by jstupec, posted on Monday, October 8th, 2012 at 1:54 pm
The strike is now over but I wanted to submit this to show what the strikers went through. They are heroes.
On Friday, Oct 1, I protested with the Walmart warehouse workers in Elwood, Illinois. I am with Jobs with Justice of Northern Illinois and we were there to show support for workers who are in just such a position and need some moral support
to show they are not alone in their fight. Other unions also backed the strikers.
It was a typical rally with an off site location across from the gigantic warehouse where the contents of trailers are unloaded into the facility and are re-loaded for distribution to local Walmart stores. Several of the speakers were “strikers” who walked off the job after trying to deliver a grievance petition to their management and were ignored and fired from their jobs. They told of inhuman working conditions where the temperatures inside the trailers parked outside in the sun reach up to 130 degrees on summer days.
by Pam Verner, posted on Sunday, October 7th, 2012 at 3:42 pm
I was eight the day I grew up. I know that’s too young, really. But life is hard, and we all have to buck up and grow up someday. It’s just that some of us have to grow up when we’re younger than others. For me it was eight. I remember the moment. At age eight I found out the world is unfair and that terribly unfair circumstances can take away your life or the life of someone you love.
It was the middle of the night and I was sitting by myself on a folding chair placed along the wall of a long dark empty hallway outside the emergency room of our small community hospital. It was 1956. My mom was inside talking to the two doctors who had been wakened in the middle of the night to come to the ER to tend to me. I could hear voices coming from inside the room, but not words. I thought I could hear my mom crying. They were talking about me.
by jstupec, posted on Saturday, October 6th, 2012 at 11:43 pm
We had a very hot summer this year and recently I decided to repair damage to the lawn in front of my house. I’ve had some success with it recently even though I started with seeding the bare spots.
A week ago I was watering the newly seeded and, essentially, watching the grass grow. I still had places where I wished I would have put down more seeds but, alas, I was out of seed. I looked up and coming toward me was a family with a young boy (maybe 13 years old) and his father pulling a wagon with a young child in it followed by mom. I greeted the family and asked them if they had any grass seed for sale, anticipating the inevitable pitch for some fund raiser. He said they had no grass seed but did have some pop corn that would be a good alternative. I said I still had 3 boxes from previous fund drives but could I just give a donation? He said sure and the youngster in the lead come over wearing his boy scout shirt and said the drive was for funds for his troop. I gave him five dollars, he thanked me and they went on their way. Just an all American scene, no problem.
Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor and publisher of The Nation, talks with “Viewpoint” host Eliot Spitzer about what she would like to see happen if President Obama wins a second term.
“I think we need a peace and justice community to stand up and say, ‘We are not more secure with the escalation of drone wars or with the violation of civil liberties,'” vanden Heuvel says. She goes on to cite austerity measures that could be passed during an Obama second term in an effort to balance the budget as a major concern.
Jeff Faux (Economic Policy Institute): The similarity of positions and Obama’s refusal to explain the real causes of the crisis gave the debate to Romney
