WPXI
KDKA
Pittsburgh City Paper
Approximately 150 protestors (union members and community activists) protested for nearly an hour today outside the office of Mayor Luke Ravenstahl. They had to protest outside the office because a city worker chained and padlocked the door (police also showed up).
The protestors were demanding that, along with all the taxpayer subsidized giveaways to developers that have become commonplace in this city, they get a promise of family-sustainable jobs.
More on this story:
http://pghcomet.blogspot.com/2009/07/were-here-to-ask-mayor-to-change-his.html
http://twitter.com/bobmayo
http://pghisacity.blogspot.com/2009/07/theyre-back.html
http://www.pittsburghcitypaper.ws/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A66316
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/cityregion/s_635143.html
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09205/986133-100.stm
http://www.wpxi.com/news/20165257/detail.html (with video)
http://www.thepittsburghchannel.com/news/20165049/detail.html (with video)
http://kdka.com/local/union.protest.mayors.2.1099491.html (with video)
"CANDIDATE FRANCO DOK HARRIS SUPPORTS UNION PROTEST AT MAYOR'S OFFICE"
Full statement here.
UPDATE: Bram has video Yarone Zober on Development and CBA's
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15 comments:
"(union members and community activists)"
Union thugs and ACORN
You are as predictable as ever, Heir.
Heir.. Exactly.
Want a family-sustainable job? Let me give these thugs some advice..
1. Stay in school (High school, at least).
2. Aspire to be more than a broom-sweeper or janitor.
3. Don't get married until you have a good job.
4. Guys.. keep it in your pants until you have a good job (married or not).
5. Gals.. keep your legs crossed until you have a good job (married or not).
6. Ditch the urge for 'bling', plasma TVs, the Escalade, etc. Unless you have a good job, forget about it! Even then, you should forget about it.
7. Ditch the attitude. No one.. I repeat.. NO ONE owes you anything. Ever.
Oh, and how's that ole Hopey/Changey thingy working for you?
thugs, union workers are thugs???
Want taxpayer-subsidized development goodies? Let me give these thugs some advice...
1. Give campaign money to Lil Mayor Luke
2. Have Lil Mayor Luke appoint rubberstampers to all relevant boards and authorities.
3. Have Lil Mayor Luke fire anyone from all relevant boards and authorities who will -- metaphorically speaking -- close their legs to favored developers.
4. Sit back and enjoy the fruits of your "labor" when you get to keep labor's taxpayer money, yet can still pay them peanuts.
Oh, and let me add one other item..
If you want a family-sustainable job (and don't have one, in your mind)..
8. Get another job. Move.
Yes, the SEIU/ACORN group is a bunch of thugs.
If you were able to buy a house when you had a job, give it up, abandon it. Give up what little wealth you might have accumulated and go back to the ranks of renters, only with a ruined credit rating. A man who knows he is better than you has told you to move away from his town.
See the thing about the personal responsibility myth is that it assumes that a poor/minority persons life is a series of separate choices, discrete events. So the poor person chooses to grow up in a single parent home. They choose to go to school where all the faces of older kids that look like theirs have already given up on the education system, have already decided the teachers aren’t interested in teaching (and the teachers, overwhelmed by a steady stream of rebellion, have decided they agree). Poor/minority kids have decided to grow up in a home where their father is absent and their mother works two low paying jobs, part of a series of jobs she had since she dropped out of high school to support her first child. In a neighborhood where the only white people they see are cops, teachers and maybe occasionally some lost driver looking scared and angry. IN a neighborhood where the only jobs young people can get are broom pushers or McDonald’s burger flippers, and those are only available to a few. The rest of the jobs in that neighborhood are selling drugs, and the dealer jobs pay a bit less than the McDonald’s jobs (but they have slightly better advancement potential). Their great-grandfather might have told them about his father who lived in Alabama and was thrown in jail one day when he went to the store, because the railroad company needed someone to lay track.
In other words, poor and minority people have ignored you, Conservative Mountaineer, and chosen to make bad choices for more than two hundred before they were born. Rich white males tried to help them, but the poor and minority people were determined to make those bad choices.
What’s the phrase about walking a mile in somebody else’s shoes? Or you can just lecture them about how stupid you think they are. Everybody reacts well to that.
Ed -
Thank you. Nothing else to add...
Clyde
thank you ed.
I thought Chad Hermann's comment at his Facebook page summed it up very very nicely:
Sometimes a great metaphor just presents itself as a gift. And here's one for all the residents of the city of Pittsburgh... The site of the Mayor's office being padlocked from the inside, because a group of concerned citizens had the temerity to want to voice their opinions in person.
Cry me a river, Ed. Life is about choices. Maybe, just maybe, if the so-called "leaders" of the poor were to talk and teach "tough love" instead of their racist whitey-hate and victimhood, many might e able to escape. Doubtful, though. It's easier being a victim.
So, if everyone gets on board and blames the victims, things will be better. Because it is so easy being poor.
Because of course when the banks were in trouble, we told them to take responsibility for their own actions. We told them to suck it up. It's not like we gave them billions. And it's not like they took the billions and went right back to making money on the backs of the poor, handing themselves fresh rounds of new bonuses. Because it is a lot harder to be a Wall Street banker than it is to work two jobs without healthcare, be a nursing home worker and a store clerk, lose one of your jobs and not be able to make the rent, and find yourself with your kids in a homeless shelter, the kids trying to find somewhere to do homework. That's a lot easier than being a banker.
And the funny thing is, Obama did include a personal responsibility section in his speech to the NAACP. But you chose to pretend it didn't happen.
Clyde, apparently a bit more might have had to be said.
But I appreciate the thought.
Has anybody checked with the fire marshall to find out of padlocking the door to the mayor's office was a violation of code?
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