http://www.ocregister.com/news/noose-315163-orange-members.html?cb=1315069280
“I couldn’t believe somebody hated working families enough to hang a noose,” said Norma Kurtz, who discovered the noose at around 8:45 a.m. “I just don’t understand.”
Of course, a noose has certain racial connotations directed at blacks due to the lynchings that used to occur in the South. There is no racial issue here. So why would someone leave a noose at a union building-especially one that was involved in contract negotiations with the California Angels?
“We just go about our business working for the working people,” said Priscilla Luviano, director of communications for the union organization. “We don’t know what the motive would have been.”
“It sickens me. It sickens me to see this in 2011 in Orange County,” Gebre said.
Victim: Working families
Perpetrator: Someone who hates working families
Maybe Rusty can hand out one his coveted "Rusty" awards next year to whomever cracks this case.
Better yet, this looks like a case for Eric Holder's Justice Department and Hilda Solis' Labor Department. Maybe they can form a task force to find the culprits.
So here is the basic question: This had to be committed by either someone "who hates working families", the California Angels, or it was a PR hoax done by someone in the union. If you look at the comment thread below the article, it seems that the overwhelming majority suspect the latter.
I'll go with the majority. That's cuz I just hate working families.
Hmmm. On second thought, doesn't he live in Orange County? Hey, where were you on Thursday night?
"I was right here. I got witnesses."
Me thinks Mr. Gary Fouse would be throwing an absolute hissy fit right now if instead of a noose at union HQ there was a swastika at a synagogue or Jewish center.
ReplyDeleteMr. Fouse's morality seems to be highly dependent on which side of the political spectrum the victim lies.
Anonymous,
ReplyDeleteIf there had been a swastika painted onto a synagogue, we would know who the victims were.
Had the noose been placed at an African-American location, I would be joining in the outcry because the victims would be clear.
Here we have people telling us that the victims were "working families"?
Right.
BTW: Why did you bring up the subject of Jews? Curious.
Gary, I rather doubt that anyone is going to actually hang a union organizer from a lamp post in the next year or two, but do a quick Google search for "Wesley Everest." When you've absorbed that one, I can give you a list of additional names. Don't overlook that he was a WW I veteran, in army uniform, at the time the American Legion lynched him.
ReplyDeleteI don't think most swastikas painted on synagogues represent people actually able or energetic enough to work up a repeat of krystalnacht, much less Buchenwald. Most nooses left in the vicinity of Black Studies departments or Black Student Union offices don't pose a significant threat that a human being will actually have their head put in the noose. Nonetheless, both of the above, as you note, do get people quite riled up based on past history and what the perps must be thinking.
Siarlys,
ReplyDeleteThe history of the unions in America is full of violence. Originally, they were the victims. For a long time now, they have been the perps. There is no wave of anti-union violence in America now.
Are you aware of any anti-union violence in Mission Viejo?
I'm not aware of any Jews being murdered in America lately either Gary. Nor am I aware of any union members engaging in violence with the impunity that those who murdered union organizers expected and received. You seem to think that any individual act of violence, or any two or three people getting together to conspire to commit violence, is the moral and legal equivalent of any other act of violence.
ReplyDeleteIt is a totally different picture when the police are part of the mob, the leaders of the mob are personal friends of the sheriff, and no jury would convict even if anyone were apprehended.
Don't try to compare apples and oranges.
What you are talking about occurred what-80 years ago?
ReplyDeleteHere's a homework assignment for you-go down the list of Teamsters Union presidents going back to 1950and tell me how many went to prison.
Homework? You think I don't know who was president of the Teamsters from Tobin to Hoffa to Fitzsimmons to Carey to Hoffa? There aren't that many to memorize. But I believe only two of them went to prison.
ReplyDeleteIncidentally, murders of union organizers by capitalist gun thugs were still going on in the 1930s, probably the 1940s, and had calmed down to punches in the kidneys in the 1950s.
Now, if you are through kicking up a cloud of dust, let's try your logic on a few of your favorite causes:
Jews were herded en masse into gas chambers what, sixty-five years ago? What's the big fuss about a swastika?
The last recorded and confirmed lynching in America was what, 46 years ago? What's the big deal about a noose on a professor's door?
(All six people lynched in the history of Wisconsin were "white," does that make it all right?)
To pretend that unions are now THE perpetrators of violence, on the scale and ruthlessness of violence routinely thrown in the way of the slightest attempt at organizing before the NLRA (which your hero Newt Gingrich tried to repeal) is simply wishful thinking on your part. You want to eliminate unions from the scene, on the grounds that any employee walking in to a corporate HR department can "negotiate on a basis of equality," which is of course exactly what corporate CEO's want. Therefore, you dismiss the violence that can easily be visited on unions, play up occasional acts of frustration that a worker on strike might commit, and use the passage of time to lull any concern.
You know the parable of the frog in the pan of water on the stove? It is not only faux conservatives raging about the faux liberals who worry about that one. Workers thinking about organizing a union worry that the National Right to Work for Less and Less and Less Committee is turning up the heat ever so gently, hoping that the legs of the workers will be parboiled before they notice the lynch mobs being mobilized. And you are an accomplice in that effort.
(LOL). All of which, is a long-winded way of conceding that in the last several decades there is no violence directed at unionists (other than by other unionists) The case of the murder of Yablonsky (SIC?) of the Mine Workers union comes to mind.
ReplyDeleteI never said get rid of unions. I said workers should have a choice free of intimidation.
You got no case, Siarlys.
Its wonderful how you can declare yourself the winner of an argument when you are opposing counsel, judge, and jury, all rolled into one.
ReplyDeleteYour didactic method is generally to take one empiric out of a long and detailed presentation, question it, without actually disproving it, ignore everything else, and announce "See, I win."
Do you allow your students to get away with that when grading papers? I was being facetious when I equated community studies at UCSC with taking English at UCI, but perhaps there is more in common than I thought.
I do not engage in debates with my students on issues. My opinions do not enter the classroom. I grade them on how they write their papers in correct English.
ReplyDeleteDuh-uh... In my last comment, I wasn't saying anything about the content of what you believe. I was questioning the integrity of your reasoning process. You ought to be giving your students F's if the manner in which they use the English language sinks as low as your last attempt at verbal self defense.
ReplyDelete