Ohio State Senator Nina Turner Bernin Down the House at Morehouse College

JayRaye

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Wednesday February 17, 2016 · 7:25 PM PST

2016/02/17 · 19:25

Screen_Shot_2016-02-17_at_8.00.46_PM.png — Nina Turner at Rally for Bernie Sanders, Morehouse College, February 16, 2016

“The Mosaic of Humanity: we are better together!”

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Killer Mike:

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Bernie Sanders at Morehouse:

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Morehouse College Students -Step Routine At Bernie Sanders Rally

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Dixie Chicks' Natalie Maines flips off Ted Cruz before kicking off first tour in 10 years

Leslie Salzillo

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Tuesday January 26, 2016 · 4:29 PM PST

2016/01/26 · 16:29

RNPS IMAGES OF THE YEAR 2007 - ENTERTAINMENT - Dixie Chicks Emily Robison (L) and Martie Maguire (R) joke with Natalie Maines during their performance at the opening night of the Nokia Theatre L.A. Live in Los Angeles October 18, 2007. REUTERS/Mario Anzuo

Outspoken musician and activist Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks once stated during a 2003 World Tour that she was basically ashamed to be from the same state as then-president George W. Bush. The backlash from her statement was incredible. The well-spun music of the multi-platinum Grammy winning trio was immediately pulled from most radio stations. The all-female band was lambasted by the media, conservative pundits, and disloyal country music fans. More horrendously, all three received death threats for practicing their freedom of speech. The whole experience took a toll on the group (Natalie Maines, Emily Robison and Martie Maguire), and years later they decided to take a hiatus from touring together.

Maines made her statement in 2003, just after the Bush/Cheney administration invaded Iraq causing the mass murder of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians and nearly 5,000 American troops. She was, of course, was later redeemed.

This experience did not silence the anti-war activist who today continues to speak her mind and truth as she flies solo. Her latest comment on Twitter lashes out at Texas senator and GOP presidential candidate, Ted Cruz. By way of Living Blue In Texas and Ashley Iasimone with Billboard Magazine, Maines tweets:

“Just so you know....I'm ashamed Ted Cruz is from America,” Maines wrote on Twitter late Saturday night (Jan. 23).

With her tweet she posted side-by-side images of former President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Cruz.

Just so you know....I'm ashamed Ted Cruz is from America;) pic.twitter.com/QU39ERnAzN
— Natalie Maines (@1NatalieMaines) January 24, 2016

Maines quotes President Eisenhower:

“I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity,” —President Eisenhower

She then compares Eisenhower’s quote a recent Ted Cruz statement:

“We will carpet bomb them into oblivion. I don’t know if sand can glow in the dark, but we’re going to find out.” —Ted Cruz

So she makes her point well well. Maines then tweets another jab at Cruz questioning his national citizenship:

“I stand corrected...Just so you know, I'm ashamed Ted Cruz claims to be American,”

I stand corrected...Just so you know, I'm ashamed Ted Cruz claims to be American. pic.twitter.com/JUltNImOXH
— Natalie Maines (@1NatalieMaines) January 24, 2016

The main difference between Maines’ 2003 statement against George W. Bush, and her 2016 tweets against Ted Cruz is that the latter is being met with great applause now, instead of years later.

Some might not remember that one of the mega networks that axed the Dixie Chicks from hundreds of their radio stations in 2003 is iHeart (formerly known as Clear Channel). iHeart carries “hate radio” programs such as The Rush Limbaugh Show (Glenn Beck, Michael Savage…) In a karmic twist, Rush Limbaugh is now being boycotted and has lost thousands of sponsors and a good number of radio stations. As for iHeart—they have been billions in debt and now Limbaugh’s contract is up and iHeart faces bankruptcy. Sometimes we get to see good override bad; it’s a beautiful thing. When it comes to dealing with right-wing, warmongering, sexist, bigots, Natalie Maines and the Dixie Chicks are simply, “Not Ready To Make Nice.”

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Lastly, on a happy note, the Dixie Chicks will be reuniting for a new 2016 world tour that begins June 1. Tickets are reportedly going off the charts. It’s no wonder. They are remarkably talented, resilient, and courageous.

Workers Who Stood Together Weren’t Railroaded

Union Matters

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Friday January 22, 2016 · 7:14 AM PST

2016/01/22 · 07:14

Last week, a rare thing happened: Some old guys challenged a big corporation and won.

They actually got some justice.

A judge said the corporation had to pay for at least part of the health benefits that it had pledged to provide for the workers.

Here’s what happened. The workers made train cars for Freightcar America in Johnstown, Pa., until 2008, when the corporation closed their plant. Like many corporations, Freightcar thought that once it had tossed the workers aside, it would be fine to shirk all of its obligations to them as well.

So in 2013, Freightcar informed them that it would break its pledge to fund their health plans. It would, in fact, completely eliminate the benefits.

Workers everywhere are at the mercy of employers like Freightcar, whose goal is profit and shareholder satisfaction, not worker well-being or community welfare. In the vast majority of cases like this when corporations renege on promises to employees, workers are powerless.

Not this time, though. These workers had long ago banded together and joined a union, the United Steelworkers (USW). They found power in speaking as a group. It got them better wages and benefits.

And when Freightcar told them it planned to cancel their health benefits, the USW law department sued. And since this story has a happy ending, you know who won.

That’s the power of collective bargaining. And that’s why the 1 percent hates unions so much and is so intent on killing them.

Bernie volunteers, a bottom up grassroots movement

Shockwave

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Saturday January 16, 2016 · 11:29 AM PST

2016/01/16 · 11:29

Bernie light brigade over the 405 at the Burbank overpass

Check out the video below to get an idea of the action;

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I’ve been involved with many Honks for Bernie specially at the Sepulveda and Ventura intersection across from the Sherman Oaks Galleria one of the busiest intersections in Los Angeles and I can tell that the number of honks has increased. The first time we did it I diaried about it; The political revolution comes to Sepulveda and Ventura.

Here we are at the honk last Wednesday.

Los Angeles is all about commuting and traffic so it makes sense to do these events.

This is all organized by volunteers. When we do these events we also organize phonebanking parties, Nevada canvassing trips and all sorts of events like the Rose Parade March. And we flyer and give bumper stickers and have fun with other Berners and recruit new ones.

Phonebanking for Bernie into Nevada at one of the last cyber cafes

I have never seen such enthusiasm for a political candidate. Bernie has changed the way things function in politics and I believe the movement has legs beyond next November. What has to be done in all the issues, from Single Payer to money out of politics and from a new Glass-Steagall to no more being the world cop will happen if the growing grassroots movement continues the political revolution inspired by Bernie.

And one day, all cars in Los Angeles will be electrical and powered by renewable energy. Since Bernie understands that global warming is one of the biggest threats we ever faced, that day will be sooner than otherwise.

Labor for Bernie: "We're Ready to Kick Ass for the Working Class"

JayRaye

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Thursday January 07, 2016 · 6:22 PM PST

2016/01/07 · 18:22

The Bernie Bus, National Nurses United — The Union Rolls on for Bernie in Big Red Bus!

Just got off a conference call with Labor for Bernie.

Each one of these calls is more inspiring than the last. We heard from representatives from Communication Workers of America, from National Nurses United, and others.

Well, this is exciting news indeed! The Nurses have headed out in a big red bus, on tour for Bernie Sanders. Right now they are in Las Vegas. I am sooo jealous!

Press Release:

Nurses to Send Off the #BernieBus from Los Angeles

National Nurses United Press Release, 1/5/16

Contact Information | Media Center

Headed to Early Voting States, Nevada and Iowa

‘The Most Trusted Profession Trusts Bernie’. If voters in the early primary states have not yet seen that message now posted on select billboards in states like Nevada and Iowa, they’ll soon be able to see it rolling by on wheels. The bus will bring nurses to meet with community groups, students, and other supporters and voters.

Joined by Glendale area nurses, National Nurses United, the first national labor organization to endorse Sen. Bernie Sanders for President, will kick off a national bus campaign for Bernie Sanders Tuesday morning from Glendale, headed first to Nevada.

What:             Kickoff of Nurses’ #BernieBus

When:            Tuesday, January 5, 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

Where:           Glendale Memorial Hospital, on Laurel between Central and Brand, adjacent to hospital at 1420 S. Central Ave., Glendale

“Bernie Sanders best represents nurses’ values of caring, compassion and community,” said NNU Co-President Deborah Burger, RN, who will accompany the bus from Los Angeles to its first stop in Las Vegas. “The 440,000 people who have attended Bernie’s rallies and the record number of individual donors demonstrate that Bernie is building a broad campaign of supporters ready for the fundamental reform we need to heal America. That’s the message we’ll carry across America on the #BernieBus.”

Vann R Newkirk II

Community

Friday December 11, 2015 · 11:38 AM PST

2015/12/11 · 11:38

NEW YORK, NY - DECEMBER 11: Erica Garner, daughter of Eric Garner, leads a march of people protesting the Staten Island, New York grand jury's decision not to indict a police officer involved in the chokehold death of Eric Garner in July, on December 11

Erica Garner, the 25-year-old daughter of Eric Garner left behind when he died in a police choke hold last year, is considering a congressional run to challenge former Staten Island District Attorney Daniel M. Donovan, Jr. Donovan is mostly known for his failure to indict the officers involved in Eric Garner’s death, which was caught on video. Garner’s death and the subsequent failure to indict his killers had surprisingly little impact on Donovan’s campaign in New York’s 11th District’s special election this year to replace Michael Grimm, who pleaded guilty to tax fraud and resigned.

Rep. Donovan, a Republican, is running for re-election next year, with no known Democratic contenders as of yet. Erica Garner would be the first if she chose to pursue. The New York Post reports:

“I’m considering [running],” [Garner] told The Post Thursday after a speech on criminal-justice issues.

[...]

Erica Garner criticized Donovan’s political rise.

“He’s been promoted,” she said. “He had a platform off my dad’s dead body to run for Congress, and that’s why he did it. It was a political move.”

Donovan declined to comment.

He’s running for re-election next year in the 11th Congressional District that covers Staten Island and parts of Brooklyn.

No other potential Democratic challengers have emerged.

Local elected officials urged Garner to meet with politicians, stake out a campaign platform and discuss a strategy if she wants to move forward.

Regardless of chances, a potential Garner run would certainly force Donovan to answer questions about the case and subsequent failure to indict that did not bother his special election campaign at all. As the records of the grand jury have been sealed, these are questions for which Erica Garner and the greater community in Staten Island deserve answers.

Hellraisers Journal: Moving On

JayRaye

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Sunday November 08, 2015 · 12:11 PM PST

2015/11/08 · 12:11

Dear Readers of Hellraisers,

This new system is way to complicated for yours truly to master.

Hellraisers will therefore be moving to a new site and will publish each day at about the same time.

One of the prime directives of my life has always been: “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it.” So why a system, so easy to use that even someone like me could use it, had to be changed...well I’ll leave that to the powers-that-be to answer.

Hellraisers Journal can now be found here:

caucus99percent.com/…

Thanks to all of you Fellow Hellraisers for your support over the past two years and eight months. I’m proud to say that Hellraisers has never missed a single day!

JayRaye

Hellraisers Journal: Labor & the Law- "That Walsh Report" from the International Socialist Review

JayRaye

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Saturday November 07, 2015 · 8:50 AM PST

2015/11/07 · 08:50

You ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age. Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
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Sunday November 7, 1915
From the International Socialist Review: Labor & the Law and "That Walsh Report"

From the November edition of the Review:

THAT WALSH REPORT

Frank P Walsh
`````

This is our second article on the report of the United States Commission oh Industrial Relations. Here's plain talk. What we do here is tell in street car talk, railroad track talk, what the Commission found while it went traveling all over these United States. It was a three years' job. There were nine commissioners. They spent about a half million dollars. They took a lot of testimony. They had a lot of reporters, detectives, investigators. When they got through in August, 1915, they were split into three factions. They started out to find why this country is torn up all the time with strikes, lock-outs, boycotts, riots and fighting in fields, factories and workshops. They ended up with three different explanations from three different factions. Chairman Frank P. Walsh, a Kansas City lawyer, signed his name with three trade union officers to a report known as the Walsh Report. Here are some of the high points of it. -----
[Continued below.]

JayRaye

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Friday November 06, 2015 · 11:00 AM PST

2015/11/06 · 11:00

You ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age. Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones

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Monday November 6, 1905
From the Montana News: Industrial Workers of the World-Preamble and Constitution

The Industrial Unionist, meeting in Convention in Chicago during late June and early July earlier this year, did establish a new labor organization based on the principle of class struggle and industrial unionism. In its October 11th edition, the Montana News, official organ of the Montana Socialist Party, published the Preamble and Constitution of the newly founded Industrial Workers of the World.

Our readers will find the entire text of the "Industrial Union Constitution" republished below the fold.

JayRaye

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Thursday November 05, 2015 · 11:00 AM PST

2015/11/05 · 11:00

You ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age. Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones

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Sunday November 5, 1905
From the Montana News: "The I. W. W. Asks For Strike Funds"

The Montana News, published in Helena, will now become the official organ of the Socialist Party in that great state. So it was reported in the October 11th edition. That same edition carried a plea from the Industrial Workers of World for the newly organized Stogie Makers of Cleveland, Ohio.

The I. W. W. was founded only last summer and is already active on the ground organizing workers who the American Federation of Labor has previously left unorganized. The Stogie Makers were one such group left out on their own by the "aristocratic" International Union of Cigar Makers.

The I. W. W. officers describe how the strike in Cleveland began:

Immediately upon learning of the organization of the employees being perfected, the manufacturers organized. Their first move was to engage, what they termed apprentices, The members of the union counteracted this move by taking in the apprentices, most of whom were over twenty and thirty years of age. The manufacturers continued engaging and breaking in more apprentices, until they thought they had enough to begin war against their older employees, by establishing a blacklist. Employees quitting their jobs, or discharged, could not get employment in another establishment.
Finally the union was forced to take action....The members were forced to either strike when the employers were the least prepared or allow their organization to be destroyed piece-meal; they chose the former.

This same issue of the News also published the entire constitution of the Industrial Workers of the World which we will republish in full in tomorrow's issue of Hellraisers. Read More

Hellraisers Journal: Mary Antin on poverty of garment workers: "I have seen babies fed sour milk."

JayRaye

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Wednesday November 04, 2015 · 11:00 AM PST

2015/11/04 · 11:00

You ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age. Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones

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Thursday November 4, 1915
From the Chicago Day Book: Author Mary Antin Speaks at Strikers' Meeting

We Shall Fight Until We Win, ISR, Nov 1915, Chicago ACW Strike

The Day Book of November 1st described a speech given at a strikers' meeting by Mary Antin, author of "The Promised Land." The meeting was held at Cohan's Grand Opera house on Sunday, October 31st, and was sponsored by Ellen Gates Starr of Hull House and other prominent Chicago citizens in support of the Great Garment Workers Strike now ongoing in that city. During her speech, Mary Antin described her own experience growing up on the starvation wages of a garment worker:

I am not a garment worker, but I know the garment workers. Not many years ago I watched my older sister in the west end of New York. I stood at the door and saw her come home and pay out her little wages to our mother. I sat with the family around a table trying to figure out how to make it go around. I have seen babies fed sour milk when they should have had sweet milk.
No, I am not a garment worker, but I know them. I was kept out of school because wages of the garment trade would not leave enough for books for me. Later I learned to read and write on the wages of a garment worker. I am not an outsider.

The Day Book of November 2nd condemned the one-sided coverage of the Garment Workers Strike by the Chicago Daily Tribune:

The most sinister newspaper trickery foisted on the people of Chicago in recent days can be found on the pages of the Chicago Tribune for last Saturday, last Sunday and today. Two or three more samples of poisoned news such as the Tribune has carried on the police handling of the garment strike and the Tribune will go into a class with the Hearst papers. Already the feeling against it has spread a good deal farther than labor union circles and the realm of club women and social workers.
It is clear to people who do their own thinking why the Tribune should use its own columns to protect bankers, department stores and its own school land leasehold. It is not so clear why any editor or publisher over at the Tribune office should join hands with Herman Schuettler, acting police chief, and give Schuettler free space to run a campaign of misrepresentation.

JayRaye

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Tuesday November 03, 2015 · 11:00 AM PST

2015/11/03 · 11:00

You ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age. Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones

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Wednesday November 3, 1915
From the International Socialist Review: "The Garment Workers' Strike"

Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, emblem

From this month's edition of the Review comes an illustrated article on the Great Garment Workers' strike now being fought to a finish by the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America in the city of Chicago. We find a photograph of a strikers' parade, led by young women, one bearing a sign that proclaims: "We Shall Fight Until We Win." This sign was carried, along with others equally militant, as the strikers marched through the Loop District on October 12th.

Other photographs document the starvation wages that the workers receive for long hours of work. On the back of those pay envelopes is the admonition from their employers: "TO SAVE IS PRUDENT." This reminds of the line from the I. W. W. tune: "If I didn't eat, I'd have money to burn."

In another set of photographs, the Chicago police can be seen bravely maintaining law and order on behalf their masters, the Manufactures' Association.

The article ends with a credit to the courage and tenacity of the Chicago Garment Strikers:

The splendid spirit of the strikers shows no signs of weakening.

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Ohio State Senator Nina Turner Bernin Down the House at Morehouse College

Dixie Chicks' Natalie Maines flips off Ted Cruz before kicking off first tour in 10 years

Workers Who Stood Together Weren’t Railroaded

Bernie volunteers, a bottom up grassroots movement

Labor for Bernie: "We're Ready to Kick Ass for the Working Class"

Eric Garner's daughter may challenge re-election campaign of the man who let his killers walk free

Hellraisers Journal: Moving On

Hellraisers Journal: Labor & the Law- "That Walsh Report" from the International Socialist Review

Hellraisers Journal: The Original Preamble and Constitution of the Industrial Workers of the World

Hellraisers Journal: I. W. W. Asks for Strike Funds for Stogie Makers of Cleveland, Ohio

Hellraisers Journal: Mary Antin on poverty of garment workers: "I have seen babies fed sour milk."

Hellraisers Journal: Garment Workers-"Splendid spirit of the strikers shows no signs of weakening."