say speaking this way of the reality that is all anyone has ever known, comes at the risk of being discredited to no end.

This doesn’t deter Wolf at all.

He makes no bones about what the problem is, or what he is speaking against. This is not the academic who will leave breadcrumbs without being explicit about it. Wolfe’s approach is too straighforward for that, and he acknowledges that the workplace being where people spend most of the time, automatically makes it a hub of political activity.

That’s a very unpopular message, not just among the business class, but probably among segment of regular working people, who are discouraged, and even intimidated by speaking against thier work lives, the economic system and how our lives revolve around chasing money.

As global economics clamp down harder and put the costs back on to consumers, by far the hardest work there is, is letting people know there is a problem and for which the people will need to create  and implement alternatives.

Thankless work.

And it’s the reason why Richard Wolff is by far the most important speaker of his time.

[disillusioned41]

The Majority Report w/ Sam Seder May 5, 2022

Amazon Union President Humiliates Republican Senator During Congressional Hearing

Amazon Union leader Chris Smalls, testifying in front of the Senate Budget Committee, reacts to Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham's opening statement that implied it's wrong to single out companies in organizing efforts: "This is not a left or right thing. This is a working class issue. And the workers at the bottom are the ones who make these corporations go."

The Rational National May 5, 2022

Amazon Union Leader Shuts Down Lindsey Graham's Garbage

Amazon Union President Christian Smalls shut down Republican Senator Lindsey Graham's garbage during a hearing on Amazon's labor practices.   

[thundergrace]

[fightforthesoulofthecities]

Strategy & Soul Theater invites you to a film showing of Americonned

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1708970010831{margin-bottom: 0px !important;}”] The Strategy and Soul Film Theater Invites you to a screening of the film Americonned “A great film about the fight for trade unions” Friday March 1st, 2024 at 6pm  Strategy & Soul Theater  3546 Martin Luther King Blvd. Los Angeles CA 90008 [/vc_column_text][vc_single_image image=”7474″…

[ignatius-pennyfeather-ix]

….

[mssoapart]

Did you know that putting pineapple on pizza was invented in Canada? Or what if Alejandro, after the finale, ended up in a hospital and his former team sent him a gift.