Where do we go from here?

At left, our Occupy film series is pretty well-attended for Republican Greenville! Last Wednesday we viewed the historical account, A Force More Powerful (Part 1). This coming Wednesday evening we will be featuring Part 2... be there or be square!

These will be at the Hughes Library in downtown Greenville, SC.




Our Occupy Greenville meeting yesterday was endless. It was rainy and cold, so we went to the Coffee Underground and had one of those interminable "What Is To Be Done" meetings. (The Yippies, goofing on Lenin, used to name these meetings, What Is To Be Undone.) Although I feel that I must attend such meetings, I have never particularly enjoyed them. (Note: I described the meetings-glut period of my life in this post.) Why can't we just DO THINGS and come up with ideas as we go along? Damn, I miss the Yippies with every fiber of my being... we never had to have mountains of meetings.* We made shit up in the car, by the time we arrived someplace, we were ready. All this verbiage, all this dithering, all this arriving at consensus (sorta) and stuff, argh.

Just do it. (Apologies for stealing an advertising slogan, which by the way, they stole from ordinary basketball players and NASCAR drivers.)

Speaking personally: I would like to physically occupy foreclosed homes, something Occupy Atlanta has been doing. Others seem to eye this concept with skepticism, and would actually prefer to confront rich CEOs personally, as the Verizon strikers so memorably did. My consigliere confides in me that he is skeptical of that approach; he worries that the right-wing will successfully paint us as whiners, jealous of an individual's wealth, rather than successfully connecting-the-dots to an unfair system that denies workers the fruits of their/our labors (while making CEOs so untouchably rich). We would have to depend on the mass media to make that point. Can they do that? We have been surprised at how the media has used Occupy's talking points, for instance, the now-well-known "60 Minutes" piece on the robo-signing of mortgages would likely never have happened at all, without the force of Occupy Wall Street.

And the Beat Goes On. Please show up at the film series, we need you to get involved! (commercial) And what do you think we should be doing at this juncture? COMMENTS WELCOME!



*Yes, admittedly, this is because we were all alike and thought the same, as I said in this old comment a couple of years ago.

**PODCAST of Saturday's radio show is up, have a listen.


~*~

Yesterday, driving down the street in the awful cold rain, I suddenly heard "Far East Mississippi" on WPCI, the most amazing radio station in the universe, and I was suddenly happy happy happy as the proverbial clam.

Last month's piece on the infamous Ohio Players album covers is here (CAUTION: they were something else). This incredible piece of music comes from Contradiction (1976) (warning: another naked lady on the album cover, feeding a horse this time).

If you listen, you can hear the Great God of Funk, who decided to come down from funk heaven (in George Clinton's Mothership, one assumes!) and consecrate this music, which is how it got to sound like this: Unbelievable!

Enjoy!

Far East Mississippi - Ohio Players

Support the 45,000 Verizon strikers!

At left: Local powerhouse activist and good friend SHEILA JACKSON! GO SHEILA!


Yesterday, 45,000 Verizon workers went on strike, and I joined a picket line sponsored by the Communication Workers of America in Spartanburg. (Photos here.)

Customer service work, which I know a few things about, can be very grueling and intense. People deserve to be PAID DECENTLY for (see link) "introduc[ing] principles of mechanization and industrial engineering into a much wider array of service transactions than was hitherto possible"... i.e. the basic organization of the factory assembly line, brought into mass telecommunciations.

If people work on an assembly line, they deserve to be paid as well as my father, UAW member who also worked on an assembly line. Customer service work is simply the high-tech, mass-telephone-version of the assembly line.

What you should know:

>> Workers in 8 states and the District of Columbia are on strike, represented by the Communication Workers of America and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.

>> Verizon's annualized revenues in 2011 are $108 billion, with net profits of $6 billion. The concessions demanded from workers equal about $1 billion, working out to an approximate $20,000 per family, per year. Many of these concessions concern health benefits and pensions, benefits promised to workers.

>> Verizon paid no taxes last year and in fact received a $1.3 billion-dollar TAX REBATE!

>> The top five Verizon executives earned $258 million over the past four years.

>> CWA statement: "For the American economy to recover, we need to work together to solve problems. But if profitable companies like Verizon keep sending jobs overseas and cutting compensation for ordinary, middle-class workers, while paying executives big bucks, we can't begin to build an economy that works. CWA and IBEW members are prepared to return to work when management demonstrates the willingness to begin bargaining seriously for a fair agreement. If not, workers will stand together and continue the fight."

>> Verizon has scabs of course; the economy insures that. From company-droid statement: “In anticipation of this development, Verizon has activated a contingency plan to ensure customers experience limited disruption in service during this time.”

But I'd like to ask Verizon customers to disrupt their OWN service, if possible.

Can you hear us now? :)