Category Archives: To Export

This article goes in-depth on members-only unions, especially in the South. Apparently, they’re far in between, but they exist and are often very civil rights-oriented. Read this:

What is often lost in many of the discussions on workers’ rights is that members-only unions are not a theoretical construct or historical remnant. In fact, beyond UAW Local 42, a variety of public and private-sector locals have operated on a members-only basis for many years, with varying degrees of success. For example, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) has approximately 120,000 members in members-only unions spread across Texas, Utah, Arizona, Colorado, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Virginia.

Most of the existing members-only unions are located in southern states, because legal conditions in those states such as right-to-work laws make it difficult to organize a majority union. Similarly, most members-only unions are public-sector unions, because many states that are inhospitable to labor can easily pass laws that limit collective bargaining rights in the public sector. However, there are members-only unions in the private sector and in other geographic locations as well.

via With Traditional Unions on the Decline, Can Members-Only Unions Breathe Life Back Into Labor? – Working In These Times.

First off, I’m guilty of this.

Second off, right now I’m reading another article on members-only unions and how they fair in very rural, politically anti-union states like Texas and North Carolina. I’m wondering if members-only unionism (aka “minority unions”) are the only sort of unionism that can work here in rural Georgia. But read this, first:

If you spend time among coastal liberals, it’s not unusual to hear denigrating remarks made about poor “middle Americans” slip out of mouths that are otherwise forthcoming about the injustices of poverty and inequality.

Yet, since the 1950s, Americans living in non-metropolitan counties have had a higher rate of poverty than those living in metropolitan areas. According to the 2013 American Community Survey, the poverty rate among rural-dwelling Americans is three percent higher than it is among urban-dwellers. In the South, the poorest region of the country, the rural-urban discrepancy is greatest—around eight percent higher in non-metro areas than metro areas.

So why is the poverty of rural America largely unexamined, even avoided? There are a number of explanations.

via Why the Left Isn’t Talking About Rural American Poverty – Rural America.

Elections with Two Female Candidates

Politics, To Export, , ,

I’m reading about the upcoming Taiwanese presidential election, pitting two women against each other from the two largest parties in the Republic of China and ensuring that Taiwan’s next president will be a woman. Given that we have two presidential candidates running for their respective parties’ nomination (Hillary Clinton and Carly Fiorina), I’m trying to build a list of women who have ran against each other in U.S. elections. The list is in its early stages:

  • Dianne Feinstein (D) vs. Elizabeth Emken (R) (U.S. Senate for California, 2012)
  • Barbara Boxer (D) vs. Carly Fiorina (R) (U.S. Senate for California, 2010; also with women from Libertarian and Peace & Freedom parties)
  • Bonnie Watson Coleman (D) vs. Alieta Eck (R) (U.S. House for New Jersey, 2014)
  • Patty Murray (D) vs. Linda Smith (R) (U.S. Senate for Washington, 1998
  • Margaret Chase Smith (R) vs. Lucia Cormier (D) (U.S. Senate for Maine, 1960)

Alabama and Political Apartheid

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Another thing about Alabama: they suffer from a slightly-worse case of Southern Political Apartheid than Georgia does. Alabama, like the rest of the South (save, maybe, for Florida) has one of the most racially-stratified political systems in the country. When the Dems had ran the South like Alabama during Jim Crow, they built the South to become a one-party state. When the pro-apartheid base was lost, the GOP claimed that base with a vengeance.

The goal in the South is to take everything. Electorally, we’re a very greedy, jealous, spiteful region.

America’s Constitutional Cowardice

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“Don’t glorify him” “Don’t show his face” “Don’t say his name”

One of the most freaking-cowardly reactions to a mass-casualty event I’ve ever seen, and us Americans are usually cowards when it comes to our slave-owning zombie overlords, the Founding Fathers(TM).

How about own the fact that he is a product of our zeitgeist? How about taking some responsibility for the mess we’ve allowed? How about recognizing that school shootings have been taking place since the early 1800s, and we refuse to change because we love our “Founding [Slave-owning] Fathers”?

“America, America, This is YOU.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/…/List_of_school_shootings_in_the_…

‪#‎Repeal2A‬ #UCCShooting #gunsense #MoveToAmend

A Racial “Crystal Gems test”

Ideas, To Export, , , , , , , , ,

I was reading locuas642′s Crystal Gems omnibus test for representation of women, and thought back to proposals for Racial Bechdel(-Wallace) tests.

Deggans’ rule recommends the following:

  1. At least two non-white human characters in the main cast…
  2. …in a show that’s not about race.

Alaya Dawn Johnson’s test goes like this:

  1. It has to have two POC in it,
  2. Who talk to each other,
  3. About something other than a white person.

Ars Marginal posted the following test:

  1. At least one named character of color,
  2. Whose primary trait is not their race,
  3. Who does something important besides help a White person.

I also have an interest in whether such a character has a narrative arc of their own, as well as pushing the discussion beyond just 1 or two POC characters in a cast. Some who have discussed the Mako Mori test have criticized how the test is not usually utilized in relation to Mako Mori being a POC character as well as a woman. Basically, I would like to see the conversation about POC in fiction be elevated beyond mere quantity of representation to include the quality of representation.

So here’s my draft of a Racial Crystal Gems test:

  1. A work must have at least four POC characters.
  2. It must pass Deggans’ Rule;
  3. It must pass Alaya Dawn Johnson’s Racial Bechdel-Wallace test;
  4. It must pass the Ars Marginal test;
  5. At least one POC must have a narrative arc of their own, which is not about supporting a white person (literally the racial Mako Mori test);
  6. At least one POC must be meaningful enough to the plot that removing the character would have a significant effect.
  7. Each [major POC] character must pass at least one of these tests, and each test must be passed by at least one [major POC] character; the more times you can repeat the previous step, the better.