The advocate
Want to known what all of our low-income citizens are thinking? Why just ask Ray MacNair because apparently he speaks for them ... all 30,000 to 40,000 of them in our community.
Just to be clear on this, someone who advocates for higher wages and, presumably, a competitive economy is saying something which has great potential to bring that to our community is something not worth pursuing.
It's cool though ... he's talked to all of the poor in our town.
Just to be clear on this, someone who advocates for higher wages and, presumably, a competitive economy is saying something which has great potential to bring that to our community is something not worth pursuing.
It's cool though ... he's talked to all of the poor in our town.
posted by Jmac at 9:40 AM
4 Comments:
Why did we even bother having PPA? We could have just interviewed Ray since he speaks for all low income citizens.
Also, he refers to the poor saying "we". I never knew tenured professors had it so rough.
lol, well whatever you can say about Ray, he's always right, about everything. Even when he has no idea what he's talking about. Good on him, I say, but the Economic Justice Coalition is a joke, they haven't done anything but manage to get enough grants to pay a full time staff person, who does nothing either.
I was involved at the beginning, but all they wanted to do was talk about how unfair everything is, and how to get money to pay for staff... well, they've done that, now why don't they actually follow thru w/any of the initiatives, like recognizing employers who pay living wages, using some of their moola to help part time temporary employees at the University get the skills they need to get out of economic slavery, chicken plant workers to get marketable skills, etc.?
Instead they merely seem to get the groups that do the real work under their umbrella so that they can take credit for it, and hold a labor day rally, once a year. I do like it that they're reaching out to the Hispanic community, and trying to build bridges over the resentment between the African American poor and Latinos.
But all the warm fuzzy class issue talk doesn't put food on anyone's table, or raise wages.
It doesn't even get our elected officials to agree that poor people are poor because they don't have enough money, not because their bootstraps aren't already pulled up into unmentionable areas.
I haven't been to the PPA site lately, so if I'm mischaracterizing the fact that PPA deliberately avoided putting pressure on our largest employer to pay their part time temporary, no benefit positions a decent wage, then forgive me.
I'm sure a lot of good will come out of the efforts of the hundreds of people who poured their hearts, souls and expertise into PPA and now One Athens, I just hope some of it trickles down to the people who need it, in the form of actual cash.
It would have been nice if more than a few token poor folks had been given positions of actual responsibility in PPA, (ON the steering committee) but I guess that the fact that most poor folks work three or four jobs or are so ill or elderly that they can't make huge time commitments, was part of why they couldn't find many actual poor people to take leadership roles in their effort.
After all, they might have messed the whole thing up by demanding living wages, health insurance, affordable day care, and other benefits. Pesky, uppity, demanding, the great unskilled, under-educated one third of us here in A-CC, aren't we?
In Ray's defense, though, even though it is a very small sampling of voters, when I was out in the neighborhoods I work every cycle, making sure that anyone who I knew needed one got a ride, had already voted absentee or went early, not one of them mentioned the new lab to me. It was all Obama, all the time, with one exception, I mean, c'mon, Ron Paul? this from a friend of mine of some years, who I still think was giving me a hard time. He also claimed to be pro death penalty when I was out w/the GFADP cards, said we shouldn't be paying to keep any killers alive, cuz nobody ever winds up in jail for doin nuthin, and if they killed them for the wrong reasons they'd probably done something else to deserve the death penalty! what a card, I need to go check that precinct and see if there was a vote for Ron Paul there or not!
In a county where we can't even run a safe chicken plant, (and where they fire folks for getting injured, or complaining about unsafe working conditions) I have to say, I'm more than a little worried about all the pathogens that are going to be right here in town. It's not a logical position, it's a visceral, emotional one. I just don't trust the Homeland Security folks, not one bit, to be able to handle anything. I was also alarmed that the paper reported that all the animals that go in, won't be going out. Or words to that effect. What they meant is that they wouldn't be leaving alive, but liquified and poured, literally down the drain, into our water system? Ew. I mean, really. Ew. or will there be a huge containment tank of dead, pathogen filled critters under the facility, left to rot and leach into our groundwater and soil? Again, ew.
I don't know what's right or wrong about that plant, I just know how I feel about it, and it creeps me out.
I like and respect Ray, but that was about the dumbest letter I've seen in a long time in the ABH --and there have been some!
Been having essentially the same discussion in my house. My decidely Left-of-Center spouse is of the opinion that, unless "the poor" get to work in these NBAF labs, we ought not bother.
The "rising tide lifts all boats" theory is not one to which she ascribes. Hence, if she has her way, the tide won't rise for any boats at all.
She should run for office.
Locally.
She'd win.
Reggie
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