There is so much at stake in our industry. It is one of the nation’s most dangerous occupations. We don’t think truck driving should be a dead-end road in America. It should be a good job with a middle-class paycheck like it used to be decades ago.
We desperately want to drive clean and safe vehicles. Rigs that do not fill our lungs with deadly toxins, or dirty the air in the communities we haul in.
Poverty and pollution are like a plague at the ports. Our economic conditions are what led to the environmental crisis.
You, the public, have paid a severe price along with us.
Why? Just like Wall Street doesn’t have to abide by rules, our industry isn’t bound to regulation. So the market is run by con artists. The companies we work for call us independent contractors, as if we were our own bosses, but they boss us around. We receive Third World wages and drive sweatshops on wheels. We cannot negotiate our rates. (Usually we are not allowed to even see them.) We are paid by the load, not by the hour. So when we sit in those long lines at the terminals, or if we are stuck in traffic, we become volunteers who basically donate our time to the trucking and shipping companies. That’s the nice way to put it. We have all heard the words “modern-day slaves” at the lunch stops.
An Open Letter from America’s Port Truck Drivers on Occupy the Ports | Coalition for Clean and Safe Ports
12 DecCan a big coordinated effort save Occupy? – GlobalPost – Salon.com
9 DecThe move has also galvanized Occupy movements in other cities. Texas occupiers have called for protesters to gather in Houston and march on that city’s port. Even landlocked Denver is trying to get in on the action, with plans to protest at a local Wal-Mart distribution center.
In Oakland, protesters like Johnson are hoping for a repeat of Nov. 2, when tens of thousands converged en masse on the Port of Oakland, successfully stopping the flow of goods overnight.
It could be more complicated this time. The powerful International Longshore and Warehouse Union, which represents most of the port workers whom protesters say they are supporting, has publicly rejected the blockade effort.
via Can a big coordinated effort save Occupy? – GlobalPost – Salon.com.
Interview with David Graeber | The White Review
9 DecWhy is it that a promise made by a politician to the people that elected them—to provide free education for instance—has a less moral standing than the promise that politician has made to a banker? It seems insane. But it’s simply assumed nowadays.
Can Occupy and the Tea Party team up? – Occupy Wall Street – Salon.com
7 DecRICHMOND, Va. — Members of the Occupy Richmond and local Tea Party movements found acres of common ground during an unlikely meeting held Tuesday at a police station-turned-art gallery in the city’s historic Jackson Ward neighborhood.
But first and foremost, the 12 men and women from seemingly polar spots on the political spectrum agreed on this: The meeting never happened.
“I think it’s all very, very important that we state very clearly that this was not a meeting between the Tea Party and the Occupy movement,” declared Donald Rallis, an Occupy Richmond member, as the meeting wound to a close. His sotto-voce assertion meets with a flurry of “up twinkle” hands — or vigorous head nods — depending on the individual’s political leanings.
via Can Occupy and the Tea Party team up? – Occupy Wall Street – Salon.com.
The evolution of a populist – Opening Shot – Salon.com
7 DecPresident Obama’s Tuesday speech in Osawatomie, Kan., essentially served as the kickoff of his reelection effort. He may make a more formal declaration over the next few months, but the hour-long address, which was designed to evoke the Bull Moose spirit of Teddy Roosevelt and featured a comprehensive defense of government’s role in combating income inequality and fortifying the middle class, provided a preview of the themes Obama will emphasize between now and next November.
His embrace of defiant, populist messaging also represents a final, definitive break with the bipartisan-friendly political style that defined Obama’s rise to power and the first two-and-a-half years of his presidency.
That’s all well and good, but is he still going to push for the right to detain US citizens without charges or evidence?
Where I stand on the Occupy movement – Roger Ebert’s Journal
7 DecA clear majority of Americans should be in sympathy with the Occupy Movement. That they are not is a tribute to an effective right wing propaganda machine given voice by Fox News, radio talkers like Rush Limbaugh, and financed by the Koch brothers among many others. The machine’s audience is to oppose its own self-interest and support the interests of the rich….
There was a time in the not very distant American past when it was easier to support a family and buy a home. Now many college graduates find themselves moving back in with their parents. They’re living off prosperity that was built up when the economy wasn’t stacked against them.
President Obama went to Kansas on Tuesday to make the kind of speech I’ve been waiting and hoping for. It was billed as sort of a keynote for his campaign. He said, “This country succeeds when everyone gets a fair shot, when everyone does their fair share and when everyone plays by the same rules.” Isn’t that true? Does everyone get a fair shot? When the Republicans try to exempt the financial industry from regulation, is that playing by the same rules?
via Where I stand on the Occupy movement – Roger Ebert’s Journal.
Live from Occupy East New York – Occupy Wall Street – Salon.com
6 DecOccupyYourHome:
Today, Occupy Wall Street activists are teaming up with existing progressive and community groups to launch Occupy Our Homes – a campaign on the foreclosure crisis – in cities around the country. One action will take place in East New York.
The campaign is expected to feature aggressive tactics such as eviction defenses, takeovers of vacant bank-owned properties, and disruptions at foreclosure auctions. The full story on the organizing of the new campaign is here. The background on current state of the foreclosure crisis is here.
via Live from Occupy East New York – Occupy Wall Street – Salon.com.
A Guide to the Occupy Wall Street API, Or Why the Nerdiest Way to Think About OWS Is So Useful – Technology – The Atlantic
3 DecThe Occupy movement explained as components of an application interface (API, a programming specification).
The most fascinating thing about Occupy Wall Street is the way that the protests have spread from Zuccotti Park to real and virtual spaces across the globe. Metastatic, the protests have an organizational coherence that’s surprising for a movement with few actual leaders and almost no official institutions. Much of that can be traced to how Occupy Wall Street has functioned in catalyzing other protests. Local organizers can choose from the menu of options modeled in Zuccotti, and adapt them for local use. Occupy Wall Street was designed to be mined and recombined, not simply copied.
The We-Are-At-War! mentality – Salon.com
3 DecSo my question to defenders of Obama’s assassination powers is this: which of those four core Bush/Cheney War on Terror premises do you reject, if any? Given the theories used to justify Bush/Cheney powers — ones that were just repeated almost verbatim by Obama lawyers when asked about the Awlaki assassination — how can anyone coherently have objected to the Bush/Cheney Guantanamo detention system but support Obama’s assassination powers now? Indeed, if anything, the Obama assassination powers are more extremist than the Guantanamo detention system; that’s true for two reasons: (1) Bush/Cheney imprisoned foreign nationals at Guantanamo, whereas Obama has targeted U.S. citizens with death …; and (2) death-by-CIA-drone is obviously a more draconian deprivation than imprisonment at Guantanamo. In sum, how is it possible to support Obama’s assassination powers without embracing each of those four theories used to justify Guantanamo?
‘We Are the 99 Percent’ Joins the Cultural and Political Lexicon – NYTimes.com
1 DecWhatever the long-term effects of the Occupy movement, protesters have succeeded in implanting “We are the 99 percent,” referring to the vast majority of Americans (and its implied opposite, “You are the one percent” referring to the tiny proportion of Americans with a vastly disproportionate share of wealth), into the cultural and political lexicon.
via ‘We Are the 99 Percent’ Joins the Cultural and Political Lexicon – NYTimes.com.
Truth and Traditions 