New Wal-Mart No Way TV Commercial
Wal-Mart No Way’s ad is now on the air. The ad, “The Real Costs of Wal-Mart,” is airing on NY1, but you can view it here.
And be sure to call Mayor Mike at 311 to say Wal-Mart No Way!
The Whole World Should Be Watching
Over a quarter of a million people filled the streets of Washington yesterday to protest the war in Iraq and the Bush regime, but our nation’s corporate media has given the event scant coverage. The demonstration itself, with a large turnout from labor, was broad and impressive.
There is much debate in the anti-war movement about the value of these large mobilizations. The side that I am on argues that these are the most visible manifestation of the movement against war and Bush that we can muster, and that there is an additional value in buoying our spirits by bringing so many of us together.
Another side argues that we’ve been marching by the millions against this stupid war since before it began, failed to stop it then and have since been losing momentum and turning out fewer people (yesterday was the largest turnout in a year). It’s time for new tactics and strategies, they say, and I don’t necessarily disagree.
The problem with a march on Washington that the media ignores is that it’s like a tree falling in a forest, with no CNN corespondent there to ask the tree why it chose today to fall and then interview three anti-tree-falling counter protesters to ask why they think the tree should keep standing.
My friend John Nichols argues in his book, “It’s the Media, Stupid!” (co-written by Bob McChesney) that the left should prioritize media reform amongst our many issues since the media has such an overbearing influence on public discourse and debate that they can effectively pretend we don’t exist no matter how many hundreds of thousands os us march in the streets. It’s on days like today, scanning the papers for any coverage of yesterday’s huge demonstration, that his argument should have a special resonance.
Today and tomorrow, dedicated activists remain in Washington to engage in acts of civil disobedience in order to ratchet up the pressure against the administration and its war. Most likely, they’ll block a few traffic intersections and maybe drop a banner or two from public places. Talk about overused and ineffective tactics.
I’ve believed for a few years now that our comrades who engage in direct action should focus on the headquarters and newsrooms of major media companies. Let’s see if NBC news can ignore the antiwar movement if activists block the entrance to their news studios and prevent Brian Williams from sitting in his comfy chair. Let’s see the NY Times ignore protests and arrests in their lobby. How about simultaneous CD’s and banner drops outside the various “window on the world” studies of the morning newscasts?
Remember “the whole world is watching?” Well, it’s not. Not anymore, and not yet again.
Everyone You Know Someday Will Die
This is going to be unforgivably morbid.
A lawsuit has been filed against the Port Authority by the kin of those who died in the 1993 car bombing of the World Trade Center. Without comment on the lawsuit, which has serious merits, one motivation is dubious. According to the NY Times:
“Among survivors of the first attack, which left six people dead and more than 1,000 injured, there has long been a feeling of neglect, as if their suffering was not valued as highly as that of the people who endured the horrors of Sept. 11, 2001. There was no federally engineered compensation fund, no blue-ribbon panel to apportion blame.”
Well, geez, whose death is as valued as those who perished in the attack on New York four years ago? And what, exactly, is fair about valuing any random death over another? We have in the Gulf Coast devastation wrought by hurricane Katrina a clear example of our weird priorities. Only weeks later, as the death toll reaches 9/11-like proportions, is there anything approaching the outrage that was palpable in this country four years ago. Maybe it’s because we can’t bomb God and Nature in retaliation, or maybe it’s because we’re so numb to daily life that doesn’t directly affect us that we’re only moved by astronomical body counts.
I’m working again – organizing – and without giving too much away, I am brought in daily contact with senior citizens (shucks, I’ve probably given it away). I met a woman the other day who was all too eager to talk about her life’s tragedies with anyone who would listen, particularly any young man who reminded her of her own son, who died years ago at the age of 33. Apparently he got into an argument with a friend of his, which resulted in a karate chop to the neck and a death from internal bleeding a few days later. Totally random and tragic, but who’s left to mourn him except his elderly mom and maybe an old flame, if he’s lucky? The old woman still beamed with pride over her lost son. She talked about the flashy job in finance he had landed a year or two before he died. He worked for some firm on the hundred-and-somethingth floor of the World Trade Center. “He would have died anyway,” she said wistfully.
Of course he would have. Everyone you know someday will die. So why privilege certain deaths over others?
Why do the 9/11 widows get to veto any kind of cultural space downtown that acknowledges the USA’s imperialism? Why is Cindy Sheehan’s voice privileged over those of the moms whose kids didn’t die in Iraq, or over the kids themselves who have yet to be shipped there?
My younger brother was at the World Trade Center on that fateful day in 1993, part of a third grade field trip to the observation deck. And had that been an airplane bomb instead of a car bomb, then I would be devastated by the loss of my kid brother and probably still climbing on the soapbox afforded me. But my brother will still die one day (I promised this would be morbid, Brian), and if I’m still around to see it, I’ll still be devastated. So why the double standard over everyday tragedies?
Instant Run-off’s Gonna Get You
Anthony Weiner’s concession in advance of the Democratic primary run-off is the best possible result of Tuesday’s election, and not least of which because I have no intention of voting for Whitey (whatever name he may go by).
Freddy Ferrer, whose campaign has been rather timid until now, deserves the chance to finally take on Mayor Mike directly, without diminished strength and campaign funds. His “two New Yorks” theme from four years ago was exactly the message that voters deserved, and I will always appreciate that Freddy didn’t back down on September 12, insisting that nothing had changed. We still had then, and still have now after four years of Bloomberg, a city of inconceivable riches that is pushing its poor and desperate farther out into the margins. If Freddy campaigns like a populist from now until November, our CEO Mayor may yet get fired.
Better yet, the possibility of wasting $12 million in taxpayer money on an unnecessary run-off election opens the possibility for significant election reform. It’s time to put proportional representation back on the agenda. Taxpayer outrage was a significant, if not primary, factor in San Francisco’s recent switch to instant run-off voting (elections by ranked ballot, where the votes for the lowest vote-getting candidate are redistributed to the next choice listed on each ballot until a candidate finally achieves a majority vote). It could be here, too. The gradual demographic shifts in the city virtually ensure lots more run-off elections, with a splintered, Balkanized electorate unable to elect majority candidates.
Those run-off elections are bad for democracy, too, for how divisive they can be. Four years ago, when Ferrer had to face Mark Green in a run-off, Green’s campaign played the race card, using fears of Al Sharpton to galvanize the white suburban vote. Green won the primary, but lost support and lost the election. But Whitey won anyway.
That wouldn’t happen in an instant runoff vote. A candidate must appeal to his rivals’ supporters for their second and third place votes in order to prevail in multiple rounds of counting. Divisiveness doesn’t work if you’re simply a plurality, nor does painting certain candidates (the wild ones, with the kooky lefty ideas) as “spoilers.” Voters could finally vote their conscience and their true preference, and candidates would have to emphasize common ground and areas of agreement.