Scott Walker's (Dis)Solution Strategy: A Tradition

DEVOUT HERMIT (prismguard)

side images: juliusbetke.blogspot.com & pragmatism.org

prismguard

Location: Westchester/Oneida County, New York, United States
Birthday: September 30

Bio: Magendanz String Quartet in h.s.; MA in Lit/ Syracuse; MA in Media Studies/ Antioch; MEd & EdD in Communications & Film/ Teachers College Columbia U. INTERESTS: Pre-Code Hollywood & noir; Canadian, Brit, & cable TV dramas; vintage "issues" TV series (DEFENDERS, JUDD FOR THE DEFENSE, LOU GRANT, THE GUARDIAN); diagramless crosswords; poetry of the Great War, E. A. Robinson, Auden; Nathanael West, Vonnegut, classic detective fiction.

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FEBRUARY 17, 2011 3:51PM

Rate: 1 Flag

crooksandliars.com
http://www.scottwalker.org/about/biography

Noam Chomsky: The Government & Labor http://www.democracynow.org/2011/2/17/democracy_uprising_in_the_usa_noam

////

“Alice’s Egg Plant” (Walt Disney Parodies Labor, 1925)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLwPQIEdjzU

"Mafia Offending" TV Smear Against Unions
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgNIEB_vUtY

//* * * //

duanegraham.wordpress.com

Governor Scott Walker Vows
To Use National Guard Against Unions

Wisconsin’s Governor Scott Walker sent a late valentine to Big Business on February 15, 2011, when he announced his solution to the financial crises since 2008 that were perpetrated by Wall Street: realign economic stability by breaking the unions, and use the National Guard to do so if necessary. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/15/wisconsin-state-workers-p_n_823476.html One reader of this Huffington Post’s account was particularly erudite: //

mburgh Commented 8 hours ago in Business:
“Can anyone say Haymarket riot? This is ludicrous misuse of gubernatorial powers. Knuckleheads offer no solutions, only violence of one kind or another. This is what the Republicans have done to our nations. We're not 2011, but in 1898. Wobblies come back. The ghost of Big Bill Hayward struggles from the loam to stand again.”--HuffPost Comments//

//
historychicago.blogspot.com
Chicago Police Assault Peaceful Labor Demonstrators
& Turn It Into “Haymarket Square Riot”

But why stop there? Any American politician with even the vaguest sense of our nation's history knows that it's standard operating procedure to blame workers as the alleged "cause" of any economic unrest (after all, it's Labor that's disrupting the flow of business!), and to rely on the National Guard to protect ... America's ... interests.

iww cops
kued.org

National Guard Unleashed Against IWW Strikers

http://www.internationalpeaceandconflict.org/photo/poem-of-a-political-prisoner-5/prev?context=user

playfulspirit.wordpress.com

National Guard Oppose Auto Workers Strike, 1937

hormel
democraticunderground.com

National Guard & Hormel Meatpackers Strike, 1985
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100519164405AAwZn8i

But, aside from “mburgh” and an aging contingency of Lefties, how many members of the general American public, I wonder, do have "even the vaguest sense"of what “mburgh” is referring to?

Politicians owned and operated by Big Business point to photos like those above as proof that (a) Labor is comprised of radical rabble rousers (and, by implication, citizens who oppose Business As Usual are indeed mere "rabble"); (b) using the National Guard to combat these threats to Business's status quo is logical, justified, historically traditional, and effective; and (c) clearly Labor is therefore irrational and unjustified in its "suspect" demands, historically beaten back by Business's uniformed forces, and impotent.

sachs onepennysheet.com seattlepi.com
union The Unions are costing us jobs! They get fat by demanding wages and perks that workers in the rest of the world could never hope for, thus legitimating corporate outsourcing to sweat shops overseas! At a time of economic crisis, we all must tighten our belts, starting with pampered Labor!

The Secret Economy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5eNyO658kk

Bernstein's Candide: “What’s the Use?”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58U3LtDayac

//
The purpose of this blog entry, then, is to introduce a few details about key events in the history of the American Labor Movement, and thereby rectify perceptions about the persons in those photos from the past and, by so doing, to make the uninitiated less vague about Labor's accomplishments on their ... on our ... behalf.

* * *

debs
poumista.wordpress.com

Eugene Debs/ Mark Ruffalo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuGp-0G1p4M

Recently, as I gathered materials for my blog essay on John Wells’ film The Company Men, I was drawn to Web resources on an auto workers’ strike from about seventy-five years ago, which eventuated many of the labor changes in the United States that made transformed this into a “First World” nation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=184NTV2CE_c More specifically, a victorious struggle that implemented many “basic” conditions in the workplace that current powers in government are intent on taking away. My own list of those “basic” appears in another of my blog essays, which considers the extent to which America is regressing to Third World status.

I. THE HAYMARKET SQUARE REBELLION
// //
martyrs
executedtoday.com

Lucy Parsons Project: Travesty Wins Americans the 8-Hour Day
http://www.lucyparsonsproject.org/haymarket/roediger_haymarket.html Democacy Now Overview
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkLpyZceCj8
Documenting the Rebellion
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OQxncb2ihQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8w-z8ud_9QU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKkEl9XzjFc

Democracy Now Summing Up
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F73dkWQyaD8

II. AMERICA'S THIRD WORLD WORKING CONDITIONS

flickr.com

// //
Nearly a Century Before Hormel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-SBsFyrofQ
http://chnm.gmu.edu/7tah/unitdocs/unit7/lesson3/workingconditions.pdf
Child Labor/ Lewis Hine
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tY1gk6J6zc
Diane Keaton in Reds/ Defending Anarchy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0ayZe_GsQA
Labor Conditions We May Return To?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eFwNk7I0hg

III. INDUSTRIAL WORKERS OF THE WORLD

// //

ehistory.osu.edu
//
"THE WOBBLIES"

IV. THE FLINT AUTO WORKERS STRIKE

chaplin
owensarchive.com

Studs Terkel/ 1930s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_WUt90rN2Q
Emma Goldman
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTCMcO4WTjE

reuther.wayne.edu
Flint
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYjJxstGl7Y
Auto Workers Pioneered American Middle-Class http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kE6e5HWH8II
Documentation
http://community-2.webtv.net/blacklava/contract/

V. THE "REAL" REAGAN LEGACY

confrontaal.org
//
Reagan 1958: “Union-Management Relations”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zf2-SSrJg7s
Reagan 1961: The Threat of “Socialized” Health Care
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYrlDlrLDSQ
Reagan 1964: A “Thoughtful Address” (Sound Familiar?)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXBswFfh6AY
Reagan 1981: The Air Traffic Controllers Strike
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dc8brHWFZMY
Reagan v. 500,000 Unions
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZ2JCB82rBc

And It Worked: Strikes Have Dwindled
During/Since Reagan's Presidency

//
union k
heritage.org

Unions' Greatest Obstacle: The American Labor Force
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A69R53DhHv0

So, quoth American workes, if a Union can't guarantee all the goodies they'd like, at least they know what to expect Management will "give" them. So do Unions, which is why they want workers to join.

Orwell’s Farm (Start & Airbrushed Finish)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bd4UJwldQ0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddzYTG-T6yg

Perhaps the saddest irony is that America's workforce has been weakened the past thirty years precisely because it has failed to join and support Labor's efforts. As unemployment figures devastate workers' families and local communities, Governor Walker's attack on collective bargaining reflects the new decade's perilous "cup of tea."

Author tags:

american labor movement, mafia, anti-union workers, air traffic controllers strike, barry goldwater, socialized health care, ronald reagan, nation's first red scare, 1937 strike, uaw, flint, charlie chaplin, august spies, albert & lucy parsons, gilded age, marshall field, 8 hour workday, james green, origins of may day, john wells the company men, eugene debs, mark ruffalo, diane keaton, robert carsen, candide, leonard bernstein, haymarket square police riot, hormel strike 1985, national guard, iww, big bill hayward, huffington post, noam chomsky, walt disney, david o norris, dan hall, g-sachs' lloyd blankfein's latest bonus, michael moore, ge ceo jerry immelt, smear campaigns, democracy now, juan gonzalez, amy goodman, child labor, lewis hine, animal farm, george orwell, the jungle, upton sinclair, emma goldman, studs terkel, al franken

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Economists from a wide spectrum of opinion agree that the current economic crisis is caused by an over-concentration of capital, and that a more equitable income distribution would make the current situation much better. Thank you very much for your solid research on this.