Just got off the phone from speaking with Chrisine Williams, Executive Board Member of the Stations workgroup of Transit Workers Union's Local 100. I called her to clear up what was the actual position of TWU on the Occupy Wall Street peaceful protest. Unfortunately Business Insider scrapped a member blog post from DailyKos (meaning, it wasnt even from the site's actual editorial group) which was in itself based on tweets by the person who goes by the handle @NewYorkist.

So here's the scoop: The membership of New York City's Local 100 Transit Workers' Union DID NOT vote to march over to #OccupyWallStreet TOMORROW. What did indeed happen? The Executive Board of TWU LOCAL 100 are officially endorsing Occupy Wall Street.  read more »

This is adapted from something I wrote some years ago when I actually worked in the building where the Triangle Shirtwaist fire took place. But it is a part of American history, labor history, and Jewish-American history that Teabaggers want us to forget. And we must not EVER forget because the women who lost their life that day died so that today we have fire regulations and unions. The Teabaggers are desecrating the memories of those women who died 100 years ago.

On March 25th 1911, 146 people died in the very building I used to work in before our lab moved to the NYU school of medicine. The result of their deaths was the rapid growth of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union and the real beginning of the fight against sweatshops. These are the very advances that right wing extremists in the Republican party are trying to eliminate, forgetting those 146 deaths. It also was the beginning of fire regulations in American cities.

The story of the fire and the missed opportunities to prevent it are chilling. But what is more chilling is the fact that America has forgotten why we need unions. Even some unions have forgotten what unions are all about, but I want everyone who doubts the need for unions to remember the events of March 25, 1911.

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[EDITOR'S NOTE: Seeing the attacks on Rock on Room 8 I want to emphasize that anyone is welcome to comment and disagree around here...but I will delete comments that are personal attacks. If you want to make a point, leave out a personal attack.--mole333]

Brooklyn's minority voters have a history of puzzling votes: no doubt. You can go back to the days of Shirley Chisholm, Vander Beatty and Waldaba Stewart, to find some strange results recorded: yes indeed.. There were times when you could only scratch your head and wonder what the motivations were, when voters elected certain folks (some repeatedly). And as time went by one hoped that minority voters in Brooklyn would evolve into rational-actor voter-models: demonstrating a higher level of critical-scrutiny for wannabee electeds. One hoped that the vetting process would be rigorous and extensive, and that the standards would be set real high for office-applicants. One hoped that qualified, educated, competent, capable, intelligent candidates would emerge to lead some of these districts sorely in need of dynamic leadership. Leaders who could articulate their way out of a phone booth; who could think creatively while they chew gum and walk straight. People of integrity. People with impeccable character traits and with very little or no “personal baggage”. People that can be examples for our hungry minority youth: too many of whom are grappling with the “missing-father syndrome”. People who could go to high places and make the case for better government-action more beneficial to the needy. People who could build coalitions and minimize isolation and alienation. People who could aspire, inspire and perspire, not disappoint and corruptly conspire. Alas, it seems as though one can only dream for the day when minority voters in Brooklyn would make better choices and be consistent in their reasoning: but we dream on; nonetheless.  read more »

My family's union support go back some time. Not sure if it began with my grandmother, an original FDR Democrat, or before. But a defining event was probably my great-grandfather, who lost fingers and an eye in an industrial accident. He had been a craftsman in the old country, making furniture. In the US he worked in a factory, with the usual results that happened in pre-union days.

I never knew him so I don't know if this incident led him to support unionization, but I do know my grandmother was a solid union supporter and Democrat until the day she died and she passed this on to my mother and through her to my brother and me. In her wilder days my grandmother even had a brief marriage to a communist. My mother focused her radicalism on feminism in the days of the ERA.

My son seems to be picking up the same radical tendencies of my grandmother, brother and mother. By comparison I am a moderate.

It started with Woodie Guthrie. My son fell in love with "This Land is my Land," particularly the Woodie Guthrie version, though I think the first version he heard was the Bruce Springsteen version sung at a rally for Barack Obama. As I was, at his request, looking for other Woodie Guthrie songs we came across Billy Bragg and others singing "I'm Sticking to the Union" at the 90th birthday of Pete Seeger. My son is now playing it over and over and singing the first several lines (the ones sung by Billy Bragg). Here it is:

There considerable resonance in this to me. My mother used to sing union songs (in a bad voice, but what the hell). She introduced me to the songs of Pete Seeger and the Weavers, a blacklisted group from the good days of Folk Music when Woodie Guthrie's working class music wasn't yet replaced by the later, more self-important and strident versions I can't stand even when sung by a voice as wonderful as Joan Baez'. And Billy Bragg is someone I was largely unaware of until hearing him on the IFC program my distant cousin, Henry Rollins, hosted. Here is Billy Bragg on Henry Rollins' show and my introduction to his music:

Somehow it feels right hearing my son belt out: "There once was a union maid, who never was afraid, Of goons and ginks and company finks and the deputy sheriffs who made the raid..." along with Billy Bragg.

Just goes to show, my family's liberal to the core. And damned proud of it.

My wife, from a similar old-Jewish radical background of course, had a role as well. After all, she's the one who taught him that Dick Cheney and Henry Kissinger were "supervillians."

First of all, congratulation to John Liu for becoming the first Chinese-American to be elected to city-wide office in New York City. That's a huge slap on the face for the New York Democratic Party establishment; an establishment that's never been too keen on grassroots movements unless they can co-opt to solidify their status-quo.

The other big grassroots story of the night was Bill de Blasio. He walloped Mark Green, one of the darlings of the New York political elite, in a run-off election and breezed into the Political Advocate's office with 76.9% of the vote.

For a political establishment that doesn't suppor grassroots movements unless it's ready to line their pockets --remember of all the so-called grassroots progressives and Democrats defecting to the Bloomberg campaign?-- these two wins are a wake-up call for the NY Dems political establishment.

Well have to see how these two fare for or against the status quo in the next four years.

1. Obama is not the Democratic Party.
Virginia is the best example of this phenomenon: Even though Obama carried the state, voters repudiated the slim pickings pushed on them by the local Democratic party. Creigh Deeds, the genius Democrat who lost the election, ran as an anti-Obama Democrat. In a state that Obama basically swept during the general elections. WHAT KIND OF STRATEGY IS THAT? Oh right, the strategy of a Democrat who rightfully doesn't look at Obama as representing him.

The biggest mistake for the Democratic Party was to sucker themselves into thinking that whatever genius political strategy Plouffe and Axelrod were able to use in getting Obama elected was going to absolve them of their state and local sins of nepotism, cronyism, corruption but most importantly utter ineptitude.

Last night was a big wake-up call for Democrats who think they'll be able to coast on the coattails of Obama for the next 3-7 years.

Which takes me to the big story of the day: Bill Owens will for New York's Congressional District #23. What's the moral of that story?

2. Carpetbaggers better not fuck with upstaters.
The sleepy corner of upper New York state became an ideological battle ground for the extreme right of the Republican party with a non-Palin-looking Dede Scozzafava being muscled out of the election by the GlennBeckian non-resident of the district Hoffman. Yet in the process of eating their own, out-of-state extremists revealed the awful truth about the New York State Democratic Party: They suck.

Democrats in New York state are rarely differentiated from their Republican counterparts. Abortion is not one a political lightning rod for New York politicians. On the contrary, NYC boasts a rather disturbing amount of African American and Latino right-to-lifers on their rolls. What separates Republicans from Democrats is the amount of money their willing to put at the feet of the political establishment in both Albany and Washington DC.

NY23 happened to be one of those districts that NY Dems didn't look as particularly profitable for them until the teabaggers came into town. And that's basically their modus operandi: Many districts in the state are marked as losses from the get go. NY23 proved what a dangerous strategy that is --especially in a year when one more Democrat in Congress could make a huge difference in Health Care and Immigration legislation.

The challenge for true progressives in New York state will be to not only get rid of anti-gay, misogynist, immigrant hating Republicans. The challenge will be to find progressives to run against Democrats Democrats with similar political views, from local all the way up to Congressional, regardless of whether it is a "red district" or not.

3. Michael Turk put it best, Can we now agree that 2008 was a referendum on Bush and GOP arrogance, and not a vote for radical liberalism?
This bears repeating over and over and over again. Obama wasn't a choice for radical liberalism. Obama wasn't even a choice for the Democratic Party. Obama didn't even win because he was a centrist. Obama won because he successfully sold himself as an outsider from the political establishment who had a vision of a United States that could be better without partisan politics.

In other words: Obama won because he was the ANTI-IDEOLOGICAL, ANTI-PARTISAN candidate. He didn't win because people believed he could change the swamp of Capitol Hill or the rats' nest of the Democratic Party. He won because he not only wasn't part of the swamp or the rats but because he aspired to transcend all of that with his presidency.

Michael Turk's comment was directed to Republicans but you might as well use it to bash into the heads of Democrats why they can't rest on Obama's laurels. 90% of the Democrat Party do not represent "Change We Can Believe In" and that's what got played out in all of lat night's electoral losses.

4. All the money int he world is not going to win you a mandate
The race was called in favor of Bloomberg when he was winning by 3%. He ended up tallying a 4.58% win. That means that the Boss Bloomberg plunked down $21,834,061.1 per each point in his margin of win. That's an obscene amount of bribe money; yet it proves that had New York City a true political grassroots movement represented in the Democratic Party, Thompson would have squeaked in a victory.

5. New York City is ready for a grassroots renaissance
Thompson didn't win because he was one of the ultimate insiders just like his losing predecessor, Freddy Ferrer. It's not just that Freddy was Puerto Rican and Bill was black. It was really the fact that these two have been part of the political establishment of New York City for far too long. Every single Democratic mayoral loser since Dinkins has been part of the party establishment.

Yet look at the massive margins that got both de Blasio and Liu elected. If any of these two guys want to become mayor the lesson is very simple: FIGHT MICHAEL BLOOMBERG FOR THE NEXT 4 YEARS.

You can't raise $100 million to buy yourself the local and national media? Fine. Then fight the man every single step of the way for the next 4 years. Govern like you were still campaigning. Amass grassroots support and boost the numbers of your independent allies. Most importantly though, KEEP YOUR FACE IN THE LOCAL MEDIA. That means every single week, every single month, you gotta get yourself out there in front of the cameras, on the newspapers and most importantly on the blogs to move your message over and over and over again.

Michael Bloomberg doesn't have a mandate. Liu, de Blasio and every single Democrat who wants to become the next mayor needs to keep the campaign going until 2013.

Which gets me to my favorite peeve:  read more »