{"id":23559,"date":"2019-06-30T00:59:23","date_gmt":"2019-06-30T08:59:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.richgibson.com\/blog\/?p=23559"},"modified":"2019-06-30T01:04:27","modified_gmt":"2019-06-30T09:04:27","slug":"rouge-forum-dispatch-empires-sock-puppet-show-is-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.richgibson.com\/blog\/rouge-forum-dispatch-empires-sock-puppet-show-is-on\/","title":{"rendered":"Rouge Forum Dispatch: Empire’s Sock Puppet Show is On!"},"content":{"rendered":"

We Say Fight Back!<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Demonstrators<\/p>\n

Brevard School Board splits 4-1 in favor of district plan for teacher pay; union vows ‘war’<\/h1>\n

In a tense meeting marked by public jeers and catcalls, the Brevard School Board snubbed a significant teacher pay raise plan recommended by a state-appointed mediator, and instead backed by a 4-1 vote a smaller salary hike proposed by Superintendent Mark Mullins.<\/p>\n

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The board struggled to maintain order in the district office where a crowd of at least 900 teachers dressed in red,\u00a0parents and students packed the room in support of the special magistrate’s plan.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThis was a total disgrace that this school [board] chose to vote over the interests of the students as identified by the special magistrate and went with the district\u2019s flawed numbers,\u201d Brevard Federation of Teachers president Anthony Colucci said after the vote.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Mullins\u2019 proposal includes raises of $1,100 and $825 for “highly effective” and “effective” teachers respectively, with a $650 one-time bonus,\u00a0plus a $500 bonuses for all first-year returning teachers. The union had wanted recurring raises of $2,300 and $1,724 respectively \u2013 an approach endorsed by the\u00a0magistrate last month, following nearly six months of impasse.\u00a0 amp.floridatoday.com\/amp\/1550316001?fbclid=IwAR3p9MTqtco5KFREGB-UJKuASlmgNL1SFF18qyqgH0D-12CrcEAIDAhtniY<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

www.facebook.com\/BrevardFederationofTeachers\/videos\/469202630545931\/?t=42<\/a><\/p>\n

‘We’ll keep marching’: Brevard students demand School Board vote to raise teacher pay<\/h1>\n

Equipped with bullhorns and picket signs, 13-year-old Hayden Mucha and 12-year-old Addisyn Thurn led more than 100 red-clad students, parents, grandparents and teachers Friday\u00a0morning in a demonstration of support for higher teacher pay.<\/p>\n

The crowd departed near The Avenue Viera shopping complex at 9.a.m and marched down Lake Andrews Drive to the Brevard County School Board building to demand they vote in favor of a plan to raise teacher pay.<\/p>\n

That plan, endorsed by an impartial special magistrate in May, was rejected by school district superintendent Mark Mullins last week, which prompted Mucha and Thurn to organize the demonstration by posting on social media and through word-of-mouth.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel that it went really well, we had an awesome turnout,\u201d Mucha said.<\/p>\n

The pair expected just 50 people to show up, but by their estimation the crowd numbered at least 100, if not several hundred.\u00a0\u00a0 www.floridatoday.com\/story\/news\/2019\/06\/14\/brevard-students-lead-march-teacher-pay\/1456444001\/?fbclid=IwAR0TfQu4lVJiHKirBlz5mCzPSK_giEWwlLEzuUdEoOlCX3WYBOKnYQMSoVU<\/a><\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>Huck<\/p>\n

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From Commune to Capitalism: How China\u2019s Peasants Lost Collective Farming and Gained Urban Poverty<\/h1>\n

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by<\/em> Zhun Xu<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

$<\/span>20.00<\/span> \u2013 $<\/span>95.00<\/span><\/p>\n

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In the early 1980s, China undertook a massive reform that dismantled its socialist rural collectives and divided the land among millions of small peasant families. Known as the decollectivization campaign, it is one of the most significant reforms in China\u2019s transition to a market economy. From the beginning, the official Chinese accounts, and many academic writings, uncritically portray this campaign as a huge success, both for the peasants and the economy as a whole. This mainstream history argues that the rural communes, suffering from inefficiency, greatly improved agricultural productivity under the decollectivization reform. It also describes how the peasants, due to their dissatisfaction with the rural regime, spontaneously organized and collectively dismantled the collective system.\u00a0 monthlyreview.org\/product\/from-commune-to-capitalism-how-chinas-peasants-lost-collective-farming-and-gained-urban-poverty\/?fbclid=IwAR2rXWk5u9QcP_haB70fQn22gC4NFMiMtFXqZ<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Wayfair\u2019s Wayward Walkout-WSJ Critique<\/h1>\n

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One depressing sign of our times is the politicization of every corner of American life, and the latest outrage overkill involves, well, furniture sales. A classic example of progressives losing the plot is this week\u2019s walkout at Wayfair.<\/p>\n

The trouble started when some 500 employees at the popular online furniture retailer complained in a letter that Wayfair had been selling beds and mattresses to a group that runs detention centers at the border. \u201cWe believe that the current actions of the United States and their contractors at the Southern border do not represent an ethical business partnership Wayfair should choose to be part of,\u201d the letter said. Employees staged a walkout on Wednesday and protested in Boston.\u00a0\u00a0 www.wsj.com\/articles\/wayfairs-wayward-walkout-11561676480<\/a><\/p>\n

California Grocery Workers just Authorized a Strike. Here is how they got sold out last time.<\/em> <\/b><\/p>\n

The California Grocery Strike<\/b><\/p>\n

by<\/u><\/i><\/span> Rich Gibson, May,\u00a0 2004<\/u><\/i><\/p>\n

“The greatest productive force is the understanding, wisdom, <\/em><\/strong>of<\/em><\/strong> the revolutionary class itself.” (Marx)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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  1. The southern California grocery strike involving 70,000 United Food And Commercial Workers members from October 2003 to March 2004 was one of the most significant actions the U.S. labor movement took in the last twenty years.<\/li>\n
  2. What happened? The workers lost, betrayed by their union leaders. This defeat was devastating, setting up a spiral of attacks on the lives of people who must work to live, particularly on the minimal health benefits that a few working people still have. The old labor saw, AAn injury to one just goes before an injury to all,@ is already felt in teacher-union contract negotiations.<\/li>\n
  3. Could this have been won? Yes, it could, but not within the confines of the law, and not in the confines of the structures of the unions, not within the philosophy of the “labor movement@ (i.e., the AFL-CIO with the independent National Education Association tossed in for good measure), not without preparationCand most importantly, not without organization and wise action.<\/li>\n
  4. What were the issues? The 70,000 plus grocery workers in Southern California, most but not all of them check-out clerks, struck to protect their wages, health benefits, pension funds, the hours and nature of the hours at work, and their union itself. Grocery clerks are not known as impatient militants. The workers fought because they had to fight. Cornered, they engaged in a battle that few of them fully understood. The sole thing that was retained after the end of a five month strike was the right of their United Food and Commercial Workers Union directors to collect dues from the members.<\/li>\n
  5. The grocery owners, Vons, Ralphs, and Albertsons, claimed they had to have massive concessions from the union in order to stave off competition from Walmart, now invading their turf. The grocery bosses rightly said that Walmart=s edge was not only in its ability to buy in bulk, but its cheap labor costs. Walmart, the largest corporation in the world, pays health benefits to less than 2 of its work force, and often pays only the minimum wage to part-timers. In addition, Walmart sometimes just does not pay at all, having been sued repeatedly by employees who were unpaid for work done.<\/li>\n
  6. On the other side, grocery workers were trapped. Because their circumstances demanded it, grocery clerks led the biggest fight-back of the working class in the U.S. in two decades.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    The Little Red Schoolhouse<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n

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    California college demands student newspaper hand over video of public meeting<\/h2>\n

    Intrepid student reporters regularly use open records laws to request information from public colleges. But in a bizarre reversal, Southwestern College in California is trying to use the law to demand its student newspaper turn over videos taken at a student government meeting. Today, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education wrote to the college\u2019s administration<\/a>\u00a0to combat this affront to student press freedom.<\/p>\n

    \u201cThis is man-bites-dog stuff \u2014 usually it\u2019s the student newspaper that FOIAs the college, not the other way around,\u201d said Adam Steinbaugh, author of FIRE\u2019s letter<\/a>. \u201cThis alarming move should concern anyone who supports a free press, student or otherwise.\u201d<\/p>\n

    Gloria Chavez, Southwestern College\u2019s Title IX director, contacted<\/a> the temporary faculty adviser to The Southwestern College Sun<\/a> on May 23 requesting any \u201c[v]ideo footage, including audio, taken during\u201d a May 2 student government meeting. The adviser responded<\/a> that The Sun would not produce the requested records, if they existed at all, because they were protected by California\u2019s shield law<\/a>.<\/p>\n

    Less than a week later, the administration hand-delivered a second letter<\/a> to the permanent adviser, now back from medical leave, incorrectly alleging that the newspaper was a government actor and thus subject to the California Public Records Act<\/a>. Further, the Title IX director claimed that not producing the records was \u201csubversion of the public\u2019s right to access\u201d in violation of the Society of Professional Journalists\u2019 Code of Ethics<\/a>.<\/p>\n

    It\u2019s not.\u00a0\u00a0 www.thefire.org\/california-college-demands-student-newspaper-hand-over-video-of-public-meeting\/?fbclid=IwAR1IwwKttkWvvnZnt4jxhx3IxkPaYysjjn3jLbmt5cMsh5kGZKpzQrTdNpI<\/a><\/p>\n

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    The story that disgraced UCD Chancellor Linda Katehi didn’t want you to read<\/a><\/h1>\n

    \"image001.jpg\"<\/p>\n

    An investigative piece\u00a0focusing on the relationship between Beverly Hills agribusiness tycoons Stewart and Lynda Resnick\u00a0and the UC system that I wrote in March\u00a0definitely\u00a0got UC Davis Chancellor\u00a0Linda Katehi’s attention.<\/p>\n

    According to an investigation by the Sacramento Bee, I\u00a0was one of the journalists being monitored by a private firm, hired by Katehi and funded by our tax dollars:\u00a0www.sacbee.com\/\u2026<\/a><\/p>\n

    The documents released to the Bee \u201cillustrate the efforts the university undertook to monitor its reputation nationwide, including analysis of Twitter accounts of journalists and lawmakers.\u201d<\/p>\n

    \u201cThe online reputation management companies were paid at least $175,000 to bury and counterbalance negative online references about the university and Katehi following a November 2011 incident in which campus police pepper-sprayed students during a peaceful demonstration,\u201d the Bee stated.<\/p>\n

    The firm was monitoring posts from\u00a0Assemblyman Kevin McCarty, D-Sacramento, \u201cwho called on Katehi to resign and held an oversight hearing on outside compensation for university leaders.\u201d<\/p>\n

    \u201cIdmloco also was monitoring online posts from journalists such as Dan Bacher, editor of \u2018Fish Sniffer\u2019\u00a0magazine, and Deborah Anderluh, the Sacramento Bee\u2019s investigations editor, who tweeted a link to a Bee story on the controversy,\u201d the Bee said.<\/p>\n

    Here’s a link on the Sacramento Bee website \u00a0to the “listening reports” by Idmloco. It it wasn’t so creepy, it would be funny: www.sacbee.com\/…<\/a><\/p>\n

    My article is one of the articles and tweets featured in the March 7 \u201clistening report\u201d prepared by Idmloco.<\/p>\n

    The good news is that Katehi is now on administrative leave. The bad news is that Stewart and Lynda Resnick, along with Riley Bechtel and other corporate interests, continue to wield enormous influence over the UC system.\u00a0\u00a0 www.dailykos.com\/stories\/2016\/5\/21\/1529480\/-The-story-that-disgraced-UCD-Chancellor-Linda-Katehi-didn-t-want-you-to-read?fbclid=IwAR3NuewAC4-ENsik9cQcucBFFiKjL-7lKQEbVhDAh_IgGljp5E01_VqZBi4<\/a><\/p>\n

    \"Image<\/p>\n

    Above, Adela De La Torre, celebrating her sparsely attended “inauguration” as President of San Diego State. She was Kathei’s protege. She will over see a near billion dollar land deal as SDSU seeks to take over a huge complex at the former football Chargers stadium. Most of the negotiating is done in secret.<\/p>\n