Reading

Some reading—a few pages from the introduction of There is Power in a Union: The Epic Story of Labor in America, by Philip Dray. But it now.

Contrast of Message Messages

Some people think the Occupy Wall Street Protest is too vague in its stated (or unstated) demands and that that is a problem, a strike against the Wall Street strike. Other people don't. Here are two videos to compare. We at the TYDK think that Nicholas Kristof makes a good point about, say, taxing financial transactions (the Tobin tax) but at the same time we think that the idea makes a bad placard, as opposed to what we are seeing out on the street. (We also find the tone condescending, like much of the coverage of the protest in New York City.) A better direction for message refining comes from the Transport Workers Union president John Samuelsen, who describes his union and the Occupy Wall Street protesters are "singing the same song and fighting the same battle" against economic inequity. This is more about battle songs than people who are not interested might imagine, and singing songs, as inarticulate as that might seem, certainly help with what Samuelsen rightly calls "the sense of desperation."