wtf?

just fucking shoot me now, before they start lining us up for the firing squads.

this is not the kind of shit you want to be watching by yourself in a lonely apartment in a city where you know no one.



fuck.

Victory in Atlantic City

The Casinos have settled with Unite Here Local 54. While this is a five rather than three year contract, it's also the best contract workers in Atlantic city have ever won, by all reports.

• A 28.3% increase in the total economic package (wages,
  
  healthcare & pension contributions) over the life of the
  
  agreement;

  
  
  A 91% increase in employer healthcare contributions – plus more if
  
  needed in the 4th and 5th years of the contract – to continue fully employer
  
  paid family healthcare coverage with no paycheck deductions. Employers will also
  
  begin paying healthcare contributions on all hours, so Local 54 members will no
  
  longer have substantial out-of-pocket costs when taking vacations;
  
  Protection from subcontracting now and in the future. No Local 54 member can
  
  lose their job, hours, wages or seniority from any subcontracting, and Atlantic
  
  City’s future growth and expansion will be done with good, middle-class Union
  
  jobs;

  
  
  Protection of Local 54 members and their Union
  
  contract in the event a casino is sold to a new owner;
  
  Restoration of the
  
  ‘step’ system of wage increases that provide significant raises as employees’
  
  years of service grow, and additional employer money added on the top ‘step’ and
  
  in bonuses;
  
  A 51% increase in employer pension contributions over the life
  
  of the contract, resulting in one of the best retirement plans for hospitality
  
  industry workers in the country;
  
  Many other contract improvements, including
  
  protection for immigrant workers, improvements in leave of absence and
  
  promotional language, a voluntary 401K administered by the employer, and a
  
  stronger shop steward system.

Just spent the entire day making calls to nice elderly voters for a massachusetts state house race and another state senate race. I like calling people when i don't have to tell them to move their meeting/conference/wedding/whatever, and just having nice interactions with people i will never meet or soeak to again over the telephone. But it made me sad when people hung up on me, especially the woman who said "this isn't funny anymore," because i don't know what was initially funny and feel bad for not getting the joke. Electoral politics aren't my bag, so i just told myself that i was doing turnout for the union, and that made it somewhat bearable.

NYT: Lockout at Top Hotels Mars Tourism in San Francisco

Workers on the picket line at The Fairmont and The Mark

Hopkins last week said they were all too familiar with the high cost of living

in San Francisco, especially on a wage of $14 to $22 an hour. Reva James-Frye,

53, a city resident and telephone operator at the Fairmont for 15 years, earns

nearly $15 an hour, or about $33,000 a year. Roughly half of her paycheck goes

toward rent.

"I can barely make ends meet now," Ms. James-Frye said. "What is

the point of getting a little 20-cent raise if it's going to go back in their

pockets to cover health benefits."

Guillermina Tremillo, 27, a single mother

of a 2-year-old, works two jobs to make ends meet, both at the famed Top of the

Mark restaurant. Ms. Tremillo also shares a home with her entire family,

including her parents and five sisters, all of whom pool wages. But four of her

sisters work at San Francisco hotels and they too have been locked out.

"My

feelings are very hurt," Ms. Tremillo said. "I do two jobs so they save one

person with me. They make money with me. You give and give the most you can and

they just don't care."

Mr. Adams said, however, that management wanted the

employees to return to work. "A contract can be had in fairly quick order if we

can resolve the issue of term," he said.

The city has already lost business

because of the dispute. The American Anthropological Association, for example,

decided to move its November conference to Atlanta in support of the union, a

decision that has cost the city $3.2 million, according to the San Francisco

Convention and Visitors Bureau.

With hotel management and the unions so far

apart on several issues, the two sides are not expected to reach a contract

agreement soon.

The union late last week heard that workers would be

eligible for unemployment benefits, which the union said could allow workers to

withstand the lockout for up to six months.

Locked out workers from the

Sheraton Palace flew to Waikiki on Friday to set up picket lines and a one-day

action at two other Sheraton hotels there, "to deliver the message that we won't

be isolated to San Francisco," said Mr. Casey of Local 2. And San Francisco has

received a show of support from hotel unions negotiating in Los Angeles and

Washington, D.C., where strikes have been authorized but not initiated.

"The

point is to get everyone together," Ms. James-Frye said. "There's strength in

numbers."

here we go again

Empty factories to the east and all our waste

The shape of things that came shows on the broken workers

face

To the west you'll find our silicon promised lands

where

Machines replace our minds for systematic profit

plans



The course of human progress staggers like a

drunk

Its steps are quick and heavy and its mind is slow and

blunt

I look for optimism but I just dont know

Its seeds are planted in a poison place where nothing

grows



Its 1989 stand up and take a look around

Weathers bitter tension it seems is sinking down

Drunk with power and fighting one another

Every hour shows the winter getting harder



Theres a freezeup coming



One nation stands the tallest radiating blinding

light

Plastic and fluorescent energy robbing us of

sight

Set in our way content with our decay

We wave the flag of freedom as we conquer and

invade

Ever ask yrself wheres my place in this hell

But no ones there to tell you cuz they dont know that

themselves

The well rehearsed lines from our elated

politicians

No longer offer solace we can see the self

destruction



Just one political song to drop into the list

That is years and years long

This is meaningless. The 'pop' of which Michael Jackson was the king is dead. And indeed, i'm not entirely sure that it ever existed.

I just spent a half hour drudging through two interconnected malls in search of a pair of cheap sneakers. All they had in the mall(s) were like Florsheim, ridiculously expensive hiking boots, a few nikes, reeboks, etc which were all way too expensive for me, and ither sundry footwear of unbelievablly high prices. I found the shoes i was looking for (fuck me and my brand loyalty) in an Urban Outfitters a few blocks away from the aforementioned malls. I now have a pair of shoes which are not open at the sole, a rare occurrence for me indeed. My shoes came with a tag that described them as an "American Original." Right below that, it says "tag made in Indonesia." Tres Thomas Freidman.



Speaking of Capitalism and its discontents, one of the greatest hip hop groups of the last decade, commie gangsta funkheads The Coup, have signed to Epitaph. I'm glad that Party Music, one of the best albums of the 2000s so far, is getting reissued, because it's a record everyone needs to hear and to study feverishly, and i'm eagerly awaiting the new album which is going to drop sometime in early '05. I'm also hoping that The Coup are able to circumvent "Epitaph syndrome" - that is, decent bands signing to the label and then producing terrible music. (The slackers found a way around it, and there's no comparison between the slackers and The Coup, no offense to the slackers.)



I love Josh. He's a fantastic organizer and a great person, and even though I got a little snappy with him sometimes over the course of the two years we organized together (and he thinks i banned him from the quotation page, which is a total lie,) i have a huge amount of respect for him. That said, i have a lot of gripes with this column, and i'm going to go into them at length, so bear with me. (I need to stop reading the YDN. I only do it cause i got booted from the fhue news listserve when i lost my yale address and i crave up to date information about the unions at yale, which they YDN really doesn't talk about that much anyway, unless people make them.)



My objections to Josh's piece concern the final three paragraphs and the arguments he makes about a progressive electoral and post-electoral strategy. I don't disagree with Josh that electing Kerry is a beginning rather than an end. I have to make GOTV calls all day tomorrow, and i'm ok with this because Bush needs to go. It's Josh's polite braiding of those on the left who "see critiquing politicians as noble but electing them as petty or contaminating" which initially commands my ire.



Josh, this strikes me as an extremely and irresponsibly simplified account of the relationship between, say, the global justice movements and state power. I wish you, as someone who has participated in these movements, wouldn't be so quick to dismiss the other kinds of power, and other kinds of relationships to that power, that activists and communities have fought to build in these new global social movements symbolized by the EZLN New Year's Day uprising in 1994, the mass mobilizations against the World Trade Organization, International Monetary Fund, World Economic Forum, and the Free Trade Area of the Americas, and the global eruptions of protest against the US Invasion of Iraq on February 15, 2003. The rhetorical project of establishing two extreme wrong paths in order to plot out a correct middle strikes me as not only Friedmanian, but also as problematic in that at least one of these paths is so simplified as to give an insatisfactory if not altogether dishonest account of its position, not to mention the fact that this reduces Hardt and Negri's "multitude" to a unitary and sole fringe, speaking in broken and indecipherable platitudes rather than the roar of mass demonstrations or the "unintelligible and frightening rhythmic cries" of anticolonial revolt.



I agree with the claims you make about the importance of a Kerry presidency when it comes to the right to organize, the environment, the minimum wage, etc. But there are many even on the most indecent fringes of the north american left, anarchists, communists, primitivists, maoists, greens, even the leninists whose thesis of inherent contradictions you find abhorrent in the first sentence of your final paragraph, who agree with you that a kerry victory is not a "dead end," but (for them) a grim necessity in the face of total fucking global annihilation. I'm not sure against whom you see yourself as arguing -- Nader? Or maybe i'm just being self-centered or solipsistic.



Among the claims you make here that i have the greatest problem with, i think, is this one: that "organizing out of powerlessness doesn't do much good unless it manages to seize power." There have been entire books written about the struggle of the new social movements to "change the world without taking power," as John Holloway puts it, (though i've not yet read his book,) a political sentiment common to everyone from the Zapatistas to many uocistas. Building and seizing power are separate acts with separate implications and consequences and should not be confused. Where Hardt and Negri are persuasive for me is where they argue that these new movements are fighting to constitute a new global network of social relationships, that the movements we are building locate in the seizure of power the victory of the powerful over the "powerless" (although this is a problematic term employed so generally) and thus envision the constitution of a counterpower capable of destructuring capitalism. Dejargonified, what i mean is that when we talk about taking power, they win. Kerry needs to win the elction tomorrow because of card check and because bush is backed by all the virulent racists and homophobic ideologues, the anti-immigrant republicans who aren't backing nader, the homeland security fascists, the defense contractors and the cheerleaders of empire. But if Kerry wins tomorrow, that doesn't necessarily mean that we do. Apologies for the rant, i've been incoherently mulling over this for a while. And i'm sorry if i'm going overboard or being a schmuck cause that isn't my intent.



Incidentally, Stolen Honor was on TV this morning, and boy, i never realized that the "Hanoi Hilton," the new left, and POW torture were all Jane Fonda's fault. My stars!