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.

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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.