“But What Harm is There in a Transgender Umbrella?”

As a number of women of transsexed history have emerged from the shadows to speak out about the trans-jacking of the lives and histories and very core of their lives, the opposition has stepped up it’s refrain about how what we feel does not matter.  Leaving aside the entitlement mentality and the out and out sexism evident in this, let’s take a look at the basic assumptions behind “transgender as umbrella” concept.

First, and most basic, is an underlining assumption that one can not actually “change their sex”, that you remain forever the sex you were assigned at birth regardless of whatever somatic corrections you make.  I know, I know, this is not what they say, well sometimes the transgenders actually do come right out and say it, but it is the inescapable essence of their position.  If post corrected women are defined as “transgendered” that is a basic and essential denial that they can correct what is actually now known as a medical condition and proceed with their lives on more or less a level playing field with other women.  That they forever remain a third sex.

Transgender is a third space between male and female.  If you doubt this, simply reflect on the speed and totality of the use of the prefix “cis” by their outspoken proponents.  The very use of the prefix cis as in cissexual or cisgender sets up an oppositional class of just plain men and women to anyone “trans” anything forever baring anyone labeled trans anything from ever actually being “cis”, or a standard, garden variety woman or man.  Language reflects thought, but it also restricts the concepts one can understand.  If you do not have a word for a certain concept, it becomes extremely difficult to understand it until you do coin language that allows that concept.  If you do have language that reflects a concept you have embraced, it tends to dominate your conceptual thinking to the exclusion of any opposing concepts.

Transsexuality has been around as long as there have been people.  We know this, all of recorded history across literally all cultures reflect this. Cultures have followed either one of the two basic paths dealing with transsexuality.  Either they allow full passage from one sex/gender to the other or they establish a third category.  Third categories, as a rule, are almost always seen as “other” and the human tendencies towards xenophobia means they do not fare well unless endowed with attributes deemed valuable to the society.  In many cultures this was shaman and healer and protected those in the third category, in early western cultures there was a tendency to walk the line between this and full passage from one side to the other, the transsexual priestesses of the ancient Goddess traditions were an example of this.  Maximum body correction was a requirement and was possible, even then, to a degree most do not realize today.  But in the Greek culture which was busy becoming a patriarchy, any blending of sexes was viewed with horror as was any exercise by women of equality openly.  By the second century Christian apologists were openly attacking the transsexed priestesses of Cybele in Rome.  Many scholars today believe that the Cybeline priestess Augustine had an affair with prior to his conversion was a Galla, or transsexual priestess and that explained his over the top post conversion references to such women as “castrated perverts”.

In the US following the media circus that came with Christine Jorgensen being outed to the country, we settled mostly on the full passage model with various States even writing into law rights of marriage and sex recognition of post corrected women.  The medical community aided this with an unspoken compact that those they helped would basically blend in and not upset the gender binary applecart.  Full passage, get married to a man and that was even better.  Full passage IF you actually corrected your body.  Drag was for comedy.

But following Christine Jorgensen emerged an entirely different sort of “trans”, transvestites.  Known in the psychiatric literature, these individuals have always been around as well.  They are men who get some sort of sexual kick, sometimes even sexually dependent on dressing as women for sexual gratification.  As people with a strange sexual peccadillo in a culture that looked on such as weird or freakish or even probably gay, they suffered a great deal of internalized shame.  One way to deal with such is what a transvestite named Arnold Lowman did.  Under the assumed name of “Dr” Charles Prince, Lowman started lecturing about “femmephilia” to desexualize transvestism and present it as something different but ok. This began around the same time as transvestite film maker, Ed Wood, put out his trashy classic, Glen or Glenda to “explain” his own transvestism.  Deeply homophobic himself in a society equally homophobic, Prince sold all this as totally heterosexual in nature.

Prince went on to organized Tri Ess, or the Society for the Second Self.  These people became today’s transgenders.  Women born transsexed mostly avoided these people although, sometimes early in dealing with their transsexuality, they crossed paths.

People born transsexed HAVE to eventually correct their bodies to the maximum possible and have always fully identified as the sex their brains are hardwired neurologically.  It is criminal, almost to the point of a hate crime to degender them and that is exactly what the “transgender” umbrella does, it denies their correction, denies them full transition socially and is gynophobic in the extreme.  So what harm?  As basic an assault on personal integrity as possible, that’s what harm.  Unlike the occasional bigot that denies identity, this is a movement with the appearance of some legitimate claim on those completely different from those making the claim by virtue of out and out erasure of even the language needed to understand the concept.

It is as pure an evil as it gets and as my prior entry demonstrated, it was done deliberately and with malice of forethought to people who maintained a separation when it was done.  Women born transsexed were resented  for their inclusion in the  “special” rights of women in general(like having safe segregated space perhaps?)  Women as elitists?  Get freakin’ real.  Only men could even come up with that.  And make no mistake other feminist women, the goal is erasure of womanhood in general as well via “gender deconstruction” a concept filled with unintended consequences for the safety and integrity of all female bodied people.  Far from a path to equality, it will lead to erasure.

 

Yvonne Cook Riley Confesses Inventing “Transgender” to Erase Transsexuality

It’s just up on Bilerico  Cook Riley , founder of IFGE and Transvestite Travesty magazine confesses to a sympathic transvestite apologist Jillian Wiess how “she” and perpetual transvestites Philiss Frye and transsexual hating Charley Prince aka Arnold Lowman conspired to erase women of history because they were pissed most went stealth within six months of corrective surgery.  Make no mistake, it was transvestites that made up and pushed “transgender” to escape the fetishistic nature of their makeup.  One of them was literally the most transsexual phobic asshole who ever walked the face of the earth,  Prince.  Riley’s IFGE  named the highest honour in transvestitism after this transsexual hating jerk… the Virginia Prince Lifetime Achievement Award (for hating women born transsexed)

You know what is left out of the story?  That at the time they did this there was widespread public acceptance of transsexuality due to about eight years of talk shows on the subject making it so normal it no longer worked for sweeps week.  That a quickly buried set of polls done by HRC around this time showed that even in the south there was a 70% acceptance rate of transssexuality and full civil rights for those post corrected  while on the same polls acceptance of gays and lesbians never rose above 30%  This is the real reason HRC bought off all the trans civil rights leaders of that time,  This is why HRC pre-lobbied against and with our bought leaders each and every lobbying effort for trans civil rights (most of the trans activists then were transsexed people)  This is why they continue to this day to promote transgender and erase transsexual from public view.  They knew the best way to combat public acceptance of women born transsexed was to replace them with the image of men in dresses, chicks with dicks and drag queens all using and demanding female pronouns like the most outrageous nelly queens of the past.

You know what other word was absent from Riley’s interview?  Woman.  No surprise there is there?  CookRiley is all about the fetish and transgender.  You know why post corrected women are so careful about the terminology?  Because we are women, period.  We fix our bodies to female norm and go on to the lives of women in all it’s glorious, non transbullshit glory.  Listen to Riley proclaim we never get to escape the clutches of fetishistic masturbators, yes that is actually said.  The AMA says transsexuality can be cured, the APA is also about to make that official.  Cured, as in women post corrected, as in not trans anything anymore.  But the transvestites?, hell no.  It is they that taught the religious right to deny our womanhood, not the other way around.  It is they who almost singlehandedly revived an almost dead radical lesbian separatist movement with a primary goal of anti-trans.

I transitioned around the time this erasure took place.  I began my own advocacy work at that time and never understood the total refusal to use transgender and transsexual at that time.  I witnessed first hand the change in the public perceptions when they learned of my history from an automatic assumption I was post operative or soon would be to “chick with a dick”.  They did this in conspiracy with Gay Inc.  What I always suspected is now confirmed, that the erasure was deliberate and conspired.   Today, as some of us have been speaking out and reclaiming just the concept of transsexual in it’s original medical meaning we are faced with penis packing perpetual transvestites like Autumn-I’m too insane to remember to dilate besides I like my low maintenance dick-  Sandeen, Monica-your neo vagina is fake- Helms, Monica-check out my 7″ neo-clit- Roberts and self confessed sociopath Toni -Fear me and my totally made up credentials-D’orsay claiming they are transsexuals.  The good news is their antics have completely alienated most mainstream gay men and moderate lesbian women to the point even Gay Inc. will have trouble claiming the “t” in the future.  And in a year or less the DSM revision will be out which recognizes them as the mentally ill people so many of them already brag about being.  I feel for those who will suffer because of this but they failed to call out the bigotry and will be reaping what the outspoken lunatics sowed in their names.

PS.  Weiss is all about the transvestites and nothing about the rights of women.  The time has come to pick a side because today’s transvestite rights movement is as anti woman as it gets and wastes no opportunity to demonstrate it.  Weiss picked her side, fetishists against women.

 

On the Cusp of a New Dark Ages

As 2012 approaches with all the predictions of “the end of the world” what is actually happening is a literal war between two radically different approaches to how human beings organize themselves.  We are seeing this played out all around the world right now and in the political battles between the far right and the far left in America.

The hallmark of civilization from the very beginning has always been the pooling of resources to free up time and the natural creativity of members of society.  To allow for the care of the young, the sick and the handicaped and the old.  Not to do so is the basest level of human existence and the opposite of civilization.  The clear message of the far right in America is this:  we can no longer afford to take care of the young, the old, the sick and the handicap.  That message is one of “rugged individualism” taken to the level of “dog eat dog” and is the natural endgame of corporate thinking capitalism gone wild.

As the progression of the ages switches from Pisces to Aquarius so the basic premise of overall gestalt is changing.  The age of Pisces was the age of the Abrahamic religions, most notably Christianity and the advent of Christianity destroyed the Roman empire with the loss of respect of diversity and plunged the Western World into the Dark Ages.

This is a spiritual war.  The Abrahamic faiths teach of a father god who sits in judgment of all we do, rigs the game to favour his “chosen” who can do any damn thing they want as long as they eventually repent.  It teaches that the world exists only for the exploitation by those chosen people, that those who disagree have no actual rights and if you fail to prosper that is a reflection of the flaws within yourself and you are getting what you deserve.

Goddess consciousness is the exact opposite.  It is embodied with the concept that all of us are in this together, that we are to take care of each other and in the supreme irony, we are the keepers of our brothers and keepers.  The teachings of Jesus were consistent with Goddess consciousness, the practice of christianity are not.  Goddess consciousness is being connected to the earth, the universe and the idea that we are the Divine ourselves, all of us and all around us and that we can aspire to reflect that in our lives and how we interact with the world.  It is the basic understanding of ecology, the value of diversity in the world including all the other animals we share our planet with.  It is a world view of responsibility rather than a twisted social Darwinism.

America is choosing right now which philosophy will dominate the next phase of it’s history.  Which way do you wish to go?  Chose wisely.

 

Banned From Bilerico!

That’s right, I was banned from Bilerico for saying the new format sucks and is unreadable and this:  My suggestion for your new motto is this, Bilerico, we’re so gay we think real women have penises.  The thing is, this is actually true, see this thread where that was exactly the conclusion this major Bilerico contributor put forth.  Bil not only cannot handle a joke, he cannot handle the truth.  Bil removed the comment and then proceeded to lie through his teeth about me being banned there in the past and claiming I was a troll.  What a maroon.

Like most gay men, Bil Browning is essentially a gynophobe, especially when it comes to women with trans/intersexed history.  His moderators have waged war on post corrected women practically from the get go, the real miracle is I lasted as long as I did pointing this out.  Well the penis people trans and non trans are now safe from this castrating radical bitch, at least on Bilerico.

I consider it a badge of honour to be banned from Bilerico and the blog that has become the cum recipe capital of the blog-o-sphere.  Gay men like him give everyone lumped under LGBt a bad name.

 

ADDED:  I learned from the horse’s mouth, sort to speak, skin transvestite and traitor to all women of history Jillian Weiss is the one who approved me being banned for a non TOS offense.

 

Open letter to those attending the super secret Trans-White House meeting

There were rumours by Autumn Sandeen about this meeting.  Sandeen was predictably pissed off she wasn’t invited as the most important tranny in Amerika.  Well apparently the rumours were true.

Given “transgender” agenda of those known to be attending I don’t hold out much hope for actual sanity but I do have a modest suggestion for a starting point that makes sense and is doable.

A simple, across the board, federal recognition of the sex of those born intersexed/transsexed and who have corrected their bodies to the maximum amount they can.  This would end the who can marry who insanity across the states, put the most at risk group on an equal legal standing with all other citizens.  It would render all employment, housing and public accommodations issues moot other than, again, on the same level as everyone else.
It makes sense, is the ideal “trans” gateway legislation, will be totally in line with the DSM V.  For those reasons, I sincerely doubt anyone at the meeting will propose it.

But hope springs eternal that some adult with influence will read this.

If you agree with me PLEASE  sign the petition to GLAAD to stop defaming women with a transsexed history

 

Fair Game: Susan Stanton in the News Again

Last Tuesday the movie, Fair Game, about Valerie Plame a CIA agent who worked directly to prevent terrorists from obtaining the means of making nuclear weapons, came out.  She was exposed by Dick Chaney and company to cover up the fact they had lied the country into the Iraq was.

Susan Stanton was the city manager of Largo Fla.  She was born with the neurological birth condition known as transsexuality.  She was preparing a carefully considered transition when she was outed by an unknown TG activist member of a support group she joined and the resulting firestorm of publicity pretty much ruined her life for many years.  The trannys tried to make her a cause celeb and paraded her around at all the TG dressup fests.  But she screwed up.  She told the truth to a reporter about her opinion of the people she suddenly found herself associated with, that they made her uneasy, uncomfortable and many appeared to be men in dresses.  The TGs went biblical on her for it.

After a bunch of false starts, she finally, as most of us do, put her life back in order and once again got employment in her field, city manager. Thing is, in A-Gay and transworld, once you step out of line, you are fair game forever.  Now it seems that in the town she is currently city manager for Lake Worth, Fla., a gay bar was in open violation of the city noise ordinance for an outside area they weren’t even permitted to do more than serve food in.  There were a bunch of complaints from citizens and local businesses.  When Susan was less than sympathetic, she was immediately branded a homophobia and a petition started to “call her out”.  Susan is fair game to these gay men for having a trans medical history and one of the first of the tranny spokespeople to blog about her in the negative was “Helen Boyd” of the My husband is a crossdressing freak named Betty fame.

My understanding is that Susan is pretty darn conservative and lived a very conserative middle class life prior to transitioning.  Me, I’m to the left of liberal and was a hippy in the sixties so I was never a stranger to diverse and even freaky people.  Hell, we embraced the name freak back then.  But anyone who has attended one of those TG conventions with an open mind will have to admit they are a total freak show.  I attended Southern Discomfort back in 2000 because the NTAC Board meeting was conducted there and afterwards like to tell people I never felt so drab in my entire life and that before attending, I had no idea that 6 ounces of leather thong and a feathered boa could be considered an outfit.  They are freak shows, no ifs, ands or buts.

The re-trans trashing of Susan has begun again, who’s crime was actually being a woman and seeing that crowd through a woman’s eyes.

It sucks.  I know because she and I have had similar experiences.  I lost my first decent post transition job after being outed by crossdressers who disagreed with my politics.  I live across the street from a rural bar, not a gay one, but one with a gay name, Ryan Nellie’s Irish Pub (Ryan Nellie means Ryan the gay guy in Gallic) Apparently Susan was trying to do right and got branded a homophobic cynically and deliberately for her trouble.  She has even made a LGBt supportive statement for the town but that isn’t good enough.  Gay men hate women of transsexed history as a rule.  Transgenders cannot stand women of history because we correct our bodies and get rid of those precious penises the TGs are so so fond of having and using while telling everyone they are women and we are not.  Susan was fair game to those gay men and TGs.

Chaney nevered paid for his treasonous act against a true American heroine, Valerie Plame.  I hope justice comes for Susan and that damn bar owner loses his business entirely as a result of this and Susan sues the crap out of those who are, once again, defaming her.

And in full disclosure, I am 100% supportive of almost all gay issues, bisexual myself and don’t believe anything should be considered in employment matters beyond can you do the job well.  No doubt I will also be branded a homophobe for writing this anyway.

 

“Autumn” Sandeen Exposed as Agent Provocateur

In a surprise announcement today Monica Roberts revealed that “Autumn” Sandeen is actually the illegitimate love child of Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth Against Homosexuality.  August LaBarbera, Sandeen’s real name, has been posing for the past several years as the right hand transvestite activist of Pam Spaulding of Pam’s House Blend while positioning himself as the final arbitrator of all things trans.

“I’m damn glad to finally be able to throw out all those horrid berets and trying to hind my hard-on under my skirt when being frisked by the cops in Washington.” August said adding “I have no idea how this has escaped exposure before now.  Come on, a mentally ill penis wielding transgender leader who jokes about wieners temping you and does videos about teaching women to stand up to pee?  That alone should have done it but these people are so gullible there seemed almost no lengths I could go in the ridiculous that was enough.”

The ruse was an attempt to make the LGBt communities into such a laughing stock that they could not get any traction on civil rights issues but with every new Sandeen stunt, they just embraced it more and more.

Peter LaBarbera said “My kid did good, it will be nice to have him home again and out of those drag queen outfits.”  He also admitted that he and Spaulding have been in on this together all along and their exchange of barbs have been part of the act.  Spaulding stated this has been the most fun she has had since witnessing the death of Bil Browning’s dog in a tragic gerbilling incident.  “How can anyone have taken either of these blogs seriously is beyond me.” Spaulding quipped. “Between the graphic gay male sex entries on Bilerico and the totally over the top rantings I’d been doing we thought someone would catch on long before this.”

 

The Triangle Fire: Still Burning Before Our Nation

From The AFL-CIO Blog: http://blog.aflcio.org/2011/03/24/the-triangle-fire-still-burning-before-our-nation/

by Tula Connell,
Mar 24, 2011

We hope you will share this special AFL-CIO Now feature on the 100th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire with your friends, family and co-workers as a way to recognize America’s workers, past and present, who have sacrificed and continue to sacrifice so much to improve the lives of all workers.

When word got out two weeks ago that Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker had ordered the windows of the state Capitol building bolted shut during the ongoing protests against his attacks on public employees, it was a chilling reminder of a similar action by the employers of the Triangle Shirtwaist factory.

Nearly 100 years ago to the day of Walker’s order—which he rescinded after public outrage—146 workers, mostly young immigrant girls, jumped to their deaths from the 10-story building, unable to escape a fire because factory foremen had locked all the doors. The owners, Isaac Harris and Max Blanck, worried the workers would steal from the company.

Hyman Meshel worked on the eighth floor. When the rescue crew found Meshel, who was still alive, the flesh of the palms of his hands had been torn from the bones by his sliding down the steel cable in the elevator, and his knuckles and forearms were full of glass splinters from beating his way through the glass door of the elevator shaft.

Thirty dead bodies clogged the elevator shaft. All were young girls. Among the many victims, the New York Times reported the day after the disaster, were two girls:
charred beyond all hope of recognition, and found in the smoking ruins with their arms clasped around each other’s necks….

Three weeks before the Triangle conflagration, the Protective League of Property Owners had held a meeting, indignant over orders by Fire Commissioner Rhinelander Waldo to install sprinklers in warehouses. Owners claimed the order amounted to a “confiscation of property.” The League wasn’t the only employer group to put profit over safety. As the New York Times reported, Fire Chief Edward Croker:  spoke bitterly of the way in which the Manufacturers’ Association had called a meeting in Wall Street to take measures against his proposal for enforcing better methods of protection for employees in case of fire.

His department had cited the Triangle building for lack of fire escapes just one week before the fire.

The working conditions at Triangle and other apparel factories had spurred tens of thousands of shirtwaist workers from more than 500 factories to walk off their jobs in November 1909. Led by the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union (ILGWU), they demanded a 20 percent pay raise, a 52-hour workweek and extra pay for overtime. They also called for adequate fire escapes and open doors from the factories to the street. By February 1910, most of the small and midsized factories, and some of the larger employers, had negotiated a settlement for higher pay and shorter hours. One of the companies that refused to settle was the Triangle Waist Company, one of New York’s largest garment makers.

The Triangle fire resulted in enactment of stricter job safety and health regulations in New York and across the country. The ordeal of the victims, who are remembered here by Cornell University, has inspired countless memorials, tributes and documentaries, beginning April 30, 1911, when 50,000 New Yorkers marched behind empty hearses to memorialize those killed in the fire.

But as we commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire on March 25, it’s sobering to realize many of the lessons we thought had been absorbed must be re-learned again. And again. The Triangle fire, a symbol of unfettered Gilded Age greed, still stands burning before us—from lack of job safety and health protections, to neglect of the conditions endured by immigrant workers to the fundamental ability of workers to form unions and bargain for a better life.

The following three perspectives highlight how the issues behind the Triangle fire still have not been resolved.

America’s Immigrant Workers

When most of us think how the immigrant workers were treated at the Triangle Shirtwaist factory, we are convinced such environments no longer exist in this country. Not so, says Ai-jen Poo. As the founder of Domestic Workers United based in New York, Poo has helped lead a movement of some the nation’s most invisible workers, those not covered by standard U.S. labor laws and hidden from view in countless homes. Last year, through the efforts of Domestic Workers United, the New York State Legislature enacted a precedent-setting law covering the wages, severance pay and sick days of the state’s estimated 200,000 nannies and housekeepers. The Domestic Workers Bill of Rights is a model for domestic workers who, despite the odds, are joining together and demanding their basic human rights on the job.

Immigrant workers face attacks by hostile state legislatures Some of the industries today where many immigrant workers are on the job are unregulated and have fallen outside the protection of existing labor laws, including the right to organize, says Poo. But while these industries were once considered marginal, [t]hey are increasingly defining the entire direction of this economy, where workers, whether immigrant or not, are experiencing dangerous working conditions, long working hours and low wages.

This “shadow” economy, with its long hours, low wages and dangerous conditions in which people are overworked and yet still poor, is “more the norm,” says Poo—and worse:

It’s a good window into the economic health of this country which is not very healthy. Just as at the turn of the century you could look at the manufacturing industry and see the economy wasn’t healthy.

But after Triangle and after countless more outrages, known and unknown, at the workplace, workers took their futures in their hands and reshaped the economy.

We’re now in a very similar moment. We’re standing at the precipice of a major crisis for working people in their country, another moment where we have to stand up as immigrant workers and all workers to take back our rights and dignity in the workplace and in the economy as a whole.

As Poo says, the actions of immigrant workers to organize against all odds in these workplaces can offer an example for us all as we search for ways to regroup and move forward.

Job Safety and Health

Last April, 99 years after the Triangle disaster, 29 miners were killed at West Virginia’s Upper Big Branch mine in an explosion that the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) says could have been prevented if the mine had been in compliance with federal mine safety rules. Massey Energy, the mine’s owner, had a significant history of safety violations.

The coal industry isn’t the only one where U.S. workers die at work. In 2008, 5,214 workers were killed on the job, another 50,000 workers died from occupational diseases, and at least 4.6 million workers were reported injured. The disasters last year that killed those miners could have been avoided had lawmakers resisted lobbying by mine owners, says Peter Dreier. Dreier, who teaches politics and chairs the Urban and Environmental Policy Department at Occidental College, says that today, the leading foe of reform is the United States Chamber of Commerce, which is on a crusade against the Obama administration’s plans to set new rules on unsafe workplaces, industrial hazards and threats to public health. The Chamber’s most vocal proponent is Darrell Issa, the conservative California Republican who chairs the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. At the request of the Chamber and other industry lobbies, Issa recently launched a congressional assault on safeguards in workplaces and communities.

The American Petroleum Institute, the National Association of Manufacturers, the Association of American Railroads, the National Petrochemical & Refiners Association, and lobbies representing health care, banking, and telecommunication providers are lobbying to scale back the gamut of job safety and health laws that protect millions of workers. And Republicans are doing their bidding. In a piece on Triangle, Dreier and Donald Cohen, director of the Cry Wolf Project that counters attempts to discredit progressive policies, write that Republicans in Congress are proposing to cut OSHA’s budget by 20 percent, which, coming on top of decades of cuts, would cripple an agency that has been effective at significantly reducing workplace injuries and deaths.

A century after the Triangle fire, “we still hear much of the same rhetoric whenever reformers seek to use government” to get businesses act more responsibly and protect consumers, workers and the environment.
The Republican leadership is trying to drive home the message, in Speaker John Boehner’s words, that “excessive regulation costs jobs” and that the “path to prosperity” is by “getting government out of the way.”

Americans of earlier generations—who enjoyed the benefits of the Progressive Era and the New Deal reforms, and the political clout of a vibrant labor movement—understood this was nonsense, but it seems like the lessons of the past have to be relearned again.

Freedom to Form Unions

When newly-elected Republican Gov. Scott Walker proposed taking collective bargaining rights away from Wisconsin public employees early this year, Chad Goldberg joined tens of thousands—sometimes hundreds of thousands—of state residents to protest the move. He and others spent the night at the Capitol to ensure the governor didn’t shut them out, in addition to taking part in rallies during the state’s bitter winter. The Wisconsin uprising has lasted for more than five weeks, sparking solidarity rallies across the country and generating support from as far away as Egypt and Australia. Goldberg, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, notes the bitter irony that on the 100th anniversary of the Triangle fire, Walker is turning the clock back in Wisconsin, refusing to work with unions or allow public employees to bargain over working conditions.

“The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire showed what can happen when employers refuse to work with unions,” says Goldberg, vice president of United Faculty & Academic Staff (UFAS), AFT Local 223.
If the factory owners had negotiated with the garment workers’ union, which demanded a decent fire escape and better safety conditions, 146 lives would have been saved.

The Republican-controlled legislature approved Walker’s proposal to gut collective bargaining, saying the action would help the state’s budget. But Goldberg and others know the move was political—taking away the freedom of workers to bargain has nothing to do with balancing the budget. In state after state, similar attacks on the rights of workers to bargain for good middle class jobs are aimed at gutting the strength of workers and stacking the deck in favor of CEOs and Wall Street. Collective bargaining rights are a matter of basic fairness, says Goldberg. Collective bargaining “strengthens shared governance, needed checks and balances and accountability and improves working conditions.”

Our working conditions are students’ learning conditions and when you improve one, you improve the other.

The Triangle fire “also showed how arrogance and oppression can galvanize the public to demand better treatment for workers,” he says. “The governor’s arrogance, the arrogance of the public legislators, the way they’re overreaching and the extremist nature of their agenda is really fueling a public reaction in defense of workers’ rights and public services.

The Triangle fire led to the growth of the garment workers’ union and the strengthening of fire, health, and labor regulations. Today in Wisconsin, we’re seeing the same kind of public mobilization to defend workers’ rights and the public services on which working families depend.

Resources

• Columbia University’s Remembering the Triangle Factory Fire site offers details of the events, the reforms it sparked and educational resources for teachers.
• The U.S. Department of Labor offers a mobile-optimized website to commemorate the anniversary, featuring an audio tour and background of the event. When you travel to one of the locations for the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire you can listen to an audio description of the location by clicking on the link within the page.
• Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition offers a range of events commemorating the 100th anniversary.



 

Merlin Stone 1931 -2011 Do You Remember?

“Though we live amid high-rise steel buildings, formica countertops, and electronic television screens, there is something in all of us, women and men alike, that makes us feel deeply connected with the past.  Perhaps the sudden dampness of a beach cave or the lines of sunlight piercing through the intricate lace patterns of the leaves in a darkened grove of tall trees will awaken from the hidden recesses of our minds the distant echos of a remote and ancient time, taking us back to the early stirrings of human life on the planet.  For people raised and programmed on the patriarchal religions of today, religions that affect us in even the most secular aspects of our society, perhaps there remains a lingering, almost innate memory of the sacred shrines and temples tended by priestesses who served the religion of the original supreme deity.  In the beginning, people prayed to the Creatress of Life, the Mistress of Heaven.  At the very dawn of religion, God was a woman. Do you remember?”

This is the first paragraph of “When God Was A Woman”.

Near the end of the seventies I was back in the broom closet after a life changing run in with the first wave of mega-church fundies in central Ohio.  I had been re-reading Frazer and turn of the century occultists and diving back into classics of Greeks and Romans.  And I knew I was missing something.  At a flea market in Marion, Ohio I saw a book sitting on the top of a stack of romance novels.  It was an American first edition of “When God Was A Woman” by Merlin Stone.  The dust cover was tattered then around the edges and the text underlined in places by the prior owner……but that book called out to me and it literally changed my life. I remembered in a flood of memories of my own life, the sacred places I had seen as a child throughout the world, the dreams of the Mother Goddess I had over and over when three and four years old.  Within a year of reading that book I had an unwanted and unexpected hysterectomy when I was supposed to be having an appendectomy.  And I had re-read many, if not most, of my collection of ancient texts, mythologies and accounts of ancient history armed now with the key to seeing the Goddess where She had been hidden before.

Everyone has a few authors who’s works significantly change their lives, for me Merlin Stone was among the most important.  The Goddess called Merlin back on the cusp of the Goddess awakening that became my life work.  Merlin, you changed my life, thank you and rest well in the arms of the Great Mother.

crossposted to cybelinecrone.blogspot.com

 

More Dealing with an Openly Bigoted Catskill New York

Ops Danny Boy, One Too Many “Motions to Dismiss”

It is no secret that I am associated with the Maetreum of Cybele and it’s legal case against the Town of Catskill for discrimination regarding our property tax exemption.  I have also tried hard to keep my actual name off this blog because the Town Attorney is a slimeball who has repeatedly attempted to use any and every thing I ever wrote on the internet to discredit me.  Several transvestite activists have deliberately linked my actual name to my opinion pieces to aid him in this.  Slimeballs of a feather flocking together.

Well ole Danny Vincelette filed one too many motions to dismiss and totally pissed off the Judge in the case with his clearly bullshit and illogical and downright dishonest claims.  In a seventeen page decision on his last motion and our counter motion, the Judge systematically ruled on each and every rationale to deny our exemption……and repeated over and over we were clearly discriminated against!  He did not grant our motion for summery judgment because, as he said last week in a hearing before this decision was written, he wants us to finally have our day in court.  He knows we will decimate Danny boy in court.  I believe he also wants this to finally be a decided court case establishing once and for all that religious discrimination by local governments is a no go, at least in New York.  Not to mention leave zero legitimate reason to appeal.

We have to file for our 2011 property tax exemption by Monday.  This time we can cite settled law countering all the bullshit reasons they have used in the past.  If we are denied this time, we will go both straight to the New York Attorney General’s office, where we have a religious discrimination complaint on hold, and file a Federal law suit in Federal court as well as criminal complaints with the US Attorney General’s office under three separate federal criminal laws.

They can no longer use BS zoning and building code reasons.  They can no longer claim our Phrygianum is “just a residence”  They can no longer attack our legitimacy as a religion.  The judge ruled that the Town of Catskill has stipulated we are legitimate and use our property for charitable and religious purposes as is required.  The Judge was so kind as to provide multiple legal precedences for each and every point.

Surrender now Danny boy….it’s over and if you continue, so will your career be over.  Read that decision carefully because the Judge handed us the basis of filing criminal complaints against you personally on a silver platter…and ethical bar action.  Sucks to be you and defeated by a crippled old lady and a shiny new attorney with zero prior court experience eh?

Our attorney is awaiting your call to arrange the terms of your surrender.