The Fok News DKOS Group publishes a diary summary of Keith's opinion blog Fok News.
Keith delivered remarks at Cornell University. The video addressing our current labor struggle is here.
He begins by reading paragraph three of a house bill HR 1135, introduced by Mr. Jordan of Ohio, Mr. Scott of South Carolina, Mr. Garrett of New Jersey, Mr. Burton of Indiana, and Mr. Gohmert of Texas.
“Notwithstanding any other provision of law, no member of a family unit shall participate in the Food Stamp program at any time, that any able-bodied work eligible adult of such household is on strike as defined in the Labor Management Relations Act..."
This proposed legislation is the launching pad for Keith's commentary....
We should all be passing out at this point. Not even hidden in flowery legalese is a Republican measure that if passed by the House and somehow by the Senate, and then inexplicably not vetoed by the President, would – even more simply put – deny food stamps to any American worker, public or private, who has the audacity to go on strike.
and Keith continues to erupt in vintage special comment form.
It actually gets worse. Let me quote again from HR 1135. If a worker is already so abused and battered by our economic system, so failed by education, by industrialization, by international corporations, by outsourcing, by the greed of Wall Street, by Bernie Madoff and a million as-yet unidentified Bernie Madoffs, even – throwing a bone to the Conservative Paranoia Of The Month Club – even so failed because illegal alien terrorist atheist anarchist liberal socialist fascist communist immigrants have come in and taken all those good jobs like cleaning the deep-fryer at McDonald’s or the horse stalls at Lou Dobbs’ daughters’ favorite horse and country club – if an American, one of us is so failed by some part of the system that he’s got a job and he’s already on food stamps – and there are 42 MILLION of us on Food Stamps right now – when a strike occurs, these Congressional Republicans will not go all Ebenezer Scrooge on their ass – they will not actually take those food stamps away.
HR 1135 further states that
food stamps will continue, “If the household was eligible immediately prior to such strike. However, such family unit shall NOT receive an increased allotment as the result of a decrease in the income of the striking member or members of the household.”
The implications of this bill are stark. The corporate control of support for low income families as a union busting weapon is a brutal tactic.
In short, you want to go on strike, whether over unsafe work conditions or subsistence wages or forced unpaid overtime? Great. Prepare to starve, too.
We are threatening every low-income American, for whom the safety net is already way too narrow and way too aged, with a choice of their legal right to strike, or their moral right to eat food not cardboard.
Keith puts labor's battle for the common good of the worker in a historical context. The right to strike is the foundation of all the benefits that working people not take for granted, and it is the weapon that is most feared by the plutocracy.
the strike is inherently dangerous to the rich, and to the corporations who have brought this country to her knees, because it is the only defense the ordinary citizen has. It is perhaps the greatest progressive act – indeed the greatest progress – since the emancipation of the slaves – or at least it’s tied with votes for women.
Keith reminds us that a safe, fair, and humane workplace has been wrestled from the wealthy only because the power of labor to coerce concessions.
Mistake it not. Whether or not you’ve ever been in a union, you are benefiting, right now, from unions. The 40-hour week, the 8-hour day, holidays, overtime, rules that keep you from getting your fingers cut off, these didn’t happen because John D. Rockefeller said “Say Fellers, we’ve got enough money, let’s be nice to the little folks.” They did it because they were forced to. And they will keep doing it only because we keep forcing them to.
Keith also has a lengthy video segment on his college experience at Cornell.
and a question and answer session with the students.
Keith will soon be on Current TV in a nightly news format, but until then we can get our Kieth fix from FOK News.