Mc Mike
Mc Mike's JournalInteresting anti-teacher media move in Pittsburgh, yesterday.
The Pgh. Post - Gazette ran with a story that the school board is asking AFT Local 400 to agree to furloughs not based on seniority, a 'kill the union' resolution.
The story ran the morning that the Pgh. Federation of Teachers had their ballots delivered by mail to all rank-and-file members, for the upcoming election of all union officials. The anti-incumbent candidate (son of 'Studio Wrestling' champ Bruno Sammartino) has been a gadfly to all three union presidents and their officers, but he can't get it together enough to fill a 30 member slate of reps. to the PA state AFT. A yutz. (I'm I. B. of Electrical Workers Local 5, but my wife's a Local 400 rank-and-filer, so I've watched their union politics for decades.)
The 2nd biggest school district in PA is of course being hammered by (repug) Gov 'Close your Eyes' Corbett's 1 billion in state ed budget cuts, and the incumbent leadership is fighting a desperate rear-guard action against the non-elected Superintendent, to save jobs. They are doing this while also fighting a union election battle.
The timing of this newspaper article's publication is clearly designed to promote an anti-incumbency 'heat of the moment' vote by the rank-and-file, in protest of the direction in which EVERYTHING - schools, the teaching profession, union representation - is going.
Watch the wun percent at work.
Tactically speaking, I advocate that the AFT, NEA, and AFSCME throw a nationwide wildcat one day strike, in solidarity with the May Day General strike. Teachers and staff can see the kids at school May 1st, just not IN school. It would definitely be a positive educational experience for 99% of public school kids, and their families. (Just my opinion, but maybe I'm a bigger yutz than Sammartino.)
Edit to add: Sammartino is Bruno's nephew, I heard yesterday. He lost on May 16, but the full incumbent slate didn't win.
I am a progressive Labor Democratic Ally of
OWS Pittsburgh 99%, Spring 99% from MoveOn and One Pittsburgh, and Labor Dems 'Get Out the Vote' efforts for candidates who back the 99%.
An alliance is not a co-optation. People in any of these groups can pick and choose to act or stand aside, in any and every action proposed by an ally. I never received a cent from the Dems for helping them out, I get requests for money from them. If OWS 99 proposes an action against a Democratic politician, like today's rally against District Attorney Zappala, for refusing to press charges against unionized Labor cops who mauled an innocent high school student, I can take off my Democrat and Labor hats, and put on my Occupy 99% hat, and attend. (1 pm in Mellon Park, across from Bakery Square.)
A lot of members of Occupy, Spring, and Rainbow Coalition Dems are members of more than one of these three groups. They can likewise switch hats when choosing to support an action for 99% of Americans, and no co-optation exists.
OWS 99 has aided Labor Democrats in Pgh., and Labor groups have aided OWS 99. Spring 99 is aiding OWS 99 here, and OWS 99 is aiding Spring 99. Labor groups are part of Spring 99's alliance, and Spring 99ers are aiding Labor. OWS and Spring aren't scheduling conflicting events.
Spring 99% brings a lot of good activist groups into an alliance, though they could use the addition of Women's Rights groups and LGBT groups.
Minus One
I can't find the un rec button anymore, so I did what I could.
Nothing against you, x, I think the info comes from repug trolls who fear that Occupy, Spring 99, and rainbow Coalition Dems all have so much in common that they are naturally allied.
Sorry HPD, can't give you a link.
Your post # 50 is the # 4 result in hits on Yahoo for jrkcia (so I'm chasing our tail on-line on this issue), and Yahoo result # 3 is an amusing discussion from a dot com (called 'whose media' drums in the global village). Basically a fight between several high level 'panthers' with CIA ties -- Malik Shabaaz, Katherine Cleaver, Elaine Brown, Geronimo Pratt. Here's why I say that:
Post 31 on this site has a good link from the SPLC about Malik Shabazz, the fake new black panther. If you combine Dallas, Farrakhan' NOI, a designation as a hate group, and the repug effort to make these new paper panthers into a credible underground conspiracy (the point of the original post here), if you combine them all into one neat package like Shabaaz's outfit represents, you're looking at 'the government' and intelligence agencies, as well as repug campaign media propaganda efforts. 'The government' isn't just the Obama Admin, it's also 'old hands' who are holding power over the course of many presidential administrations.
The Cleavers' connections with the CIA are undoubtable.
Pratt took over the LA Panthers when Ms. Huggins' husband was killed by Karenga's United Slaves outfit. (Seale discussed Karenga's Los Angeles gas station venture as being backed by the Rockefellers in 'Sieze The Time'. CIA.) Newton didn't trust Pratt, and Pratt is connected to Ward Churchill(CIA) through 'Studies on the Left' magazine. Churchill is a 'professor' like Karenga (who used to be Ron Everett, before all his name changes.) 'Pratt and LA' is important because the Wiki info on Jay Richard Kennedy and Brown put them in the music business, and LA, at that time.
Wiki's Elaine Brown info has her moving to LA around '61, to be a pro songwriter, but she winds up working in a wise guy strip bar, and meets the CIA's Kennedy. It also indicates her cutting records for the Panthers in '68 and '73, but whether she recorded in LA or Motown isn't indicated.
Wiki of Motown shows they had 110 top 10 records from '61 to '71. They started moving to LA in '69, (after Bunchy Carter and John Huggins were assassinated and Pratt took over the LA Panthers) and Motown completed the move by '72.
I tried to get an on-line link for you on Kennedy and Motown, that avoids citing wiki and Brown's autobiography, since my caveat on 'A Taste of Power' started the whole original conversation, and I don't really like citing wiki. But I couldn't. I don't own the book, but read it from the library in '93. I dug up a hard-copy Essence Magazine article from Feb. of '93, that promotes her book (starts on p. 58), but she spends too much time bashing Newton in it, to mention her musical career and CIA friend Kennedy. I have an absract from New York Times Magazine for 1-31-93, page 20, by author Rosemary L. Bray, but no way to get the Times site to cough it up. It interviews Brown about her book, her early life in Hollywood, and her relationship with Jay Kennedy. Ms. Bray seems to be good, unlike Brown, and she used to edit the NY Times Magazine, but I can't get it on-line for you.
So to bite the bullet, all I can say it that Brown's 'Taste' discusses Kennedy more thoroughly than I can find available in internet sources. He went to Motown, or Motown came to him in LA. He was involved in representing acts, and on the business end of Motown, according to Brown. She wasn't blowing the whistle on him, she was discussing his accomplishments. That's what I remember about her discussion of Kennedy in her book, but my memory doesn't prove anything to you. When Motown got broke is a matter of individual listeners' taste. I think the complete move to LA killed it, but some good music lingered in Detroit and LA, even after that. Then those sparks faded too.
So to cut to the chase, I can't prove a connection on-line between the CIA's Kennedy and Motown, and must recommend Elaine Brown's book for further reference(!) Lifes a bitch, sometimes, I guess. I won't be re-reading it myself, because I disliked and distrusted Brown enough the first time around. I'm sorry that I couldn't get something credible for you as a link on-line, and hopefully I didn't waste your time with the long response.
True. I did read her book when it was released, but
if you watched the coverage she got during her book release, both televised and print, you could see that she was pushing government sponsored lies about the Panthers. I saw her being interviewed at that time on a television show, along with Dave Hilliard. He seems to be great, (and he wasn't with her, just sharing the same interview) but she promoted the gov's fake propaganda charges of misogyny, organized crime thuggery, etc., against the Panthers. This was decades after Sieze the Time refuted those charges, and she just recycled them. I'd rather hear from Ericka Huggins or Angela Davis, than hear any further from Brown.
She didn't mortally wound the panthers, but she helped Cointelpro nail the lid on the coffin, then decades later, danced on the grave for money.
Catholic bishops denied Kerry communion in '04, because he was pro-choice.
In '08, my catholic bishop (Zubik in Pittsburgh) made the public statement that there were many important political issues in the election, but the only 'non-negotiable' issue was the candidate's stance on pro-choice vs 'pro-life'. Not the death penalty, not starving children, not war, just pro-choice. (Therefore, voting for a pro-choice Dem is a sin. Our Catholic doctrine requires us to confess sins. You're supposed to not commit that sin again after absolution.) After we rank-and-file catholics put Zubik on ignore and whomped his pig repug buddies' asses in the election, he issued the statement that 'now that the election is over, he hopes that Prez Elect Obama will pay attention to the concerns of the Catholic Church.'
This year, Zubik pushed the repug's b.s. issue of Obama's 'attack' on religious freedom and the church, both in the Pittsburgh Catholic weekly newspaper, and by sending flunkies to state his views from the pulpit, during the sermon. The National Catholic Reporter weighed in on the issue:
http://ncronline.org/news/faith-parish/pittsburgh-priests-bishop-listen-laity-contraception
excerpt from the link:
"Asked what he might say to a Catholic woman who had attempted to follow the church's official teaching on contraception but had found it painful or difficult to do so because of health or other reasons, the bishop would only say that he thinks 'that really is an issue that's between a confessor and a penitent.'"
I'm a practicing Catholic, and it seems like you are too. I'm with you on the 98% statistic. To me, it looks like the thing to do is ignore the hierarchy when they say things that rise to the Zubik level of stupidity. I walked out when Zubik's muscle bound Deacon delivered his repug campaign propaganda during the sermon, and I never give the church any money. But I still go to church, because I'm not going to let the bad guys spoil my good time.
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