anomaly 🌹 @anomaly@jorts.horse

I know it is a long way to fall, and we have been betrayed before. If I take one step, will you take one? if you take one will I? take each other's hand and trust just one step at a time, closer, closer

a million people in this county, and not one will take my hand

did I dream that I was loved, that I was wanted? it happened more than once, I thought, and for years...now the further away the memory gets the less real it feels. like I have always been alone, never seen, never desired

(from "The Book of Trespass," Nick Hayes, 2020)

Praise be to cougars, hags, and witches

read these books (especially the first two)

Private ownership of land is a fiction, one I don't believe in, and which I actively resist by simply going wherever I damn well please. You can too.

/end rant

and now, not only do we have a tactic to attack them and overwhelm their union-busting efforts, *the workers* have the knowledge that *they can succeed*. The effects of this on worker morale in unionization efforts going forward - in a time of record union approval rates, worker dissatisfaction, and resignation rates - cannot be overstated, imo

this is *hugely* important, because the tactic of companies like Walmart, whose employees are atomized across many small stores across the country, rather than the large factory floors of old, to simply shut down any one store that unionizes, has presented a near-impenetrable wall to unionizing big players in the service industries in the past few decades. That's over now.

and the unionization of a string of Starbucks stores is also incredibly important. not only is it a major attack on a contemporary service industry/fast food chain that, like all of them, is heavily anti-union - it also has demonstrated a powerful new tactic - using the internet hype machine to create a massive national wave of unionization drives at local stores that outpaces and overwhelms union-busting resources

the successful unionization of an Amazon warehouse is an enormous victory. it shows we *can* unionize heavily union-busting powerhouses of the contemporary economy.

there have been high approval ratings for unions, and some high-profile strike actions and unionization efforts, over the past few years - but over all that time, net unionization rates continued to fall and attempts to unionize major employers who have expanded primarily in the post-Reagan era were mostly failures

since it's May Day and this is topical: I am so fucking pumped about the run of Starbucks and Amazon unionization efforts rn.