Meanwhile, in Other News
With some quiet backing by the United Food and Commercial Workers Union and the Service Employees International Union, among others, some 200 Wal-Mart employees in Florida have formed a self-help organization. Called the Wal-Mart Workers Association, the group is agitating, fairly gently, for better wages, benefits, and insurance against cut hours.
As an advocate for a reinvigorated labor movement, I think this is good news. It indicates that the private unions are listening to feedback from their members, and seeking to really grow the movement rather than pillage from each other. It also indicates that they've shifted their approach for unionizing Wal-Mart to one that is led by Wal-Mart employees themselves. As I've argued previously, such a shift is probably necessary for any advancement towards a true Ownership Society.
posted by Tom Strong @ 11:56 PM
7 comments
7 Comments:
oh, i know i am through with this blog now. you have added "i hate bush, and republicans, but claimt o be one" Dennis sanders. and you call yourself a centrist. is he your affirmative action hire? lol.
please, he is more liberal than stewart. i had disagreements with stewart, but who he has been adding to the blog only confirmed my worst thoughts. tom strong is a few words short fo being as bad as oliver willis and kos. dennis sanders, the gay preacher, who does nto support a single republican policy? just because people claim to be centrists does nto make them that.
dennis sanders??? are you serious/ well i can see tom strong thinking its a great ides, but i am dissapointed in stewart.
centrists?
every poster on here is anti war, their personal blogs spend more time attackig Bush for the silliest things- not policy.
centrists??
you have proven to me that centrists are liberals who dont want to admit it.
you would have someone at least to the right of those on here, if you were a genuine centrists.
ok, i will admit amba may be a reasonable person.
sanders?? wow.
Sean,
What do you think "centrist" means?
What I think "centrist" means is someone who, no matter what their personal political beliefs are, thinks their is wisdom to be found in that dim area between what you think and what I think. That each of us has eyes and can see part of the truth, but are limited in our total perspective.
As a result, I don't really see a strong difference between being a "centrist" and being a "liberal". Nor do I see any contradiction between being a "centrist" and being a "conservative". I do think that being a centrist requires some openness towards all political persuasions, as well as a willingness to acknowledge that one's own perspective may frequently be wrong or incomplete.
However, I do not think that centrists must always seek to please partisans on both sides, or to find "neutral" ground. Such an approach to centrism is to me, weak and inherently untenable.
So yes, I am a liberal, and yes, I am critical of the Bush Administration. But you know what? A great number of people have been quite critical of the Bush Administration lately, including a growing amount of self-identified Republicans. If one cannot criticize the Bush Administration, even harshly, and remain a centrist in your eyes, then I would suggest your concept of centrism requires some further explanation.
Okay, so why isn't the UFCW targeting Target? Why is it "Wal-Mart bad, Target good"? They are both aggressively non-union.
Sean,
What amazes me about you is I know your politics pretty well. You're a conservative libertarian (most of the time). The funny thing is, as a libertarian, you should have a lot of issues with Bush (who is no libertarian), but instead you go out of your way to act like a lap dog--you can't even bring yourself to admit that maybe, just maybe the federal government was a little slow in responding to Katrina. I've never once heard you criticize the administration. That's just weird.
I invited people to write on this blog not because I whole-heartedly agree with everything they say, but because they are all willing to actually think about an issue and debate it--instead of using their intellect to come up with new ways to spin.
That's all I have time to say. Sorry you don't like the new format.
Scott,
I think the reason is pretty simple -- Wal-Mart is the biggest employer in the nation. Target isn't.
I don't mean to pick on Wal-Mart other than that - I don't think they're evil or anything like that. I do think that a resurgent and transformed labor movement would be good for the working poor, the economy, and the world; and I think such a resurgence must begin with the unionization of the world's biggest company.
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