In interviews, Starbucks workers tell In These Times that starting a union campaign is the first time they’ve felt hopeful in their adult lives. “A lot of us have gotten used to a sense of hopelessness and helplessness when it comes to our jobs,” says Rachel Ybarra, 22, an organizer at a Starbucks in Seattle. “But unionizing can give you a sense of agency,” Ybarra adds.
“If a union is involved, your coworkers have the power to go to bat for you.”
In Memphis, Tenn., Nikki Taylor, at age 32,
is one of the oldest Starbucks baristas at the busy corner of Poplar
Avenue and S. Highland Street. She says she feels like a mother figure
to a “close-knit,
regular barbecue-type family.” When she started as a shift supervisor
two years ago, working in the café was a dream job — but this
soon changed.
During the pandemic her store has faced chronic
staffing shortages and baristas have been tasked with the work of three
or four people. “You’re
getting hundreds of drink orders, making them all yourself, still
having to give that ultimate customer service,” Taylor says.
So workers began to talk. “When you’re working alongside people going through the same thing every day, you guys bond so much,” Taylor says.
One concern was pay. The starting wage at the store is about $12, and some workers take multiple jobs to make ends meet, Taylor says. According to MIT’s living wage calculator, the living wage in Memphis is $13.26 for a single adult, $18.02 for a family of four.
Another issue was Covid-19 policy. Vaccinated workers who were exposed to Covid-19
but had no symptoms were expected to work their shifts. During the
highly contagious Omicron wave of the virus this winter, workers say
they’d see people with known exposures come in for work, only to develop
symptoms while on the clock.
Be sure to read the whole thing and think about it before you buy Starbucks again.
Monday, March 21, 2022. JACOBIN whores for the IRaq War.
Over
the weekend, the Iraq War hit the 19th mark, 19 years and still going.
Will US troops ever leave Iraq? At this rate, no. And we know how the
corporate media in the US did their part to start the illegal war and
to keep it going. We address that fact constatly. We've also noted,
over the years, how Pandhandle Media -- the beggar media -- send money,
send money -- also keeps the illegal war going. This anniversary?
Silence from the beggar media for the most part.
To
be clear, when we don't get silence from them on Iraq, we don't get
much of anything. They do af, "It's 19 years old" statement and then
rush to offer what everone knew back when Bully Boy Bush occupied the
White House. Nothing as recent as two years prior is ever offered
because they don't pay attention to Iraq. They can show up to do their
useless segments and writing that would be the same if they wrote it ten
years ago but they can't talk about Iraq today -- the political
stalemate, the protests (more and more over rising costs), the large
number of women being murdered (Juare is apparently the furthest US
'feminists' will allow their minds to wonder when women are being
targeted), etc.
Enter JACOBIN
and Saif Ansari -- the latter of whom bill shimself as "Philosopher,
lawyer and writer. Indian American/Muslim atheist." SOmeone break it to
the idiot that Muslim isn't a race, it's a religion so, if you bill
yourself as an aehist, you're not a Mulsim. Basics are hard for Saif as
he makes clear when writing about Iraq for Jacobin -- a place he
doesn't normally cover but apparently someone at JACOBIN felt that the
piece was needed and theyf armed it out to Saif as one of the non-White
guys they actually have working at JACOBIN. Isn't that just another
form of colinialism?
At any rate, Saif starts out his piece
slamming US President Joe Biden which is more than fair. Joe is
president and the war continues under his watch. Joe supported the war
in the US Senate. And then, the whole thing quickly falls apart. The
first section with huge pro lems:
And yet not even during the heated final debate of the primaries in
2020 did Bernie Sanders (who had voted against the invasion in 2002 as a
representative of Vermont) make the case — which he had alluded to on
the campaign trail more than once — that Biden was unfit to serve as president because of what was, in Sanders’s view, “the worst foreign policy blunder in the modern history of the United States.”
Elizabeth Warren, another candidate who had called the Iraq War a mistake, also failed to challenge Biden’s historical defense of the invasion — from denying that he had ever believed Hussein possessed WMDs to lamenting
that the only mistake he had made was to trust the Bush administration.
When asked whether Biden was to blame, Warren — a legal academic who
had begun her political career taking on the president over the 2005 bankruptcy bill — demurred.
In fact, the most strenuous criticism against Biden’s role in the
Iraq War was leveled in March 2020 by an air force veteran who accused Biden of having the blood of fellow service members on his hands. But despite his overtures that he had come to regret his support for the war — which became increasingly unpopular in the upper echelons of the Democratic Party in subsequent years — Biden never learned from his mistake.
Eleven years after the intervention in Libya’s [. . .]
Tulsi
Gabbard? Isn't that the name that belongs in the above? Yes, it is.
Caling Tulsi out for fake assery isn't a popular move. We don't worry
about popularity here. We worry about the truth. SO we won't just be
Abby Martin saying her name on a JaACOBIN podcast and then laughing.
No, we'll actually go there as we did in real time. In the final debate
that candidate Tulsi made the stage for, we were all expecting the big
showdown. This was anti-war Tulsi. She'd played that anti-war arm
chair zealot over and over. And the war, she'd tell voters over and
over, was her biggest issue. It effected everything -- including how
much money we had to spend on other issues -- needed issues.
Bill
de Blasio and others had confronted Joe during the debqtes of the
candidates for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination. Tulsi
hadn't. And she had an excuse, she wasn't on the stage with him. The
field was so crowded back then that they had to divide them up into
groups.
So she'd go on MSNBC, for example, on June 26,
2019 and slam Joe for his actions regarding Iraq but she wasn't on
stage with him.
But Wednesay, July 31st,
she was finally on stage with Joe Biden. And big talking Tulsi, whose
big issue was the war, was on stage with Joe Biden who voted for the
IRaq, War, who did a pre-war hearing that was stakced with war
supporters though Joe tried to pretend it was fair and balanced, the man
who voted over and over to keep funding the war, the man whod efended
it over and over (despite his 2019 lie that he had turned on the wr the
minute bombs started ropping). Here was Tulsi's chance to finally take
the fight to Joe.
It was going to be an epic throwdown, right?
Wrong.
We recounted it at lenght and repeatedly over and over. For example, see the next day's snapshot.
Joe
Biden was on the ropes. He was struggling and he could have been
eliminated that night. If Tulsi had done the job she should have, he
could have been out of the primary.
But
instead, she decided to take out Kamala Harris. Jimmy Dore rightly
points out that Kamala ended up without any support at all. Throughout
the entire thing, the long process, no one was flacking to her. He's
right. But he is someone who has some allegience to Tulsi that is
greater than his allegiance to the truth. Now I'll overlook that on
Jimmy. He speaks out on many important topics. And I'll defend her
from the lunatic attacks from WHoopi Goldberg and others.
But I'm not going to pretend that we saw Tulsi was a whore at the debates.
Read
the transcript -- or read the snapshot -- because Tulsi went after
Kamala and Kamala was no threat. She was never going to get the
nomination. She had no large base of support. Most women did not rally
to her. African-Americans in the south did not relate to her.
But Tulsi used her time and her ammo on Kamala. Not on Joe.
Her
defenders -- and, sadly, that included BLACK AGENDA REPORT -- would
make excuses for her. There was no excuse. Joe Biden was the choice of
the establishment and he was being carried by the corporate meid and
covered and pimped by them.
She should have taken out Joe.
Sher refused to do so.
If
you missed that debate, you may join the liars and insist that she was
making statements and -- B.S. That's a damn lie. Jake Tapper was a
moderator. He specifically called on her regarding Joe Biden and he was
puzzled -- watch his face -- by her remarks which were rescuing Joe and
excusing his actions.
He looks like he's
wondering if she understood the question. SO he then goes back to her
for a second time and is more specific. And Tulsi again takes a pass.
That
night, the next day and through the weekend, Tulsi shows up where ever
she could on TV and repeatedly insisted that Joe said his vote was wrong
and that was good enough for her.
His actions
wnet far beyond just his initial vote but Tulsi buried that in hre
comments and buried Joe's Iraq issues for the press. When the
self-promoted anti-war candidate told the American people and the press
that Joe had nothing to apologize for or make amends for that everything
was fine? There was no longer a story there. The media wants
conflict. And it wants conflict is can hide behind to pretend to be
objective. Had Tulsi held Joe accountable on the stage, the issue of
the Iraq War would have been forced itno the conversation by the
national press.
My allegiance is not to any politician.
Tulsi
is one of the reasons Joe Biden is in the White House. She had the
chance to tak ehim out and instead aimed her fire at Kamala. People
like pig Michael Tracey were overjoyed.
What
they refuse to admit now is that Tulsi gave the nomination to Joe on
that night in July of 2019. They refuse to also admit that the woman
Tulsi 'destroyed' on stage is now Vice President of the United States.
So exactly how badly did Tulsi destroy Kamala?
It was pure fake assery.
Dennis
Kucinich left people in tears in Boston back in 2004 at the DNC
convention. I didn't defend him. I told the young teenagers who were
crying in the open -- especially one young woman -- that Dennis didn't
deserve them. That they had more integrity and more ethics than he ever
would.
I don't whore for a politician. I hold them accountable.
It's
a shame that no one wants to hold Tulsi accountable. It's how we will
get another Bernie Fake Ass SAnders to divert us all and we will pour
energies into him and risk our own health to try to deliver the
nomination to him and he will sell us out and try to use us as his fan
clubm.
JACOBIN trets Tulsi as an aside because
they get vicious feedback. I don't care what the e-mails to the public
account are like. I will defend her right to speak. I will defend her
from vicious attacks on her patritoism. I will not, however, pretend
that she's anti-war or that she will speak with an anti-war voice.
She betrayed everyone and she needs to be held accountable.
Saif writes:
American voters used to give a damn about the Iraq War. In 2008, Barack Obama leveraged
widespread discontent with the war to secure the Democratic nomination,
courting progressives and young people alike. In fact, it’s widely
believed that Hillary Clinton lost
to the senator from Illinois not just because she had voted for the war
— and was instrumental in rallying ambivalent Democrats to the cause —
but because Obama had decried the invasion from the start.
Where do you start with that garbage.
American voters used to give a damn about the Iraq War?
The voters are the ones who walked away?
I
don't remember the voters issuing a statement the week after the
November 2008 election stating that they were shutting down. No, that
was United for Peace and Justice which made a ton of money off the war.
But they then used their organization to shelter elected Democrats and
theywhore to get Barack into the White House. Leslie Cagan is a grown
ass woman and then some -- the whiskers on her chin prove that. But the
woman who's too cowardly to tell a board meeting that she's a Community
-- she is one -- is the same woman who whored for Barack and didn't
want to be around to hold him accoutnable.
They lied. They lied to the voters and told them Barack was an anti-war candidate.
He wasn't. He never was.
The
media stuck in on Iraq just a little bit longer. As 2008 drew to a
close, newspapers and networks in the US announced that they were
closing BAghdad desks ABC announced that anything that happened in Iraq
could be covered by their using BBC coverage of the war.
So the 'leaders' deserted and then the US news deserted all before Janaury 2009 and yet the person JACOBIN blames is voters?
When
we do our Zooms there are always students who will say they showed up
thinking this was going to be historical, a look at what had been done
to Iraq. They didn't realize that it was still being done. I don't
them blame them or attack them. I understand why they don't know about
Iraq, the corporate media doesn't cover it and the so-calleldl
politicians who care (Barbara Lee) won't mention it.
Saif
writes tht ''some believe'' Barack used Iraq to destroy Hillary's
chances. Some believe that? It was his whole argument advanced by his
suppoters. as well as by himself. It demonstrated his supposed superior
judgment.
We heard tht over and over. And
we saw CODESTINK bird dog Hillary while avoid him despite the fact that
hew as voting for the Iraq War once he was in office.
No, he did not vote for the 2002 authorization of the war. He was not in the US Senate at the time so he could not vote for it.
Patricia
J. Williamson was a typical whore for Barack. Despite being a law
professor, and presumably understanding what ethics are, she wnet on
KPFA and lied on THE MORNING SHOW about how Barack, in 2002, had voted
against the Iraq War. When confronted with her lie by a caller, Patty
refused to admit the truth.
They all lied, they
all whored. THey used poor Kimberlé Crenshaw. I told her they were
using her so I don't feel sorry for her. She was warned. They wanted
to attack Hillary and promote Barck so White women teamed up with
Kimberle to use her skin color in the byline. They didn't give a damn
about her or her observations. She thought she was breaking through.
HUFF POST, THE PROGERESSIVE,e veryone was noting some column she had
co-written and the importance of it and . . . . By 2009, when she was no
longer needed as cover to hide behind, she went back to being unwanted
in the circle jerk that ignores most people of color. But for awhile
there, she was convicnced that everyone was interested in her and she'd
finally broken through.
Saif wants you to know that Barack was agains the war from the start.
But he wasn't.
He
was against it enough to give a tiny speech. It was so smallt hat iwas
insignificant. Footage existed of it -- I'm still friends with the
person who asked Barack tp speak in Chicago that day. But the turnout
was small. So 2008 campaign decided to 'recrete' it and the press let
them do that. I've seen the original. It's not inspiring, the voice
doesn't soar. Hes not impressive in his remarks or in his delivery. So
they shot it several years later and the press let him get away with
it.
Why dods it matter?
I
mentioned Boston 2004, remember. I was there. I was there when he
gave that lousy speech at the convention. Matthew Rothschild called it
out in THE PROGRESSIVE. It was a war speech. And then, three years
later, Matty wants to whore for Barack and begins praising the speech.
That's what a whore does, erase the past.
And that's what JACOBIN's doing.
It
was in Boston that THE NEW YORK TIMES asked Barack -- anti-war Barack
-- about he Iraq War and noted that the top of the ticket, John Kerry
had voted for it. Barack pointed out that he wasn't in Congress and
said he didn't know how he would have voted if he had been in Congress.
When Bill Clinton raised this point, he was smeared as a racist. We've repeatedly noted Bill's criticue over the years
But since you raised the judgment issue, let's go over this
again. That is the central argument for his campaign. 'It doesn't
matter that I started running for president less a year after I got to
the Senate from the Illinois State Senate. I am a great speaker and a
charismatic figure and I'm the only one who had the judgment to oppose
this war from the beginning. Always, always, always.' " "First it
is factually not true that everybody that supported that resolution
supported Bush attacking Iraq before the UN inspectors were through.
Chuck Hagel was one of the co-authors of that resolution. The only
Republican Senator that always opposed the war. Every day from the
get-go. He authored the resolution to say that Bush could go to war
only if they didn't co-operate with the inspectors and he was assured
personally by Condi Rice as many of the other Senators were. So, first
the case is wrong that way." "Second, it is wrong
that Senator Obama got to go through 15 debates trumpeting his superior
judgment and how he had been against the war in every year, numerating
the years, and never got asked one time, not once, 'Well, how could
you say, that when you said in 2004 you didn't know how you would have voted on the resolution? You said in 2004 there was no difference between you and George Bush on the war and you took that speech you're now running on off your website in 2004*
and there's no difference in your voting record and Hillary's ever
since?' Give me a break."This whole thing is the biggest fairy tale
I've ever seen...
I
dictate the snapshots. I am not looking at the above. I mention that
because as we repeatedly returned to that quote, we would add more links
to it to back up what Bill was saying. My friend's pulled that from a piece I did with Ava back in 2011.
I steered him to that because I'm hopning it has all the links in it.
If it doesn't do the research yourself. I'd also recommend the piece
for THIRD entitled "The Temple Prostitutes in the Cult of St. Barack."
JACOBIN fits in that same temple with the other prostitues when they publish garbage like this.
And I'm not even at the half-way mark on that awful article.
How does the Iraq War continue? Be cause of whoring like what JAOCBIN posted that never hodls anyone acountable.
Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "We Feed Them" went up Saturday night.
And you can pair that with this video from Jimmy Dore.
