this is how much we <3 collective bargaining

23 hours and counting.  I’ve been awake for 21 of the last 23 hours. I’m surprised how well I slept for those two hours in my sleeping bag liner on the concrete steps outside City Hall–though not as well as some of our sleepers who slept through the three camera crews and two radio interviewers who came to document this madness.

Zombie flash mob was a success!  Somehow amongst the creation of fake blood, assigning numbered signs (that flipped!), and intense zombie assembly and sign making practice, we turned a crowd of young rally-goers into socially conscious, organized zombies with a message.  Don’t kill collective bargaining, don’t kill our futures.

Starting with a lady from police communications who dropped off a heavenly pink box of donuts, we’ve been getting a lot of encouraging responses from people who saw us on the news or heard about what we’re doing.  Sometimes I think we just need a space, an anchor to link ourselves to, and the good in people will come out.  Also, creepy face paint and a pressing issue help a lot.

I listened to Mayor Reed’s comments about our sleep-in this morning at 7am, after having done almost nonstop interviews for three hours and only having had three glorious sips of Anna’s latte.  It was actually more saddening than angering to hear him misrepresent who we were and what we were there for.  He implied that we were from AFSCME, the union that is facing the worst cuts in layoffs and benefits (and which also represents the lowest paid city workers), and that he was only trying to reign in these runaway pension costs.  If so, Mayor Reed, work with the unions.  Don’t play your power tricks and take away people’s rights.   Don’t let these measures that weaken collectively bargain go to the ballot.

Thanks to everyone who came out, for the rally, for the flash mob, for sleeping on the steps, for early morning press fielding, for later morning coffee and petition signing, and everyone who is with us in spirit.  Sometimes it takes something like this, even when we’re a little lonely on the steps in the cold at 3 in the morning, to realize that there are so many people who stand with us all the time.

learning to love san jose thru 24 hours of solidarity with city workers !

kathryn holdin it down at sj city hall

Twenty four hours of solidarity has begun.

Off to a slow start with just a few people staking out space in the hot noon sun, but now around 3pm we’ve collected a good group of sign makers, Verizon hotspot providers, and blogger (me). Getting here has been a whirlwind of changing memos and changing messages but nevertheless we are HERE and we stand (draw, type, upload photos) in solidarity with city workers fighting to keep their rights to collectively bargain.

California Attorney General Kamala Harris (first black and Asian attorney general in CA, what) said she had serious concerns about what Mayor Chuck Reed is trying to do in San Jose.   So do we.  Trying to balance the budget on the backs of workers is so classic but only ends up hurting us more while shoring up power for the politicians who push these measures through.  Jean Quan, mayor of Oakland, has vowed not to.   We’re asking Chuck Reed to keep his word and keep negotiating with the city unions.  

If you don’t know what’s going on, check out this crazy facebook page.

If you support having a voice at work and collective bargaining, which as brought you such staples as an 8-hr day, a lunch hour, and the weekend, sign City Councilmember Ash Kalra’s petition here.

try harder, san jose

Watching this live stream of a public hearing on San Jose’s declared fiscal emergency is making me profoundly sad.  At the Labor Council, our official stance is that this is a political move by our generally conservative mayor, Chuck Reed, to curb collective bargaining rights of city employees.

“We the people are broke.”  The budget proposed by the City Manager cuts 10% of fire and police, closes libraries for four days every week, eliminates the domestic violence unit of the police force, closes community centers, and closes fire stations for several days in a week.  I know this is the reality we live in, but this is insane.  This recession wasn’t caused by city employee pensions.  It was caused by reckless decisions by incredibly rich people, who walked away with $150 billion in compensation and salaries in 2010 alone.   (Don’t let go of that anger.)

It saddens me to hear these one-minute synopsies of people’s lives and how they will be affected.  Union employees asking the city to take more of their pension instead of cutting after school services.  A woman asking where she will take her kids if the library she walks to is closed.  Youth talking about how they wouldn’t be who they are, with the confidence to speak to City Council, without these leadership programs that the city wants to cut (how ironic).   But this is just a formality.  Mayor Reed already has enough City Council votes to move forward.  Is this — short, tragic stories cut off by a terse speaker, to mute City Councilmembers who have already endorsed this budget, really what democracy looks like?

fck you tiger culture

Do I have to be money-grubbing, sexist, selfishly cutthroat, obnoxiously self-promoting, and in general more “interesting” (read: annoyingly unavoidable)… and/or white (and most definitely a man) to “ratify” my minority experience and be successfully American?

I feel (almost) as bad for how poorly white culture is portrayed in this NY Mag article by Wesley Yang.  There is absolutely no questioning of the status quo—“What I’ve learned is that America is about money, and if you can make your culture commodifiable, then you’re relevant.”  And we give props to this businessman for making it big and presumably scoring one of those tall blond chicks who is similarly being exploited for her superficial stereotype, no matter how sexy.  Yang shrugs his shoulders at the woman who feels she needs to “love the world twice as much” to make up for her lack of beauty and says hey that’s how it goes, ha, ha, it’s like us Asian Ams who pay thousands of dollars for someone to teach us how to stand and smile like a true ladies’ man, kind of sad but that’s what you gotta do.

What I say is fuck your poor attempt at a cynical apology for accepting “white success” as the goal and embracing all things  imperialistic implicit in white American culture.  Fuck your credit to Amy Chua for standing up for anything and thus defying stereotypical Asian meekness and silence, I want to be judged on what I say and not just that I say it.  Fuck conforming, I want to transform.

//

A less angry, more incisive commentary.  (thanks Nhu-Y.)

believe fight obey !

Congressman Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) came to San Jose today, one of twenty cities he is visiting in California to garner support for comprehensive immigration reform.

The more I call the secretaries of these politicians, meet them in person, see them speak and listen to their arguments, the more I realize how much of a game all of this is.  Listening to President Obama say all the right things about how our broken immigration system needs to change, and then hearing Congressman Gutierrez rail about how he can’t with a clear conscience support Obama serving another four years if he doesn’t take up the mantle of comprehensive immigration reform… I think to a certain degree we need a show.  We need politicians not so much to have precise, logical, and piercing arguments about the systems in play right now, but to make an elegant deal about something we can believe in.  Change, for example.  And for those of us who crave something more, immigration system change.  Dictators are so effective not just because they create a personality cult but because people want to be part of a personality cult.  They want to think that there is a champion, they want to dance in the streets under the same banner as a hundred thousand other people.  Even better if the banner says something they agree with.

But the dangerous thing is that peoples’ lives hang in the balance.  Through all the cross country flights and expensive suits and well-crafted phrases, mothers and fathers are deported, hate crimes against immigrants happen every day, and other politicians traipse around proclaiming that “all those Hispanic kids don’t want to go to school, they just want to be in gangs.”  I guess it does matter what all your ranting and raving is about… it just tires me out to see all the politicking and knowing how much actual work there is to be done.

I guess it’s ok, though, knowing that for me the real work and wonders happened after Gutierrez’s rousing speech about the dignity of every single human being and how we need to support all humans in the world equally… when I met folks from local organizations doing work in the community, helping people navigate the system, and made inroads for Next Gen Bay Area, our fledging young labor activist group.  But I’m still looking forward to May Day, there’s still something powerful about millions of people coming together on one day for something as vague but as sincere and deep as justice.  Check it out for yourself if you want.

it’s so easy to hate

Yesterday, at an event commemorating the 100th anniversary of the  Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, a lady brought up a paradox that I’ve been thinking about.  In its infinite wisdom, our government considers corporations to be people–giving them the right to sue and be sued, etc.  (Apparently, “corporate personhood” was explicitly stated as being entitled to 14th Amendment protections in a case originating here in Santa Clara County, when the County was trying to force railroad companies to pay taxes in full.)  So, they can contribute as much undisclosed money to political campaigns as they would like, but they can also move freely across borders to other countries and build factories, call centers, even headquarters.  While immigrants who cross our borders into this country are put in terrible working conditions, criminalized, and then sent back where they came from.

You could say that there is still a fundamental difference in these crossings, that immigrants cross illegally while corporations cross legally. But who makes the laws — or more importantly, who pays other people to influence laws?    Perhaps the immigrant and the corporation are both legally “persons” and still subject to laws of the nation, etc, but come on.  The corporate “person” is backed by scores of highly paid, well-educated lawyers whose self-identity and families rely on the continued profits of this “person,” as well as skilled lobbyists whose only job is to advance the interests of this one “person” in all laws and regulations, and probably a hefty sum of profit if they are aiming to move overseas.  I don’t even think we can conceive of the odds in an actual showdown between these persons.

Probably the ultimate irony is that immigrants cross our borders seeking jobs partly because corporate persons have moved abroad first.  With NAFTA passing, cheap corn flooding into Mexico put over a million people out of work at corn farm–so what could they do?  When the American dream of growing profits has expanded its reach and influence into other countries, can we really be so surprised that people in those countries directly feeling this economic and  would not come here to seek the same American dream?

It’s like being the ultimate bully.  You get to make your own rules that other people have to follow, meaning you can pretty much do whatever you want wherever you want–maybe just somewhat curtailed by a frustrated but exhausted schoolteacher with good intentions but only a bewildered understanding of your actions (the government).  Then, when you’ve achieved supreme bully power by getting people to do what you want for very little in other places, you get the churches, the politicians, and the investors on your side, your bullying becomes Legitimate Power and here we arrive in the capitalist American society.

[This post was also partially inspired by this Daily Show segment, maybe one of the most brilliant and tragic I’ve seen.  The video is at the bottom of that post–apologies, can’t find a YouTube video to embed.]

coming together

Went to Azteca New Year celebration in San Jose today.  Seeing a large group of people dancing to live drum music in a circle, at the center of a larger circle of vendors and political tents, reminded me too much of weekends in Pine Ridge.  I love that I can find this here, too, but I want to go back.  Who’s up for a road trip to the Oglala Nation powwow this August?

“i’m telling you, i’m ready to die.”

“I work in the best company to work for in the world, I had the best wife, I love my kids.  But I’m willing to lose all of that for my dream to happen, and no one is going to go against our desire.  No one.

“Kidnap me. Kidnap all my colleagues. Put us in jail. Kill us. Do whatever you want to do — we are getting back our country. You guys have been ruining this country for 30 years. Enough, enough, enough.  You are not going to stop us.”   [cnn]

Words of Wael Ghonim—a persistent activist, revolutionary, organizer, instigator… computer engineer, head of marketing in the Middle East/North Africa at Google, internet nerd, tireless creator of Facebook pages (including one that he used to organize the first day of protests on Jan. 25).

[Ghonim giving a speech on the internet usage in his region, giving a speech in tahrir square calling for Mubarek to step down]

So you can be a geek and the leader of a dictatorship-deposing revolution.  Well, Silicon Valley?

Of course, despite how major media outlets have become obsessively delighted at how Facebook and Twitter “sparked” or “spurred” the wave of protests in Egypt that eventually led to the resignation of former dictator Hosni Mubarek, you need fodder for that flame to feed on.  Say, thirty years of repressive, unresponsive government and extreme poverty.  But the poorest, most wronged group of people will stay poor and unvindicated without organization.  Like, organizations of thousands of Suez workers, postal workers, tax collectors, farmers, and railway workers who mobilized more people to demand what was theirs and went on strike.  Glenn Beck reminds us that “our Founders, by the way, weren’t community organizers,” which I say no doubt was a large part of how they were able to create a system of government that called blacks 3/5 of a person, only gave white men who own property the right to vote, and still was called “democracy of the people.”

So, blogging nerds, Google/Facebook employees, embattled union members, fighting non-union folks, caffeinated hipsteresque leftists, even if some of you live in a secluded suburb in Dubai and work for a multi-billion dollar corporation and others in almost-foreclosed homes in anywhere usa without a job for the 99th week in a row, if we work together, the revolution can be ours.

good reading:
comprehensive coverage of events in Egypt by the huffington post
nyt opinion piece on how america’s “democracy” compares to egypt
al jazeera never lets me down–this is their photostream of the protests
newsweek’s article on ghonim
nyt video on people voluntarily returning to tahrir square to clean up

while driving, i have

eaten spaghetti.
typed intersections into my gps.
taken photos of passing scenery.
written down hundreds of numbers.
changed shoes.
wrapped a gift for an office Valentine’s gift-exchange party (i ❤ the san jose office).

asi:

this rainbow made me optimistic that the rain on highway 1 would eventually stop.   it didn’t.   after this shot, i drove through some serious rain all the way from just past san luis obispo to san jose.

driving from san jose blue skies into fog, on the way to sacto

luchamos, entonces

They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle.  Power concedes nothing without a demand.  [frederick douglass]