March for Jobs and Economic Fairness
Posted 12 years ago on Dec. 1, 2011, 12:33 a.m. EST by OccupyWallSt
The NYC Central Labor Council has called a march on Dec 1st for Jobs and Economic Fairness that's "not just for the labor movement, but for everyone who is frustrated and worried about the growing economic disparity in this country. It's for anyone who has ever agonized about finding a job, paying for college, meeting a mortgage payment, or how to buy enough food for dinner. "
The true means of wealth increase is innovation and trade.
All else is zero-sum.
Businessmen are not the wealth-creators.
No; the real wealth-creators are scientists (one of which I am), engineers, doctors, inventors, anybody who uses their mind and their abilities to produce something new.
Businessmen only gain wealth because of us. They gain their billions off our backs. The CEOs of biotech companies cannot earn their money without the products their business is built on. The CEOs of gas companies cannot earn their money without the experts they employ who find their oil and develop new processes to refine it.
I call for a General Strike of the Innovators.
Right on!!
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If you are such a great innovator, start your own company. That is what Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Thomas Edison, Ben Franklin, and on and on did. But I am more inclined to believe that you want to use the resources of the company you work for to create your innovations. Sorry dude, when you use someone elses money the owner of that money should reap the greater reward, don't you think?
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What kind of scientist are you? A barista isn't a scientist of coffee FYI.
Biologist.
What do you do? Be specific. Stop being so vague. You can be a biologist and work in a pharmacy and that doesn't make you a "scientist". I have a degree in Comp sci and I don't walk around pretentiously calling myself I scientist.
See the following news how dictator Bloomberg says "NYPD is my own Army!" and it's the world 7th army!
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/11/30/mayor-bloomberg-calls-the-nypd-my-own-army/
I am saying to you Bloomberg: You have the army, We have the power and you will end up in criminal court inside the cage same as Egypt Mubark. You just told Hitler that you lay to rest I am alive! Dig up Auschwitz memories by your gas chambers! SHAME ON YOU and YOUR NAZI ARMY!
Yeah. I read the article. Bloomberg has waaaay to much power. Thinks he some freakin dictator. Dethrone him before its much to late already!
You know, Bloomberg is following Gaddafi's foot steps. I remember Gaddafi had the same speech on the media before that famous knife met his butt! When Bloomberg changed the rules to extend his power and dictatorship for 4 more years in office I wrote an academic article in CUNY that "this is the beginning of a dangerous deviation and corruption" This school sent a report to FBI for suspicious activity and they contacted me and put my name on Federal Black List for a while! I didn't remain silent, I also wrote an official letter to Bloomberg's office on 8/25/10 (ref#1-1-589120053) that he is an immediate danger to humanity and I will go on sit down hunger strike in front of the United Nation (ref#1-1-615328024) but his intelligent officer Herman Yan (SH#*878, office location 1 Police Plaza) kidnapped me in lower Manhattan and took me to his car and threaten me that if you do you will get disappeared in an accidental car crash! We should open a case in the UN and go on a sit down strike in front of Main Building some day soon. I call people like Bloomberg and capitol hill gangs as "Economical Terrorists", Terrorism is not just blowing up some where, Terrorism is also blowing up people's life and future by making fear in their hope. God bless 99.99% American, Not 0.01% America. We should know that 0.01% must have right to fair trial same as terrorists whom blew up WTC.
"We have it in our power to start the world over again" - The moral and political thought of Thomas Paine
Occupy Manifesto Suggestion...
"Independence is my happiness and view things as they are without regard to person or place. The world is my community and my religion is to do good." - Thomas Paine
Objectives:
a) Remove political influence of power and money from the government.
b) Adopt a policy of sideways economics as opposed to trickle up & trickle down economics.
c) Hold politicians accountable
d) Commit to vote.
e) Religion and the 1%
This is 5 point start, a good foundation that will create on-ramps directly to the heart f the problem and gives a united theme for how to create a specific message.
Thomas Paine was considered treasonous by the founding fathers because of his view on the moral good. As an african-american, I find it ironic that a man who in the very beginning was against slavery was run out of the country simply because he believed that 'All men are truly created equal' & 'Separation of church and state is necessary in order to have a government of the people by the people.'
At the end of the day, the Occupy Movement is about justice.
http://www.religionpaine.org/article_bisheff01.html
What about those of us who actively decide not to vote because we see voting as a sign of consent to be governed by what we see as an unfair system. If I believe that a representative democracy is one that is inherently keeping the problems we have in place why should i vote for anyone?
Those of you who choose not to vote play right into the hands of those you claim to be against. The goal of the 1% is to have less people vote and by sitting out elections you get people like Allen West and Marco Rubio elected. The fact is that the only way this movement can make it's presence undeniably felt is by occupying the voting booth. I like many of you voted for Obama in 2008 and have been disappointed by his apparent lack of willingness to act on his campaign promises but I also realize it is very hard to track the work he has done because the right wing media machine is willing to mislead and even lie in regards to his record. I would urge any OWS supporters to check out the following two sites
http://whatthefuckhasobamadonesofar.com http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/
Ultimately voting is consenting to letting someone else speak for you. Taking a stance of non-voting may not be the best solution short-term, but problems caused by politicians won't be fixed by politicians. And I'm not suggesting voting for a "non-politician" like Hermann Cain. I'm suggesting not-voting and doing it yourself, ourself, instead of voting and thinking someone else will have your best intereste in mind.
So vote out those politicians and replace them with people sympathetic to our cause. Not voting will only turn more power over to those who oppose us. Not voting would result in the entire government being run by the GOP which will in turn lead us down a faster road to ruin. At least with the dems it's a slow burn that we can, with time extinguish.
I don't believe that the system will get any better. I thought Obama supported causes I did. His campaign did, and he has backed a few of them up, but a lot of them he hasn't. Maybe democrats are better than republicans, but thats not really relevant. Ultimately no matter who you vote for, the way the system works they all end up more accountable to the 1% and their lobbyists then to the american people. I probably won't vote for anyone, and if I do definitely not for anyone on a major party ticket, but more important than that is remembering that the system that led us into this crisis can't be the same system that leads us out of it.
did you atleast check the two sites I linked above? If you did you wouldn't be claiming he backed up a few of his promises.
He has backed up some of them, which is what you're links said, but he also bent or broke a lot of them in very significant ways. The bailout was a problem. The not closing of Guantanamo Bay is a significant problem. He has done somethings as he said he would, but he also went off of a lot of what he said he would due to the influence of corporate interests and other things that may be out of control. If you want to go vote, go ahead I'm not saying you shouldn't I'm mostly saying that voting is by no means an end. If this becomes about electing a candidate, or unelecting a candidate or even getting rid of everyone in all of congress out it will have been a total and complete waste of time.
Politics is a game of compromise. Unless you can show me one politician who hasn't compromised on campaign promises your issues with Obama are not valid.
no thats the point I was trying to make in the first place. My complaints weren't about Obama. My complaints were about politicians and the way politics work. You're response that all politicians compromise on campaign promises and my statement that they are inherently more accountable to lobbyists than voters is my point exactly.
My apologize but the start of your post sounded like a boycott the voting booth thread and honestly in my opinion that would be the nail in the coffin of OWS. Allowing republicans to control all three branches of gov in this country will only lead to worse times for the 99!
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I completely agree with you on everything you've said.
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the establishment must be replaced. they got the guns we got the numbers and computer know how. Lets get on with this. Do you want your children putting up with this. we are here to help and share no to screw everybody. when you help someone how to do you feel? when you screw someone how to do feel? any questions.
Large corporations, like IBM, love high unemployment. It gives them the power to give no raises to the workers and to selectively hire at very reduced pay rates.
I understand and support the movement, but they need to be more focused in order to progress and accomplish their goals, instead of fighting a war on all fronts. They should address their concerns with the companies in the DOW 30 Industrials - starting with Big Brother, IBM. IBM has done everything it could to make its employees powerless against the corporation from killing any semblance of a union to firing anyone who questions company policies concerning cutting benefits. Out of greed, IBM has given very few, if any any raises in the past four years, dramatically reducing earnings and disposable income of the workers. At the same time IBM demands more hours and productivity from the overworked people who are left. The result is a reduction in the trickle down effect which would provide jobs throughout the economy. IBM is now reducing employment in the US and outsourcing to reduce costs for more profits. IBM is cruelly forcing its first line managers to give one employee in their department a performance deficiency letter each quarter, even if everyone is doing a great job, so they can later "manage people out of the business" instead of laying them off with a severance package and unemployment insurance. IBM has systematically killed its competition until it is once again a monopoly for the large computers that run the world. IBM has several targeted campaigns today against competitors like Oracle, Microsoft, HP and others, which will cost jobs and further reduce competition. Meanwhile IBM hoards cash, uses cash to buy back its stock, or to provide large bonuses and stock options to its executives. Occupy Wall Street should occupy IBM headquarters, expose IBM for what it does, and bring this company to its knees. Then other large companies will understand the power of this movement.
About voting: I go by Albert Camus: ""To live as if our choices make any real difference in the long run may be the act of a fool, but to live as if they do not, that is the act of a coward."
“I hope that we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.” Thomas Jefferson
“If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them (around the banks), will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.” Thomas Jefferson
What about existing jobs? The GOP is talking about cutting thousands of gov't jobs to pay for extending the payroll tax break which will benefit the 99%. Gov't workers are in the second year of a two year salary freeze; now, the powers to be want further cuts/ layoffs from the gov't sector. Once again, shift the burden onto the gov't workers, teachers, fire, police and other municipal employees.
Federal employees across the nation should push back by an organized "sick-out", or a full fledged strike! Time for public servants to fight back. The RI legislature screwed its retired state employees, killing the COLA (3%) for the next five years. The union is taking this to court, where I'm hopeful our "contract" will prevail. Unions and the ows protesters, 99%ers, and other social movements striving for equality have already changed the agenda in DC, and need to keep moving forward. GO OWS!!!
When will it be enough? My husband was laid off in 2007, while looking for work he was mugged, stabbed, and hospitalized and the medical expenses consumed our savings.
We have 3 young children, and barely can make ends meet in this economy, I have to travel to clean houses and my husband barely can make any money and as he does not qualify for social services after paying into the system for over 20 years.
While going from cleaning job to cleaning job I get pulled over by the cops, they take my car because I cannot pay liability insurance, give me several tickets, put me in jail and demand I plead guilty to all their charges, else I will lose custody of my children.
I HAD ENOUGH! WHEN ARE WE GOING TO TAKE OUR GOVERNMENT BACK FROM THE PARASITES RUNNING IT. COPS ARE NOTHING MORE THAN THIEVES WITH A BADGE AND THE JUDGES TOO.
FIGHT BACK, GIVE ME LIBERTY OR GIVE ME DEATH!
my heart goes out to you and is with you 100% we are living in a fascist police state. this is babylon slavery. brutalising us with their BS. they are living high off the hog laughing at us struggling to raise and have time for a life with our children. while the fascist elite have sold us all down the river. we are all hippies now!!
That is just bullshit! Your story is a great example of how wrong things are. The REAL criminals need to pay up and go to prison. The system is fixed to serve the fat cat pricks at the top. I've also had enough!!!!!
The laws of the land should work for people, not against them. We've become a society where money is king and nothing else counts.
I feel for your pain and frustration, I know of several people that share similar stories with you and it makes me extremely pissed off at the corrupt system that has expanded into every State in the nation.
increasing automation means there are no more jobs. look at biblical prophecy! daniel2 the stone cut out without hands is the SILICON CHIP which grows into a great mountain that fills the whole earth: the WORLDWIDE WEB! this destroys Babylon (THE ENEMY). in Revelations we read "there shall be no more curse." in Genesis we read we were taken from the garden of paradise and CURSED TO WORK the ground. so increasing mass unemployment is here to stay. we need to reform our community life in that light. we are the new aristocracy!! the high society so WE DEMAND OUR PIECE OF THE PIE.
Jobs are becoming obsolete due to advances in technology. This should be a key issue with the OWS movement. If you acknowledge that this is happening, then any solution will help to establish economic fairness.
http://occupywallst.org/forum/jobs-are-becoming-obsolete-due-to-advances-in-tech/
so true,,, we have had increasing population and technology, and the convergence of the two has been very ugly for the labor force... in all fields. one example: tele-radiology allows indian doctors who can charge 10% of what an american doctor has to charge (to pay his lease or mortgage) have been displacing US radiologists... literally moving jobs to india due to our high cost of living/business operations.
That is NOT why unemployment skyrocketed during Bush's reign. Advances in technology may cut a certain amount of jobs, but it certainly isn't the cause of the mess we're in across the board. Bush and Co. are responsible for that, along with the presidents before him since and including Reagan.
It's contributed heavily to it, and it's definitely, imo, the main reason why the unemployment rate is still so high. Companies no longer need to increase human labor in order to increase output.
And somehow our government always can find the money to give to the military and defense, but it can't find the money to give true national health care to all, to create more jobs via green energy (it doesn't get nearly the subsidies that many other industries get), fixing infrastructure, creating new infrastructure, etc. It puts the money where it wants to or where it's been hired to.
And your opinion is wrong. It's not a mystery that unemployment skyrocketed during Bush 43s reign, when he invaded two countries, the housing market went crazy, all kinds of huge corporations running themselves in the ground and laying off employees while their top dogs get insane bonuses, and all kinds of other things came unglued. Blaming technology is being very shortsighted. If that's the case, then technology should have created high unemployment throughout history. Technology always will exist, but high unemployment doesn't.
We've reached a tipping point with our technology where it is eliminating jobs much faster than it's creating. I'm not a Bush fan, but our unemployment isn't being 'fixed' by Obama either. He actually tried to start a conversation about automation over the summer, but no one on either side of the aisle wanted to listen.
I'm with you. KILL technology!
Nope! Change the system to adapt!
Just what the buggy whip manufacturers said in the early 1900s.
Yes, but we've reached a tipping point now. Technology is eliminating jobs at a much higher rate than it's creating them, and that's going to accelerate.
Is this a bad thing? If those machines get us food faster is it more important to have more jobs or to lower the cost of the food because it doesn't take as much human work to get that to the rest of the people? Technology taking away jobs is good because it facilitates the processses and allows people to do other more valuable things than factory work. Creating jobs is a good thing in certain scenarios, but not a universal good.
No, it's a positive progression of our civilization. I agree with you. But, being that we're in a monetary based system, people have to have money to buy goods and services, and without 'jobs' they can't get money. The solution is to change our system to one that takes all of this into account.
I'm not sold on that one.
Well, credible sources agree with me: Forbes, Business Week, CNN, NY Times, CBS, PBS, numerous trade journals, etc.
In the news just this week: http://www.cityweekly.net/utah/blog-25-6720-university-of-utah-healthcare-to-lay-off-50-employees.html
“It’s always hard to reduce your workforce but the major point I would make is this is not economy driven this is efficiency driven,”
Great article from last month:
http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/12/what-if-this-is-the-future/
Hope you're joking.
very much so. It drives the industry I work in.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/30/arundhati-roy-interview Dam good read on the Occupy movement as seen through the eyes of the East and the Third world.
This lady spoke to Occupy Wall Street.
Never thought about all this till now http://www.youtube.com/user/LearnLiberty?v=KGPa5Ob-5Ps&feature=pyv&ad=8739327369&kw=ayn%20rand
now THAT is a clear definition of a position.
A few photos here http://edgeoforever.wordpress.com/2011/12/01/the-march-of-the-99/
Words of support from American history:
In a speech Robert Kennedy made to the young people of South Africa on their day of affirmation in 1966, Senator Kennedy said, “There is discrimination in this world, and slavery, and slaughter, and starvation. Governments repress their people; millions are trapped in poverty, while the nation grows rich and wealth is lavished on armaments everywhere. These are differing evils, but they are the common works of man. They reflect the imperfection of justice, the inadequacy of human compassion, our lack of sensibility towards the suffering of our fellows. But we can perhaps remember, even if only for a time, that those who live with us are our brothers, that they share with us the same short moment of life, that they seek as we do nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can. Surely this bond of common faith, this bond of common goal, can begin to teach us something. Surely we can learn at least to look at those around us as fellow men, and surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us, and to become in our own hearts brothers and countrymen once again.”
I count myself as being one of the underemployed, struggling to meet my mortgage payments while those that laid me and others off gave themselves raises. Please continue to provide a voice for us!
Steve M.
Will Occupy make a difference? Ocuppy must make a difference no one else is trying very hard
I cannot get additional information because I am not a facebook member, nor do I wish to become one because I don't want my private details sold. Can this please be taken into consideration moving forward?
Keep Up the Good Work. Keep the 1% guessing. Fair-ness.
its important to keep this actions going over the winter months, before the everything can explode again in spring. any plans to do an occupy central park? that would be something.
i've set up a new blog on direct democracy if you are interested: http://samplocracy.wordpress.com
Finally someone has the right thing to say about OWS http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJD8pZiRIzs&feature=player_embedded
An article on the interrelation of work and wealth that is worth reading and discussing: http://www.gegenstandpunkt.com/english/workandwealth/1-sec-1.html
What is economic fairness?
First we should help all the employees of unions to unionize! They too should have decent pay and benefits!!!
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Ideas -Protectionism instead of free trade
http://www.larouchepac.com
Senate Moves To Allow Military To Intern Americans Without Trial Allows U.S. Military to arrest American citizens in their own backyard without charge or trial
by Paul Joseph Watson
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=27910&fb_source=message
15 Mind-Blowing Facts About Wealth And Inequality In America. Information Clearing House, Grafiken über Einkommens- und Vermögensverteilung in den USA
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article25399.htm
http://www.pauljorion.com/blog/?p=11384
http://elboheme.blogspot.com/2010/05/die-wahren-ursachen-der-krise_12.html
Occupy and Labor come to each othr's rescue and in so doing, come to the rescue of the 99%. Hope to be there.
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Will Occupy Make a Difference?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4Xxj1FP0Jo&feature=feedu
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Economic Fairness! Hell Yea! And Brain smarts fairness. and talent fairness. and height fairness!!! I'm white, 5'8", can't run much or jump high, but damn-it I want to play in the NBA and make a million dollars a game! FAIRNESS is awsome!
Your analogy is laughably bad. You don't understand anything about income inequality. Go away.
So tell us all about income inequality will you? Income inequality seems like the logical result of people with different backgrounds, skills, and education pursuing different career paths in various industries and trades. So what?
well the question for me comes down to, does an investment banker or a lender really do that much more work than a farmer or a factory worker? Even if we really believe that they do more work, which seems to be a spurious claim at best, how do we decided mathematically how much more work that is? How can we decide what is deserved?
An investment banker does more work, because they wear suits and ties or business suits and skirts. Pffffffft!!
No. It's the logical result of people with an initial endowment of wealth using their money to influence the game in their favor.