Downtown

I’ve been busy the past three or four weeks; so I am not sure how much coverage “Day of Rage” received. As I understand the objective it’s an attempt to breathe life into the dying labor movement. The early years of the labor movement are long gone. The robber barons in government are labor union supporters. A vast majority of Americans now see organized labor for what it is.

There is one unknown factor in the pubic’s disgust with labor unions. Will the American people continue to rely on the government to rein in union thugs? Or will Americans finally realize they, and they alone, must fight back against intimidation and union violence.

The pertinent question is: Who will the government prosecute in any violent confrontations? Recent events in the Pacific Northwest saw a few ILWU members arrested:

http://www.koinlocal6.com/news/loca...ew-union-protests/rRSTQEYITk6A2UOZiRu4NA.cspx

Arrest is one thing —— prosecution is quite another. How the government handles union violence, if any, on the Day of Rage will signify a sea change, or reaffirm business as usual.

I find it interesting that Day of Rage organizers are targeting Wall Street; the very institution that bears the most responsibility for outsourcing American jobs and entire industries. The fact is: Private sector labor unions have long-been controlled by government-employee unions who want more tax dollars and more government jobs. Were that not true they would be demonstrating against the government.

Finally, there is always the chance the Day of Rage will turn into nothing more than a trip Downtown for rank & file malcontents.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKCnHWas3HQ&feature=player_detailpage"]Petula Clark - Downtown - YouTube[/ame]

See part two for tomorrow’s planned festivities. Notice that the usual villains are all present and accounted for.

 

PART TWO:

Is revolution hitting U.S. streets tomorrow?

Protesters training to incite violence, resist arrest, disrupt the legal system
Posted: September 15, 2011
6:10 pm Eastern
By Aaron Klein

Fight "market dictatorship"

"People of the world rise up!"

"We are legion."

"Take to the streets."

These and other battle cries were posted on the recent Twitter feed of a group calling itself Take The Square. The organization is one of the social media planners behind the "Day of Rage" protest slated to target Wall Street on Saturday.

WND previously reported how the U.S. section of the protest, complete with a planned tent city in downtown Manhattan, is closely tied to the founders of ACORN and leaders of major U.S. unions, including the Service Employees International Union, or SEIU.

While protest leaders claim they are non-violent, there are indications the protesters are training to incite violence, resist arrest and disrupt the legal system.

The protest aims to take root nationwide.

Activists are advertising on social network sites such as Facebook and Twitter for a "Day of Rage" on Sept. 17 to begin with the "occupation" of Wall Street and continue with protests across the nation.

Planners have their own website – USDayofRage.org – which tells protesters to "bring your own tent."

The website is not specific about the purpose of the "Day of Rage" other than calling for "integrity" to be "restored to our elections."

The site accuses corporations of using "money to act as the voices of millions, while individual citizens, the legitimate voters, are silenced and demoralized by the farce."

Advertisements claim the protests at Wall Street and nationwide will be "non-violent." However, the official website provides resources, including videos and detailed written instructions, for protesters to engage in "civil disobedience."

The resources provided include instructions on how to resist police arrest and disrupt court hearings.

This week, the 'Day of Rage' twitter feed posted links to what it called "nonviolent civil disobedience training talks."

Similar instructions are provided on the website of an affiliated organization, which calls itself "Occupy Wall Street" and is also involved in planning the Sept. 17 protests.

The use of the term "Day of Rage" recalls the "Days of Rage" organized in the 1960s by the Weather Underground domestic terrorist organization co-founded by Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, close associates for years of President Obama.

Numerous radicals, many with direct ties to Obama, are linked to planned protests and other activism scheduled for the coming months.

In March, ACORN founder Wade Rathke announced what he called "days of rage in 10 cities around JP Morgan Chase." Rathke was president of an SEIU local in New Orleans.

The planned Sept. 17 protest appears to be the culmination of Rathke's efforts.

Those efforts are being organized by Stephen Lerner, an SEIU board member who reportedly visited the Obama White House at least four times.

Lerner is considered one of the most capable organizers of the radical left. He recently organized the SEIU's so-called Justice for Janitors campaign.

As part of his planned protests, Lerner called for "a week of civil disobedience, direct action all over the city."

His stated aim is to "destabilize the folks that are in power and start to rebuild a movement."

In an interview about the planned protests, Lerner outlined his goals: "How do we bring down the stock market? How do we bring down their bonuses? How do we interfere with their ability to, to be rich?"

Forecast for American cities: Confrontation, intimidation?

There are other indications a coalition of radicals and unions are planning chaos using the current economic crisis.

Last month, WND reported that a slew of extremist organizations, some tied to Obama, are preparing protests to coincide with major NATO and G-8 summits in Chicago next May.

Foreshadowing possible violent confrontations, some of the same radical trainers behind the infamous 1999 Seattle riots against the World Trade Organization have been mobilizing new protest efforts geared toward world summits as well as the current economic crisis.

Some of the activists are tied to Obama.

The NATO and G-8 summits are not the only focus of radical groups.

WND reported Heather Booth, director of a Saul Alinsky-style community organizing group, the Midwest Academy, was among the main speakers at the "2011 State Battles Summit" in June at the Hyatt Regency Capitol Hill Hotel in Washington, D.C.

Booth's husband, Paul, also was a speaker at the union summit. Paul Booth co-founded Midwest Academy in the 1970s.

The four-day summit was organized by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, or AFSCME, with participation from the AFL-CIO, the nation's largest union.

An official schedule for the event, obtained by WND, declared: "Our union is under unprecedented attack in every state. Extremist politicians want to weaken us as we head into 2012. Their tactics include budget cuts, layoffs, privatization and the denial of our very collective bargaining rights."

Continued the flyer: "New challenges require new energy and new thinking. We encourage union activists to attend this conference and bring their creative ideas on how to overcome the challenges ahead."

Heather Booth participated in a panel entitled "Our Message, Alliances and Best Practices."

Paul Booth delivered the opening remarks for the union conference.

Another speaker at the union event was John Podesta, who co-chaired President Obama's transition team.

Podesta is president of the Center for American Progress, which is heavily influential in advising the White House. The center is funded by billionaire activist George Soros.

Mideast revolutions coming to U.S.?

Citizen Action of Wisconsin, an arm of Booth's Midwest Academy, is part of the Moving Wisconsin Forward movement, one of the main organizers of the major Wisconsin protests in February, as WND was first to report.

The protests were in opposition to Gov. Scott Walker's proposal for most state workers to pay 12 percent of their health care premiums and 5.8 percent of their salary toward their own pensions.

WND reported at the time that speakers at the rallies likened the Wisconsin protests to the ongoing revolutions in the Middle East and North Africa while calling for similar uprisings in the U.S.

'Redistribution of wealth and power'

Obama himself once funded Midwest Academy. He has been closely tied to Heather Booth.

Booth has stated building a ''progressive majority'' would help for ''a fair distribution of wealth and power and opportunity."

Her husband Paul is a founder and the former national secretary of Students for a Democratic Society, the radical 1960s anti-war movement from which Ayers' Weather Underground splintered.

In 1999, the Booths' Midwest Academy received $75,000 from the Woods Fund with Obama on its board alongside Ayers, In 2002, with Obama still serving on the Woods Fund, Midwest received another $23,500 for its Young Organizers Development Program.

Midwest describes itself as "one of the nation's oldest and best-known schools for community organizations, citizen organizations and individuals committed to progressive social change."

It later morphed into a national organizing institute for an emerging network of organizations known as Citizen Action.

Discover the Networks describes Midwest as "teach[ing] tactics of direct action, confrontation and intimidation."

WND first reported the executive director of an activist organization that taught Alinsky's tactics of direct action, confrontation and intimidation was part of the team that developed volunteers for President Obama's 2008 campaign.

Jackie Kendall, executive director of the Midwest Academy, was on the team that developed and delivered the first Camp Obama training for volunteers aiding Obama's campaign through the 2008 Iowa Caucuses.

Camp Obama was a two-to-four day intensive course run in conjunction with Obama's campaign aimed at training volunteers to become activists to help Obama win the presidential election.

Also, in 1998, Obama participated on a panel discussion praising Alinsky alongside Heather Booth, herself a dedicated disciple of Alinsky.

The panel discussion following the opening performance in Chicago of the play "The Love Song of Saul Alinsky," a work described by the Chicago Sun-Times as "bringing to life one of America's greatest community organizers."

Obama participated in the discussion alongside other Alinskyites, including political analyst Aaron Freeman, Don Turner of the Chicago Federation of Labor and Northwestern University history professor Charles Paine.

"Alinsky had so much fire burning within," stated local actor Gary Houston, who portrayed Alinsky in the play. "There was a lot of complexity to him. Yet he was a really cool character."

With research by Brenda J. Elliott

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=345321

 

What if there was a day of rage and nobody came? Apparently that is what happened on Wall Street over the weekend. I especially enjoyed this excerpt from Judi McLeod’s piece:

While legions of families worry how their university graduates have not been able to find work, the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ Day of Rage gang filled the time at the protest nobody attended by boning up on their yoga.

Practicing Yoga while protesting:
Multi-tasking in Manhattan
Judi McLeod Sunday, September 18, 2011

http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/40449

If unemployed university graduates had any brains they would have camped outside the NEA demanding refunds on their tuition:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Education_Association

The NEA is what is wrong with the economic system and the country. You can bet that the NEA, not Wall Street, ripped off the educated unemployed with an unspoken promise of unnecessary government jobs.

And let’s not forget Hussein in this. He has been railing against crumbling school buildings since he came to office. Now, he wants to send hundreds of billions of federal tax dollars to his friends in the education industry to rebuild rundown schools.

Never mind asking where the trillions of state and federal building-maintenance tax dollars went over the past sixty years? If Hussein has his way the education industry parasites counting on a new windfall will not need a college diploma. Obviously, the over-educated, under-employed, wannabe-parasites, should have attended trade schools.

Parenthetically, Los Angeles has the record for new school construction costs:

LA unveils $578M school, costliest in the nation

http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2010-08-22-taj-mahal-schools_N.htm

This excerpt warns of things to come:

"New buildings are nice, but when they're run by the same people who've given us a 50% dropout rate, they're a big waste of taxpayer money," said Ben Austin, executive director of Parent Revolution who sits on the California Board of Education. "Parents aren't fooled."

The same people who justify a 50% dropout rate are the same people who will be in charge of maintaining the new school. I’m afraid to ask about maintenance costs.

Bottom line: Getting a higher “education” ain’t what it used to be.

 

Did you make this all up?

None of this has any basis in truth. But it is a good example of a deep contempt for working people.

 

To stonehorse: Not working people. Just public sector labor unions.

 

Are they not also working people?

I don't believe that one should give up his human rights just because he takes a job with the government.

How effective is a work force made up of sheep who stand with hats in hand, accepting whatever crumbs the boss may toss them?

You have plenty of criticism for unions. But I've seen no factual info from you. Without facts you are posting fantasy.

 

To stonehorse: People who live on tax dollars, including teachers, are not working people in that they do not create wealth —— they absorb it then take credit for creating it. They are the foundation of the parasite class. They have no employer, it is almost impossible to fire them; so for all intents and purposes they enjoy lifetime tenure. Up until JFK public employee unions were prohibited. Since JFK changed the rules the parasite class has been absorbing the nation’s wealth at an alarming rate.

You obviously know nothing about labor unions. Read this thread for a start in acquiring knowledge:

http://www.politicalforum.com/united-states/173232-saving-spoils-system.html

 

As an American blue collar worker I believe I know more about labor unions than most who post here. My knowledge comes from experience. Not from conservative columnists.

You say you do not hold working people in contempt and then you call teachers parasites.

Private or public - working people deserve representation. And if the system does not allow it the system should be brought down and rebuilt.

The only ones who disagree are those who have bought the propaganda of the economic elite.