Finally, mainstream support. This is the benefit if a rolling protest, as opposed to a start-and-stop affair.
In a start-and-stop demonstration, the media decides if you're news. In a rolling ongoing protest, you make yourself news by persisting.
In These Times (a great place to visit regularly):
Trumka also endorsed the Occupy Wall Street protests, as the federation’s executive council did on a Wednesday conference call. Many local unions in New York had already joined the protests or offered support, but more national unions have issued statements of enthusiastic support, including the Service Employees (which has long had a campaign focused on the financial sector), the Teamsters, the Bakery Workers and others.The article notes many common interest of labor and the protesters (my emphasis):
“We will support them in every way we can,” Trumka says, noting that unions had mobilized 15,000 marchers on Wall Street a year and a half ago. “We believe as they do that the economy is shutting out 99 percent of the people. It works for the top 1 percent marvelously…But the rest of us with stagnant wages, lost jobs, home foreclosures, kids that can’t go to school, lost health care, pensions taken away and retirement security destroyed, we think there’s a different and better way….We aren’t going to try to usurp them in any way but support them. And we certainly hope they support us on our America Wants to Work campaign.”
Organized labor has three demands that are shared by most Wall Street occupiers, Trumka says. First, corporations and banks should invest their cash in America, creating good jobs. Second, banks and other holders of the 14 million foreclosed or “under water” mortgages and then ten million more expected to go sour should be forced to write down the mortgages to reflect the real, post-bubble value. Finally, the government should impose a “speculation tax,” or financial transactions tax, of one-tenth of one percent. Researchers in Europe figure a similar tax would generate $78 billion a year, and with its larger financial markets, the U.S. could gain as much or more.Excellent on many counts. Trumpka offers a list of great demands that will be backed by labor muscle. This gives focus to the protesters without that pesky hyper-leaderly problem (or endless discussions).
And second, it reunites today's dirty hippies (post-Reagan edition) with labor. These groups had a nasty divorce in the 1960s (caused entirely by labor, I might add — watch the end of Easy Rider or All In the Family).
For today's protests to have an effect absent a real depression, uniting with labor is key — for both groups. This is great news on all fronts.
GP
