Yesterday, I took the Rock Island Metra from 103rd to La Salle Street station for an 11:30 luncheon of the Finance Committtee of Ives for Illinois. I was flattered to be invited, because I do not have two-nickels to rub together.
I helped Chicago Renaissance Man Mike Houlihan form the Irish for Ives which will host a fundraiser at Reilly's Daughter on Monday, March 5th between 5-7PM. That will be a great event, where traditional Democrats like me can ask Jeanne Ives about their public service pensions, Bosco Rauner's lie, that Representative Ives shovels Mike Madigan's snow covered sidewalks over on Kedvale & 64th and how she plans to get Illinois back on its feet.I passed out some fliers to my fellow passengers who either accepted them, or politely declined. Most took them. One woman chatted me up and said that she will probably go to the event.
Jeanne Ives has nowhere near the money to respond to Governor "Bosco" Rauner's calumnies. This same place-holding creep, tried to hijack the funeral of Commander Paul Bauer and equated drinking chocolate milk to solving race relations. As such many 19th Ward residents are buying the ads from Governor Bosco, like they were words coming from a burning bush:
She's a Madigan crony!
She is hateful, bigoted and wants my pension
All without any examples given other than repetitions of Eric Zorn, or Sun Times talking points.
The worst comes from a shirt-tail cousin of mine with a swell County job, who will be working to re-elect Toni Preckwinkle shortly.
If you see the "Irish for Ives" posters up on the South Side, let the businesses know you won't support them. I saw one on 111th in Mt Greenwood today and they immediately agreed to take it down. There's supposed to be a fundraiser for her at Reilly's Daughter Oak Lawn. Let them know too.
He attached a smear piece from Daily Kos 2013 about Ives the Union Buster though the same Union Buster has been supported by IUEO 150. Jeanne Ives must be scaring the hell out of people who want to keep things going the way they are. They know if Ives knocks Rauner out in the primary, JB Pritzker will not have the planned can of tomatoes in the 15 round bout in November. Nor, do they want Jeanne Ives to face Chris Kennedy, let alone Progressive Boy Toy Biss. So union leaders who were all-in for Rahm want Rauner to lay down in November for them all.
The rank and file union membership are stuck with the property taxes, the water bills, the lousy schools and are told who not to vote for.
Union voters must declare in a primary polling place and people have big ears, adapted to the slightest volume thanks to street cash and Rauner has plenty. I takes a very special kind integrity to take an unsanctioned ballot in Chicago.
Tearing down posters and threatening business boycotts? These same union loyalists shop at WalMart and regularly cross picket lines to snag an Italian beef. Hey, it's a free country. . .still.
I arrived at the Union League Club and was asked to man the greeter's table for a few minutes, which I did and introduced myself while I handed out name tags.
A gentleman by the name of Mike Schultz was carrying a huge briefcase and asked me, " I suppose Ives is a Democrat, this being Illinois. I am coming from Wisconsin and satyed here over night."
I explained that Jeanne Ives was running against Gov. Bruce Rauner in the March Primary as a Republican and he asked me about her. I explained that Ives is the only Pro-Life candidate for the office of Governor by either Party, was a comon sense fiscal conservative who wants to halt the run-away pension crisis while easing the pain of the victims of former Governor Jim Edgar's IOU briberies, a West Point grad and Army officer, mother of five children two of whom serve in the armed forses and honest,tough and good humored, happy person.
Jeanne Ives came up the stairs and we met for the first time, " Pat Hickey, it's nice to see a Facebook person in person."
I introduced the Guv to Mr. Schultz.
Mr. Schultz is a dreamer, of German, Irish and Japanese blood, who grew up in Bridgeport. His grandmother lived two doors down from the real Mayor - Richard J. Daley. Schultz went on to explain that he was selling a product that he helped developed - a pain relieving lotion made from hemp oil. He is searching States for the expansion of his business and is skipping Illinois as toxic to innovation and industry.
Mike Schultz gave me a bottle of the lotion for my retired carpenter brother who is crippled up with artheritis in his knees, hands, shoulders and ankle. He is no fan of Trump, Rauner, or Ives. I am a huge fan of Jeanne Ives.
Mr. Schultz bid farewell and said, " I am very impressed with you, Mrs. Ives. Best of luck!"
We were called into lunch/
I knew Dan Proft and was astonished to see him with whiskers. I was introduced to Jeanne's husband Rich, who is an engineer and a West Point man. He had been with Kenny Construction, when the great flood washed through the Loop. Rich is like . . .every guy I know in this neighborhood, funny, embarassed to be there, serious about his wife and his family. Rich Ives would be at ease at Kens, Barney Callaghan's or Hinky Dinks. Alas,Mr. Ives gave up beer and smokes for Lent.
There at my table sat Mike Houlihan with two gentleman donors, as well as Dan Patlak, the only Republican in Cook County government, and Representative Tom Morrison. We later joined by Mr. Spencer from Christ the King Parish. Jim Tobin and John Powers sat with the Ives' and Chair of Finance Committee Mr. Vince Kolber, an elegant Polish gent from Seneca, NY who adopted Illinois as his home state, built a mechanical service corporation RESIDCO, funds The Little Sisters of the Poor and The Big Shoulders Fund. Real robber-baron type.
We began with the Pledge of Allegiance and Mr. Kobler explained his notion of fund-raising which matched that of the great Bob Foster of Leo High School - make everyone an investor.
Most people believe that fundraising is whale-hunting. Everyone seems to believe the notion of nailing down a million dollar give, as the pinnacle of success. No. Leo High School defied the know-it-alls for decades, including my own two, but counting on committed people. Leo's Alumni are like 17th Century Jesuit Black Robes - they drag in new converts and turn those converts into missionaries.
Jeanne Ives has the support of this Democrat because she is honest, happy and heroic. One older gentleman in Mount Greenwood told me " She's gonna win! The little girl has alot of hard bark on her." That, she do.
Vince Kobler is accepting checks for Ives for Illinois and he wrote another huge one yesterday. Vince Kobler had writtne big checks for Governor Bruce "Bosco" Rauner, until he proved himself to be the fraud that he happens to be. Jeanne Ives was handed a check in the amount of $ 300,000.
Mike Houlihan and I felt the change in our pockets.
Jeanne Ives thanked Mr. Kobler, who himself had run for Congress in the 5th District in 2016, for leading her 'rag-tag band of insurgents' who depend upon people power to get her message out.
Ives noted that all Rauner has is money, lots and lots and lots and lots of money. Fund-raising is the art of friend making.
Jeanne Ives praised Mike Houlihan and me for our work on the upcoming Reilly's Daughter event. In a room full of well-to-do women and men, it was uncommonly nice of Jeanne to recognize two broke boys.
Like I said, fund-raising is friend making and Jeanne Ives was on way to Peoria. She had just comeback from Decatur, Belleville, and Watseka, Illinois, where union members learned the truth about Ives for Illinois from Jeanne Ives herself.
I wish my shirt-tail cousin and a few of louder partisans were as fair-minded.
I met Jeanne Ives and I don't have two-nickels together.
Wonder if Rauner, or JB Pritzker would give me two hoots in hell?
It's your vote.
Hey leave up the signs. Don't go to the event. Even better, don't vote.
"There's a saying that you can't manage what you don't measure," "I want to measure the results. … Then we'll decide from there, when we know the facts and we see the trends, what appropriate action we can take further." Bruce Rauner
Measure twice; cut once. Governor Carhartt knows as much about the skilled trade ( the ones that pay well, because the tradesman actually sacrifices his own time, talents and treasure to be a skilled tradesman) as he does about Pat Quinn's deepest aspirations. Well, maybe not that shallow a guess.
Bruce Rauner is a money guy businessman - not a player with railroads, or stacker of wheat. He shitches zeroes and commas after arabic numerals, preceeding the requiste period.
Bruce Rauner hitches zeroes and commas with best of them. I voted for Rauner, because he is not Pat Quinn. I will vote for Dr. Willie Wilson, or Jimmy the Two Headed Boy, because they are not Rahm Emanuel. Chuy and Alderman Goldenrod weave are Rahm without the game.
The skilled trades are going for Rahm, like was Barack Obama with street cash. Labor has made foolish pacts with politicians in last twenty years that have diminished labor.
My entire family, save one hand of cousins and myself - and my family is huge, BTW - are skilled tradesmen - carptenters, machinists, plumbers, electricians and travail acharné , certains actes de violence secondaires de protection et la grâce de Dieu, members of IUOE local 399. I listened to their concerns that Bruce Rauner was out to kill labor, because he was just like Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker.
Rauner is no Walker. Walker stands for small government and the middle class Rauner sprints to money and power and like his soul-mate Rahm Emanuel could care Effing less about you, your neighbor, your dog, Selma, or the middle class.
The skilled trades of Wisconsin learned that Walker was a genuine friend of real labor -public unions , like SEIU and the teachers, not so much
Skilled work pays well and skilled tradesmen work.
Bruce Rauner wants the skilled trades to open up their books to him. Governor Carhartt wants to see how many minorities and veterans are in skilled trades apprenticeship programs.
The Skilled Trades should tell Bruce Rauner to go pound sand. Governor Rauner wants to measure data, in order to control. Each skilled trade got to where it is today on its own. Yes, they did build their own success.
Pandering to veterans along with minorities is slick. Pat Quinn must be kicking himself.
Instead blaming public education for its crime against minorities, Governor Rahm Rauner decides to kick the skilled trades with implied racism, bad breath and poor polo skills. Right out of the Rahm Emanuel playbook.
Bruce Rauner knows that government adds zeroes and commas to his arabic numerals and if he can wrest control of the apprecipship standands and training from the Pipefitters, Engineers and all the other skilled trades the media will love him as much as Rahm Emanuel.
Government wants controll of all training programs. No dice. The skilled trades are the redoubt of the American middle class. An early warning sign of the government take over of skilled trades unions comes fro the biggest government warehouse of ineptitude and smarmy hypocrisy - the National Education Association:
The skilled trades should take Rauner's measure twice and thrice times twenty, before cutting their own throats.
I worked in the fast food industry from September 1969 - November 1969. Gene Mahoney hired me along with Pat Murphy and Timmy Atkins, as well as about six young ladies to work at Chicken Unlimited on north east corner of 79th & Wood Street for $1.30 per hour.
Gene Mahoney had a gold mine due to his foresight and a loan from Standard State Bank at 79th & Ashland. The corner of 79th & Wood was a people magnet. Around the corner on Wood was a saloon ( very busy)and across the street the 18th Ward Republican Headquarters ( rarely visited) on the south east side of the corner was Kiley and Kalina's Drug Store two more busy saloons, a fore-runner to 7/11 Hites' - which sold candy and pop to hundreds of Little Flower Grammar School & High School students and the bread and cheese that Dads forgot while visiting the three saloons - ' Here's a buck, run up to Hites' and get a loaf of that Butternut and a hunk a Baloney, or your Old Lady will crucify me.'
Across the street was Fields one of many Greek restaurants that served Mass go-ers, mourners from Sheehys/Walter Quinlan & Sons, or high school teachers and coaches from Little Flower High School on break. Fields, with manager/cook/ owners named Chris, Jim and Gust, served consistently wonderful food and coffee that was better than any brewed by a Barista extant.
Gene Mahoney niche-marketed , shift changers, teen-agers with pocket change, guys who needed nourishment to go along with the Great Taste of Drewrys/Hamms/Meister Brau and Schlitz, and families requiring a quick meal of fried chicken , hamburgers, fries, shrimp and creamy cole slaw with very generous helping of buns and honey. Gene Mahoney was an electrician by trade and managed a hardware store, as well as operated this Chicken Unlimited station. He later opened two more.
Gene Mahoney tasked me, Pat Murphy and Tim Atkins with deep frying chicken, shrimp and spuds and also grilling the beef patties for low-end hamburgers and the signature Wham-Burger ( so-named for its size and secret Wham Sauce) according to franchise standards. I was an adept with a spatula, but miserable a deep-fryer failure. Chicken, shrimp and spuds were to be cooked to a golden brown Mine came out of the bubbling oils with all of the texture and appearance of a Rawlings, a Spaulding, or a Wilson . . . football.
I took home eight pay checks. On Halloween, Gene Mahoney informed me that I should seek employment where I needed to deep-fry "nothing." I went to work at Gee Lumber two miles west on 79th Street - it was longer walk to work, but found my skills and attention level to detail work more suited to cutting 2X4s, mixing cement or stacking lumber. I continued to take my high school lunches at Chicken Unlimited on Wood Street all through my senior year and was delighted to see that my replacement, Kevin Glynn, was superb fryer of foods. I was paid $ 1.30 at Chicken Unlimited and at Gee Lumber and banked that cash at Standard State Bank for my looming tuition at Loyola University. I did not aspire to be a chicken fryer, nor a cutter of lumber.
Would I have been happier making $ 15 an hour soaking a hamburger with Wham sauce? I rather doubt that, unless my aspirations matched the prevailing minimum wage.
1954 - Full Universal Health Care for all Local 25 Members and their Families - not now. SEIU spend dues on the likes of Gov.Pat Quinn, Sen. Dick Durbin and Marxist 501(c) 3s and entertaining the Chicago media..
SEIU, is the son of Local 25 Chicago Office, Theatre, and Amusement Building Janitors' Union. In 1969, that Local was run by old timey union tough guys, like its President Tom Burke, who had their heads busted by management goons hired by the Building Managers Association of Chicago while walking picket lines. I worked out of this local during my summer vacations between my junior and senior year. I made $ 1.85 ($.55) more than the Chicken Unlimited and Gee Lumber scale. Nickels added up back then. When my summer work ended in August 1969, I settled for the lower wage in order maintain a less than full-time weekly set of hours. I was still in high school. Gene Mahoney, and Mr. Jim Gee, Jr. helped me pay the $80 in tuition at Little Flower High School and save for the $1,400 annual tuition at Loyola. SEIU was born when Local 25 was seized and turned over to the Toronto Local run by Marxists in 1973 and they controlled the union Cook County Democrats, the Chicago news media and murdered the aspirations of its membership - in my opinion.
The Reds ran Local 25 and adopted the color purple under the now invisible direction of Marxist Andy Stern.
Today, labor remains very confused.Labor History has been forgotten, or erased by SEIU. Skilled and Industrial trades have cooperated with SEIU for decades and allowed the "producers" to go-along to get along.
A producer was laborer who had something to show at the end of his labors - a carpenter, a butcher, dress-maker, a canner, a boilermaker, a steam-fitter, a pipe-fitter could join the Knights of Labor - the people who actually won the eight hour day and forty hour week. A priest, a parson, a clerk, or an academic could not be a member of the working class.
The Knights of Labor was a rather inclusive group. It sought to unite together all "producers." Producers included anyone that constructed a physical product in the course of their workday. The Knights of Labor welcomed factory workers and business owners into its ranks. The group rejected "nonproducers"—people who did not engage in physical labor, such as bankers, lawyers, and academics. The Knights of Labor sought to create a united front of producers versus the nonproducers. The organization even allowed women and African Americans to join its ranks. Together, the producers sought an eight-hour workday, an end to child labor, better wages, and improved working conditions in general. Under (Terence) Powderly's leadership, the organization also sought to instill morality in its members, including providing support for the temperance movement.(emphases my own)
Terence Powderly and the Knights of Labor, like Mother Jones and Booker T. Washington have all but disappeared from the labor conscious vocabulary.
All labor is noble; by that I mean any job accepted by woman or man and carried out with care and conviction. Some Labor remains noble; by that I mean, organizations of working men and women who bargain in good faith with wage providers. SEIU, in my considered opinion, is and has been dangerous.
The Minimum Wage Dodge is no more than another Cadillac Commie gimmick to destroy the American Middle Class and the American Standard of living. Leadership of SEIU comes out academia and not the work force. Schools of Social Work produce Andy Stern, Anna Burger, or discredited scams like ACORN which gave Illinois Keith Kelleher. I doubt any SEIU Clipboard, or Bullhorn Artiste ever swung a mop, stripped a floor, or cleaned brass.
The skilled and industrial trades are led by producers - workers actually know how to pack a pump, thread pipe, and the difference between red, green, white and black wires.
Skilled trades people aspired to wages they earned. SEIU enslaves its membership to a wage it manages squeeze out of taxpayers via legislation.
America continues to subsist on a diet of Progressive bullshit - Big Labor is SEIU, Woman should be recognized with a stamp for the six lesbians who might have raised the flag on Iwo Jima and Americans should not use toilet paper. Mayor Bloomberg and other damp-brained types worry about sugar, trans fatties, salt and thick ply toilet paper, yet never once blink or squeak when the steam table of bullshit piles higher despite the ladling out by academics, ink-slingers, activists, mail-order preachers and political hacks in heaping helpings to ever more historically and rhetorically sated generations of citizens. Our President fell victim to this steady diet of deadly of nonsense, when his speech writers allowed him to read "Polish Death Camps" without a stuttered, or head shake.
The American intellectual gag reflex needs to be restored.
Yesterday, I jammed a feather down the gullet with a posting about Mary Harris "Mother" Jones*.
This was in reaction to a series of articles spewed out by Mother Jones Magazine -named in honor of the tiny, fearless Catholic woman who dedicated her life to fighting injustice. I chose one Woman's ( Feminist) Website: Women in History, as an example of how leftists have hijacked the truth about a heroic woman's life and spirit. From the get-go the presentation is nonsense and mythopoeic larceny -"She ( Mother Jones) came from a long line of social agitators. It was common in Ireland then to see British soldiers marching through the streets with the heads of Irish freedom fighters stuck on their bayonets." and it continues with more such leftist legerdemain . . .Several sources ( Chris Matthews? Pete Seeger? Albert Speer?) say her father also was one and, shortly after his father was hanged, was forced to flee Ireland with his family. Another source ( Rip Taylor? Susan Sarandon?) says he left to work on railway construction crews in the U.S. and Canada. At any rate, they did leave Ireland, eventually settling in Toronto, Ontario, in 1841." ( emphases and ridicule my own)
Mother Jones is presented as a fiery, secularist, bomb-the- NATO Bastards! Rachel Maddow. Nowhere is the word Catholic mentioned in the long offering, though a school identified as well as a eulogist for the Catholic widow's funeral in Mount Olive, IL where she is buried. Her Faith is Stalanized and her spirit is diluted with nonsense.
Mother Jones lived a long life that reads like the Book of Job her husband and children died of yellow fever and her business was destroyed by the Great Chicago Fire - natural causes. Mary Harris Jones took refuge following that last test of faith and character in St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church on South Wabash, in Chicago. From there she met another Irish Catholic Terence Powderly, founder of the Knights of Labor and immersed herself in the fight for others - workers, victims of injustice and especially children.
Mother Jones and Labor itself are and continue to be misrepresented in America. The diet of bullshit is far more dangerous than the outlawed fois gras, fats, sugars, and facts.
*"Mother" Mary Harris Jones
NAME: Mary Harris Jones
DATE OF BIRTH: August 1, 1837 (She later claimed it was May 1, 1830)
PLACE OF BIRTH: Cork, Ireland
FAMILY BACKGROUND: Mary Harris was born to Richard and Mary Harris. She came from a long line of social agitators. It was common in Ireland then to see British soldiers marching through the streets with the heads of Irish freedom fighters stuck on their bayonets. Her paternal grandfather was hanged by the British for being a freedom fighter. Several sources say her father also was one and, shortly after his father was hanged, was forced to flee Ireland with his family. Another source says he left to work on railway construction crews in the U.S. and Canada. At any rate, they did leave Ireland, eventually settling in Toronoto, Ontario, in 1841.
EDUCATION: Mary attended public schools in Toronto, and graduated from the normal school in 1854 at the age of 17. The next year, she began working as a private tutor in Maine. She received a teaching certificate in Michigan in 1857, at age 20, and taught at St. Mary's Convent school in Monroe, Michigan.
ACCOMPLISHMENTS: Mary only taught in Michigan for about eight months, moving to Chicago to work as a dressmaker. From there, she moved to Memphis, Tennessee, in 1860 to teach school again. It was here, in 1861, that she met and married George E. Jones, a staunch and prominent member of the Iron Molders' Union. At times, Mary traveled with George in his union organizing. Through him, Mary learned about unions and the psychology of working men. Later, she would advise women that "the wife must care for what the husband cares for, if he is to remain resolute."
Life was good for a while, as Mary and George bore four children in quick succession. But tragedy first struck in 1867, when her husband and all the children died in a yellow fever epidemic, within a week of each other. She stayed in Memphis nursing other victims until the epidemic waned, then moved back to Chicago, working as a dressmaker again. But tragedy soon followed. In 1871, she lost everything she owned in her home and seamstress shop in the great Chicago fire. It was then that Mary embarked upon the path that made her name synonymous with social justice. Probably the seeds were sown earlier, while sewing in the homes of wealthy Chicago families. She later said:
"Often while sewing for lords and barons who lived in magnificent houses on the Lake Shore Drive, I would look out of the plate glass windows and see the poor, shivering wretches, jobless and hungry, walking alongside the frozen lake front.... The contrast of their condition with that of the tropical comfort of the people for whom I sewed was painful to me. My employers seemed neither to notice nor to care."
After the great fire, Mary began to attend meetings of the newly formed Knights of Labor, held in a ragged, fire-scorched building. The fraternity and its ideals must have struck a chord in Mary, bringing forth her compassion and passion. And although she continued to work in Chicago as a seamstress, she had no fixed home. She began volunteering with the Knights of Labor as an organizer -- traveling back and forth across the country, from one industrial area to another, living with the workers in tent colonies and shantytowns near the mills. She in essence adopted the hard workers of America, and they called her 'Mother.' (One source says during a strike, a mine detective bashed the skull of a miner. While Mary cradled his head, the delirious, dying miner thought she was his mother and called her such; the name stuck.) When asked about where she lived, she said:
"My address is like my shoes. It travels with me. I abide where there is a fight against wrong."
The Industrial Revolution was in full swing. America was changing from an agricultural to an industrial economy. Immigrants and displaced farmers made up the vast array of workers, digging out coal and forging steel. But they were subjected to nightmarish conditions and paid starvation wages. Mary would travel to wherever there was a strike, organizing and helping the workers. She would hold educational meetings, and bolster the men's spirits to keep up the fight. Often she was at odds with union leaders. In 1877, Mary helped in the Baltimore and Ohio railroad workers' strike in Pittsburg. In the 1880s, she organized and ran educational meetings, saying:
"Sit down and read. Educate yourself for the coming conflicts."
On May 1, 1886, labor unions in Chicago organized a strike for an eight-hour work day. (Two years earlier, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions had called for the eight-hour work day to begin on that day.) Two days into the strike, a fight broke out and two strikers were killed by police; others were wounded. On May 4, spurred by incendiary fliers saying the police had murdered the strikers on behalf of the business owners, thousands of workers gathered in Chicago's Haymarket Square for a rally. Although the people remained calm throughout, when the police ordered everyone to disperse and began marching in formation through the crowd, a bomb was thrown and exploded near them, killing one policeman. (Seven more policemen died later from their injuries.) The police began firing into the crowd, ultimately killing 11 people. Many of the wounded were afraid to seek treatment, for fear of being arrested.
It was because of this event that Mary "changed" her birth date to May 1, 1830 -- May 1 in honor of the strike for an eight-hour work day. This date has become celebrated worldwide as International Workers' Day (except in the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Australia and New Zealand), commemorating the social and economic achievements of the labor movement and remembering the Haymarket Riot. Mary probably moved her birth seven years earlier to embellish the grandmotherly image of 'Mother' Jones.
Prominent strikes Mary participated in include the Pullman railroad strike in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1894; the Pennsylvania anthracite coal miners' strike in 1902; the Ludlow miners' strike in Colorado in 1913; and the nationwide steel workers' strike in 1919. She also helped other workers as well. In 1901, she helped form a union of domestic servants and helped silk weavers (often daughters of miners) fight for better work conditions. In 1909, she helped striking shirtwaist workers; the next year she helped organize women bottlers in Milwaukee breweries. In 1916, she helped streetcar workers in Texas and New York.
At only five feet tall and dressed in black with just a touch of lace at her throat and wrists, Mary was a perfect picture of a grandmother. Yet when she spoke, she was dynamic, energetic and enthusiastic -- bringing her audiences to tears, applause and laughter. She was a gifted storyteller with a brilliant sense of humor. Her intensity was almost explosive when she began to speak; her listeners (mostly men) sat up, fully alert, and believed that together they could do anything. She'd smile and scan the people gathered with her bright blue eyes, then say:
"I'm not a humanitarian. I'm a hell-raiser!" Another well-known quote is: "Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living."
Starting in 1890, she joined the coal miners' fight, becoming an organizer for the newly formed United Mine Workers of America. First she was a volunteer, then she became a union employee. She traveled to West Virginia, Alabama and Colorado, the hardest to organize areas. The miners and their families lived in towns where everything -- the houses, stores and even churches -- was owned by the mining company. She knew the gruesome conditions and hazards of their work, and even went into the mines during strikes to convince scabs (men who worked while others were striking) to quit and support their fellow workers. She warned miners to not trust the churches because they were financially supported by the mine owners. One preacher chastised Mary for holding a union meeting in "a house of God." She said:
"Oh, that isn't God's house. That is the coal company's house. ... God almighty never comes around to a place like this."
Although Mary was raised Catholic, she never claimed allegiance, feeling the organized church had abandoned the revolutionary nature Jesus had espoused. She also felt organized religion was used as a way to keep people from asking questions about their condition. When she spoke to groups, she portrayed Jesus as an organizer of the poor, saying he chose to die rather than betray the poor. On June 20, 1902, at a rally near Clarksburg, West Virginia, Mary was arrested after her speech. When she found out she would be detained in a hotel, she demanded to be put in jail with the other miners who had been arrested. During her career, she was arrested or escorted out of town many times -- only to return again and again.
Remembering lessons she learned from George, Mary often involved the wives and children of miners to dramatize the situation, as well as keep up the men's resolve. In 1902, she told striking miners in Arnot, Pennsylvania, to "stay home with the children for a change and let the women attend to the scabs." Then she led a march of the miners' wives from mine to mine, driving away strikebreakers with brooms and mops. She used this strategy many times at other strikes. In 1907 in Westmoreland, Pennsylvania, she urged strikers' wives to stand at the picket line, with their children. If arrested and imprisoned, she told them to sing as loudly as they could so the townspeople would be happy to have them released.
As for children, Mary traveled to several Southern cotton mills, assessing the working conditions -- although cotton mills were not exclusive to the South. She hired on at some, telling the managers she had children who would be working with her. She described the typical conditions at the mills:
"Little girls and boys, barefooted, walked up and down between the endless rows of spindles, reaching their little hands into the machinery to repair snapped threads. They crawled under machinery to oil it. They replaced spindles all day long, all day long; all night through. Tiny babies six years old with faces of sixty, did an eight hour shift for ten cents a day."
In 1903, to dramatize the need to abolish child labor, she led a caravan of striking children from the textile mills of Kensington, Pennsylvania, to President Theodore Roosevelt's home in Long Island, New York. They carried banners saying "We want time to play!" and "We want to go to school!" The president refused to meet with them, but the "Children's Crusade" caught the public's attention. She is quoted as saying:
"The employment of children is doing more to fill prisons, insane asylums, almshouses, reformatories, slums, and gin shops than all the efforts of reformers are doing to improve society."
In 1898, Mary helped found the Social Democratic Party. In 1904, she resigned from the UMWA and began lecturing for the Socialist Party of America, traveling throughout the southwest. She became an organizer for the Western Federation of Miners (who mined metal rather than coal), who were much more radical than the UMWA. In 1905, Mary was a founder of the Industrial Workers of the World union -- the only woman amond 27 people signing the manifesto calling for the organization. The predecessor of this union was the Knights of Labor.
While still participating in strikes and organized drives for unions, Mary became concerned as well about the conditions of Mexicans working in the U.S. She also focused energy on raising funds to defend Mexican revolutionaries who had been arrested or deported. She supported the overthrow of the dictatorial Mexican President Porfirio Diaz, and visited his successor, Francisco Madero, until he was assassinated.
In 1911, Mary left the Socialist Party to again work for the United Mine Workers union as an organizer. It was during this time that 'Mother' Jones came to national attention through the Paint Creek-Cabin Creek strike in West Virginia. On September 21, 1912, she led a march of miners' children through Charleston, West Virginia. On February 12, 1913, she led a protest about mining conditions and was arrested.
At the age of 76, Mary was convicted by a military court of conspiring to commit murder and was sentenced to 20 years in prison. This whole ordeal created such a fervor nationally that the U.S. Senate ordered a committee to investigate conditions in the coalfields. Before the investigations began, newly elected governor Hatfield set 'Mother' Jones free. (Because of her adding seven years to her age, everyone believed she was 83 years old.) She didn't waste any time -- traveling to Colorado to help miners in a yearlong strike. She arrived in Trinidad, Colorado, and spoke at the West Theatre:
"Rise up and strike ... strike until the last one of you drop into your graves. We are going to stand together and never surrender. Boys, always remember you ain't got a damn thing if you ain't got a union!"
Mary was evicted from mine company property several times, but returned again and again. She was arrested and imprisoned twice: first for about two months at Mt. San Rafael Hospital, and later for 23 days in a squalid semi-basement cell at Huerfano County Jail in Walsenburg. This second time was in Ludlow, Colorado, after she'd been told to leave town or be arrested. After her prison term, she was escorted out of town, but she slipped back in with the help of railroad workers.
On April 20, 1914, miners and their families, 20 people in all, were killed in a machine-gun massacre at a tent colony in Ludlow. Mary traveled the country telling the story. She caught the attention of the nation, and its leaders. President Wilson and members of the House Mines and Mining Committee responded by proposing that the union and each mine's owners agree to a truce and create grievance committees.
In 1915 and 1916, Mary helped in the strikes of garment workers and streecar workers in New York. In 1919, she helped steel workers striking in Pittsburg and was arrested again. In 1921, as a guest of the Mexican government, Mary attended the Pan-American Federation of Labor meeting in Mexico -- a highlight of recognition for her role in the labor movement. The next year, she resigned from the UMWA. (Both of her resignations from the UMWA were from disagreements with the presidents; the first time being John Mitchell. She felt Mitchell had been bought off by the mining companies and was serving their interests rather than the workers'. As for John L. Lewis, the later president, she thought he was a self-promoter and detested him until she died.)
In 1924, Mary was sued for libel, slander and sedition. The next year, the publisher of the Chicago Times, a fledgling newspaper at the time, won a shocking $350,000 judgment against her. Early in that year, Mary was attacked by a couple of thugs while staying at a friend's house. She fought them off, causing one to flee and seriously injuring the other, a 54-year-old man who later died from the wounds -- which included a blunt head injury from Mary's trademark black leather boots. Police arrested her, but she was released soon after when the attackers were identified as associates of a prominent local business man.
That same year, 1925, Mary published her autobiography, which she'd probably started writing in 1922 or 1923. She dictated her stories to Mary Field Parton, a reporter, friend and mistress of Clarence Darrow. (He wrote the introduction to the first edition.) Afterwards, she continued to lecture, as her health permitted. She was now 85 years old. Her last known public speaking engagement was in Alliance, Ohio, in 1926, as the guest of honor at a Labor Day celebration. Her last public appearance was at her 100th birthday party (although she was really only 92 years old) on May 1, 1930, in Silver Spring, Maryland.
Mary lived in Silver Spring with a retired coal miner and his wife, Walter and Lillie May Burgess. Seven months after the birthday party, 'Mother' Jones died on November 30, 1930, at the age of 93. A requiem mass was held at St. Gabriel's in Washington, D.C., then her body was sent to Mount Olive, Illinois, to be buried in the Union Miners Cemetery, in the coalfields of southern Illinois -- near the graves of victims of the Virden, Illinois, mine riot of 1898. (See the website on the cemetery, below, for more on this event.) Mary had requested to be buried there, back in 1924.
Mourners paid tribute to Mother Jones there, both at the Odd Fellows Temple and the Ascension Church, where the memorial service was held. About 10,000 to 15,000 people attended. The Reverend John W.F. Maguire, president of St. Viator's College in Bourbonnais, Illinois, said in his address:
"Wealthy coal operators and capitalists throughout the United States are breathing sighs of relief while toil-worn men and women are weeping tears of bitter grief. The reason for this contrast of relief and sorrow is apparent. Mother Jones is dead."
Starting in 1934, the Progressive Miners of America, who owned the cemetery, raised over $16,000 to erect a monument to 'Mother' Jones. It stands 22 feet high, built of 80 tons of pink Minnesota granite. On October 11, 1936, the dedication ceremony included an estimated 50,000 people. Five special trains and 25 Greyhound buses brought people to Mt. Olive. Others came by car or hitch-hiked. West Virginia Senator Rush D. Holt spoke, as did North Dakota Congressman William Lemke and socialist leader Duncan McDonald. The final speaker was Lillie May Burgess, who said Mother Jones had wanted to live another 100 years to "fight to the end" so that "there would be no more machine guns and no more sobbing of little children."
For years, October 12 was Miner's Day, celebrated with a big gathering in Mt. Olive and a visit to the monument. Mary's work was honored throughout the 1930s, by labor activists and Gene Autry recording "The Death of Mother Jones," whose song origins are obscure. After that, her memory faded and the copyright on her autobiography lapsed. Finally, in 1972, the Charles Kerr Company published a second edition of her autobiography, folk singers revived "The Death of Mother Jones," and in 1976, Mother Jones Magazine was formed, promising journalistic muck-raking much like its namesake.
'Mother' Jones has been criticized as not being a feminist. Her focus, though, was on the rights of workers -- men, women and children. She strongly opposed the suffrage movement, feeling it supported a passive inactivity; whereas she was wholeheartedly about taking action. She pointed out that the women of Ludlow, Colorado, had voting rights in the state, but it did not stop the massacre from happening. She said:
"[Women need to realize that with] what they have in their hands there is no limit to what they could accomplish. The trouble is they let the capitalists make them believe they wouldn't be ladylike."
As a side note, the popular children's song "She'll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain" is believed to have been inspired by 'Mother' Jones. It first was sung in the late 1800s, spread throughout Appalachia (probably by coal miners), and was widely sung by railroad work gangs in the 1890s. In addition to being nicknamed 'Mother' Jones, Mary also was called 'The Miners' Angel' and 'The Grandmother of All Agitators' -- a title she was proud of, saying she hoped to live to be the great-grandmother of agitators.
DATE OF DEATH: November 30, 1930
PLACE OF DEATH: Silver Spring, Maryland
PORTRAYED BY: Ann McEvoy
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Commire, Anne, editor. Women in World History: A Biographical Encyclopedia. Waterford, CT: Yorkin Publications, 2000.
Fetherling, Dale. Mother Jones, the Miner's Angel. Southern Illinois University Press, 1974.
Foner, Phillip S., editor. Mother Jones Speaks: Collected Writings and Speeches. Pathfinder Press, 1983.
Gilbert, Ronnie. Ronnie Gilbert: Face to Face with the Most Dangerous Woman in America. Conari Press, 1993.
Gorn, Elliott. Mother Jones: The Most Dangerous Woman in America. New York: Hill and Wang, 2001.
Jones, Mary Harris and Edward M. Steele, editor. The Speeches and Writings of Mother Jones: Pittsburg Series in Social and Labor History. University of Pittsburg, 1988.
Jones, Mary Harris. The Autobiography of Mother Jones. Dover Publications, 2004.
Josephson, Judith Pinkerton. Mother Jones: Fierce Fighter for Workers' Rights. Lerner Publications, 1996.
Coal Mining and Union Activities. Oral History Collection 1970-1975, 24 items. Sangaman State University, Oral History Office. Springfield, Illinois.
THE WIN BY GOVERNOR SCOTT WALKER YESTERDAY SHOULD BE STUDIED BY REAL LABOR WITH A HARD EXAMINATION OF S.E.I.U. AND ITS GROWTH AS A PAC BEGINNING IN THE 1970'S, THROUGH THE RISE OF JOHN SWEENEY (SEIU) AS HEAD OF THE AFL-CIO AND ANDY STERN'S COUP.
American workers are the best. American labor made the standard of living that is being eroded by people who want the American middle class to disappear.
The issue in Wisconsin will not end well for organized labor. The skilled and industrial trades, in my simple opinion, made a pact with the devil by siding with public sector unions ( PACs in reality) and allowing the likes of Andy Stern to hijack not only the voice of labor, but the very meaning of the word.
Taxes and the salaries of public sector unions are paid by electricians, carpenters, millwrights, pipe-fitters, plumbers, auto workers, steel workers, engineers and industrial workers. These folks are American labor.
Here is the face of labor -hijacked labor - in 2011.
This is face of real laborThis great photo was sent by Max Weismann
Eric Zorn, the Garbage Grid Grinder and Water Boy for Team Rahm-a-Lama-Dang-Dong had an Epiphany after watching WTTW - Winnetka Talks To Wilmette.
Like, the movie goers nodding with conviction to the sight of Charles Foster Kane's Rosebud Sled incinerating to a cinder in Xanadu,CA, Eric Zorn realizes that . . . Public Unions cost money!
After months of mouthing the Mike "Michigan Fats" Moore Meme in Wisconsin and throaty preachifying about Union Solidarity, The Water Boy now knows what any blue collar tangible citizen has known for decades about Time and Half for Overtime and Double Time and a Half on Birthdays.
Solidarity Forever . . .well until now.
Talk about many happy returns! Earning $50 an hour if you usually earn $20, just because it is Your Special Day.
And who pays for these gifts? Riders, the same folks who are looking at fare increases or service cuts if the CTA doesn’t get its costs under control, in part by winning work-rule concessions from its unions.
Kelly, who was seated next to Claypool on the WTTW set during the contentious conversation, went on: “If a guy is working and is getting paid for eight hours and he works on his birthday, he gets an additional eight” hours, he said. “If you do the math, that’s not 21/2 times. There’s nobody out there who gets 21/2 times.”
Well, almost nobody. During a follow-up interview Tuesday, Kelly said that when his members are called to work an overtime day on their birthday or employment anniversary, they’re paid double time and a half, but he estimated that “it doesn’t even happen 100 times a year.”
Still. WTTW moderator Eddie Arruza asked the question on everyone’s mind: “Why do they get paid extra on their birthday anyway?”
Eddie Arruza and Forrest Claypool tag teaming a guest on WTTW? -Ouis!Naturalmente, Mes Amis!
Progressives always do a pile on a target-guest, like two geeks emerging from their latest locker-stuffing at the hands of jocks and cool kids and then jumping like WWF Heroes on poor little Tobie, the ADD lite weight, but Summer School Valedictorian. Nobody bullies like Progressives.
Well, I'll be dipped and rolled, says the Water Boy! EZ has been been doing any number of cheerleading routines for the Smart Garbage Grid and most recently Bump-Up The Water Rates and Get Your Own Bad Selves a Meter from the top of Rahm's Progressive Propaganda Pyramid.
Eric only reports and comments on what he is given. Today, he must react on what he saw and the strain to his very soul is hurtful to witness and, obviously, facts must be brought to his attention.
Public Unions, Eric, are paid for through taxes. Public Unions are as old as the 1960s when Lefties in New York got JFK's Okey-Dorky to hammer Tammany Hall. Tammany Hall ( the Democratic Ward Machine) is gone and Public Unions have all but murdered the Middle Class.
The Skilled and Industrial Trades Unions and their membership, not tweedy mopes with milky hands and earnest big-hearted, but two-faced activists, fought and bled for Labor Rules.
The Public Service ( teachers, City, State, Federal workers) aped the gains made by Real Labor. Eric does not twist Forrest (Rula Lenska) Claypool's nipples for bashing the Civil Rights of Workingmen. I listened to that tin-horn mope make promises to Union Men, trying to unhorse Joe Berrios two Springs ago, all over the south side - Forrest, Boss Toni and Easter Bunny Quinn. Eric the Water Boy, instead, gets all pissy about Union Bargaining Chief Kelly doing exactly what he was employed to do (stand up for his Local)and then mocks the rank and file's benefits bargained for with political hacks and their progressive propagandists in the first place.
As a Progressive, Water Boy, you demand to go east and west on Western Ave., but that is not, in truth, how traffic flows.
Instead of coming to a realization that Public Service Unions are not a really great idea, though they create a swell post-Shakman Patronage Army.
Eric's outrage over the obvious is charming, even whimsical. Harry Potter's magic wand works just fine on the big screen and on cable, but when your little digits tear open the packaging and you try it out - you must contend with your magical imagination.
Double Bubble and Double Time and a Half, little Muggle with the Water Pail, has been around for a very long time.
So, the next time Michigan Fats and Big Ed want to get a bongo circle in Madison, WI, or Zuccotti Park, ask the Two TeleTubby Trotskys - 'Who's paying?' It's easy let me do this slow -
Private Sector -labor good! - only so much money to bargain for.
Public Sector -labor(PACs) not so good! - Tax well's drier than All Things Considered.
The Skilled Trades and Industrial Unions who helped make the American Middle Class fought for decades to earn those rights through Collective Bargaining with Management.
Water Boy! The Game's Afoot and you're all tangled up . . .here, start with this knot . . .then over . . .over that's it . . .Over not under . . . under is opposite of over . . .that's right over, but upside down . . .we'll come back and see how you're doing.
If the Occupy Wall Street Movement and its rehearsal the Madison Wisconsin Sideshow last year have done anything it is making us all aware of the importance of bongos, drums and other percussion instruments.
Though I expect that there will not be a wild revival of Sandy Nelson, Buddy Rich, or Gene Krupa record sales, those kids can beat.
But consider Sandy Nelson:
And the OWS In-a-gadda-davidas!
More significantly, the fist thrust heaven-ward has become an all too frequent semiotic tool.
There is nothing so impressive as the calloused hands of a man who actually works for a living with skill, professional piety, and determination.
There is nothing so laughable as the milky white digits of a latter-day Hero of the Proletariat.
Man, put them back in the pockets of your North Face, son.
Lefties live on a diet of BS. The more BS they shovel in, the more strident they become e.g. the Chicago media call SEIU Big Labor. Whenever labor is used in newsprint, think SEIU. Remember the Big Box BS? Jane Addams has an expressway named for her; why?
Jane Addams, truth to tell, stabbed the Amalgamated Meat Cutters in the back in Sept. 1904, after a violent and horrifically hot summer on strike against the Meat Packers. A vote was called to continue the strike at the union hall on 47th & Ashland. Hours later a Jane Addams and her delegation of short-haired women activists, who pretended to stand with the strikers, met with union President Michael Donnelly. Three hours later Donnelly called off the strike. The Amalgamated Meat Cutters got nothing. Donnelly faded into obscurity and died under mysterious circumstances. Try finding anything on Michael Donnelly in modern labor history, the Chicago Encyclopedia, or anywhere on the web. He was as Orwell warned, disappeared. Like the old timey Lefties are wont to say, 'You could look it up!' I did. Go through the New Times and Chicago Trtibune 1904 archives -fascinating reading. (STRIKE IS ENDED; MEN SURRENDER.
Chicago; Sep 9, 1904; ProQuest Historical Newspapers Chicago Tribune (1849 - 1985))
Jane Addams has a nice stretch of highway running Northwest toward here home town Cedarville, IL. Jane Addams got herself a Nobel Peace Prize, taking credit for the work of others.
This morning, Carol Marin offered another heaping helping of BS and called for a Studs Terkel rant for Labor Day. Why? Don't ask. He's a treasure.
I miss Studs.
I miss his laugh. His martinis. His stories. But this weekend, I’m missing what he would say about working. Or — for so many desperate Americans right now — not working.
It is Labor Day weekend and the news is grim:
In August, there was no job growth, the first time in a year there has been no monthly jobs growth.
Studs Terkel died Oct. 31, 2008, at 96. He was the greatest listener of the 20th century. Armed with a tape recorder, a brilliant mind and an insatiable curiosity, he asked normal, everyday people what they thought and felt.
He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1985 for his book The Good War, and received the Presidential National Humanities Medal in 1997.
But it’s his 1974 book, Working, that’s on my mind.
The unemployment rate remained stuck at a dismal 9.1 percent in August.
Work helps define us. Gives us pride. Puts food on the table and pays for the tuition that sends our kids to college. And yet America, a huge swath of it, is not working right now.
Studs did exactly what? He recorded people's stories and did not share the royalties and won awards, and played records on Public Radio and spun yarns on Public Television.
Studs did alright for himself. I grew up in a fiercely union house. I have met real labor heroes and a very few villains.
There are old timers who actually had their heads spilt by company goons. Like combat veterans of WWII, Korea, Vietnam and our current wars with Islamist terror, they never cashed in on their efforts.
Studs Terkel did pretty well on their efforts however. Like Jane Addams, Studs Terkel is remembered because of the diet of BS, than by any real efforts.
I met Studs Terkel once when my late wife Mary was a waitress at Arnie Morton's in the early 1980's. I was waiting for Mary to get off work and she introduced me to Studs. I was teaching English at Bishop McNamara in Kankakee and came home to Chicago on the weekends. I had read Working, in fact Hots Michaels, the great jazz pianist for the old Scuttlebutt Lounge and Chicago Chop House, Mount Carmel grad and life-long pal of my uncle Jack was featured in Working. I asked about Hots. Studs asked 'Who?' Hots Michaels he is featured in the beginning of Working.
"Oh, yeah, . . .Hots," and the man of people got up tossed two bucks on the table for Mary and shuffled off to Buffalo.
My uncle Jack, Hots Michaels and a bunch of guys including Nelson Algren played cards together. It seems that Studs Terkel played a few times. Hot Michaels was a great musician and Chicago legend. My uncle Jack was a stationary engineer at the water station on 35th Street.
Studs Terkel put Hots in his book. I am sure Hots Michaels never saw nickel one, nor did he care.
Studs Terkel had his work and his success. Labor Day is about labor and the fight for a living wage, an eight hour day, and the dignity of work.
The late Tom Roeser respected working men and women. He knew Studs Terkel.
Her( Carol Marin) first column was to celebrate that 14-carat phony with a self-embroidered history of radical activism from yesteryear, Studs Terkel, 96, a self-promoting agnostic windbag who named one of his kids after declared Communist stage actor and singer Paul Robson and , to hear Terkel tell it in his rasping voice which thrills his listeners since they fathom the real man of the street is talking… marched with the Wobblies, braved assaults from the club-wielding goons in the Armour strike, endured beatings with Walter Reuther in the Detroit sit-down strikes of the 1930, fought the white racists who opposed blacks swimming off a South Side pier in the 1920s, was black-listed because of his opposition to that hideous Joe McCarthy…all the stories inflating in coloration by the year-some invented out of whole cloth--while Ms. Marin beamed expressively and accepted his supposed man-in-the-street lingo as true genre.
As the late Steve Neal, no conservative, pointed out in a column Terkel never did anything of note for the “working class,” is in reality a b.s’ing blatherer of tales who would long since have been thrown out of a neighborhood bar for inculcating terminal boredom, since he has lived far longer than most and has license to exaggerate scandalously without fact-checking. Aside from a brief acting career on early TV, Terkel’s has done nothing noteworthy except to snap on a tape recorder and capture stories from first-hand participants for which, as a canny capitalist, he paid nothing but from which he made a fortune for himself-beginning with “Division Street America.” A self-proclaimed man of the people, he deliberately never learned to drive and rides a bus, taking care to sit by the window where he, festooned in his red-checked shirt, can be quickly glimpsed. I debated him once at Bughouse Square. A coward when confronted, this giant puff ball self-inflated turned into a clawless pussy cat. I actually went easy on him after he caved. It was the first time he was ever called on any of his stories because his recollections were at variance with history. Marin the dilettante swallows it all.
Labor Day and every day lets lay off the BS. It makes fat heads.
Dorothy Rabinowitz has written very sober warning to any Republican with the tripes to run against Barack Obama in 2012. President Barack Obama has been a lousy President, in my opinion, but he is a very formidable politician with more money than he needs, and an adoring corporate media that has cashed in its integrity for investment in Green Energy Initiatives. Green Wall Street has gone the way of the Dodo bird, but engineering firms (they always seem to be Sierra Club members), lawyers, and venture capitalists - with heart-breaking sincerity and moral weltanschauungs continue to pump millions of dollars in the Obama 2012 Campaign in the hope of Cap'nTrading, stop oil drilling, kill coal, fund Rube Goldberg automotives, build windmills, and rake in some profits -all for a Greener Planet.
Ms. Rabinowitz writes,"The Republican who wins will have to know, and show that he knows, that most Americans aren't sitting around worried to death about big government—they're worried about jobs and what they have in savings."
Correcto! However, the GOP, especially in my home of Illinois, has a propensity for blowing its own toes off. In the last Illinois gubernatorial race, the GOP candidate Bill Brady used all of the rhetorical force that swept Democrats out of the Congressional House of Representatives in November and lost to Rod Blagojevich's Lt. Governor Pat Quinn. The GOP had only one candidate in the big field for governor who understood that all labor is not SEIU and that was Dan Proft. The tasseled loafer Illinois GOP refused to support Dan Proft and opted for small-business, pro-life, anti-union zealot Bill Brady.
Pat Quinn campaigned like a blue collar guy and now governs like a Trotskyite from Berkley. Bill Brady did all of the hot-button Tea Party razz-matazz and got himself beaten by Pat Quinn. Pat Quinn wrapped himself up as the savior of the working man. I voted for Quinn, God help me.
Pat Quinn was elected because the skilled trades and not radical leftists of SEIU got out front for Quinn. Brady blew his toes off by attacking unions -all unions. The GOP would not know a working man if the guy were three feet away fixing his toilet.
Public Service monster unions ate up labor in the last forty years with the rhetorical teeth of Marxist Andy Stern's One Big Union bullshit. Join Us or Die!
Sadly, too many skilled trade and industrial unions played ball with SEIU. However, SEIU is no friend of labor.
The GOP tags all unions as corrupt and evil - Stupid as well as false. Take a look at Wisconsin, while public service unions need to have the reigns tightened on them, Gov. Walker and the GOP managed to alienate blue collar trades people in the bargain. These are people who are doubly burdened by SEIU tax-aholic degenerates. They reap not the benefits that suck up tax dollars and are vilified and threatened by the GOP as well.
A Republican for President must get union smart and play fair with the American working man.
This candidate should spend a month or more with business agents, apprenticeship officers, and apprentices in some of the American industrial and skilled trades unions.
Go home with a young guy who is paying for his classes, working with journeyman, paying a mortgage, maybe even private school tuition and municipal, county, state and federal taxes that eclipse his income, before he pays out in pension, medical, grocery, utilities, and tries to top off the used car he drives to and from the job.
Take a look at what it costs out of pocket to earn a salary that is touted to be inflated by the very media that demands greater tax-burdens.
The GOP, in Illinois and across America, pays lip service to the memory of Ronald Reagan. Reagan won over blue-collar votes, because he took the time to understand blue collar values. The working man is not a fan of abortion for example. The tasseled loafer Republican, like Illinois' U.S. Senator Mark Kirk, is abortion friendly.
The Tea Party is not a right wing conspiracy, but a genuine national voice of frustration aimed at the pompous and smug voices that have hogged the pulpits and microphones for too long.
Barack Obama will win the White House again in 2012, unless some candidate has the tripes to learn about real American labor and give voice to their concerns. Attacking unions is stupid as well as incorrect.
This morning most members of my immediate and extended family will march in celebration of Labor. They will form up on Columbus Drive* as the fog and mists of morning break away along the Lakefront, but they may still be enshrouded in both a Purple and a Green fog.
The Purple Fog is the powerful cover of SEIU - tax salaried, collectivist political action masquerading as real Labor. I have continued to snipe away at SEIU as faux labor, because the SEIU membership the rank and file are used by SEIU for dues, while the membership remain in low-paying, no skill/low skill jobs, without a path to the middle class. SEIU uses the dues of members to buy and amass political power.
The Green Fog comes from the Environmental Agendanistas and Allies of SEIU who have be-fogged American political conversation with the white noise of Green Jobs, Green Capitalism, and Green Politics.
Labor gave America its standard of living and created the American Middle Class.
These are tough times. Americans face near 10% unemployment, and erosion of the industrial jobs that once marked America. Many of those jobs rusted and chipped away due to Environmental Concerns. The American Steel Industry is now all but gone. Coal was and remains a political whack-a-mole - 'We're with You! We Ain't!'
America is Green Slap Happy. Green Jobs? Green Turn-around economy? Renewable Sources of Energy? Green fog.
The Green Fog's Czar, Van Jones, was out-ed as an agenda driven goof and will return to the activist sidelines - for a while.
Today, as Labor - Real Labor - marches and celebrates the courage and conviction of people to demand dignity and a solid livelihood from the people who benefit from their labors, try to avoid the Green Fog, as well as the Purple Fog.
Green jobs barely exist. American scholar and demographer Joel Kotkin writes this about the Green Fog:
All told, green jobs constitute barely 700,000 positions across the country – less than 0.5% of total employment. That's about how many jobs the economy lost in January this year. Indeed a recent study by Sam Sherraden at the center-left New America Foundation finds that, for the most part, green jobs constitute a negligible factor in employment – and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Policymakers, he warns, should avoid "overpromising about the jobs and investment we can expect from government spending to support the green economy."
This is true even in California, where green-job hype has become something of a fetish among self-styled "progressives." One recent study found that the state was creating some 10,000 green jobs annually before recession. To put this into context, the total state economy has lost over 700,000 jobs over the past year (more than 200,000 in Los Angeles County alone). Any net growth in green jobs has barely made a dent in any economic category; only education and health services have shown job gains over this period.
More worrisome, in terms of national competitiveness, the green sector seems to be going in the wrong direction. The U.S.'s overall "green" trade balance has moved from a $14.4 billion surplus in 1997 to a nearly $9 billion deficit last year. As the country has pushed green energy, ostensibly to free itself from foreign energy, it has become ever more dependent on countries such as China, Japan and Germany for critical technology. Some of this is directly attributable to the often massive subsidies these countries offer to green-tech companies. But as New America's Sherraden puts it, this "does not augur well for the future of the green trade balance."
Nor are we making it any easier for American workers to gain from green-related manufacturing. Some of America's "greenest" regions are inhospitable for placing environmentally oriented manufacturing facilities. For example, high taxes and regulatory climate have succeeded in intimidating solar cell makers from coming to green-friendly California; a manufacturer from China told the Milken Institute's Ross DeVol that the state's "green" laws precluded making green products there.
The jobs –manufacturing and others – depart and there is no work – No Labor. The fog of Green propaganda and sloganeering by editorial boards and politicians will endanger American Labor, as much as the collectivist clap-tarp of Andy Stern’s SEIU. Purple or Green, fog is fog. God Bless the American Labor Movement! Work for the dignity of working women and men, but for Labor's sake - for God's Sake! - stay out of the Fogs, Green and Purple!
* No Parade - plenty of barbecues, though. At the time I wrote this, I had forgotten that the City of Chicago no longer Parades Labor. There is an Immigration Reform rally.
Dad always said that I couldn't find my butt with both hands. I can. Allow me to add this imperative -“Defend the unborn against abortion even if they persecute you, calumniate you, set traps for you, take you to court or kill you." - Pope Francis to celebrate Pro-life Mass, Vatican
"You stand up for what you believe in, even if it gets in the way of what other people think. You are proud of yourself and your accomplishments and you enjoy letting people know that."
A peach of a guy with all the sweetness one could expect from a life well-spent and in good company: short on brains but a terrific dancer!
Author:
Every Heart and Hand: A Leo High School Story
The Chorito Hog Leg, Book One: A Novel of Guam in Time of War
He later opened two more.
NAME: Mary Harris Jones
