“So much bullshit. … So little time.”
(Rob Anderson)

That was Rob’s opening statement at the D5 forum at the Canvas Café a month or so back.  And, it is so true.  …  So?

THE HOTEL LOCK-OUT

It is time for the international union to close down a non-union luxury hotel in the third world owned by Hyatt or Starwood or another of these blood-sucking, heartless, multi-national capitalists dogs.

If that don’t work

If that doesn’t work, go to the method that worked to bring the genocidal Serbs to their knees.  Remember how we did that?

Hit em where they live

Clinton finally stopped bombing bridges and power plants in Serbia and started bombing the homes and businesses of the rich.  The war was over in a few weeks.  …  Now, that’s an analogy and I’m not suggesting violence.  I’m saying that the union should picket the homes and other holdings of the major shareholders of the guilty corporations.   Carry signs with pictures of the crippled children being effected by the rich pigs’ theft of health care from their employees (the cost of which, incidentally, must be born by local governments like San Francisco, who can ill-afford it).   The union should start by putting the names and addresses of the major shareholders of the multi-nationals.  …  And, not just them.   Their families too.  And, all of the cute little boutiques purchased for trophy wives from the health insurance of crippled children.  Picket their cathedrals and mosques and synagogues.  They’re all fair game.  I mean, it’s not like their insatiable greed hasn’t effected the families of their employees.  …  Face it, these people will never be satisfied and they don’t give a shit how many poor people become homeless of starve or die.  They don’t care how many cops or soldiers die.  That’s just collateral damage to them.  Part of the cost of doing business.  If you want to get their attention, show up where they sleep and party and worship.    I am convinced that actions such as this are, in fact, absolutely the ONLY thing that will work at this point. 

This is not a new phenomenon

Greed is as natural as lust and lasts long past the time the latter has turned to ashes.   When the rich get too much of the wealth, there are revolts.  The nature and frequency of these uprisings (some turn to full-blown revolutions – see France in 1792 and Russia in 1917)  …  it depends upon the structure of the ruling system. 

In the United States, the piggish capitalists squeeze the poor enough to force a violent reaction about every 40 years.  In 1967, the rich were making  big money from an ill-advised foreign war in which the sons of the poor were paying the ultimate price (our present U.S. President and Vice-President both evaded those conflicts).   Red necks in the South were still hanging black people for being black people (the base cause was actually financial).   The cities exploded!  Watts in L.A. burned as did poor neighborhoods in Detroit and other cities.  The rich called out the tanks and for a period (though there was no riot here)  …  for awhile, there were tanks sitting on 3^rd street in the Bayview in case the revolution, she done come. 

The rich responded with an array of welfare programs that hadn’t been matched since the New Deal.   The ‘New Deal’ itself was the result of the invasion of Washington, D.C. by an army that some said approached a million.  …  A million unarmed veterans who demanded the government feed them and their families.  Opposing them were General Douglas MacArthur (head of Joint Chiefs of Staff) and Colonel Dwight Eisenhower, who led the troops defending the bloated Republican Congress and White House (smashing uprisings by the poor is a sure route to power in a capitalist society). 

Forty years before, there was another unacceptable imbalance in the wealth and the economy collapsed.  Forty years before that, another.  And on. … And on. 

We’re there again.  Only dishonest statisticians and pollsters (‘Hi there, David Binder!!’)  … only asshole tools of the rich can come up with numbers that tell you this economy is not headed for a crash.   I don’t know about you, but nearly everyone I know is unemployed or marginally employed and these are some brilliant-ass people.  

Matt Gonzalez said it best when he addressed the corporate leaders who failed to appear before the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to discuss the strike/lock-out:  

“Even if you get your way and local #2 goes away

… these are not jobs you can outsource.

Eventually, you’ll have to deal with the basic needs

of the scabs you hire to replace union workers. 

It makes more sense to deal with them now.”

Back later

I lost half of this column (you get used to it, and, my rewrites are better anyway) … So, I’m gonna try and file this before it disappears.  I try to write about the topics that I feel are most important to the local scene (except when I’m whining about my own troubles) and I think that given the international nature of this hotel strike, both sides will establish templates here (what’s new?) that will determine tactics well into the future.  I’ll get back to whining about cops and the like later today unless the 49ers show up against Carolina.

My e-mail works again.

Go Local #2!!: