Today, several members of the Grand Rapids Chapter of the IWW went to a Kohl’s store just off Alpine Avenue to draw attention to the 70 workers who were recently fired from a Bissell warehouse near Chicago.
Kohl’s is one of the largest sellers of Bissell products, so the union in Chicago (UE) was asking people to act in solidarity around the country. Since Bissell’s headquarters is in Walker, Michigan, the IWW decided to take action. They distributed a flyer to customers inside and outside of the Kohl’s store until Walker police were called and made them move off the property and onto a nearby road where people continued to hand out flyers and hold signs.
The campaign is calling on people to pressure the Bissell company to treat workers in their warehouses with dignity. According to the UE organizers workers at a Bissell warehouse near Chicago have been disrespected, pregnant women have been discriminated against, other workers have earned less than minimum wage and management has made threats against workers for attempting to organize.
Warehouse Workers for Justice is asking people contact Bissell CEO, Mark J. Bissell, to pressure him to reinstate the 70 workers that were recently fired. You can send an E-mail to ann.lamb@bissell.com (Director of Communications), call (616) 977-4341 or send a letter to:
Mark J. Bissell
2840 Pioneer Club Road SE
Grand Rapids, MI 49506
Below is video with IWW members talking about the campaign and what happened at the Kohl’s store.
How I stopped hating Thanksgiving and learned to be afraid
(This article is by Robert Jensen – a professor in the School of Journalism of the University of Texas at Austin and a board member of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center, http://thirdcoastactivist.org/. His latest book is All My Bones Shake: Seeking a Progressive Path to the Prophetic Voice (Soft Skull Press, 2009).
I have stopped hating Thanksgiving and learned to be afraid of the holiday.
Over the past few years a growing number of white people have joined the longstanding indigenous people’s critique of the holocaust denial that is at the heart of the Thanksgiving holiday. In two recent essays I have examined the disturbing nature of a holiday rooted in a celebration of the European conquest of the Americas, which means the celebration of the Europeans’ genocidal campaign against indigenous people that is central to the creation of the United States. Many similar pieces have been published in predominantly white left/progressive media, while indigenous people continue to mark the holiday as a “National Day of Mourning” (http://www.uaine.org/).
In recent years I have refused to participate in Thanksgiving Day meals, even with friends and family who share this critical analysis and reject the national mythology around manifest destiny. In bowing out of those gatherings, I would often tell folks that I hated Thanksgiving. I realize now that “hate” is the wrong word to describe my emotional reaction to the holiday. I am afraid of Thanksgiving. More accurately, I am afraid of what Thanksgiving tells us about both the dominant culture and much of the alleged counterculture.
Here’s what I think it tells us: As a society, the United States is intellectually dishonest, politically irresponsible, and morally bankrupt. This is a society in which even progressive people routinely allow national and family traditions to trump fundamental human decency. It’s a society in which, in the privileged sectors, getting along and not causing trouble are often valued above honesty and accountability. Though it’s painful to consider, it’s possible that such a society is beyond redemption. Such a consideration becomes frightening when we recognize that all this goes on in the most affluent and militarily powerful country in the history of the world, but a country that is falling apart — an empire in decline.
Thanksgiving should teach us all to be afraid.
Although it’s well known to anyone who wants to know, let me summarize the argument against Thanksgiving: European invaders exterminated nearly the entire indigenous population to create the United States. Without that holocaust, the United States as we know it would not exist. The United States celebrates a Thanksgiving Day holiday dominated not by atonement for that horrendous crime against humanity but by a falsified account of the “encounter” between Europeans and American Indians. When confronted with this, most people in the United States (outside of indigenous communities) ignore the history or attack those who make the argument. This is intellectually dishonest, politically irresponsible, and morally bankrupt.
In left/radical circles, even though that basic critique is widely accepted, a relatively small number of people argue that we should renounce the holiday and refuse to celebrate it in any fashion. Most leftists who celebrate Thanksgiving claim that they can individually redefine the holiday in a politically progressive fashion in private, which is an illusory dodge: We don’t define holidays individually or privately — the idea of a holiday is rooted in its collective, shared meaning. When the dominant culture defines a holiday in a certain fashion, one can’t pretend to redefine it in private. To pretend we can do that also is intellectually dishonest, politically irresponsible, and morally bankrupt.
I press these points with no sense of moral superiority. For many years I didn’t give these questions a thought, and for some years after that I sat sullenly at Thanksgiving dinners, unwilling to raise my voice. For the past few years I’ve spent the day alone, which was less stressful for me personally (and, probably, less stressful for people around me) but had no political effect. This year I’ve avoided the issue by accepting a speaking invitation in Canada, taking myself out of the country on that day. But that feels like a cheap resolution, again with no political effect in the United States.
The next step for me is to seek creative ways to use the tension around this holiday for political purposes, to highlight the white-supremacist and predatory nature of the dominant culture, then and now. Is it possible to find a way to bring people together in public to contest the values of the dominant culture? How can those of us who want to reject that dominant culture meet our intellectual, political, and moral obligations? How can we act righteously without slipping into self-righteousness? What strategies create the most expansive space possible for honest engagement with others?
Along with allies in Austin, I’ve struggled with the question of how to create an alternative public event that could contribute to a more honest accounting of the American holocausts in the past (not only the indigenous genocide, but African slavery) and present (the murderous U.S. assault on the developing world, especially in the past six decades, in places such as Vietnam and Iraq).
Some have suggested an educational event, bringing in speakers to talk about those holocausts. Others have suggested a gathering focused on atonement. Should the event be more political or more spiritual? Perhaps some combination of methods and goals is possible.
However we decide to proceed, we can’t ignore the ugly ideological realities of the holiday. My fear of those realities is appropriate but facing reality need not leave us paralyzed by fear; instead it can help us understand the contours of the multiple crises — economic and ecological, political and cultural — that we face. The challenge is to channel our fear into action. I hope that next year I will find a way to take another step toward a more meaningful honoring of our intellectual, political, and moral obligations.
As we approach Thanksgiving Day, I’m eager to hear about the successful strategies of others. For such advice, I would be thankful.
Several news sources are reporting today that President Barack Obama will announce his plans next week to send more US troops to Afghanistan. McClatchy newspapers is saying that the administration is likely to send an additional 34,000 US soldiers to participate in an occupation now in its 9th year.
The Associated Press reports that Obama said, “I feel very confident that when the American people hear a clear rationale for what we’re doing there and how we intend to achieve our goals, that they will be supportive.” He was also quoted as saying, “It is my intention to finish the job,” referring to what has been going on since September 11, 2001.
Nowhere in the Associated Press story did the reporter verify what the President meant by finishing the job. The administration continues to claim that the military occupation of Afghanistan is to hunt down the terrorists responsible for 9/11. However, this overlooks the fact that the US military is fighting a Taliban insurgency that had nothing to do with September 11, 2001.
When President Obama makes the announcement next week about the US troop increases to Afghanistan we will continue to provide some analysis and information about any actions in West Michigan.
Blackwater in Afghanistan/Pakistan
We also thought is was important to add that Jeremy Scahill, author of the important book on Blackwater, has just written an excellent investigative piece on the role that Blackwater mercenaries are playing in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. Despite the local connections with the Prince family, there has been no reporting in the local news about Blackwater as it relates to the war in Afghanistan/Pakistan.
Media Bites – Marketing Love
In this week’s Media Bites we look at some recent Zales diamond commercials and critique their use of equating diamond giving with love. This strategy has been used for decades through Hollywood Films, magazine ads and TV commercials. We look at some of these examples and then juxtapose this marketing campaign with the human cost of diamond mining and diamond trafficking.
Alternative Actions to Black Friday
This Friday, according to the Business community, is the busiest shopping day of the year. People are led to believe that the best holiday deals will be available to them, so people will line up early in the morning outside of stores and malls hoping to get one of these deals.
The news media will report on this shopping frenzy so that human greed and indulgence can be on display. What the news media won’t report on is how the public is being manipulated into participating in what the industry calls Black Friday.
However, there are alternatives to this madness. One general idea is to just not participate in the shopping madness. For years people have made the first Friday after Thanksgiving (Nov. 27) in the US (Nov. 28 internationally), “Buy Nothing Day.” Buy Nothing Day is essentially a moratorium on buying anything for 24 hours on the very day that the business world most wants us to ship.
A variation on that theme is the Really Really Free Market (RRFM), which is also practiced around the world. The RRFM is an anti-capitalist action where people get together to exchange goods for free. People give what they don’t need and take want they might need.
The RRFM takes place once a month on Grand Rapids and this month they will be holding the event on Black Friday. On Friday, November 27, from 1pm – 5pm, the RRFM will be held at the Division Avenue Arts Cooperative (DAAC), located at 115 S. Division in Grand Rapids.
One other action you could take on Black Friday is to stand in solidarity with workers who were recently fired from a Bissell warehouse in Chicago. People in Chicago and in Grand Rapids will be going to Kohl’s stores on Black Friday to inform people about how Bissell treats workers. Kohl’s is the largest retail distributor of Bissell Products, which is why they were chosen as a target for this action.
In Grand Rapids we will meet outside the Kohl’s store at 745 Center Dr., just off of Alpine Avenue near the Star Theaters. People will gather there at 1pm to hand out flyers to the public. You are encouraged to bring signs and invite your friends!
Obama and the Afghan War Escalation
Once President Obama comes back from his Asian trip he is expected to announce a decision on whether or not the US will send more troops to Afghanistan. Actually, as Tom Engelhardt has pointed out, the administration is not deciding on whether to send more troops, rather how many troops the administration will send.
Every day independent reporters are providing good information on the consequences of the US occupation of Afghanistan. Now it seems that the US might use the pretext that the Karzai administration is corrupt, therefore bringing “stability” to the country is crucial at this moment. This notion disregards the fact that the US has propped up the Karzai regime since 2002 and this support has also meant financing the worst of Afghan’s warlords.
Beyond the current debate on the number of US troops being deployed in Afghanistan are the larger strategic questions that are not being addressed in the US mainstream media. What are the real motivations of the US government in regards to Afghanistan?
Afghanistan plays a critical role in the future of the region, since it borders both the Middle East and Central Asia. Iran, Pakistan, China, Uzbekistan, Tajiikstan and Turkmenistan, all countries that have tremendous amounts of natural resources, surround Afghanistan. Afghanistan itself does not possess many natural resources, but it provides a critical role as a trans-shipment point for fuel pipelines in the region, as is noted in an important study by the Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives, A Pipeline Through a Troubled Land.
The strategic and regional role that Afghanistan plays is further supported by the fact that the US military is expanding its infrastructure throughout the country. According to a recent article by Nick Turse, the US is expanding its main base at Bagram and building new military facilities in other parts of the country. If history has taught us anything, it’s that when the US builds permanent military bases they have no intention of leaving anytime soon.
Where is the Anti-war movement?
The military buildup in Afghanistan and the probable announcement from the Obama administration that more US troops will be sent to Afghanistan has not generated the kind of anti-war groundswell that we saw with Iraq. However, there are the beginnings of activity across the country.
An ad-hoc coalition of national peace groups is calling on people to inundate the White House with Phone calls on Monday (November 23) against military escalation in Afghanistan. The White House number is 202-456-1111.
There is also an online petition campaign that Brave News Films has organized. This petition campaign is accompanied by a video with Matthew Hoh, who resigned from his position at the State Department in protest of the administration’s Afghan policy, which we have posted below. However, we know that these actions alone will not be enough to pressure the US government to end its occupation of Afghanistan. If you are aware of any other campaigns or efforts to challenge the Afghan occupation let us know so we can publicize them in the coming weeks and months.
Road to Copenhagen Part 3: US Climate Legislation & Lobbyists
With just two weeks before the International Climate Summit in Copenhagen we thought it would be useful to look at current US legislation as it relates to Climate Change. We have already discussed in this series Global Warming and Public Opinion and the growing international opposition leading up to Copenhagen.
With the announcement last week that there will be no international agreements decided on in Copenhagen, the US Senate now has some time to massage their version of the Climate Change legislation passed by the House in June of this year.
Called the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, the Waxman-Markey bill was fought hard by the energy industry. According to a report by the Center for Public Integrity, “More than 460 new businesses and interest groups jumped into lobbying Congress on global warming in the weeks before the House neared its historic vote on climate change legislation.” You can see from the chart above that there was a spike in the amount of lobbying just prior to the bill’s passing.
It is true that that the energy industry fought hard to defeat this legislation and according to the Center for Responsible Politics those who voted against the bill received on average about twice as much money compared to those who voted for the bill.
While the Obama administration and some of the beltway environmental groups hailed this vote as a victory, many people and organizations believed that the Waxman-Markey bill was too weak and made too many concessions to industry. Greenpeace fought against the legislation and stated, “The Waxman-Markey bill sets emission reduction targets far lower than science demands, then undermines even those targets with massive offsets. The giveaways and preferences in the bill will actually spur a new generation of nuclear and coal-fired power plants to the detriment of real energy solutions.”
Friends of the Earth had a much stronger critique of the House bill on Climate Change. “Vital authority for the EPA is stripped, but 2 billion additional tons of pollution are authorized every year, forever. Residential consumer protection incredibly is entrusted to the mercy of utility companies. Exempting a hundred new coal plants and paying billions to Old King Coal leaves him, indeed, a very merry old soul. This bill is 85% different from what President Obama proposed months ago.”
George Monbiot, author of the important book Heat: How to Stop the Planet From Burning, provides some of the best critique of the Waxman-Markey bill we have seen. Monbiot addresses the weak proposed carbon emissions cuts:
“The cuts it proposes are much lower than those being pursued in the UK or in most other developed nations. Like the UK’s climate change act (pdf) the US bill calls for an 80% cut by 2050, but in this case the baseline is 2005, not 1990. Between 1990 and 2005, US carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels rose from 5.8 to 7bn tonnes.
The cut proposed by 2020 is just 17%, which means that most of the reduction will take place towards the end of the period. What this means is much greater cumulative emissions, which is the only measure that counts. Worse still, it is riddled with so many loopholes and concessions that the bill’s measures might not offset the emissions from the paper it’s printed on.”
Some of the concessions he identifies are to the biofuels industry, with promises not to investigate its wider environmental impact, concessions to agribusiness and of course the biggest concession being the Cap & Trade provisions. Environmental writer and activist Brian Tokar recently wrote that,
“The much-touted cap-and-trade provision of the bill accounts for about a 1 percent reduction by 2020, according to the Center for Biological Diversity’s analysis, with the remainder coming from regular, old-fashioned performance standards for smaller pollution sources, including automobiles, and from a controversial USAID effort to reduce deforestation in poorer countries. For comparison, most wealthy countries agreed over a decade ago in Kyoto to reduce their emissions by 2012 to 6-8 percent below 1990 levels.”
Cap & Trade is of course a market-based solution, which is supposed to provide “economic incentives” for polluting industries to reduce their pollution output. However, in reality, Cap & Trade policies will only exacerbate the problem and further create a gap between rich and poor nations in terms of the actual impact of climate change.
The Senate version of Climate Change legislation is not expected to break from the weak and concessionary policies of the Waxman-Markey bill. In August some 300 grassroots and environmental groups did send a letter to Senator Boxer laying out a vision for a meaningful Climate Change bill, but there is no evidence that the Boxer-Kerry version will embrace these demands.
The Press Promotes Agribusiness Front Group
Yesterday the Grand Rapids Press published a story in the Business section of the paper entitled, “Learn about farming, enter to win groceries.”
The article begins by stating, “Michigan’s farmers have a story to tell. And they are offering you a chance at $5,000 in free groceries if you are willing to listen. A coalition of agricultural industry groups launched a Web site this week, farmersfeedus.org/mi, offering visitors a chance to register to win one of three $5,000 grocery giveaways if they take the time to view any of 10 farmer profiles.”
The story goes on to quote the owner of a “poultry ranch” in Saranac telling readers, “We want to give people a little glimpse into where their food comes from.” Seems well intentioned, until you dig a little deeper.
Towards the end of the story we find out who is behind this campaign and the $5,000 sweepstakes. “The sweepstakes is organized by the Center for Food Integrity, a nonprofit established to build trust in the U.S. food system.”
According to the Center for Media and Democracy, the Center for Food Integrity (CFI) is a food industry funded front group. Founded in 2007, CFI’s creation was set to coincide with the release of a film version of Eric Schlosser’s book Fast Food Nation, since the book and the film challenged some fundamental aspects of the agribusiness in the US.
If you look at the website for the Center for Food Integrity you notice that the member groups are state and federal industry associations like the American Farm Bureau Federation, the Michigan Ag Council and the National Pork Board. Other members of CFI include the international animal agriculture giant Novus and Monsanto, one of the worst companies in the world in terms of food control and genetic modification.
Unfortunately, the Press article did not explore who was behind the $5,000 grocery giveaway. Instead, the Press accepted at face value the information provided to them by CFI and even posted two of the “local farmer” videos with the online version of the story. You can see in the video below that this “egg farmer” runs an industrial sized operation that is highly automated and produced most of their eggs for “the food service industry.”
Readers of the Press should not be deceived by this attempt to present agribusiness as “local” and we should see the grocery sweepstakes as no different than the contest that McDonalds offers every so often.
Say No to the Latest Media Merger
This history of media consolidation has been disastrous for the American public, particularly since the 1980’s when media deregulation became the norm. Every administration since Ronald Reagan has helped facilitate this consolidation by passing legislation friendly to media conglomerates and those conglomerates have returned the favor by making substantial donations to political parties/candidates as is evidenced by the amount of money donated during the 2008 Election cycle.
Now the federal government is confronted with another proposed media merger. The cable giant Comcast and the NBC network are now talking merger. The national media reform group Free Press is asking people to oppose this merger on the grounds that it will:
- Give Comcast unprecedented control over what you can watch and how you can watch it.
- With less competition, Comcast will jack up prices even more. If you don’t have Comcast at home, you could end up paying more to get NBC shows.
- Comcast will have an incentive to promote NBC shows over local or independent programming, making it even harder to find alternative voices on cable.
Free Press is asking you to take action by sending a message to Washington that You Oppose This Merger!
The Sarah Palin Media Spectacle Comes to Grand Rapids
Grand Rapids has yet again been cemented in the mind of the nation as a GOP stronghold, conservative to its core, by the arrival last night of former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.
Kicking off her tour for her tell-all memoir “Going Rogue”, she was greeted by hundreds of adoring fans at Woodland Mall, many of whom had waited all day for her.
The line of people, filled with as many men as women, young as old, snaked around the mall entrance to Barnes & Noble and outside into the chilly, drizzly November night. Many in the crowd wore Palin memorabilia, including stickers reading “Palin Power” with a moose and the Liberty Bell or t-shirts claiming “Thanks Sarah–We Still Love You!”.
To pass the time the three diehard Palin fans who camped out at the mall the night before — Nichole Perrine, Laura Lomik, and Lucy Vismostad — periodically started chants of “Sarah, Sarah!”. Everyone would join in, and the chant reverberated through the festive holiday halls of the mall.
Everyone was eagerly awaiting Palin, but we in the media were disappointed, yet not surprised, to learn that Palin would not be doing any interviews and perhaps wouldn’t even address the crowd gathered outside, who were busily scanning the parking lots for her tour bus.
If Palin wanted to travel inconspicuously, her tour bus definitely was not the way to go. As the bus pulled up to the gathering, plastered onto either side of the vehicle was a massive portrait of Sarah the folksy outdoors woman, amidst the mountains of Alaska and the words “Going Rogue: An American Life”. Palin has never been about doing things quietly.
She surprised the crowd by coming off the bus holding her youngest son, Trig, and grabbing the microphone on the platform set up for her as country music blared through the speakers. Thanking everyone for showing up, Palin then begin to say how much she was glad to be back in Michigan, comparing it to Alaska: “Alaska and Michigan, so much in common, with the huntin’ and the fishin’ and the hockey moms. And just the hard working patriotic Americans that are here.”
Palin had some not so underhanded digs to make towards the media in her short speech, saying she was glad people could read “[her] words unfiltered from the media”.
This tension between the “liberal media elite” and the “real America” was one of the underlying messages last night. Many of her supporters spoke out against the media’s portrayal of Palin and how they contort her words and image. These very supporters eagerly spoke their message to the “liberal media elite” they despise and which is giving Palin ample coverage for her book tour.
After her short speech, she greeted fans in the crowd, who were intermingled with media clamoring for a word with Palin. This was as close as the media was allowed, as Palin was whisked away into Barnes & Noble to begin signing books. Her security guards kept her well protected from the media, which Palin often looks at with disdain, especially after her disastrous interview with Katie Couric during the election campaign.
Much criticism of Palin’s book has been raised, but that didn’t stop her fans from gushing out Palin praise.
Teenager Madeline Hamilton waited in line since noon but was unable to get a wristband to get her into the signing. But that didn’t diminish her love of Palin:
“She’s my hero, she’s my mentor…I love her, she’s great, she’s American. She symbolizes everything I’d love to be. She’s everything I wish I could be and hope to be when I’m older.”
Jo Lamanski drove all the way from the Michigan-Ohio border to see Palin so her daughters could witness ‘Palin Power’:
“We are firm believers that she’s an awesome role model for women, that she is a strong, smart, beautiful woman who is a great mother and didn’t put her career on hold to be a mom and proved that you can do both. You don’t have to give up your family to be a successful career woman, you don’t have to sacrifice your career to be a great mom. And to me that’s an important lesson for my girls to learn.”
At the end of the night, with the crowds dispersing in revelry and the cameras and lights of the media all packed up, Grand Rapids has yet again experienced life in the political spotlight. But what the spotlight has revealed to the nation, and the world, is for us Grand Rapidians something that doesn’t look right in the light.
Edward McClelland of Salon.com had this to say about West Michigan:
Sarah Palin seemed to have an affinity with Greater Grand Rapids that she may not find anywhere else on her 31-city tour. West Michigan fits both sides of the Palin persona — the antiabortion creationist and the moose-skinning hockey mom. It’s a northern exclave of the Bible Belt, with one of the highest churchgoing rates in the nation. But unlike the rest of the Bible Belt, it’s a place of deep snowfalls, ice rinks and bars with more Ski-Doos than pickups parked outside on a January night.
Many other news outlets commented on Grand Rapids and West Michigan being a conservative stronghold.
The notion that is being spread in much of the media that Grand Rapids is purely a GOP epicenter is dishonest, especially when one considers that a majority of Grand Rapids voted for Barak Obama and Jennifer Granholm in recent elections. If Sarah Palin was so popular in Grand Rapids why did she do so poorly in last years Presidential race in this supposed GOP epicenter?
