Noah Dobin-Bernstein's aformementioned Ginsbergian ode to the supermarket strikers:
Striking a Supermarket in California
By Noah Dobin-Bernstein
1.
I sacrificed my cup of coffee to the cause this morning, imagining myself guided by wire cart down dairy isles to my deli girl, excited when her blond locks almost lick my #7 lox, onions and cream cheese on sesame.
The rows of cereal boxes, screaming their multicolor slogans, “two scoops of raisins…but only one for labor class A,” you taunt me you communist ketchup!
How oppressive the popcorn! Patriarchy picking pomegranates and tasting tapenades! Scabs shelving macaroons while mallowmars look to teddy grahams for solidarity!—and you, Leticia Garcia, four-time cashier of the year, why have you taken to the streets?
2.
Do you cross picket lines, Walt Whitman?
Are your eyes fixed on your blade of grass,
Or can you see the field, each body leaning
On the next, standing against the wind en-masse?
How do your like your America dissonant?
The owner singing numbers on spreadsheet,
The stocker singing ballads of hospital bills
As he lugs shipments of packaged meat.
Ha! How easy to win you, talk working men
Sweating slightly among produce, so American,
But stale bread makes us so less picturesque
That even Ginsberg won’t touch the baker’s skinny son.
Will we walk the lines dreaming of lost America of healthcare benefits cut to compensate for epidemic Wal-Marts paving lesions onto our valleys?
3.
There is no oppressor
like text, that unmoving
dictator, CEO of history.
You, who turned us inward,
spoke of beauty, toes, groins,
what now when the grocery boy’s locked out?
Our image shopping grows
expensive—at whose cost
contemplation? We march somewhere,
waiting for no one.
Speaking of the supermarket strike, there's lots of coverage in the news today.
CNN reports that the strike has now spread to "involve 10,000 other unionized workers in Kentucky, Missouri, Ohio and West Virginia, making the labor dispute the biggest to hit the U.S. grocery industry in the 24-year history of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union."
Yahoo reports that Jesse Jackson wants Governer Schwarzenneger to get involved.
"It's time for the Terminator to go to the bargaining table," Jackson told about 400 union supporters at a Santa Monica rally.
USA TODAY reports on the impact of the strike for hundreds of thousands of Californians. The article reports that the grocery strike, the MTA strike, and the blue flu by L.A. county sherrifs all have one thing in common: they are responses by workers to stop employers from cutting their health care benefits. John Sweeney says: ''Nearly every major labor action this year . . . has been the result of runaway health care costs and employers' attempts to foist those skyrocketing costs onto workers.'' The
Ventura County Star reports that the teachers are supporting the strike.
The teachers' visit Monday definitely brightened Kathi DeBie's day. The strike captain and 18-year Vons employee was smiling as she greeted the arriving teachers.
"Awesome, isn't it?" she said. "We feel so blessed that they support us."
CONGRATS:
David Lee and Scott Marks are being
honored by the NAACP for their role in the strike victory last month.
Lee, a local religious leader and community activist, will get the William H. Webb Religious Services Award, which state NAACP President James Griffin said goes to an individual for outstanding achievement and dedication to moral and spiritual renewal in the community.
"Lee has been very active bringing about enormous change in the community through his efforts to work a resolution of the Yale University strike," Griffin said.
Both Lee and Marks were key in organizing support for labor action during the Yale strike, which included major marches and protests that drew thousands.
Marks, a community advocate through the Connecticut Center for a New Economy, will receive the Lavore Tucker Social Advocacy Award for community activism in the African-American community.
"Through (Marks’) leadership on the Yale strike, he has done a terrific job serving people who have no voice (for themselves)," Griffin said.
"I’m very happy to be one to get an award," Marks said. "But it’s me in 1,000 people who did such great work in the city of New Haven, fighting for the equality of the working people at a time when many universities around the country are cutting back on pensions."
This despite the fact that the university, which is (somewhat incredibly given the outright racism they showed during the strike towards latino workers) recieving an "Equal Opportunity Award"
has contributed about $10,000 to become a corporate NAACP member from 2003 through 2005, and is sponsoring the state NAACP conference with another $10,000.
