Weekend

I spent the weekend at the Oregon AFL-CIO Summer School. I learned many, many new and interesting things. My stories are much better shared with you in person than online, so ask uncle Dave to tell you them sometime, but I did want to relay a few things.

Tom "Kicking Ass for the Working Class" Chamberlain was on fire. My notes reflect that at one point I thought he was either channeling Will Ferrel or was as high as a kite. Those that remember the very stiff TC would not have recognized the jokester I saw. The part where TC explained that the bosses were trying to use gender, race, and ethnicity to divide the workers was priceless. Just as I was thinking that he was telling us these things like he just found out about this, he said "There have been lots of books written about this." Tom recommend this.

At one point in my workshop on Immigration Laws and the Mobile Workplace, one attendee suggested that if you want to talk about crime we should talk about Enron and corporate crime. She went on to assert that no illegal immigrant had ever committed a crime as large as Enron. She was immediately challenged with something like this, "Well, the illegal immigrants that committed 9-11, that was worse." Which is an interesting way to think about it.

A discussion about "Big Labor" led to this a discussion about who, exactly was Big Labor. Hoffa was thought of immediately, although it was asserted that he was a UAW guy. An organizer from SEIU told us that whenever someone brings up "Big Labor" she just tells them that it's not that way anymore. For instance, her union president is democratically elected. Chosen by the workers themselves.