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#OWS Hijacked: #OccupyCongress Next Steps On Unions’ Agenda

Did it really need to take two months for New York City Mayor Bloomberg to figure out that unions have hijacked the #OccupyMovement? Most sane observers knew that from the very start when when the Transport Workers Union in New York endorsed the squatters in Zuccotti Park, opening the flood gates for other unions, the Democrats, and the institutional Left to climb on board.

Since then, unions have provided paid protesters, legal representation, money, advertising, and even offered their property to the #OWS movement.

What began as a Neo-Communist movement that allegedly only had the goal of destroying capitalism has now become a full-fledged, union-financed class war with the very real goal (in coordination with Democrats in Congress) of instituting tax increases, along with the it’s-only-a-matter-of-time global system of taxation, beginning with the so-called Robin Hood Tax.

Now, so thoroughly have the unions hijacked the #OWS movement that the SEIU even stole the ‘We Are the 99%’ slogan in its endorsement of Barack Obama’s re-election. Unsurprisingly, the SEIU did so without even bothering to ask permission of the Occupy protesters. [Note the pre-printed 99% t-shirts on SEIU bosses as they were arrested on Thursday.]

Now, after two months of coddling the anarchy-like protesters, the SEIU and CWA appear to be asserting themselves as the new leaders of the #Occupy Movement as they plans the next union-funded event: the Occupation of Capitol Hill.

According to an interview with the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent, the SEIU’s Mary Kay Henry and her union cronies are planning the effort to take back the Capitol on December 5-9:

The coalition — which includes unions like SEIU and CWA and groups like the Center for Community Change — is currently working on a plan to bus thousands of protesters from across the country to Washington, where they will congregate around the Capitol from December 5-9, SEIU president Mary Kay Henry tells me in an interview.

Thousands of people have signed up to come to Capitol Hill during the first week in December,” Henry says, adding that protesters are invited to make their way to Washington on their own, too. “We’re figuring out buses and transportation now.”

One idea under consideration — pending various permitting and other logistical issues — is to have a series of tents set up on the lawn outside the Capitol, each representing a state, with the number of unemployed in each state prominently displayed. But the optics are still being worked out.

One goal of the protests, Henry says, is to pressure Republicans to support Obama’s jobs creation proposals. More generally, the aim is to highlight Congress’s misguided obsession with the deficit and overall inaction on unemployment.

As the #OWS matures into an election campaign for Barack Obama and Democrats, the original propagators of the #OWS movement are bound to realize they’ve been both hijacked and had by union bosses bearing gifts. Until then, however, the Woodstock-feel of the #OWS movement will continue its putrid and semi-organic co-existence with union bosses in purple shirts and pin-striped suits.

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“Socialism has no place in the hearts of those who would secure the fight for freedom and preserve democracy.” Samuel Gompers, 1918

Cross-posted on LaborUnionReport.com

COMMENTS

  • tomhave

    Actually the Occupy movement goes beyond the union issue. Since attacks on unions are defacto attacks on the middle and working class. It is not the “unions” that Walker and Kasich are attacking they are attacking the working or middle class. The demise of the union movement has led to the upward transfer of wealth. The strengthening of the labor movement represents a threat to upper 1%.
    The Occupy movement brings attention to the unequal distribution of wealth. Thus the union movement and the occupy movement are united by a common enemy. Since both provide a political voice to working people they may share some common objectives but they are separate movement.

    • gekster

      The HuffPo is calling.

    • Kyle-MI

      Try the old Soviet Union. Everyone had equal wealth there; they were all equally poor.

      Well, even that is not quite true. Those who controlled the government lived better than average. The same thing always happens, ALWAYS. If you bozo’s get your way, it will happen here, too. It has already happened in the union structure. The union bosses live like kings. Why don’t you occupy them?

      • adair

        “The upward transfer of wealth” is exemplified in the different living standards of union members and their executive officers.

    • barry915barry

      nice DK talking points. Let me help you with directions. The DK exit is to the left. <<- – - – - – - . Barry.

    • bs61

      to redistribute anything! In this country we get to keep our money and give to charity that we want and far more efficiently and honestly than corrupt, power hungry govt!

    • btpull

      The greed of the unions reduce jobs for the middle class.

    • rdm42

      Oh please. YOu remove unions entirely, the unemployment rate would likely HALVE within a month.

      Almost a full half of union members are government workers. Middle class my. . .

      Do YOU even believe the junk you spout? Really?

    • jaykali

      Just seems to me the problem is that we’re in a recession not that wealth isn’t distributed according to whoever is in charge of playing Robin Hood.

      And wealth distribution seems like a phony statistic to me because it shouldn’t matter if you have a healthy middle class, lower percentages in poverty, low employment etc.

      This seems like another way the left frames the conversation. I mean I would rather talk about what our poverty % is per capita, I have no idea bc there aren’t any stories on it. I am sure there are a lot of stats that could help compare our middle class to other countries, etc. I would think a lot of those stats aren’t great at the moment bc we’re in a recession but the wealth distribution to me is a phony way to frame the argument bc it tries to lead you to the conclusion that wealth is something to be distributed and “we” need to distribute it better.

    • mutantone

      Just how much are the union paying the ones attending the “Occupier” event? the one that spoke out said $125,000 a year and the Union bosses make how much? That is why the unions are supporting them because they want to spread the wealth? If they are so pro America then why are they associated with the following groups?:

      • gunsrus

        I guess it’s just sex and drugs without the Rock and Roll.

        • vandalii

          ;-)

    • behindenemylinesvt

      On November 10, a homeless man who had joined with OWS protestors in City Hall Park died of a gunshot wound to the head. The incident is still under investigation, but Occupiers who were with him at the time claim the wound was self-inflicted. It is claimed that the man had been drinking heavily before pulling the trigger. The occupation site became a crime scene, the protestors were removed and the park remained off limits until the department of sanitation could clean up blood, broken glass, condoms and other sharp objects (the polite way to say needles, apparently).
      While people went to work in downtown Burlington, at the bank, the bagel shop, the delis and City Hall itself, the OWS protestors were camping out, waggling their fingers, using heroin, drinking, fornicating and smashing bottles. That they do not make as much money as the bank president or the teller, the cook or the restaurant owner should not come as a surprise.

    • unitedwestood

      I want to offer you a news flash — Unions do not support the working man. Unions support Unions. The working man is the vehicle they USE to obtain their wealth. So, when you talk about companies that make there money off the backs of the working man, look no further then the unions.

    • edintexas

      At least all the feeding of this troll hasn’t resulted in a return trip yet.

  • http://www.theprecinctproject.wordpress.com ColdWarrior

    Most of the “occupiers” occupy their parents’ basement at night, it appears — and are being helped by the unions during the day.

    Thank you.

    ColdWarrior

    • vandalii

      Would love to see similar examinations done in Zucotti, Oakland, DC, etc. But now that one expose has been done, I’m sure they’ll put sterno cans in all the unoccupied tents now to simulate warm body (though arguably some number of the actual occupiers might be considered sterno cans…)

  • johnt

    Yes, job creation, like the first $800 million, worked just peachy didn’t it? So support another $500 + million, you might say throwing worse money after bad. And has been said by Harry Reid and repeatedly by The O,[or his puppeters] it will be going to the so called civil servants, our new elite. Of course we will also need money for our run down infrastructure,{ read,unions]. The infrastructure we spend hundreds of millions on every year for upkeep.
    PT Barnum should be alive at this hour, all he pushed was dwarfs and freaks. Now they’re running the unions and the worst are in the WH.

  • publious

  • renl57

    According to reports, the OWS protesters overwhelmingly back Obama’s decision to effectively cancel the Keystone XL pipeline. OWS is into all the cliche “save the planet” claptrap.

    But that pipeline would have provided thousands of *union* jobs to private-sector oil workers and construction workers. That’s why the relevant unions were backing it.

    The interests of OWS and private-sector unions do not coincide. Private-sector union members know that without an expanding economy, they won’t have jobs at all. OWS either doesn’t care (as long as we stop global warming or something), or they don’t realize that Obama’s talk of “millions of green jobs” is a cynical lie.

  • hwgood

    Recent articles have had the headline “Strike anywhere in the world within one hour!”
    Imagine my surprise when the stories were about a new missile.

  • jaykali

    I think wow it’s pretty risky for Congress people (OccupyCongress bit) to try to borrow anything from OWS when you have all these images and video out there of police clashes. But these are the ppl they created by promising Americans more free lunches. I really wonder what Joe Q public thinks of this. We all know where ideologues fall but where does the generic independent fall? I would think they would be semi-sympathetic just bc they would probably judge that these people are out of work and protesting unfairness on wall street, etc. – I know that OWS polls as good or better than the Tea Party I just don’t know what to think of those polls. I can’t imagine OWS is going to be something that gets more popular as time goes on.

  • jaykali

    This is very interesting bc you would expect OWS would have emerged during the Bush administration and so they would argue you need to put a democrat in office to fix all this wall street unfairness. But these are largely Obama supporters protesting during his administration. But if Obama can’t fix these sort of ‘societal’ ills and unfairness who is?

    The only conclusion I can come to is that things are going to become so more polarized that truly nothing constructive is going to be able to get done that isn’t deemed an ‘emergency’. The ideologues drive both parties for better or for worse so I don’t see how we can conclude anything except that there will be gridlock unless one side tips the scale. So I think if you get a super majority or something close you can get some stuff done but even then the opposition party has some ability to cause trouble.

    So these might be the ‘good years’ we’re in right now. I think this is only going to get worse before it gets better.

    • nathanalbright

      ….and I have to admit I share your pessimism. It requires a huge mandate to get anything done, and the sort of division our society is facing right now may not be soluble politically.

    • http://www.reddit.com/user/pi_over_three/ Pi Over Three

      Isn’t it funny that liberals didn’t have a problem with corporatism, bailouts, and corporate handouts of during the years 2007-2010, a time when the Democrats who controlled Congress where more corrupt and blatantly and openly selling out the country to politically connected corporation then any other time in US history.

      Isn’t it funny that when people started to taking to streets in response to the Wall Street bailouts, liberals like you called them racists and attacked at every opportunity.

      Isn’t it funny that liberals didn’t even bat an eyelash until Republicans took the House, running on a platform of stopping the crony capitalism and corruption.

      • jaykali

        Personally I think that liberal is less ab having a cohesive set of ideas that are more persuasive and more ab being a type of person that matches ‘characteristics’ they admire such as:
        1. Caring about the ‘little guy’
        2. Being more tolerant
        3. Being anti greed
        ..etc.

        And if there is something going on that doesn’t match up they discard it as irrelevant.

        • http://www.reddit.com/user/pi_over_three/ Pi Over Three

          I think I misread it the first time.

          Yeah, I do with with both posts.

          I think a good analogy for the current state of our government is that it is like taking 50 people, one from each state, and making them live in the same house. All 50 people are living off of one shared budget, and have to decide how to spend the money. It doesn’t take long before it degenerates into a free-for-all of everyone trying to grab as much of the budget for themselves and they can.

  • reaganbuckley

    Our financial sector is based on socializing risk and privatize profits.

    Our government takes our taxpayer money and bails out bankers who make mistakes. They then pay themselves with that windfall. How is that capitalism Labor Union Report. We then borrow from the ChiComs to make up the rest of the difference.

    Socialist tendencies of unions pale in comparison than the redistribution of wealth to Wall Street bankers.

  • daniel22

    To say the OWS is a sham would be an understatement. If a movement claims to be leaderless then they are sheep waiting to be shorn or they are lying. If they had a goal as they claimed they would have a plan. They do not, unless you accept taking other peoples property as your own. That is called theft. To tear down a system and have nothing to replace it with is anarchy. To claim that OWS is aplolitcal and speaks for the 99% yet allows unions and political entities to usurp and co-opt the name itself is corrupt and a lie. To claim a filial relationship with the Tea Party is dishonest at best deceitful to be sure.
    No, they do not represent me nor 99% of America. Like other politicians they lie.

  • http://slcliberty.blogivists.com randy streu

    nt

  • haroldhervey

    Although the Conservative Party congratulated the GOP and the Tea Party for giving Obama and the Democrats a shellacking last November, we