We’re all in this together
Wow. What a crazy week. I feel a profound responsibility to keep people informed about what’s happening in Michigan. This week we appear to have succeeded, even if only a little. Our coverage of the Right to Work for Less rally in Lansing, Michigan has been picked up nationally by the New York Times news blog, Salon, Forbes, Little Green Footballs, Breitbart.com, and Twichy.com.
It’s bad enough that corporatist tea party Republicans that have taken over our state and shaped it into something completely unrecognizable. But they also attempted to distract the national conversation away from what they have done to organized labor and workers in Michigan, the birth place of labor unions in this country. Instead, they tried to take the dumbass behavior of a handful of frightened and angry workers and portray the thousands and thousands of caring, thoughtful Michiganders as if they were thugs and criminals.
Teachers. Construction workers. Government employees. Nurses. The men and women that build our cars, drive our trucks, serve our food, and clean our hotel rooms. Our family members, our neighbors, and our friends. The people that educate our children. The people that care for our aging parents and injured children. The people that make our water drinkable and that drive our city buses.
Our political opponents have demonized these people as if they were nothing more than street criminals, parasitically sucking the lifeblood from our state.
This week at Eclectablog, we pushed back against that false and offensive narrative and pulled back the curtain just a bit to show the hypocrisy, greed and deceit being displayed by the anti-union forces allied against us.
I’m proud of that.
So, to my union brothers and sisters, I say this: I will continue to fight for your rights and for your rightful place in society. Never, ever let the bastards get you down and never compromise your values.
The battle is never completely won, of course.
But neither is it ever completely lost.
Solidarity.
