kmanns.bsky.social
Part time freedom fighter/dad. Tech, Retro Tech, social justice, transit revolution (give me more trains), Black on both sides
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Of any union. This article doesn’t tell us if it’s a mayoral issue, payroll issue, police issue, or what. But at least they have people who can speak up for them. The vast majority of Americans don’t have that
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I think the “police have regular worker problems just like you” stories are interesting. I think most people view unions as a thing they are familiar with, but couldn’t tell you what they really do.
It sucks for anyone to not get paid as a worker. But also, police unions are the most influential
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More generally, conservative "new media" figures were always treated as fascinating revolutionaries while as soon as lefties showed up people were trying to regulate and ban them
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I think Short n Sweet was 2024? It just seemed like albums used to be more of a process, and more spread out
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Ehh, she’s still trying to recover from the tour disaster and the Bezos stuff
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Not all that different than the “complete every survey you can find” hustles from 10-15 years ago. Do enough surveys and you’ll get some free samples of xyz product, or occasionally money
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There were a lot of weird things they did, but ultimately they tried to strong arm a bunch of people who all had different areas they wanted to organize under into defeating them.
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Guastella and crew were also anti-democratic. They had this weird thing where they only wanted to have the whole org meet 4 times a year. You could do some work around this, but there were limits. They limited debate during those GM’s. They refused to have a message board also
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Insert leftist fracture jokes. The thing that got me was - it’s one thing to be for a certain cause. It’s another to shut down volunteer work, in a volunteer org! Dozens of people who were interested in organizing work left b/c they couldn’t do what they knew or cared about
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In practice, an organized cadre led by Guastella gained power of this organization, controlled most of the decision making positions, and used the rare times the org got together to vote for issues they cared about, and shut down anything else. It was crazy to see
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Their view of socialism, or at least, what this socialist org should do, was singularly focused on union work and M4A, and Guastella and friends wanted that to be the bulk of an org that had a few thousand members, and at that time, probably 300 engaged members, based on general meetings
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They used Parliamentary BS, usually involving Robert’s Rules of Order, to suppress or deny anything that wasn’t M4A related. The only thing that got a pass was labor union related stuff. What’s even wilder is that there wasn’t a fight from any side on those being issues to support
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This was 2018-2020 or so. He and the “Momentum” caucus of Philly DSA were all in on Medicare 4 All, and that would have been fine, but they openly mocked anything that wasn’t that - racial justice, trans rights, housing work, immigrant work. And there were a lot of people that wanted to work on that
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Cereal finished. I thought Guastella was a really good public speaker; some folks may know the “organizer” stereotype. Maybe he was some of that but he was an effective communicator. It’s too bad that he was definitely a leftist-conservative
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Yes, all facts. Maybe you get some folks to write a chapter or 2, ala 1619 Project. It’s needs to be spelled out
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Initial theory - “so called centrists” assumed they would be a natural fit for Bluesky, and a couple of them, in addition to their bad takes, couldn’t easily recreate the audience they once had.
This is all about reach, and if the n**I bar makes that easier then that’s where they’ll stay
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But also, it is a *reporting* choice to consistently center mostly older white men as the voice for the direction of a multiracial party whose base is Black women — something these men often appear to resent.This reflects the politics of the political reporting class as much as the Democratic Party.
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While this is happening, those selfsame journalists will be loudly wondering "whether the American people care," as though they are merely observing rather than shaping public reaction, as though the quantity & tone of coverage does not *determine* whether people care.
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Oh, and go Birds.
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The gist is that she didn’t actually exist… a conspiracy so stupid that it’s not worth engaging with
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It’s the high school version of the “eff them kids” meme. I’m on board
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Centrist Dem politicians think compromise and capitulation are synonyms
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And they should exist. The Republicans have been unrepentant in attacking any state/org/institution even remotely tied to the Dem party. The response from that can’t be, after a lot more targeted damage to come, “ok let’s forgive them for punching us repeatedly, let’s turn the page”
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For one, Dem leaders could call out that they’re also trying to rename a ship named after Medgar Evers, who was a veteran. That’s an extremely odd thing to do, don’t you think?
What’s “woke” about it? Have the Republicans say it out loud!
We need Dems that are antagonistic against these bigots
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This is football. I’m not solely cheering on the coach because he’s “Ted Lasso nice”. He gets cheers for winning. And when the playcalling and strategy sucks, he gets booed!
What Dem voter truly believes “yes we lost but we mustn’t ask how things can be better, that’s divisive”
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Small arms kill switch? Hmm, sounds plausible.
That’s not even the worst part of that paragraph.
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I saw No Malice speak at a church years ago. Don’t know what his faith is like nowadays, but as long as he stays true to himself and the rhymes are good I’m with it.
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They’re trying to sanitize bigotry. Just looked up my school, Penn State, and in addition to the enrollment size increasing over the years, they dwarf the admissions at Harvard
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And there’s probably half a dozen or more rationales for that. My main point was - Industrial Revolution/tough agricultural work + limited worker protection (this is all pre union in the US) + longer work days = recipe for excessive drinking