Power to the people

[maypirate]

Regarding the asshole from yesterday, he never ended up calling back, at least not while I was there, and my boss basically said that we would deal with him by saying we'd forget the matter if he promised to never come to the store again. Hooray, everyone wins! Or something.

And now for some politicality.

The atrocious man the rest of the state atrociously elected governor has been trying to lay down some extravagantly atrocious bills, and as a result there's been protests at the Capitol every day this week, which is a whole two blocks from my job. I actually just heard the shouting as a huge mass of protesters marched down State St. It makes me very proud to live in a place that can still be reactionary when the situation calls for it, and god I hope it makes a difference, but I'm still upset and bewildered that this horrible,nasty man was even elected in the first place. I wonder if the people who voted him in who are going to get socked by his awful policies have realized what they've done yet.

And the right-wing media does not approve: Beck Cites WI Protests To Claim That "Evil [Is] Spreading Around The Globe." On the February 16 edition of his Fox News show, Beck stated that protests in Madison, WI, as well as in the Middle East and Mexico are part of "evil spreading around the globe."

It's a sorry day in politics when people standing up for themselves are labeled as "evil," but then again, Glenn Beck is a sorry, wicked man. But I'm proud to be a citizen of a city named alongside Cairo.

Maybe there's still a chance to make a difference.

Comments

[mikkeneko.livejournal.com]

Unions are a big thing in America; I don't know why Walker thought he could so callously dismiss them. Did he really think there wouldn't be a fight?

Probably he felt that the time was ripe. Neoconservative sentiment is hot right now in America, and the economy is lousy; except rather than making people look towards their own protections, that just helps promote a dog-eat-dog, screw-everyone-else-I-got-mine mentality among the desperate working class. There's also a resurgence of 1950s era anti-communism going around, being used as a tool to discredit and cripple the progressive and human rights movement, covering everything from health care to equal pay standards for women.

You also have a generation that is growing up in America with no memory of what life was like before the unions, or when and why their fathers and grandfathers fought so hard and so desperately for them. See also people who think that "feminism" is a dirty word; since they've lived in a world where women have always had voting rights and always had at least the semblence of equal employment, then they can rest content in their privilege and never have to imagine a world where that isn't so.

Heck, even in race relations this still crops up from time to time, or you wouldn't get people declaring "Racism is over," upon the election of a black man to high office. But at least race issues are still enough in the public consciousness that people know to dismiss such comments as ridiculous. If you try to point out however that women make 75% the pay of men in the same jobs, or that one our of seven women will be raped in their lifetime; or that 1% of our population controls 90% of our wealth and this should be considered a bad thing, you'll simply get laughed out of court.

[infinityduck.livejournal.com]

I completely agree. It would be wonderful if we lived in an America where race issues were obsolete, or workers are not exploited, or there was gender equality. But people need to be reminded that these issues are ongoing, and that they require constant maintenance to keep from regressing.

You might watch this clip from MSNBC and think it's a little too conspiracy theory to be true, but I have a growing feeling that it IS true. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27EN1k4TSao

This isn't about the merits of unions. It's about crippling the biggest competition to conservative political spending. It's about finishing what Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission started.