Monthly Archives: March 2009
Happy Birthday Cesar.
Cesar Estrada Chavez would of been 82 today. He is buried up the road from me in Keene, CA which I drive by every time I go east. He left this world on April 23,1993.
I marched with him. I took shit from the cops and rednecks for him and the cause of Farmworkers being paid a living wage. I had vegetables thrown at me, I had obscenities screamed at me for my belief in Cesar and his mission to get a living wage and decent working conditions for farm workers. I have picked fruit. I know what it’s like to be a farm worker.
I would do it all again. In a NY minute. From Las Culturas:
THE LAST MARCH WITH CESAR CHAVEZ
On April 29, 1993, Cesar Estrada Chavez was honored in death by those he led in life. More than 50,000 mourners came to honor the charismatic labor leader at the site of his first public fast in 1968 and his last in 1988, the United Farm Workers Delano Field Office at “Forty Acres.”
It was the largest funeral of any labor leader in the history of the U.S. They came in caravans from Florida to California to pay respect to a man whose strength was in his simplicity.
Farm workers, family members, friends and union staff took turns standing vigil over the plain pine coffin which held the body of Cesar Chavez. Among the honor guard were many celebrities who had supported Chavez throughout his years of struggle to better the lot of farmworkers throughout America.
Many of the mourners had marched side by side with Chavez during his tumultuous years in the vineyards and farms of America. For the last time, they came to march by the side of the man who had taught them to stand up for their rights, through nonviolent protest and collective bargaining.
Cardinal Roger M. Mahoney, who celebrated the funeral mass, called Chavez “a special prophet for the worlds’ farm workers.” Pall bearers, including crews of these workers, Chavez children and grandchildren, then carried their fallen leader, resting at last, from the Memorial Park to Forty Acres.
The death of Chavez marked an era of dramatic changes in American agriculture. His contributions would be eroded, and others would have to shoulder the burden of his work. But, Cesar Chavez, who insisted that those who labor in the earth were entitled to share fairly in the rewards of their toil, would never be forgotten.
We can not forget him…ever. We also can never forget the farm workers and what they deal with to make a living…ever. You might not understand why this is important to me, but I hope you get the gist of it.
No one works harder for a living than farm workers, and they do it for pennies. They still die in the fields because of heat stroke or because some asshole farmer had a field sprayed while the workers were working there, every year here in the San Joaquin valley. It gets over 100 daily here in the summer. But no one goes to jail here for a dead farm worker.
There is still lots of work to be done and the UFW is trying to level the playing field. Eight states recognize Cesar Chavez’s birthday with a state holiday. Yet… all 50 states eat the food farm workers pick….
Professor Turley on the Spanish Inquisition.
He also talks about the failure of torture as a method to gather evidence..and the Big Dick Cheney and how Obama and Holder might be protecting The Shrub and the Big Dick from prosecution.
Matt Taibbi-I love you dude!!
Matt’s latest piece is a wonderful bitchslap of the AIG carpetbaggers. He is responding to the recent NYT OpEd by one of their employees…actually former employee. Executive VP Jake DeSantis. Jake was a big wig in the Financial Products division…you know, the one that created the credit default swaps bullshit. It’s a must read! Just a small tidbit:
Are we supposed to believe that Jake DeSantis knew nothing about Joe Cassano’s CDS deals? If your boss and the top guys in your firm were all making a killing selling anything at all — whether it was rubber kayaks, generic Levitra or credit default swaps — you really wouldn’t bother to find out what that thing they were selling was? You’d really just mind your own business, sit at your cubicle and put your faith in the guys up top to fill you in if there was something you needed to know?
This would be a believable claim for an employee of some other wing of AIG, a company with well over 100,000 employees. But DeSantis works for tiny, 377-person AIGFP, a unit that had only two offices — one in London and one in Greenwich, Conn.
And we’re talking about financial professionals, the most shameless group of tirelessly envious gossips ever to walk the face of the earth. The likelihood that Cassano would pull in $280 million for himself, and his equally greedy, hopelessly jealous employees wouldn’t know not only exactly how he made that money but every last ugly detail about his life — from what skank he’s sleeping with to what side of his trousers he hangs on — is almost zero.
I know plenty of people who work in this world, and I’ve met very few who didn’t hate with every cell in their bodies anyone in their own companies who made more money than they did or got bigger bonuses at Christmastime. Gossiping about each others’ bonuses, and bitching about each others’ compensation, is the national pastime for these people.
So forgive me if I don’t buy this story that poor Jake and his buddies didn’t know about Cassano’s CDS business.
Get em Matt!!! Bitchslap the living shit out of these punks. Taibbi is one of the best journalists out there..I can never get enough of him.
H/T to MPS and the Vanity Press for having this up on their sites.
A budget without numbers is like a car without wheels.
Hug and a hat-tip to Fran for emailing me this sucker. 😉
Feline Friday!
Ok, so this is Scooter, the Alpha Male:
Scooter is a bully, he takes their lunch money and their seat on the bus. Wait! That is the grade school bully…Scooter takes their cat food and their favorite seat by the open window in my bedroom. He is a big, fat, white bastard..but I love him anyway. Two of the teenage cats, Jack and his sister Charlie have been on a mission to knock Scooter down a peg.
(We recycle those plastic bottles btw.)
They tag team ole Scooters ass, and he can’t deal with it…he just sits there and cries when they get him cornered. So I get out the fire hose. Ok, really it’s just a spray bottle with water in it, but it shoots a stream of water about 15 feet. I hose down the two offending teenie boppers and all is quiet again in the humble abode.
Then, Pee Wee and Spanky start running through the house like their asses are on fire. At least Spanky has a play pal now. They sound like a herd of horses. Spanky has eye issues, so meds were obtained from our vet, the world’s most wonderful pet doctor, Dr. Anderson. Here is PW looking innocent. He is one sneaky little fucker.
Ok, that concludes todays Feline Friday post. Obviously I have other things going on and politics can go straight to hell today, for me at least. Time for ye olde hippy speedball. 😉
Enjoy your weekend folks and do something fun and entertaining..treat yourselves to something nice.
Its my Right to be Left of the Center 