Union News
One very prominent Bloomington citizen who is a long-time union supporter told me this morning that yesterday’s rally outside the Bloomingfoods on 6th Street rang a little too us-vs.-them-ish. This person said B-foods Board Chair Tim Clougher was portrayed by one or more speakers as something on the order of a mouthpiece for corporate America, a charge my source says is ridiculous.
“It seemed,” my source says, “that it was too confrontational.”
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Nevertheless, this source has advised B-foods general manager George Huntington that he should welcome the coming of a union. It would, my source says, simplify and streamline relations and negotiations with employees. He is, this person claims, taking the workplace complaints of pro-unionists personally.
Should 30 percent of B-foods employees sign organizing cards, a general election would be held in which the United Food & Commercial Workers Union Local 700 would have to gain a simple majority of voters to represent employees of the co-op.
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Seeking Hayden
The Chicago 7 — originally, 8 — was, in every sense of the word, a motley crew. The Mobe guys thought the Yippies were showboaters, the Yippies thought the Mobe guys were fussy old aunts, and Bobby Seale never really had much of anything to do with most of them.
This, then, was a group the feds and Mayor Richard J. Daley tried to pin an interstate conspiracy rap on. Naturally, the prosecutors lost.
Perhaps the most famous Chicago 7 (0r 8)-er turned out to be Tom Hayden, which, I suppose, would have crushed Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin. For, in reality, Hoffman and Rubin were indeed showboaters, although Abbie managed to hold true to his radical ideas until he died in 1989. Rubin reinvented himself as a stockbroker and multi-level marketer before he died five years later.
Hayden, of course went on to marry Jane Fonda and become a long-time California state legislator. He’ll turn — believe it or not — 75 this year.
Hayden: Then & Now
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Anyway, Hayden must be sensing that the end is in sight because he has donated all his personal papers to the University of Michigan. He attended UM in the late 1950s and early ’60s. While there he wrote the Port Huron Statement — the charter document of the Students for a Democratic Society. Later, he became a Freedom Rider and then a tireless activist against the Vietnam War.
His papers include 22,000 pages of FBI files compiled during the Bureau’s 15-year spy-op on him.
Hayden told Al Jazeera America, “I can’t wait until after I’m dead,” regarding his pre-mortem donation of material to the University.
Hayden was the advance guard of a youth revolt back in 1962. Man, that’s more than half a century ago. The end is indeed in sight for many of us. That’s why, for my part, I’m savoring every day I can now.
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Switch Hitters
People have been jumping out of the woodwork saying that raising welts all over a four-year-old’s body with a switch is no big deal at all. The line goes That’s the way my parents disciplined me and look at how wonderful I turned out to be.
Which is a towering pile of horseshit.
Discipline?
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The thrashing of pre-schooler with what is essentially a wooden whip has become an issue since the indictment of football star Adrian Peterson for bloodying and scarring the fruit of his loins a week ago today.
As if the rational among us needed an argument against such intellectual fuckery, sports commentator Jeb Lund wrote in Wednesdays’ Guardian that, no, those of us beaten bloody by our parents did not turn out okay.
He observes:
The pernicious, toxic and inescapable lifelong effect of being disciplined physically – either to the point of abuse, or to the point that the distinction between acceptable and unacceptable blurs in your mind – is that you almost have to say you turned out fine, just to redeem the fact of being who you are. That you “turned out fine” is the only way to make sense of having once felt total terror or uncontrollable shaking rage at the sight of one (or both) of the two people expected to care most for you in the world. The thought that you might have ended up relatively OK or perhaps even better without all that fear is almost unbearable: the suffering only doubles if you admit that it truly had no purpose.
Read the whole thing, please.
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bloomingNOT
Early Thursday evenings without bloomingOUT seem empty these days.
Producer Carol Fischer and host Helen Harrell’s syndicated one-hour weekly gabfest aired for the last time on August 28th.
Fischer (L) & Harrell
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They did their part for 11 years (acc’d’g to the program’s Wikipedia page). Now it’s time for someone — anyone — to get going and pick up their banner.
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Lotus Fest Friday
Here’s your Lotus Fest 2104 lineup for tonight:
Venues
- Buskirk Chumley Theater 114 E. Kirkwood Ave.
- First United Methodist Church 219 E. 4th St.
- First Christian Church 205 E. Kirkwood Ave.
- First Presbyterian Church 221 E. 6th St.
- Ivy Tech Community College Tent 6th St. between Walnut & College
- Old National Bank/Soma Tent 4th & Grant streets
- The Bluebird 216 N. Walnut St.
- 3rd St. Park 331 S. Washington St.
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Friday, September 19th
● 6:30pm: Söndörgó First United Methodist Church
● 6:45pm: Catherine MacLellan First Christian Church
● 7pm: Kaia First Presbyterian Church
● 7:15pm: Vanesa Aibar & Company Buskirk Chumley Theater
Flamenco Dancer Vanesa Aibar
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● 7:15pm: Mames Babegenush Ivy Tech Community College Tent
● 7:15pm: The Revelers Old National Bank/Soma Tent
● 7:45pm: Catherine MacLellan First Christian Church
● 8:05pm: Nora Jane Struthers & the Party Line First United Methodist Church
● 8:50pm: Nagata Shachu Buskirk Chumley Theater
● 8:50pm: Van-Anh Vanessa Vo First Christian Church
● 8:50pm: FullSet First Presbyterian Church
● 8:50pm: Tsuumi Sound System Ivy Tech Community College Tent
Tsuumi Sound System
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● 8:50pm: Aurelio Old National Bank/Soma Tent
● 9:50pm: Söndörgó First United Methodist Church
● 10:10pm: Banda Magda Buskirk Chumley Theater
● 10:25pm: Nora Jane Struthers & the Party Line First Christian Church
● 10:25pm: Erkan Ogur’s Telvin Trio First Presbyterian Church
● 10:25pm: Orkesta Mendoza Ivy Tech Community College Tent
● 10:25pm: Movits! Old National Bank/Soma Tent
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