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Go Get Kaiser

ETS!,

I would highly recommend that one of your reporters or another interested party look into the current Kaiser Aluminum Strike happening in Spokane, Tacoma and Ohio.

Basic background: Union members have not had a raise since 1984. Union has given concessions in every contract since 1984. Kaiser has turned a profit last year for the first time in many years. Management still claims that they are losing money even thought their own books state otherwise. "11 hour" offer from Kaiser to Union still included pay cuts.

Current Allegations: Retirement workers flown into Spokane from other parts of the country were not informed that this was a strike busting move. "Replacement" workers have filed suit against Kaiser claiming assault/false imprisonment and other charges.

Basically, the replacements have been locked in the plant and have not been allowed to leave for "safety" reasons. Some of these workers have been beaten up while within the plant.

Sources: striking worker and the Spokesman Review Newspaper.

Unfortunately, since I live in Seattle where no non-mayhem news from Spokane reachs me I can not report on this fiasco. I would hope that someone reports on this interesting and infuriating story.

Thank you,

--Justin Galloway, Seattle

G.P. comments: As noted in this week's From The Kitchen, we're an all-volunteer outfit--we don't have reporters we can assign to go dig up stories (lordy, we'd love that...). We depend on folks like, well, Justin, to bring the stories to us. If you know about something important that's going down, write it up!

Things Go Better

Dear Geov, Maria, and all,

It is indeed tragic that the Seattle School District is economically desperate, not unlike many single parents. In times of economic desperation, people become extremely vulnerable to exploitation.

What if single parents, in their economic desperation, chose to sell access to their children in ways that would damage their children's health and undermine academic achievement? How harshly they would be judged, and rightly so.

The Seattle School District voted on 10/7/98 to sell to the Coca-Cola corporation access to our children. The School Board endorsed soda-consumption by children during the school day as a way of generating revenue. (The School District is allowing each school the option to sell soda 24 hours per day). Irrefutable evidence strongly states that drinking caffeinated sugar-water encourages hyperactivity and anxiety disorders among children, which, of course, does much to enhance educational achievement.

Their vote was not just about selling Coke to children. It was primarily about selling our children to Coke.

The School Board said that is willing to renegotiate the Coke contract if it conflicts with any new advertising policy that is adopted. A sham process skewered the results of the citizens' committees' recommendations for a new advertising policy to the School Board. Before any new policy it is adopted, full and public hearings must be held. While it is unlikely that the School Board will not challenge its new sugar daddy, many outraged parents and students are certainly willing to do so.

--Sarah T. Luthens, Seattle

Linda for Senate!

ETS!,

Geov Parrish says:

"There is no doubt that Murray would vote better on enough different, important legislative issues that she's clearly a better choice, and it becomes essential to keep Smith out--which is exactly the calculation Patty's made while spitting in the eyes of her grassroots constituents."

Geov's decision is understandable, given his set of priorities. But I think economic fairness for working people has a higher priority than political correctness. So I'm going to vote for the racist, queer-baiting, bible-thumping lady from Hazel Dell. Linda Smith has never presented herself as anything other than what she is...a right-wing populist, with all their virtues and all their faults. What you see is what you get. You could drop her into a campaign in 1888, during the heyday of prairie populism, and she would fit right in.

In contrast, Patty Murray presented herself as a progressive in 1992, and I was one of those who voted for her, but she has betrayed our trust repeatedly. To me she's lower than a scab. I loathe that little woman. She's an invertebrate. The thought of six more years of Patty Murray has driven me to take my chances with Linda Smith.

And Linda Smith has one admirable quality that few politicians have these days...she has a backbone. In Congress she has opposed free trade and she is shunned at the same poobah clubs that have welcomed Patty Murray with open arms.

Behold! We have a vertebrate in the 3rd district. Hold your nose and promote that vertebrate to the U.S. Senate..

--M.G. Murphy, corresponding secretary, Seattle Vertebrate Party, Seattle

G.P. replies: Linda Smith is a disaster for working people, free trade stance notwithstanding. She's rabidly anti-union, anti-livable wage, and pro-corporate welfare. Her anti-PCness is just one of those special little bonuses that comes with the truly far right--or the people with enough gumption or security to parade their bigotry.

It's a searing indictment of Murray that such a candidate can quite reasonably look like a viable alternative for folks like M.G. But in this case the cure is even worse than the disease. Sharks have backbones, too. And big pointy teeth.

Those Useless Unions

ETS!,

I just have one question for you.

If you invented something (Let's call it X). X is made and your friends love it and they all want it. So you start making X and your friends are calling you up so much that you realize that you could feasibly quit your job and sustain a healthy income off of this. Your working so much on this and your production sky rockets to the point you hire some help. You decide that you will hire for $6 an hour with as long as the company does well you will give a 5% cost of living expense. After a year goes by you hire enough people that you are able to get group rate insurance for everyone.

Years go by and you employ 200 employees and the ones that have been with you at the beginning are now making $15 an hour to put this simple thing together. With this simple thing you are making $200,000 a year. You prosper to the point that you want to give a little back to your employees so you throw a large party. With this party a couple of people that were just recently hired decided that you owe them because they work for you and you make all this money. Well they get together, create a union, strike, and shut down your whole operation. Meanwhile the people that have been with you since the beginning, get treated like a dog and even threatened by the striking employees. You try to talk but all they really want is for you to give them all your money. Needless to say, the company fails because all your stores you do business with "don't want to deal with business that can't run their companies"...and the whole company collapse and no one has a job. This happened to my father.

We needed unions when this country was started but you see why unions don't work now. They just destroy business, companies, and people's lives. The mentality of this is called Socialism. It does not work. Canada lives like that. Imagine all you make, 50% goes to the government. If you make $500 a week you take home $250. I don't know about you but if I work hard (which I do) I don't feel like I want to give all my money to someone else because they think they have the right because they don't want to work. People that are blind, deaf and in wheelchairs have jobs. Nowadays there are only about .00001% of people that need help from the Government.

I listen to people and I really get hurt when people think they know what is right and they really don't think things through. If you believe in this idea of Socialism then move. Within a year you will be back. It's the country you hate, that gives you the right to think like this. Please realize this. How much do you value your brain. Evidently a fair amount or you wouldn't have published your views. To give these ideas out may spark someone to help you find out a way to make money from these ideas. Would you like someone to come along and demand that just because they typed it they deserve half of your money?

--Kevan Bolejack, via e-mail

Free Speech on the Lawn

Reader,

Stephen "the man" Phillips (ETS! Sept. 23) says he hates political yard signs on public property, then goes on to champion privately-owned property as the rightful place for political signs.

Limiting political messages to private property disenfranchises the more than 50% of the public that doesn't own property. The Constitution originally allowed only property-owners to vote, a restriction wisely rescinded. Phillips approves the step backwards that handicaps non-property owners' ability to influence votes, and thereby disempowers.

In California's Great Central Valley nearly all the land along the major highways is owned by giant agri-business firms and ultra conservative rich men. I have seen these public highway corridors between cities festooned with giant billboards promoting extreme rightwing ideologies to the commuters and travelers. Common-folk have no such access.

I was dismayed last year to observe a Seattle man display posters promoting a conservative cause, that he had removed from public property, to cheering fellow "progressive" activists, and brag about how he was helping the law by removing illegal signs from "his" public property. I know that at least some of these "activists" were also strongly opposed to the anti-postering ban. A touch hypocritical, isn't it? In similar vein, Phillips says "I figure someone else puts a sign up on my property, I have the right to push it over, am I right?"

No, Phillips, you are not right. Public property is property owned in common not only by you, but by the homeless street person, billionaire, anarchist, socialist, fascist, Republicrat--everybody.

The anti-postering law is a direct assault on equal access because it disempowers those with little money and denies them the ability to compete with the affluent in providing information to the public. Public access such as postering on public property can permit equal access to all, and avoid the de-facto censorship of those with little means by the wealthy.

If you "hate" what the poster promotes, leave it there and put up your own poster next to it, and be glad the offensive message wasn't on a two-story billboard on private property that you don't have access to.

Posters almost certainly should be regulated in size, and quantity, or the wealthy could easily overcome those with little money; but access to public property for postering is a big step toward the democratization of ideas.

"The Man," a phrase often used to connote authoritarian elitist power, has long been the enemy of the disenfranchised. Apparently it is so even if "the man" is a Phillips.

--Ron Richardson, via e-mail