Senator Bernie Sanders joined with a broad array of labor, environmental, healthcare, consumer and other advocacy groups yesterday at a Capitol Hill rally. Originally planned to protest the Trans Pacific Partnership, or TPP, the rally’s focus was broadened to promote a people’s agenda and a common commitment to stepping up grassroots mobilizations for economic and social justice and equality as the incoming Trump administration takes office. Under sunny skies, the activists celebrated the TPP’s apparent defeat, following months of protests by labor and progressive organizations that culminated in opposition to the trade deal by all three leading Presidential candidates. The successful movement to stop the TPP, said Jean Ross “indicates the power of a unified, community movement and grassroots activism that will have even greater urgency in the coming year.” Ross is a Registered Nurse and co-president of National Nurses United, which helped lead yesterday’s mobilization.
On our weekend labor calendar, there’s a Rally Against PhRMA Greed today at 4:30pm and on Sunday at noon there’s a rally to reinstate Julia Flores, an outspoken advocate for better working conditions for herself and her coworkers at Whole Foods for the last fifteen years. For full details and the latest local labor calendar listings, go to dclabor.org and click on Calendar. Here’s this weekend’s labor history: On November 19, 1915, Joe Hill, labor leader and songwriter, was executed in Utah. On November 19, 1981, my union, the National Writers Union, was founded. November 20, 1816, was the first time the term “scab,” was used. The word, which refers to someone who crosses a picket line, was first used by the Albany Typographical Society. On November 20, 1884, American socialist leader Norman Thomas was born. And, on November 20, 1888, the time clock was invented by Willard Bundy, a jeweler in Auburn, New York. Bundy’s brother Harlow started mass producing them a year later and workers have been fighting them ever since. Today’s labor quote is by Norman Thomas American socialist leader Norman Thomas, who said “I am not a champion of lost causes, but the champion of causes not yet won.” Norman Thomas, who also said: “To us Americans much has been given; of us much is required. With all our faults and mistakes, it is our strength in support of the freedom our forefathers loved which has saved mankind from subjection to totalitarian power.”
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