Kos dismisses transit strike as "regional issue"

[iconoclastNYC]

I'm sorry Kos but this isn't just a regional issue. I know you say it's fascinating but you might have taken the time to note that solidarity with organized labor has been a big part of what made the Democratic party succesful in the past.



from my blog:

-------

It’s a sad state of affairs when the most important labor action in decades is dismissed by the largest liberal blog as a ‘regional issue’. The trade of a pro-baseball player gets equal mention but not dismissed as a ‘regional issue.’

Even liberal bloggers are distancing themselves from organized labor. Nothing more needs to be said of the DLC’s effect on our party.

[aquart]

1. Exactly. They. do. not. get. it.

[alkaline9]

2. if this is a "regional issue" then so was katrina...

Good luck to those union workers holding fast in the cold on the picket lines! Give 'em hell!

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

3. For The Record, I'm Really Starting To Take Issue With The

lockstepping notions being thrown around by some so readily here.

There are NO issues that every liberal has to be in solidarity with. None. That's what makes us a great party. I'll be damned if I'm expected to say "yay, go strikers" for every strike always no matter what and if I don't lockstep risk being called a moderate. That on its face is absurd. We are free thinkers. Every damn one of us has every right to explore each strike on its merits and make our own informed and personal decision/opinion on how we feel about a certain strike. That doesn't make them not liberal if they think a strike or two are unreasonable.

I hate lockstepping demands, but I also know the fact that this attitude shown by some here is upsetting me, that it doesn't mean I'm asking you to stop presenting it. That's your right.

[RB TexLa]

6. It's been getting bad

On one of the strike threads there was someone saying something to the effect of "some of these posters must be in management" and went on to say how they would never admit it. Guess now you can't be on DU if you are not in lockstep and you have to worry about where you are employed and where in the organizational chain you are. I'm self-employed I wonder if I have to worry about a lynch mob coming for me?

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

8. You're generalizing too, good sir (or maam, didn't check)

You can be on DU just fine. There are a zillion other threads that aren't lockstepping in nature, and the ones that are by no means carry all posters on DU in them.

DU is a big place, the best on the web, and has many different topics to choose from to make you feel at home :)

Don't sweat those asking for your lockstep approval. Just move on to a thread you feel better about :)

[RB TexLa]

11. No worries

"Don't sweat those asking for your lockstep approval."

Oh I don't, I have yet to find anyone who agrees with me on everything and if I did I'd probably find conversing with them pretty boring. :)

Just agreeing with your sentiment.

[madfloridian]

7. Lockstepping, my hind foot. Your attitude upsets me a lot.

When a party that calls itself Democratic, and a blogger that stands on the left side of the dial....are marginalizing a union movement then Houston we got big problems.

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

10. Hi Madfloridian

My issue wasn't with that. It was with a specific quote of the OP that has since been edited to be far less offensive.

It was one of the opening lines, saying in esssence that You have to have solidarity with labor to call yourself a liberal, period.

Sorry, but that's lockstepping if I've ever seen it. That quote itself is what my post was in reply to. Course, now that quote is gone, but I will let my reply stand since the OP knows its context :)

[iconoclastNYC]

16. What quote are you talking about? N/T

[benddem]

22. they aren't marginalizing a union activity

it is hard for me in rural Oregon to get exorcised about the issue. I am angry with the mayor for not negotiating and crying about the money being lost...but it is not something on my mind every minute. If I lived in NY I'd be picketing.

[iconoclastNYC]

32. Kos responded to my email.

I should have been a little more careful with my message, because it invited a snarky little reply. Of course if he coudln't have replied with something snarky he probably woudln't have replied at all.

To: [e-mail]
Subject: I regret that you dismiss the TWU strike as a "regional issue"

And the fact that you go on to mention the latest development in
pro-sports really makes you seem kinda hypocritical.

His reply:

Last time I checked, MLB was a national league.

[Name removed]

36. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Name removed]

38. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[rinsd]

40. You called him a hypocrite.....

If that is being civil to you, I would suggest some lessons in basic manners.

What did you think your response would be?

[iconoclastNYC]

41. Hypocrite is what I think he was being

It's not an ad hominem like "jerk" , which is what you called me. His response was a lot classier than yours.

I didn't expect a response. If i hadn't opened the door for his snide reply I woudln't have got one.

[iconoclastNYC]

13. Did I say he wasn't a liberal.

Good luck with the strawman.

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

17. Did I say you did?

You know you edited your post, and you know that the original line stated something close to "if you don't have solidarity with organized labor you aren't a liberal"

That is very close to what it said, and that is what I responded to.

Thanks.

[Name removed]

18. Deleted sub-thread

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[LincolnMcGrath]

27. Post an example of an 'unreasonable strike'

[katinmn]

4. I'm looking for statements of solidarity from other unions

Have you seen any?

[madfloridian]

5. New Dems/DLC effect for sure.

This group in the late 80s deliberately determined to stop worrying about standing up for labor. New Dems network, NDN, is the fundraising arm, the PAC, for the DLC. Simon Rosenberg heads it, and he ran for chair. Many bloggers are associated with his media network NPI.

Simon Rosenberg, the former field director for the DLC who directs the New Democrat Network, a spin-off political action committee, says, "We're trying to raise money to help them lessen their reliance on traditional interest groups in the Democratic Party. In that way," he adds, "they are ideologically freed, frankly, from taking positions that make it difficult for Democrats to win."

A Business-Led Party

Freeing Democrats from being, well, Democrats has been the Democratic Leadership Council's mission since its founding 16 years ago by Al Gore, Chuck Robb, and a handful of other conservative, mostly southern Dems as a rump faction of disaffected elected officials and party activists. Producing and directing the DLC is Al From, its founder and CEO, who's been the leader, visionary, and energizing force behind the New Democrat movement since Day One. A veteran of the Carter White House and Capitol Hill, where he'd worked for Louisiana Representative Gillis Long and served as executive director of the House Democratic Caucus, From helped build the Committee on Party Effectiveness, a forerunner of the DLC, in the early 1980s. To From, a key rationale for establishing the DLC in those days was to protect the Democrats' eroding bastion in the South against mounting Republican gains, and indeed one of the DLC's chief projects in the 1980s was to create and promote the Super Tuesday primary across the South, aimed at enhancing the clout of southern Dems in selecting presidential candidates.

Privately funded and operating as an extraparty organization without official Democratic sanction, and calling themselves "New Democrats," the DLC sought nothing less than the miraculous: the transubstantiation of America's oldest political party. Though the DLC painted itself using the palette of the liberal left--as "an effort to revive the Democratic Party's progressive tradition," with New Democrats being the "trustees of the real tradition of the Democratic Party"--its mission was far more confrontational. With few resources, and taking heavy flak from the big guns of the Democratic left, the DLC proclaimed its intention, Mighty Mouse–style, to rescue the Democratic Party from the influence of 1960s-era activists and the AFL-CIO, to ease its identification with hot-button social issues, and, perhaps most centrally, to reinvent the party as one pledged to fiscal restraint, less government, and a probusiness, pro–free market outlook.

It's hard to argue that they haven't succeeded.

http://www.prospect.org/print/V12/7/dreyfuss-r.html

[Mass]

9. Not kos - kos is the prototype of the blogger - no time for issues

the thougher you talk , the better you are as long as you criticize Bush.

This is how we have had months of bloggers applauding Lou Dobbs, Pat Buchanan, Ron Paul, ... Sure, they have the right position on Iraq (or at least they end on the right side of the issue), so they must be fine. Who cares about the rest!:sarcasm:

I have switched from kos to people like Sirota. At least, they know the important questions.

(but thanks for the Rosenberg quote: It did not know it).

[leftstreet]

12. They'll have us labeled "subversive" for supporting labor

The DLC needs to register and start its own party. Give the DNC back to labor. Then let the voters decide.

[madfloridian]

15. Actually in effect, I think they already have started their own party.

:think:

[Stephanie]

14. Kos should consider how much MONEY Bloomberg has given to repugs

He donated MILLIONS to the RNC convention last year - where I noticed Markos blogging away on a rundown couch at the Tank, reporting on the hundreds of protestors who were getting arrested outside. He might considered that they were being jailed at the facility RENTED BY the RNC, using dough contributed by Bloomberg and other corporate moneybags. Bloomberg is not the benign nonentity he might appear to be. He is financing BushCO and a win for him is a win for THEM.

[LittleClarkie]

19. Kos is a dick

who tends to alienate as many people as he befriends.

[jonnyblitz]

24. he sure doesn't care for anti-war protesters, that's for sure. nt

[LittleClarkie]

26. Except that he referred to "hippy dippy" types

Did you mean something different than you typed. Because he insulted "hippies" on his site as well, and also feminists.

[jonnyblitz]

28. OOOPs...yup i did a major typo..i left the computer and saw

what i mis-typed when i came back. my bad!! i corrected it. :hi:

[goodhue]

20. Kos apparently unaware of 2004 Twin Cities 41-day transit strike

Exactly the same pattern of management tyring to break union.

http://news.minnesota.publicradio.org/features/2004/04/13_hughesa_strikesettle/

Edit: By same pattern I refer to imposition of 2-tier system.

[goodhue]

25. Not to mention the Los Angeles transit strike of 2000

East Coast, West Coast, Mid West. All my favotire regions!

[bpilgrim]

21. the national is the sum of its regional parts

is he really that strict :shrug:

peace

[Jed Dilligan]

23. Sounds to me like someone is sick of

whatever happens in New York being "national news," and everything else being a regional issue.

[robbedvoter]

29. Sorry Jed. Politically active union attacked by the GOP even in NYC

it's kinda relevant to your life too. Do you by any chance oppose the war in Iraq? Cuz they do:

It's at least in part political retaliation, more power grab by the BFEE.

[Jed Dilligan]

42. I'm not anti-labor, I support the strike

I just tend to demote the importance of anything happening in New York, because I think the city's importance is over-emphasized in most people's minds.

[robbedvoter]

45. Your problem with NYC is duly noted. Doesn't make this event less

significant for this particular area of slippage into fascism. (as it's the one strike going on in the country at the present)

[Beelzebud]

31. No it sounds like someone that consistantly ignores labor issues.

KOS is horrible when it comes to speaking about the average working Democrats.

Without the support of the labor unions the Dems are lost...

[Jed Dilligan]

43. Wouldn't know

I never got into reading Kos. I only just got broadband, and it takes too long to load with dialup--end of story.

[Beelzebud]

30. Kos is ok, but mostly CLUELESS about average working Americans.

[alcibiades_mystery]

33. The most important labor action in decades?

Not really. That would have been the UPS strike, against which this strike pales.

Anyway.

[LittleClarkie]

34. Even so, the contrast between thinking NY baseball is a national issue

while a NY strike is not, just shows a weird set of priorities, and Kos' usual case of immaturity. He seems to be clueless as to how he comes across sometimes. And I don't think he realizes that his site is as much the people going there as it is him. In fact, I'd wager it's the individual diaries that make the site, not his commentary.

I often ignore him and head straight for them. If all that's left after a while is Kossack dittoheads, the place will be the lesser for it.

[rinsd]

35. Stirring up shit about nothing....

....Kos decided he did not wish to write about and then pointed you to a get source for info about it. What is the problem?

"It’s a sad state of affairs when the most important labor action in decades"

Can the hyperbole. While important, this is just one of many battles that have been fought, are being fought and will be fought in the future. The biggest battle in recent times was the grocery strike here in SoCal.

[iconoclastNYC]

37. Oh really?

Were 7,000,000 people daily affected by that strike? Somehow I doubt people went hungry. New Yorkers are having to walk miles to work here and yet a majority still supports the strikers.

Was that strike centered in the largest media market in the country?

Did the union get fined $1,000,000 a day?

Were the workers being fined two days pay for each day off the job?

This is one of the most important labor actions in decades. Someone mentioned the UPS strike, and that does sound like it was more important still it was national and UPS is hugely important to the economy, but don't say that this is only a local story is bullshit.

[rinsd]

39. In otherwords,. NY's self importance is a bigger deal....

"This is one of the most important labor actions in decades."

Not it's not. The grocer strike had more to do with the two tier benefits AND pay system. Same with UPS.

"New Yorkers are having to walk miles to work here and yet a majority still supports the strikers."

Show me a poll that says that that hasn't been voted on by DU.

"Were 7,000,000 people daily affected by that strike?"

In that way this strike is? No. But this strike won't last 3 months either.

While I think this is a PR disaster waiting to happen, I support thsi strike but the self centerness of this being THE BIGGEST THING is obnoxious. As was your response, blog post and e-mail to Kos. I'm not a big fan but bloggers are supposed to decide what they feel like writing about. If he felt Gilliard was doing a good job with coverage so be it.

[Jed Dilligan]

44. Yeah, you nailed it.

A lot of important labor actions go down all the time--some of the most important overseas.

Some of the reaction here is not a referendum on organized labor. It's a referendum on New York thinking it's the center of the universe and that anyone who doesn't live there, wants to.