Congress Hotel Strike Enters 5th Year...

It’s official. The Congress Hotel strike is now the longest active strike in the country. Yet the workers continue to man the picket line everyday. There are no new developments in the strike, and few expect there to be any major breakthroughs soon, but the annual strike anniversary rallys have become a yearly gathering site for nearly all of Chicago’s progressive union activists. Hundreds gathered outside the Congress Hotel in downtown Chicago today, in an almost party like atmosphere, complete with a New Orleans style Jazz band. As fun as the event has become over the past few years, let’s hope it will not need to be repeated next year.

Here is some audio from today’s rally…

Henry Tamarin, President of UNITE-HERE Local 1, talks about the massive turn out of workers and their supporters at the 5th anniversary rally of the Congress hotel strike in Chicago. The strike in now officially the longest running active strike in the country.

http://www.archive.org/details/HenryTamarinAtCongressHotelStrike5thYearAnniversary

Imelda Martinez, employee of the Congress Hotel in Chicago talks about attending the picket line 5 days a week for the past 5 years, at the 5th strike anniversary rally outside the hotel.

http://www.archive.org/details/ImeldaMartinezCongressHotelStriker

Comments

Best Films of 2023...

Best Films of 2023 Well, it's already early February somehow and award season for the 2023 film year is well underway. 2023 was the first year post-pandemic I was able to see the volume of new films to warrant a top 10 list - a practice I started in 2017 but abandoned after 2020 when like the rest of the world I was mostly forced to watch releases from years past on streaming services. Last year, despite my ongoing poverty, through a host of tricks, streaming services, tight budgets, and the generosity of friends, I was able to see around 40 new releases. For most of 2023, I considered it the YEAR OF DISAPPIONTMENTS . That's still my primary description of the year in film. Long anticipated and ballyhooed new films by Nolan, Scorsese, Fincher, and Wes Anderson to name a few all left me dissatisfied. Not because I am an adoring fan of these directors, but given the high regard with which they are held and given the rich subject matter on which ...

Financial Crisis Brings Historic Opportunity…

www.whatnowtoons.com Wow, what a difference a few weeks can make. Less than a month ago, every mainstream mass media outlet, U.S. politician, economic analyst, and probably the majority of average citizens would still have been singing the praises of the unfettered free market. Regulation was still a dirty word and privatization was still equated with efficiency and prosperity. Granted, the sand had already begun to shift under this ideological edifice of 30+ years. The sub-prime mortgage crisis and the bursting of the housing bubble had seriously shaken the confidence of some in the system. I had mentioned repeatedly on Labor Express Radio over the Summer the glaring contrast between the soaring gas prices we experienced here in the laissez-faire fuel market of the U.S. as compared to the low and stable prices maintained by the state oil company of our neighbor to the south. But none of that seemed to really change the mainstream belief in this country that free markets solve all prob...

In memory of Rafael Gomez Nieto, the anti-fascist COVID victim two wars could not kill, on the first anniversary of his passing…

When I was an up and coming young socialist high-school, then college student, moving gradually away from Liberation Theology, towards some form of democratic socialist-humanism, the example of the Spanish Revolution of 1936-1939 made a major impact on my thinking. I knew instinctively and without question Stalinism and Maoism had nothing to offer. How could two of the century's most brutal dictators have anything to say about creating a future free of oppression. What I was looking for was historical examples of a new stage in the movement toward full human freedom, one in which working class people were in control of their lives and their future. No bosses, no party bureaucrats, no cults of personality and increasingly, in a departure from my past, no gods. Probably the first and certainly one of the most influential works of revolutionary literature that I encountered was Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia , hence my Orwell attachment to this day. Soon following were the equall...

Search This Blog