Stop Me Before I Happen Again!
"You happened again, Billy! There is no IT!" - Gloria (White Man Can't Jump)
Are you ready for this?!?
Ready for some blunt force honesty trauma straight to the dome?!?
DTE Energy: $62.13 (Past due as of yesterday)
Xfinity 200Mbit: $83
Renter's Insurance: $18.70
August Rent: $664
PSN Network: $10
TOTAL: $837.83
That's how much I need right now.
$683 of it just to avoid eviction after August 5th ...
That's my monthly expenses in my 1 bedroom apartment here in Monroe, Michigan. Home of the La-Z-Boy headquarters. Hometown of Christie Brinkley. Hometown of former Miss America Kaye Lani Ray Rafko. And the first line of defense in a future war with Canukistan although I honestly believe that we could win that war by skating landmines across an iced over lakes and rely on drunken Canadians to whip out their brooms and hockey sticks, and curl/slapshot them bitches right back home ... blowing themselves up in the process! Eh?!? But yeah, that's how much I need right the fuck now in my checking account to keep the anxiety attacks at bay and avoid living in an invisible vaaaaaaaan down by the river-her-her ...
Now, before you start thinking, "This mustachioed Mario Bros. reject gonna hit me up, start hooking himself out like the HookerJay he used to be on that one podcast," hold up. Not yet. I'd have to shave my legs and I can't afford it. Also Because I kinda befouled by own nest. Hocked, pawned, and house wiggered away my own leverage. It happened about 7 months ago. Recorded my former employer engaging in discrimination, bullying, and shaming of my disability (Diabetes) after I rejected the absolute joke of an ADA accommodation - trying to purge me up 2 flights of stairs for my breaks and lunches because I have to take my shoes off restore blood flow and feeling to my feet ... and then made her and my ex-employer famous on YouTube! Yessiree, I exposed the bastards ... and there's where I hocked, pawned, and house wiggered away my leverage. Because according to the lawyer I talked to "way too fucking late, idiot" (his words, not mine), putting this recording up on YouTube was fine because you can sort of negotiate a take down in exchange for a settlement, which according to him was about one year's pay - so about $23,000 to start but would be whittled down because that's what lawyers do in their back and forth. The problem is my running commentary that the lawyer said "maded me look bad" and then told me that my lawsuit would be a crapshoot if I paid him the retainer to proceed with it. That, and the lawyer said I should've contacted him within the hour of that recording instead of dealing with the EEOC directly. I learned the hard way that lawyers don't like being undercut. Billable hours, bitches ...
But I didn't give a fuck about a settlement.
That's obvious in and of itself by the details.
I didn't fall off the turnip truck yesterday.
I knew what I was doing, and the ramifications of it all.
So why did I do it?!?
Because these people -- my co-workers -- for 6 months and 1 week can't strike. It's in theirs (and many other) UFCW contracts. Can't strike. Can't go public. Can't protest working conditions. Can't work slow. Can't do nothing. But be a wage slave on a German immigrant family's plantation. With the likes of Walmart, Kroger, and Amazon taking the brunt of the PR backlash since the mid 1990s, regional chains like Meijer, Publix, Winn-Dixie, Food Lion etc. got to skate with a sigh of relief for essentially engaging in the same shit. So why is it fair for me to walk away with an $18,000 to $20,000 settlement for doing everything in that video that their union contract forbids them to do?!?
Keep in mind, I wasn't union. Michigan is a right-to work state, and this very employer (and the same union) screwed me over 20 years previous when they fired me on my 90th day 2 hours after signing my union membership paperwork during my lunch, and my steward was conspicuously nowhere to be found to protest the firing on the spot.
So yeah, I wasn't dumb enough to throw my union dues at a derelict and worthless union who uses their "superdelegate" status to purge M4A out of the DNC platform. But still somebody else's mouth making me 5 figures richer seems so unjust - especially when salaried management should know better -- but I was more mad and pissed off at how badly my unionized coworkers could just hock, pawn, and housewigger away their only leverage.
Quite hypocritical, eh?!?
And then something worse happened: they enjoyed it! They ENJOY the UFCW 951 putting the stretch marks behind their ears. Thread after thread on r/Meijer, you can find Meijer Team Member after another bellyaching about their plight but don't bother fighting. Because the union contract says they can't. But then they go so far as to tear down other people hired in at a higher payrate than they did some 10, 20, or 30 years ago when it's their own fault for not striking; for not being the tequila and being the lime instead. After reading enough of these, naturally I lost my shit and probably squandered my only chance in bringing them over to my side. But it doesn't discredit the facts: these same people breached rental contracts, landlord contracts, cell phone provider contracts, internet contracts, maybe even a payday loan shark contract or two (perish the tought), but somehow can't bring themselves to breach a labor union contract that gives them no leverage whatsoever?!?
I don't know how to effectively deal with this level of self-defeat. This level of Stockholm Syndrome. It's absolutely foreign to me and infuriating to me! I believe it's mainly because I'm on the Autism spectrum trying to navigate the neuro-divergent world capable of unlimited compartmentalization and hyper-partisanship. Doesn't make my any more sympathetic, though. "We can't afford to strike," sounds their excuse du jour. And after it triggers a flashback to all the black and white photos in a Howard Zinn book, I once again lose my shit because they couldn't afford to strike, either. The Wobblies. The Gompers. They couldn't afford to strike. But they did. Even went so far as to pack their own children onto trains to be taken in and looked after by total fucking strangers -- a move that absolutely pissed off business cretins and government bureaucrats because doing so effectively prolonged their ability to strike. Once the strikers were assured that their children would be taken care of, they themselves could keep striking; keep the pressure on.
The difference between people then and now is simple: they didn't have the luxury of addiction and co-dependency that has reduced society to validation junkies demanding instant gratification or escapism as well the invention of helicopter parenting. They didn't have cell phones, consoles, and all sorts of stupid blinking shiny shit to distract and placate them and artificially prop up their narcissistic bubbles, lady-finger attention spans, and fake and moribund Ever-Quest lives, either.
Like we do.
No, quite the opposite. Their starving children were constant reminders of their condition. Total unadulterated all-pervasive rumination. 24/7. No fucking Xbox or TikTok to distract them and meet their jones. No wonder they got off their asses and did something about it. Consider their alternatives. The late Joe Bageant once said, "You never know you're in a prison until you try the door." They tried the door, alright. Got shot at and killed by Pinkertons, too. Big Bill Haywood’s imprisoned people got told, "Habeus Corpus be damned. We'll give you post mortems."
And yet that's exactly what we need to do today: make the Biden Administration and his army of shitlibs want to kill us! For direct action. Direct action outside of their cookie-cuttered "time and place". For coming off the reservation at the "wrong" time. Direct action that always has the historical sanction of those who'll reprobate the fuck out of it as its happening only to turn around and wrap themselves with it after all the fighting and dying is done (yes, Uncle Fester and your fucking laugh track, I’m talking to you!)
We need #ForceTheVote on angel dust and a 6 pack of Red Bulls ...
We need to rise up and see if the bipartisan oligarchs are willing to "Make Murika Pinkerton Again" in response to "essential" labor re-declaring their independence and walking off Capitalism's plantation. A good portion of us already did back in April, coining the phrase "The Great Resignation". And you don't need to picket in this day and age. Just SQUAT! Plant your happy evicted and foreclosed fucking ass in the middle of your apartment or house, and DARE them to come George Floyd your ass. Just don't tell them you rigged the bitch to burn the nanosecond they try to throw you out.
OMG JAY! YOU FUCKING ACCELLERATIONIST!!
Bullfuckingshit. I'm a realist. First, never underestimate a good bluff. Secondly, as an apartment dweller with less than $2,000 in assets, it honestly wouldn't bother me one bit. Remember up at the top my renter's insurance?!? That's right, baby! For less than $20 a month, I'm insured for $25,000. This bastard is worth more to me ON FIRE than anything. Having neighbors cooking meth, falling asleep seasoning their iron skillets, or squatting to protest their eviction with cheap, easy-to-make Molotov cocktails?!? That shit's well within my vested interests, thank you very much. I got people who'll put up with my ass until the insurance claim clears - especially for a couple grand as an "anguish fee" or "tolerance fee". Putting up with my let it all burn freak ass ...
Remember ProPublica's report about taxes?!? The one that stated wage earners pay way more in taxes than the oligarchs?!? Nothing spells "taxation without representation" more than that very article, and yet how many of us do you suppose got off their dead surpluses and cut the purse?!?
You can! It's not complicated at all.
If tens of millions would just check the box on their W-4s declaring themselves tax exempt (or insisting on under-the-table payment), the oligarchs would shit themselves. Shit Scottish castles. Combine cutting the purse with a picketless general strike, and they would be beside themselves. Especially the police. Nobody to shoot in the leg. No knee to sink into a random black man's cervical vertebrae. Nobody to put down Fred Hampton style. And let me point out the obvious: one day strikes like May Day and October 15th are meaningless. That won't get their attention. What we need other than cutting the purse is a massive picketless general strikes in retail/grocery, fast food/restaurant, sanitation/trash collection, and nursing/direct care. That WILL get their attention since that's just about everybody who makes $20 an hour or less, resulting in about 60% of the American economy shutting right the fuck down, and the National Guard (or prison labor if you're Governor Whitmer or a card carrying member of the Khive) having to step in and pick up the slack. All of this has historical precedence, too. Less than a 100 years ago, whenever the government got to big and bossy for its britches, the poor and working class would bolt. Pack up their shit and haul ass to the boonies, leaving the rich and upper class to fend for themselves. It is guaranteed to work every fucking time because it HAS worked every fucking time ...
Even Stockhom Syndrome has reached an expiry date ...
This is not a good job. At 7am, our warehouse is 100 degrees. We don't have air conditioning. We have cooks in the kitchen on the fryers that are 130 or 140 degrees making chips and sweating like pigs. Meanwhile, the managers have A/C.
I make $20.50 [an hour] after 37 years here. Most people make between $16.50 and $20 an hour. I haven't gotten a raise in a decade. Three years ago, I got a $600 bonus that was taxed, and three years before that I got another $600 bonus. That was my only "raise" for the past 10 years. This is from a Fortune 500 company that is making billions.
I can tell you that many people have had heart attacks in the heat at Frito-Lay since I've been here. One guy died a few years ago and the company had people pick him up, move him over to the side, and put another person in his spot without shutting the business down for two seconds.
Just like my Discrimination charge against my ex employer Meijer has an expiration date. September 2nd. I filed for unemployment from Meijer in mid January, got denied in early March and appealed within the hour, signed the Detroit EEOC's Charge of Discrimination on June 2nd, uploaded that to MIWAM to establish that discrimination (and the various photos of COVID-19 sanitation violations) grants me good cause for collecting unemployment, contacted my Rep. Dale Zorn's office to look into my appeal/protest, and on July 3rd, the UIA called me saying my claim was corrected but a supervisor needed to look it over and that I should expect a call back by July 6th at the earliest and July 10th at the latest.
None of that happened.
Here's it's July 20th, my last deposit was my $1,400 stimulus, there's only $8 of that left, and I'm facing eviction and homelessness only because it's in Meijer's vested interest -- and apparent legal right -- to run out the clock until after September 2nd. At which point my Discrimination charge expires, effectively defunding and denying my day in court. Guess I better get ready to hit the streets. Sell my couch and chaise, and everything else. And one of the sad ironies in all of this is while the delays in my unemployment appeal are putting me right into bankruptcy, a judge has giving us Michiganders the right to sue both the companies that designed Michigan's unemployment software and its architects for the erroneous fraudulent claims and stiff penalties that made us insolvent and homeless. So where exactly would I go about finding a lawyer willing to sue the UIA for dragging its ass on my unemployment appeal that denied me the unemployment money I needed to finance my ADA discrimination claim against Meijer?!?
My guess is I'm not supposed to.
In post-legal America, poor people don't have rights.
Only oligarchs do.
Until we hoist the black flag, blare the fucking Krokus, and bring on the pitchforks and guillotines ... wait ...
Shit, we need another $1,400 stimulus check for THAT!