bieups · 2 years ago
Text
(tw: mention of sexual assault/rape)
Sharing this news article about our union's press conference, but making it ~study related~ by breaking down the headline :)
원어민 - native speaker
강사 - instructor (there are a million words for different types of teachers; "영어 원어민 강사" is commonly used for Eng. teachers even if technically we aren't all "강사")
노동 - labor, work
실태 - reality, real condition
증언 - testimony
기자 간담회 - press conference (reporter meeting)
임금 - wage, pay
체불 - default (as in failure to pay wages/loans on time)
다반사 - everyday affair, common occurance [comes from the Hanja 茶飯事, meaning drinking tea & eating meals is an everyday affair]
성폭행 - sexual assault, rape
위협 - threat, intimidation
~까지 - until ___, as far as ___, even, moreover
One thing that makes headlines difficult is they just use a bunch of nouns with a few particles, rather than full sentences with verbs.
원어민 강사 노동 실태 증언 기자 간담회: Press conference to testify about the real labor conditions of native speaking instructors
임금 체불은 다반사, 성폭행 위협까지: Overdue wages are commonplace, even threats of sexual assault
11 notes · View notes
other-peoples-coats · 2 years ago
Text
hit submit on the union survey about gender equality and just realised, with dawning resignation, that this is the first step down the path that ends up with me involved in chairing a queer focus group or mailing list or fuckin something.
8 notes · View notes
insert-stupid-username · 30 days ago
Text
God golly molly IATSE is so freaking cool. I fucking love unions
2 notes · View notes
spiderbitesandvampirevenom · 5 months ago
Text
not a fan of how performative and reactionary y'all are becoming
4 notes · View notes
treybien · 7 months ago
Text
yes capitalism's power seems unshakable. but i think people underestimate the psychological benefits of doing *something* rather than giving into powerlessness, even if that something doesn't change the world on a large scale or whatever
1 note · View note
chillyfeetsteak · 3 months ago
Text
did you know The Animation Guild is holding a rally tomorrow (8/10) in Burbank, CA and ANYONE is welcome to attend?? Come out and show support for our union ahead of contract negotiations!
Do you watch or enjoy animation? Wish shows would stop getting cancelled and shelved? Want to avoid having to look at AI slop? Think workers should earn a fair wage and have protections? Stand with us in solidarity!
Tumblr media
We need YOUR support! Join #AnimationGuild members on 8/10 at 5 PM at IATSE Local 80 to show our strength before negotiations. Together, we can make a difference! 💪 Spread the word - everyone is welcome!
4K notes · View notes
mesetacadre · 4 months ago
Text
The anti-imperialism posting experience
🚩 read-parenti
I hate the US so fucking much you wouldn't believe. The CIA killed my grandfather for trying to organize a union in the british-owned textile factory. To this day they keep my entire continent poor.
🦝 genderqueer-bernie 🔴🟠🟡🟢🔵🟣 follow
Hey OP I like this post but uhhhh
You're not the only one oppressed by neoliberalism
Middle class Americans got screwed over by Reagan
Corporate profits are at an all time high and we need solidarity more than ever
So instead of hating on Jessica from Idaho we should all work together against Power. Volunteer at a soup kitchen! Attend your local protests! Join the DSA!
#not ninjago #vote blue #progressive #social justice #sj #dsa
4K notes · View notes
mostlysignssomeportents · 1 month ago
Text
Everyday homeowners are human shields for Wall Street’s Internet of Shit slumlords
Tumblr media
The American Dream, such as it is, used to be two dreams, one based on work and solidarity, the other on asset appreciation and disconnected individualism. We killed the first one.
As the New Deal gave way to the post-war social safety net, Americans discovered two paths to social mobility: they could join a union, and they could buy a home. Joining a union meant that your wages would rise with productivity, and that the democratic ideal that you were meant to approach once every two years at the ballot-box could follow you into the building you spent more waking hours in than any other: your jobsite.
Labor unions used their political power to win labor rights, so that even workers who weren't a union couldn't be arbitrarily fired, or maimed on the job with impunity, or harassed or abused. And while the labor movement was mired in the same racist legacy that every American institution brought forward out of genocide and slavery, where racialized people started unions of their own or demanded representation from the unions who nominally represented them, they thrived.
Then there were houses. On the one hand, owning your home insulated you from the petty tyranny of the landlord, the threat of eviction, rent hikes, indifferent or dangerous building maintenance, and all the other miseries that arise when you think of a building as your home and someone else thinks of it as an asset, and the board is tilted so that they win every argument.
But homeownership wasn't just sold as a way to get out from under scumbag landlords: it was primarily sold as a way to build intergenerational wealth. Your house wasn't just a place to live: it was an asset, and it appreciated.
And if the dividends of labor protection were unevenly distributed between white people and racial minorities, the dividends of home ownership were almost entirely hoarded by white families. Federal policies – redlining – combined with racist lending at the local level, meant that Black families and other racialized groups were stuck in tenancy, while white families build wealth thanks to federal subsidies:
https://web.archive.org/web/20170220005558/https://www.demos.org/sites/default/files/publications/Asset%20Value%20of%20Whiteness.pdf
Those were the two American dreams: a good job and your own home. We killed the first one, and the second one devoured us whole.
Without a strong labor movement, wages stagnated. Corporate power waxed, and with it, the power to pollute, to poison, to maim and to defraud. The labor movement wasn't strong enough to stop Reagan from killing free UC tuition when he was governor of California. It wasn't strong enough to hold back spiraling health care prices. It wasn't strong enough to block the business lobby from neutering antitrust and ushering in four decades of market concentration, market capture and corruption. Workers couldn't save their defined benefits pension and were railroaded into market-based 401(k)s, forcing them to play the stock casino against their bosses, ever the sucker at the poker table.
With stagnant wages and out of control medical, educational and end-of-life bills, homeownership – the thing you do as an individual, where your gain is someone else's loss – became the American secular religion. Your house wasn't just a place to sleep and keep your photo albums: if it appreciated enough, you might be able to liquidate it on your deathbed and pay off your eldercare, your healthcare, your kids' college debt, and leave enough left over for your kids' downpayments.
And so every American who had a home became the enemy of every American who didn't – including one another's children. Every home built threatened your own property values. The racist, batshit American school funding formula, which sees schools funded out of property taxes, meaning the richest kids get the best schools, turned out to be a great way to increase your property values.
Protections for tenants, meanwhile, threatened the entire American way of life – the American dream itself. Every protection a tenant got – protection from eviction or rent hikes, the legal right to a safe and well-maintained home – reduced the value of every home in town.
After all, the better a landlord has to treat their tenants, the less money a landlord can make from a rental property. The less money a landlord can make from a rental property, the less they'd bid on a house like yours if it went up for sale.
And since anyone planning to buy your house to live in it has to outbid a landlord who might want to rent it out, giving tenants any protection threatened everything – the one asset you owned, which was your plan a, b and c for paying off all that health, education, and assisted living debt:
https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/06/the-rents-too-damned-high/
Today, the house-as-asset scam is breathing its last. There are millions more people who need homes than there are homes available. Sure, homelessness is a fantastically complex problem, but you could address every aspect of it – addiction, mental illness, joblessness – and millions of people would still be homeless, because there aren't enough homes for them to live in:
https://headgum.com/factually-with-adam-conover/myths-about-homeless-people-with-dr-margot-kushel
70% of all inflation in 2024 came from the cost of housing; a quarter of that came from illegal collusive behavior by landlords to hike rents:
https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/up-to-a-quarter-of-rental-inflation
Wall Street landlords have raised gigantic war-chests and are buying up homes at a rate never before seen, converting every available single-family home in many cities from an owner-occupied home to a rental. Private equity and hedge fund landlords have elevated charging junk fees to an absurdist theater project: you pay a "convenience" charge for paying your rent in cash. But also for paying your rent by direct transfer. Oh, and also for paying in cash. When Wall Street is your landlord, your home is a slum, dangerously undermaintained, sometimes lethally so:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/08/wall-street-landlords/#the-new-slumlords
Capitalists hate capitalism. The best thing to sell is something your customer can't live without, and that no one else has for sale. That's why "the market" loves private prisons so much:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/02/captive-customers/#guillotine-watch
The vast sums Wall Street is putting into buying up all of America's available housing stock is a bet that they can establish regional monopolies over having a home, and charge all the market can bear.
That's the plan at Invitation Homes, a company that was just targeted by the FTC for a slate of eye-watering crimes against the tenants in the 80,000 single-family homes they've acquired:
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/09/ftc-takes-action-against-invitation-homes-deceiving-renters-charging-junk-fees-withholding-security
Invitation Homes purchases homes as they come on the market, and they're also a leading customer of the "build-to-rent" housing industry, a fast-growing segment of new housing starts.
Writing about the FTC's enforcement action against Invitation Homes, Matt Soller brings in Starwood Capital Group, who manage Invitation Homes properties, and own 14,000 more homes in the sunbelt. Invitation and Starwood hate the anti-monopoly movement, and Barry Sternlicht, Starwood's billionaire CEO, really hates FTC Chair Lina Khan:
https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/monopoly-round-up-corporate-slumlords
The FTC complaint lays out a suite of just comically sleazy things ways that Invitation abuses its tenants, starting with false advertising. The company lists its houses at relatively low rents, then charges a large fee to apply to live there. When you pass the application process, you're told the rent is actually much higher, and if you walk away from the deal, you forfeit your application fee. That scam's netted Invitation $18m since 2019.
Stoller really hates junk fees, calling them "convenience fees without any convenience, service charges without any service performed." He lays out Invitation's long list of junk fees, which honestly sound like a list that Chatgpt would spit out if you prompted it for fifty junk fees that wouldn't pass the giggle-test: "utility management fees" "Lease Easy bundle fees," "air filter delivery fee," "smart home technology fees," etc etc.
"Smart home technology fee?" Yeah, Invitation's gone in hard for Internet of Shit smart home tech. The SVP who oversees Invitation's smart home fee program was ordered to "juice this hog" (you guys, juice doesn't come from hogs).
After decades of recruiting everyday American homeowners to demand anti-tenant policies that benefit giant corporations, American tenants have few rights on paper and even fewer in practice. That's left the door wide open for Invitation to abuse their tenants in a myriad of dismal and unimaginative ways: stealing their deposits, trashing their credit reports to retaliate against complaints, illegal evictions, busted appliances, mold, vermin, insects – the whole slumlord playbook.
As Stoller writes, there's a twist: "this landlord isn’t just a random slumlord, it’s one of the biggest Wall Street players in housing."
There are vast fortunes to be made in converting the human right to housing into an asset class, but those fortunes end up in the hands of a very small number of billionaires. On their own, they wouldn't have the political power to dismantle protections for tenants.
Realistically speaking, most kids who grew up in their parents' owner-occupied homes are going to end up tenants, thanks to undersupply and housing inflation. But those kids' parents have spent decades demanding policies to make their homes as valuable as possible – including mortgage tax breaks (but not rent tax breaks!), looser eviction laws, and less enforcement of what few protections tenants have.
Middle class homeowners are the useful idiots and human shields of the billionaires who are determined to force every American under 40 raise their kids in a rented slum full of spiders, ratshit and black mold, which will still cost 60% of their take-home salary.
That's why the FTC's action against Invitation Homes is such a big deal. And as Stoller points out, Chair Khan is really just implementing Kamala Harris's campaign promise to get Wall Street out of the landlord business.
Wall Street's raid on your bedroom and kitchen has inspired a generation of "finfluencer" copycats who buy and flip apartment buildings, sucking ever-larger amounts of cash out of them until they're unfit for human habitation, with mountains of rat-infested garbage ringing their crumbling walls:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/22/koteswar-jay-gajavelli/#if-you-ever-go-to-houston
Any future worth living in is going to get housing right. We need to stop thinking of housing as an asset and realize that it is, first and foremost, a human right. That's the premise of my 2023 solarpunk novel The Lost Cause, which just came out in paperback:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865946/thelostcause
You can't protect yourself from rising seas or rising healthcare bills through individual home-ownership. Solidarity – the kind of solidarity that once powered the union movement, and that is powering it again – is the only way to defeat the housing profiteers. The New Deal wasn't perfect, which is why whatever we do next has to be bigger, further reaching, and more inclusive than what FDR did almost a century ago.
The only minority that should be excluded from the next New Deal is billionaires.
Tumblr media
Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER stories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; and SPILL, about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.
Tumblr media Tumblr media
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/01/housing-is-a-human-right/#rentier-tech
Tumblr media
Image: Sam Valadi (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/132084522@N05/17086570218/
Carlos Delgado (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wall_Street_-_New_York_Stock_Exchange.jpg
CC BY 2.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/
837 notes · View notes
ms-demeanor · 5 months ago
Note
You never wanted norms to begin with, of course. Just violence that's on your side.
Ah yes, the frightening violence of...handing out food and emailing the zoning commission.
It's very useful to be able to paint everyone who disagrees with you as a violent revolutionary who doesn't care if anyone lives or dies and won't put in the work to keep shit going after the storm that they have awoken has laid waste to the land.
It's a lot harder to figure out what to do with people who vote in every election, are active in local politics, engage in mutual aid, and still think you're shitting the bed.
Join a union and start a meal share, asshole; the Parliamentarian isn't going to fuck you.
1K notes · View notes
eph-em-era · 1 year ago
Text
well all i can say about HBO's anti-union message in that bts video is that AS A KIWI ACTOR/STAGE/SCREEN INDUSTRY WORKER who isn't being strongarmed by a corporation into saying shit that they agree with
the hobbit laws suck. peter jackson is universally despised. what that man did with warner brothers and the national government to make our laws worse for workers so he could film his bad films here in the late 00s is akin to several crimes.
we WANT union protection! we WANT to be able to strike! i'm a member on the Equity NZ (union akin to SAG-AFTRA) committee for Wellington and the amount of work that's going on behind the scenes at the moment to claw back worker protections from our fucked up local laws is immense.
most of us aren't allowed to strike. most people working at wētā (the big screen production house), as well as on most screen/stage jobs are employed as contractors, so they're taxed exorbitantly, have no sick leave, have no holidays, have minimal protection from harassment or being taken advantage of.
long hours? being burned out? that's the kiwi way of living in the screen/stage industry and it SHOULD NOT be celebrated.
The Screen Industry Workers Act of 2022 has fixed some of that but there's still so much to go. yknow how SAG-AFTRA is fighting over residuals? here, we don't even know her.
i know all this personally and intimately.
i was taxed 39% on my contractor income last year.
only now that i'm a salaried worker can i afford to get my teeth fixed.
i had to get a legal action from a lawyer from ANOTHER UNION to get paid for one of my contracts in 2021 because the production team didn't like how i spoke up about their lax health and safety rules (this was a contract I was nominated for one of the most prestigious awards in the country for my work on, fyi)
sexual harassment is rife. what support is there? basically none. we hope it comes out in the media, or it doesn't change and there's nothing we can do cause we'll get sued into oblivion.
ive worked multiple 12+ hour days with only a tiny break in the middle or none at all. friends of mine have done 10-16 hour night shoots.
i've burned myself out multiple times in five years of professional practise cause that's the expected thing. that's what you do. if you're not working at 150% the entire time then you're a bad arts industry employee.
in conclusion, fuck off with your anti-union message, fuck you for utilising our weak-ass laws and HBO i'm in your walls
if you're in the US, support the Entertainment Community Fund! if you're a screen/stage worker in NZ, join Equity!
3K notes · View notes
reasonsforhope · 10 months ago
Text
"Seven federal agencies are partnering to implement President Biden’s American Climate Corps, announcing this week they would work together to recruit 20,000 young Americans and fulfill the administration's vision for the new program. 
The goals spelled out in the memorandum of understanding include comprehensively tackling climate change, creating partnerships throughout various levels of government and the private sector, building a diverse corps and serving all American communities.
The agencies—which included the departments of Commerce, Interior, Agriculture, Labor and Energy, as well the Environmental Protection Agency and AmeriCorps—also vowed to ensure a “range of compensation and benefits” that open the positions up to a wider array of individuals and to create pathways to “high-quality employment.”  
Leaders from each of the seven agencies will form an executive committee for the Climate Corps, which Biden established in September, that will coordinate efforts with an accompanying working group. They will create the standards for ACC programs, set compensation guidelines and minimum terms of service, develop recruitment strategies, launch a centralized website and establish performance goals and objectives. The ACC groups will, beginning in January, hold listening sessions with potential applicants, labor unions, state and local governments, educational institutions and other stakeholders. 
The working group will also review all federal statutes and hiring authorities to remove any barriers to onboarding for the corps and standardize the practices across all participating agencies. Benefits for corps members will include housing, transportation, health care, child care, educational credit, scholarships and student loan forgiveness, stipends and non-financial services.
As part of the goal of the ACC, agencies will develop the corps so they can transition to “high-quality, family-sustaining careers with mobility potential” in the federal or other sectors. AmeriCorps CEO Michael Smith said the initiative would prepare young people for “good-paying union jobs.” 
Within three weeks of rolling out the ACC, EPA said more than 40,000 people—mostly in the 18-35 age range—expressed interest in joining the corps. The administration set an ambitious goal for getting the program underway, aiming to establish the corps’ first cohort in the summer of 2024. 
The corps members will work in roles related to ecosystem restoration and conservation, reforestation, waterway protection, recycling, energy conservation, clean energy deployment, disaster preparedness and recovery, fire resilience, resilient recreation infrastructure, research and outreach. The administration will look to ensure 40% of the climate-related investments flow to disadvantaged communities as part of its Justice40 initiative.  
EPA Administrator Michael Regan said the MOU would allow the ACC to “work across the federal family” to push public projects focused on environmental justice and clean energy. 
“The Climate Corps represents a significant step forward in engaging and nurturing young leaders who are passionate about climate action, furthering our journey towards a sustainable and equitable future,” Regan said. 
The ACC’s executive committee will hold its first meeting within the next 30 days. It will draw support from a new climate hub within AmeriCorps, as well as any staffing the agency heads designate."
-via Government Executive, December 20, 2023
-
This news comes with your regularly scheduled reminder that WE GOT THE AMERICAN CLIMATE CORPS ESTABLISHED LAST YEAR and basically no one know about/remembers it!!! Also if you want more info about the Climate Corps, inc. how to join, you can sign up to get updates here.
974 notes · View notes
other-peoples-coats · 2 years ago
Text
so if you have the anxieties at work -- which, uh, big mood -- and have the specific breed of anxieties of 'fuck I am fucking up at my job so much, I am about to be fired for sucking so much', you might find it useful to note down -- not on a work device for the love of god -- how often everyone else at your job fucks up.
not just like, Huge Fuck Ups, like 'john deleted the only copy of Important Report and we had to run it again, so the project was delayed by two weeks past its due date and Big Deal Client will never work with us again', but like. 'james said he'd send me the file last monday, it's thursday, I asked where it was and he was like lmao soz forgot', or like, 'sarah processed [thing x] and accidentally missed [minor step y], or even like 'my boss set up a meeting with me on a day I am not in; and then tried to reorganise it on a day she is not in'.
Not as like, a grudge list, but just as an external 'this is how much everyone else in [your team/org/whatever] is fucking up all the time, and they're not about to be fired/fail their annual review/even getting a talking to about it, here is a benchmark that is not based on your own brain's perception (which is probably dogshit)'.
it doesn't have to be detailed (bc it's not really about the specifics, beyond maybe a vauge 'this is the scale of fuckup in question), but you do probably want dates, even just so you can look down your list (or whatever) and be like '2nd feb: john fucked up. 3rd feb:kate fucked up. 4th feb: mark fucked up. 5th feb: jane fucked up. kate fucked up.'
Or like, don't do it, I'm not your parent, I'm just an idiot bootstrapping a profoundly stupid mix of neurochemicals into an approximation of functionality enough to like, keep paying rent and not have a break down while doing it.
61 notes · View notes
renthony · 3 months ago
Text
Join a union. You can join the IWW even if you're unemployed, self-employed, freelance, working under the table, too disabled to work at all, too broke to afford dues, or otherwise not eligible for other unions.
Get involved in your local community. Join a mutual aid organization. Join Food Not Bombs. Become a street medic. Attend city council and school board meetings. Collect signatures for petitions. Drive people to their voting locations, or help them find someone who can. Make use of your public library. Join your local native plant society and encourage your neighbors to plant pollinator-friendly things in their yards or on their balconies. Join a Buy Nothing group and give your neighbors things you don't need instead of throwing them away.
Pay attention to hyper-local, super-niche politics even when it isn't a major election year. Pick your favorite or most urgent political issue, and get involved in a group that's doing something about it. It doesn't matter if you can only do teeny-tiny actions, but please for the love of this great green earth, pick something that is local and material. If all you can do is signal boost your favorite local organization for others who can join fully and do more, that's still something.
Go vote, yes, but pick something else you can do, too. There are things that need doing even when it isn't an election year. If you're voting blue with the mindset that we're "picking our opponent for the next four years," you have to be ready to actually follow through and keep up the fight after the votes are tallied.
Don't abandon progressive organizations after the election. I watched it happen after Biden got elected in 2020, and it was demoralizing as hell. It's also why every member of my union branch is burnt out to hell and back. We need more people, and we need them desperately.
349 notes · View notes
iww-gnv · 7 months ago
Note
Genuine question. Why should someone who is freelance, self employed or unemployed join the IWW as the ad suggests? Wouldn’t a collective benefit or pension plan suite them better?
There are a lot of reasons someone might join the IWW despite not having typical employment. For one, the only way the working class can enact change is to work together against the capitalist system. Whether you have regular employment or you're totally unemployed, you're still working class if you don't own capital, and your class interests align with those of employed workers in your community. It benefits the entire community when wages are high, worker safety is enforced, and bosses are kept in line.
Joining, paying dues to, and attending meetings with your local branch gives that branch more worker power and more funding. Having more worker power and more funding helps the union fight for bigger and better changes and reach more workers.
For freelancers, joining the IWW can give you a community where you can get advice, compare rates to make sure you're getting a fair deal, recommend gigs or publications to each other, warn each other about predatory ones, and otherwise build solidarity. As an example, I (the social media volunteer typing this) have personally used IWW freelancer connections to help figure out what rates I should charge for commissions.
On a practical, day-to-day level, the union also always needs volunteers to do things like manage social media, maintain websites, facilitate meetings, organize events, keep track of bank accounts, and any number of other logistical and clerical tasks. If you want to help support unionized workers and workers trying to unionize, joining the IWW and helping with those tasks can be an incredible way to build community, organize workplaces, and support actions like strikes.
774 notes · View notes
robertreich · 5 months ago
Video
youtube
Bezos and Musk Vs. Workers
Two of the world’s richest men want to end unions once and for all. 
Musk’s SpaceX and Bezos’ Amazon are both arguing in court that the National Labor Relations Board is unconstitutional on the grounds that it combines judicial and executive functions.
The NLRB is the agency that supervises union organizing and collective bargaining as established by the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 — a cornerstone of FDR’s New Deal that guarantees the right of workers to organize. It is, in effect, the referee of labor management relations.
If Bezos and Musk get their way, two of the richest people in the world will have gutted the enforcement of labor laws designed to protect the right of average workers to unionize. Corporations could fire employees who try to organize, without any repercussions. It could also be a death knell to unions that already exist.
Corporate giants Starbucks and Trader Joe’s have similarly advanced their own legal arguments echoing the same anti-union, anti-worker sentiment. So much for being “progressive” companies, huh?
Beyond their copycat legal arguments, what do all of these corporations have in common? A history of bashing unions and preventing workers from exercising their right to organize.
The NLRB has charged these companies with hundreds of violations of workers’ rights. They’ve fired pro-union workers, retaliated against organizers by cutting their hours, closed stores that tried to unionize, denied benefits being provided to non-union workers, and refused to bargain. And now Musk and Bezos are even going after the referees — the NLRB—  so unions and workers don’t stand a chance.
It’s not the first time their argument has been trotted out by robber barons. A similar case made its way to the Supreme Court way back in 1937. The opinion in that case upheld the NLRB and its decision to punish steel barons who fired workers who tried to organize a union.
Modern-day robber barons Bezos and Musk are hoping today’s Supreme Court will reverse its 1937 ruling and return America to a time before workers had a referee to ensure their rights.
Evidently, it’s not enough for Bezos and Musk to amass more wealth than any two people on the planet. No, they want even more wealth and covet even more power — and don’t want to share it with their workers.
You see, unions are one of the greatest champions of equality. And unions don’t just help unionized workers — they help all workers. There’s a ripple effect that occurs when workers organize: Non-union workers often receive the benefits of higher wages and safer working conditions fought for by organized labor. Unions also play a political role: They provide countervailing power to the overwhelming political power of giant corporations.
We will all suffer if unions are not there to have the backs of workers.
Now these cases may take a while to snake their way through the courts.
In the meantime, please share this video. These corporations win this fight only if the public doesn’t know what’s happening.
And support your local unions. When they go on strike, join a picket line. Better yet, join a union if you can.
We all need to voice our support for organized labor now more than ever.
393 notes · View notes
libraford · 5 months ago
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media
(I have permission to share this.)
Text- from Walking Distance Brewing Company
Happy Pride month! We are here another year to celebrate Pride with you! Thank you for your love and support through a difficult year of slander and harassment. Your support has not just kept us afloat but has made us thrive! Our inclusive community isn’t here just for Pride - we’re here all year. It's not always easy being inclusive in town. The library, community organizations, and yes, even Walking Distance have been targets. In this post, we're going to discuss the attacks against the library and against us. Last June, the library had a pride book display [1]. On July 3rd, (now ex) city councilmember Deb Groat wrote an email to the library at the request of the Union Faith Family Coalition [2]. In this email, she wrote: “I am deeply offended by explicitly sexual material on display in the children’s section of our library. Shame on you and your staff for pandering to any social agenda in displaying reading material to children.” [3] Later on in the email she wrote: “The library may well want to pass a levy in the future, or have input in a community TIF.” [3] On November 27, 2023 - Deb Groat was joined by city councilmember Mark Reams in voting for a TIF that would divert money away from the library for 30 years. Luckily, the extension did not pass. [4] According to Union County Faith Family Coalition’s founder, Mark Reams is a member. [2] Deb Groat and Mark Reams vote together to divert money from the library. Let’s move on to us. In June 2023, we had a drag show. On July 8th, Mark Reams’ wife, Leslie Reams posted on Facebook calling Walking Distance “Little Epstein Island” [5] joining in the same rhetoric spread by the Union County Faith Family Coalition, who nicknamed us, “Walking Distance Grooming Co.” Additionally, on April 15th, 2024 - while on-shift at her job, Leslie Reams called us a “den of depravity bar [that] preys on children,” and called our bartenders and customers, “pedophiles” and “drunks.” Let’s be clear. Leslie Reams, the members of the Union County Faith Family Coalition, and their followers have never called law enforcement (to our knowledge) - something we would expect and want to happen if pedophilia was happening. Law enforcement has never been called, we suspect that even they know that it’s not true. We have heard many rumors, as bad as, “Walking Distance is full of pedophiles” to more innocuous rumors that hurt our reputation. Our guess is that the same people who don’t believe we’re pedophiles, but want to demonize queerness, also know their audience and are able to tone it back to do the damage they can. We saw sales dips directly following Leslie Reams’ statements. We have heard city council members echoing similar rumors. Last summer, we had around 10 citations against the owner’s house and the business from the city and council - none of these citations asked us to remedy anything (except for the one about mowing��oops), and in fact there were instances when the local officials said that we were doing everything right, but they are only reaching out to us because they had so many calls. The year prior, Walking Distance and the owner's house had 0 citations. We’ll never know exactly how much business we lost due to the slander against us. We do know, we lost a lot. Similarly, we’ll never know exactly how much the support of our community has meant. We do know, it meant a whole lot. The support has kept us afloat, and with time, it's made us thrive. We know that we have survived to see another June. And we are ready to celebrate it, in the face of the hate. There would be no pride with no hate. Looking forward to seeing you on Wednesday for drag BINGO; Saturday for drag brunch; and also visit us on Saturday during Marysville Pride. We have more Pride events this week and month, keep your eyes peeled! And even if it's not a pride related event, we are always inclusive. Oh, and there's a city council meeting next Monday, June 10th at 7PM.
[/text]
Here's some photos of the extremely offensive library display:
Tumblr media Tumblr media
They haven't given a call to action yet.
So anyways, that's what's happening in a nearby town. Marysville's pride event is this weekend and if you'd like to show up for local queers its going to be a very fun time.
I'm thinking of grabbing some of my local gays and giving them our patronage, of course. Its somewhat unrealistic to ask strangers on the internet to do take a hike all the way to Ohio for drag bingo.
So I think I would just like to call attention to it- if this is happening in our area, its probably happening in yours too. If you were thinking of attending a drag show but were on the fence about it, I think you should. They're a fun time.
Being involved in the queer community can be as simple as attending a drag show. Or going to a silly queer-focused event. Or supporting a queer-owned business. Every little bit of support for your queer community counts!
394 notes · View notes