Real Live Guides for a Real Live City - Please help preserve NYC jobs under attack

Why This Is Important

New York City is real and live in every moment, and NYC tour guides should be too.
When you visit New York City live licensed tour guides are here to serve you as:

-Story tellers and entertainers.
-A trusted, knowledgeable source for advice.
-A friend in town, looking out for your safety on Double Decker buses. (So that you don't get decapitated by a street light, sign or bridge).

But, now, Twin America, who has an illegal monopoly of NYC sightseeing tours (not to mention a very healthy profit margin) wants to "throw tour guides and their passengers under the bus", by eliminating live guides and replacing them with pre-recorded narrations. We are calling on New York City Council and Mayor Bloomberg to move swiftly, to require live guides on NYC bus tours. Show them you support real live tour guides for NYC, for quality, safety, and living wage jobs!

MORE INFO & NEWS REPORTS via the Facebook cause page for this issue.

PLEASE SIGN THE CHANGE.ORG PETITION

Tour Guides at Gray Line NYC are members of TWU Local 225 (AFL-CIO), so not only is the move to replace guides with pre-recorded narration the sort of corporate greed we've become all too used to seeing, but it's also union busting. Please help.
Safe travels and thanks in advance for your support!

OCCUPY WALL STREET view from the ground

Today, I participated in the labor union rally and march in conjunction with the Occupy Wall Street protest, which today coalesced many social justice groups, unions, student groups, faith-based groups and activists into a massive march. Occupy Wall Street is diverse in every way; beautiful, democratic, and today it's numbers were truly MASSIVE. Take heed, 1%. Take heed, corporate greed. The 99% are marching. Here are photos from the march and from "Liberty Plaza" Zucotti Park.

Keep up the pressure. Workers rights are human rights. Get out the message that is getting lost in a media blackout: the wealth of this country is in the hands of 1% while 99% suffer job losses and continued unemployment, reduced wages, discrimination, charges for using debit cards, union busting, forclosure, and countless other grievances. All while the 1% continue to hoard profits, pay conservative think-tanks and talking-heads to spin lies and buy out politicians. It's a cycle that is inhuman and unsustainable. But there's hope; look at the beautiful expression of democracy in these pictures. I was particularly moved by the little girl in the very last of these pictures, with a shirt that says "Girls can change the world". Amen. 

Wisconsin Recall TODAY

The Wisconsin Recall begins TODAY, August 9th.

If you care about what decent humans tend to care about, you should care about this cause. Because worker's rights are human rights. And human rights are a good thing to fight for. Workers' rights have been trampled and spit upon in the great state of Wisconsin. Tea-Party-backed extremists have mounted countless dirty tricks at the expense of the working class and the Wisconsin taxpayer. Walker's authoritarian platform is an insult to the American civic system. He is blatant cronyism on steroids, and that's the nice part. I could go on and on and on, but if you're new to this information, please, just search AlterNet and your mind should be properly blown.

Contribute via ACTBLUE

Contribute via Bold Progressives

Want to know more about the historic Wisconsin uprising? There are books about it! Check them out! Reading is good. Education is good. Teachers are good, despite what extremist Governor Scott Walker thinks. (He is, after all, a college drop-out and has seen fit to attack education from every possible angle).

GET OUT THE VOTE, FRIENDS!

The world needs you to keep giving us hope and making us proud, Wisconsin.

Breaking News: Message from Little Mike, President Cherubim Local 333 advocating Koch Industry Boycott

Message from Little Mike, President of Cherubim Local 333, affiliate SEIU (Seraphim Employees International Union)

Dear citizens of Wisconsin,

Our union has heard your prayers. I am shocked and horrified by the attack on basic workers' rights being perpetrated by Scott Walker and his overlord, Koch Industries. I am further incensed to learn that my image has been pirated for use upon Koch Industry brand "Angel Soft" toilet paper. Aside from the insult of being a poster child for poop, I never approved of my image being used on any commercial product unless it promotes love, fairness and world peace. Koch Industries is the opposite of these values, a chief polluter of our planet, buying the souls of GOP statesmen to further their own aims. (Such as gaining control of state property that has been in the hands of hard-working Wisconsonites for generations, instead giving control to out-of-state holdings that have no loyalty to the great state of Wisconsin.)

I ask that you please join in the Koch Industry Boycott of all products, including all Dixie Brand paper products and especially Angel Soft, attack upon my dignity that it is. Because giving Koch your money essentially, from what I'm seeing from up here, is tithing to Satan.

Our Union has a proud tradition. First we were an Order of Cherubim, then a Guild, but in this modern age we voted that an international Union suits Earth best, and we stand in solidarity with all who organize in good faith for workers' rights. Cherubim Local 333 supports you, Wisconsin, and all people struggling against the corporate fists of greed and vice that seek to pummel average Americans and reward only the most privileged. Might I remind you all of the 2,000+ Biblical references that demand justice for the poor and downtrodden? Oh yeah, and we've got arrows.

The bible also says that we must pray for our enemies. And so we shall. Doesn't mean you give enemies your money.

There are many faith groups that have joined with workers in this struggle, which pleases our Local very much. Because workers rights are human rights, and where humans are imperiled by the revocation of these rights, so shall angels be.

Stay strong, keep the faith and for God's sake someone take my image off that bathroom tissue, it’s a crime.

Sincerely,

Little Mike
President Cherubim Local 333
To The Left of Your Conscience

Suite 12
Heaven, 33333

Boycott Koch Industry Products

100,000 Strong

2/26: NYC's Rally in Support of Wisconsin Workers and Workers Rights everwhere!

So the last MoveOn RSVP poll I saw listed NYC attendees at nearing 3,000, there was definately around that number down at City Hall park this morning, on both sides of the street.

My boyfriend came up with a hit chant: "More Cheese, Less Sleaze!"

And here are our favourite signs and I hope you can get a sense of the scope. And I hope you know how much you are loved, Wisconsin!!

Please spread the word about what you have seen, there on the ground in Wisconsin and all across America! Thousands upon thousands were on the streets today. Rough estimate was over 100,000 in Madison, with thousands on the streets across the nation. (You can see great national footage via MoveOn ). Talk to your legislators and communities about what is happening here and all across the nation. Most mainstream media, run and controlled by corporate sources, will not pick up on the full breadth or true scope of this movement. So it's up to us to make anyone and everyone listen. And to not stop doing so.

You know that things are kinda fucked up...

When liberals are quoting Reagan (the only president to have belonged to a union - Screen Actors Guild) and Eisenhower on the elemental human right to unionize, and what unions are about.

“By outlawing Solidarity, a free trade organization to which an overwhelming majority of Polish workers and farmers belong, they have made it clear that they never had any intention of restoring one of the most elemental human rights—the right to belong to a free trade union.”  - Ronald Reagan, radio address to the nation, 1982 - (Thanks to ThinkProgress for this)

"Only a fool would try to deprive working men and working women of their right to join the union of their choice." - Dwight D. Eisenhower

Yes, folks, it's THAT MUCH of an essential human right that even those very famous Republicans do not dare refuse! By their right to exist, they must have the right of collective bargaining, that is the whole point of a union. I have seen these quotes used to defend the workers' cause against the far right wing's assault, who idolize said men.

Unions provide a check and balance to those holding all the strings. There is no other force in this country that is created and organized to provide that kind of check. In the case of Mr. Walker, he wants to take all the strings, wind them around everyone's necks and watch his little dictatorial world suffocate, all while he's the puppet of out-of-state billionaire masters. (Rest assured, my arts education provided me with numerous ways to evoke marionette metaphors, there's more where that came from.)

Worker's rights are human rights.

Capitalism, if left unchecked and solely in the hands of selfish capital, is a cannibal.

If you think this doesn't affect you now, it will. One more time:

Worker's rights are human rights.

"First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak for me." -- Pastor Martin Niemoller. More about the context and specificity of this quote.

PS -- the FOX news haters are all members of AFL-CIO Affiliated AFTRA, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, of which I myself am a proud member. Man, self-hating union members really are the worst.

2 things: 1. Krugman 2. Beck goes against Fox's own ad campaign...

1. I love Paul Krugman.

2. In Glenn Beck's recent nonsensical rant, a dismissal of the American Dream as Communist plot (thanks Media Matters), I was struck by an awesome irony (surpassing the irony that bleeds like arterial wounds from all things FOX). 

This week, myself, my partner, members of diverse unions and others with common sense and shreds of humanity, rallied in support of Wisconsin Union workers outside of Fox News HQ near Rockefeller Center. After the rally, we walked the bowels of Rockefeller Center en route to the subway. There we noticed the ads. Fox, Beck's employer, has advertisements plastered all over the basement corridors of Rockefeller Center saying "FOX NEWS and FOX BUSINESS" - "HOME OF THE AMERICAN DREAM" (Replete with a blazing banner shouting "Opportunity!" above a white house with picket fence, manicured lawn, etc...) We rolled our eyes in the moment, but after Beck's latest mania du-jour denouncing the very thing the network is trying to 'sell', we had to guffaw at the absurdity. And write Rachel Maddow in hopes someone else might pick up on it.

Glenn gets a call from PR saying, "Glenn! You can't call the American Dream communist! We've got ads trying to sell that very bait and switch to the schmucks who go to that dungeon Wendy's down there! Stay on message, those were expensive posters!"

Koch Boycott. Because your $ is all they care about.

Thanks to the "Green Tea party blog", here's a comprehensive list of Koch Ind. products to NOT BUY.

Unless you want to directly fund the sorts of people who could care less about you, your job, your health, your life, and would buy up every last one of your souls and trade them to Satan if they could. (They already sold theirs long ago.) And it goes without saying that they'd deny your collected souls collective bargaining rights too.

Scott Walker haikus

A Scott Walker haiku hashtag arose today on Twitter and I dearly hope that since this is a bit of a Teacher Uprising that we might get a few more clever syllabic throw-downs into the #scottwalkerhaiku ring.

My contribution:

"Walker delusion / power hunger hurts people / karma is a bitch"

But I was particularly moved by Governor Walker's shockingly honest Twitter persona @GovWalkerWI who changed a Charlie Sheen coke haiku by @GerryDuggan into this telling 5/7/5 that again shows us Walker's true motivation in all things:

"KOCH KOCH KOCH KOCH KOCH / KOCH KOCH KOCH KOCH KOCH KOCH KOCH / KOCH KOCH KOCH KOCH KOCH"

(Again, thanks to a union teacher for teaching me what the hell a haiku was in the first place.)

Indiana deputy attorney general advocates use of live ammo on Wisconsin protesters...

Via Mother Jones. Indiana deputy attorney general Jeff Cox advocates using live ammunition on Wisconsin protesters fighting to maintain collective bargaining rights.

Jeff Cox: "Use live ammunition"

Union organizers have a history of being shot at. (And killed.) Pinkertons, anyone? If you don't know about that infamous still-existent private security force, you should know about the deaths associated with their presence. Here's your history lesson. Thank you, Wikipedia. And thank you, union teachers, who once taught me about the Pinkertons so I might make that chilling connection while examining this article.

If "mainstream news" fails to pick up and pin this "gentleman" Mr. Cox to the wall, please, do your part to make this ugly story come to further light. And while you're at it, give someone a history lesson on the Pinkertons.

Battlestar Galactica has its truths: "All this has happened before and will happen again."

UPDATE 2/23 - The great state of Indiana has sensibly fired Mr. Cox. Mother Jones has updated the above post. Hope someone checks to see if that guy has a gun while standing in the unemployment line.

Quote to live by and ways to help the cause...

"If I went to work in a factory the first thing I'd do is join a union." - Franklin D. Roosevelt

Courtesy of Winning Progressive:
The latest update of rallies and other ways to support public employees and their unions:
http://fb.me/CvlvWEuj

Power to the people.

Quotes to live by...

“The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it comes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism...” - Franklin D. Roosevelt

'We Stand With You as You Stood With Us': Statement to Workers of Wisconsin by Kamal Abbas of Egypt's Centre for Trade Unions and Workers Services | MichaelMoore.com

'We Stand With You as You Stood With Us': Statement to Workers of Wisconsin by Kamal Abbas of Egypt's Centre for Trade Unions and Workers Services MichaelMoore.com

Quotes to live by...

“The test of our progress is not whether we add to the abundance of those who have much. It is whether we provide enough to those who have little.” - Franklin D. Roosevelt

Be careful what you promise...