I once again Occupied Wall Street at the Labor Outreach Table (plus great cartoon)

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.facebook.com/notes/joes-union-review/i-once-again-occupied-wall-street-at-the-labor-outreach-table-1u-occupywallst-la/10150428761530937

by Joe's Union Review on Tuesday, October 18, 2011 at 11:05pm

I stopped by the Labor outreach table in the park today after work and continued to meet more interested people, fireman, teachers, laborers, union organizers, nurses, veterans, etc.. I even spent some quality time with brother Steamfitter. I was interviewed by a labor writer from Switzerland, and video interviewed a few times. When asked why I was there, I said, although I am a union member of a great union, that I was there on my own as a New Yorker and as a tax paying American. I spoke of the unfettered wealth and power which has been amassed by the few, and of the need for removing corporate personhood from our Constitution. I spoke of how the banks were supposed to lend to developers and small American businesses with the tax bailout money our government gave them and all they did was buy smaller banks and give their failure CEO's larger bonuses. How they did this while my bread and butter, construction projects, were getting filled with sand by the dozens. I spoke of how my brothers and sisters were having to decide between paying the mortgage or put food on the table. I expressed how a majority of us have had to live unemployed and/or under-employed and many of us are losing our health benefits or have lost them already. I asked what if my good union employer had a problem with his bills? Would the Federal government bail them out?



I spoke about the failing and evaporating safety nets to our well-being, the constant threats of losing Social Security and Medicare. I explained that in all of human history there has always been a ruling class. How in all of known time the working people were always under the rulers, and that if you were to look at it as a huge line, the labor movement would only be a tiny blip of a little over 100 years, how this experiment in equality is basically a new idea, how the middle class, and the American dream are even a fraction of that tiny percentage and how the ruling class has been against it for more than a third of it's lifetime.



I asked some of the other union workers who came on their own, whose local and/or international had not endorsed this movement wholly, I asked them: If everyone had to wait for a union to tell them when to act, how would there have ever been a union movement in the first place?



FULL story at link.