"Sarah Jaffe": This Is Only Getting Bigger -- 20,000 Rally in New York to Support Occupy Wall Street

It's 10 PM in Liberty Plaza and the jubilant 20,000-plus crowd from the day's solidarity march has dwindled, now, to the faithful, the regulars, having debated and decided by consensus against another attempt at marching. The police have dropped barricades around the entire plaza, but rumors that they are coming in are so far unfounded. The medical team has calmed down and are eating pizza from the boxes being carried throughout the plaza. A giant projection on the wall of a building across Trinity Street reminds the protesters "The Whole World is Watching #OccupyWallStreet."

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"Danny Schechter" - Unions Promise Support As #OccupyWallStreet Enters Third Week

#OccupyWallStreet has yet to attract the 20,000 militants they had hoped for but its growing and, more importantly retaining its sense of community, non-violence, and sense of a tolerant community. Most important is that similar actions are already taking place in other cities like a March on Friday in Boston against the Bank of America. An even bigger one is being planned for Washington in October. Other organizations are supporting this emerging movement. Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union say they “applaud the courage of the young people on Wall Street,” and are planning to turn out their members next week. I saw T Shirts of UAW members and met some activists from the Salvadorian community. Already #OccupyWallStreet sent over a hundred people to back a protest by postal workers trying to save their jobs and the Post Office. The longer this lasts, and is allowed to last, the more it is likely to grow.

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Chris Hedges: #OccupyTogether -- The Best Among Us

There are no excuses left. Either you join the revolt taking place on Wall Street and in the financial districts of other cities across the country or you stand on the wrong side of history. Either you obstruct, in the only form left to us, which is civil disobedience, the plundering by the criminal class on Wall Street and accelerated destruction of the ecosystem that sustains the human species, or become the passive enabler of a monstrous evil. Either you taste, feel and smell the intoxication of freedom and revolt or sink into the miasma of despair and apathy. Either you are a rebel or a slave.

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"Erik Olson and Barbara LaBoe" - No Arrests as ILWU Members, Supporters Attempt to Turn Themselves In

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/09/17-0

Published on Saturday, September 17, 2011 by The Daily News (Longview, Washington)

by Erik Olson and Barbara LaBoe

More than 200 union longshore workers and supporters massed peacefully outside the Cowlitz County Hall of Justice in Kelso early Friday afternoon, saying they were planning to surrender themselves to police to answer charges for demonstrations last week.

ILWU Local 21 president Dan Coffman addresses the media Friday at the Cowlitz County Hall of Justice. (photo: Bill Wagner / The Daily News)

However, when no law enforcement official emerged to meet with them and officers present did not move to make any arrests, the group dispersed at 1:30 p.m after waiting a half hour.

Later Friday, though, the union's local vice president was arrested on two misdemeanor charges. He bailed out after roughly an hour in custody.

"I'm hoping we don't have to worry about being arrested in the middle of the night now. ... We shouldn't have to fear the intimidation that's been put forth or the abuse that's been put forth. ... We're going home as free citizens," Dan Coffman, president of the longshore union's Longview-based Local 21, said during the rally.

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"Sarah Jaffe" - Are Jobs on Their Way to Becoming Obsolete? And Is That a Good Thing?

http://www.alternet.org/story/152383/are_jobs_on_their_way_to_becoming_obsolete_and_is_that_a_good_thing/

AlterNet / By Sarah Jaffe

Do we have it backward when we call for job creation? Could we instead radically rethink our economy to benefit everyone?

September 12, 2011 |

 

Are jobs obsolete?

 

Media theorist and author of Life, Inc.: How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take it Back Douglas Rushkoff ruffled some feathers this week when he dared, at CNN.com of all places, to ask that question. It seemed, perhaps, gloriously insensitive to the plight of unemployed workers, of union workers at the U.S. Postal Service, who are struggling like so many others to stay afloat in an uncertain economy while they're demonized in the press as greedy for wanting a decent job.

Yet Rushkoff also raises points worth considering, particularly for those of us trying to articulate, in the wake of massive failures of the economic system we've lived our whole lives with, some sort of alternative to the cycle of boom, bust, bailout.

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"Joe Uehlein" - American Labor: A Sustainable Path

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/09/01-13

Published on Thursday, September 1, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

by Joe Uehlein

This Labor Day, as union membership falls to a mere seven percent of private sector workers and bargaining and political clout shrink to match, two roads diverge for American labor. One is to attempt to find a niche within an economic-political system that is ever more shaped by short-term greed and is therefore ever more unsustainable economically, socially, and environmentally. The other is to align with the long-term interest of workers in transforming that system to provide for a sustainable future for the planet and its people. Organized labor will have a better future if it chooses the second road.Joe Uehlein and his daughter came to support the Tar Sands Action on August 24th, 2011. "To have a future itself," writes Uehlein, "Organized labor needs to reorient itself around the objective of providing a sustainable future for all working people and the world we inhabit. That means putting millions of people to work creating a sustainable economy, society, and environment." (Photo Credit: Shadia Fayne Wood)

Labor has always had two hearts beating within a single breast – one representing a particular group of workers, the other responding to the wider needs of working people as a whole. But now unions can only protect their members by championing the interests of all working people.

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