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VIDEO: “Dignity… That was the message of the signs [the restaurant workers] carried: I am a man, I am a woman.”

strike restaurant workers i am a man woman

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Yesterday’s Doonesbury: “Lack of paid sick days for workers causes what? Rich owners.” #FastFoodFwd nailed it.

So did Chris Hayes:

All successful social movements are built and all social progress is built out of multitude of tiny miracles just like we saw in New York City.

A single person… a union of thousands or millions who decide against the odds against great risk with no protection to do something courageous, to speak up for their dignity, to proclaim themselves fully human and that was what the fast food workers did today. That was the message of the signs they carried: I am a man, I am a woman.

And this sign  should ring a bell, because it’s a sign we have seen at a major labor strike before. At this labor strike, in the city of Memphis in 1968, these sanitation workers were being paid so little that many of them, even working full time, needed welfare just to feed their families.

Their jobs were not just astonishingly low wage, they were also incredibly dangerous. The strike  got started after two workers were killed, crushed in a sanitation truck’s compactor.

Supporting that strike is what Martin Luther King Jr. was doing in Memphis in 1968 when he was assassinated 45 years ago today. He was there to support those sanitation workers in their strike and in their struggle.

This coverage made me tear up. To see people standing up for their rights, risking their jobs, organizing, demanding to be treated with dignity, to be treated as human beings…

Such a minimal request, such a fundamental demand should never have to be made. Treating people equally and with respect is what this country should be all about. And nobody should have to beg for that.

martin luther king we are people strike workers

Doonesbury: “Lack of paid sick days for workers causes what? Rich owners.” #FastFoodFwd

strike fast food workers Richard Trumka restaurantsRichard Trumka joins the line in Midtown

doonesbury restaurant workers

Garry Trudeau is covering an important topic here. So important, in fact, that tonight a representative (likely the director) of the New York Communities for Change will be talking about today’s fast food strike (which could be the largest in the industry’s history) on Chris’s new show All In with Chris Hayes.

Set your DVRs.

Via MSNBC’s Historic fast food strike draws lessons from MLK’s last campaign:

Thursday morning, hundreds of fast food workers in New York City walked off the job in what could be the largest strike in the fast food industry’s history. This is the second major labor action in a long-term campaign by fast food employees, the community organizing group New York Communities for Change, and community allies. The first day-long strike came in late November 2012, when the organizing workers first announced themselves to the world and demanded higher wages and union recognition.

The date of this second strike is not a coincidence: April 4 is also the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. [...]

Though the fast food strike does not take place in a post-Jim Crow South, it does also reflect the racial stratification of a major American industry. Whereas the striking sanitation workers were African-Americans struggling against racial discrimination, modern people of color are disproportionately employed in low-wage service jobs, such as fast food service.

Doonesbury– New restaurant managers slogan: “Attention workers! It could be worse!”

union pay difference food industrydoonesbury workers rights

Garry Trudeau, Doonesbury, food stamps, restaurant workers, restaurant managers, snarkitude, commentary on the state of workers’ rights, the economy, food stamps … all in one, concise four-panel comic strip. What more could we ask for?

Well, we could ask for income equality, guaranteed collective bargaining, support for and appreciation of labor unions, humane treatment of employees, decent health care, fair pay, equal pay for women, and more quality comic strips like this one, I suppose.

Taco restaurant thinks their “How to Catch an Illegal Immigrant” t-shirts are “witty and comical”

(Courtesy Nathan Sloan and NBC)

(Courtesy Nathan Sloan and NBC)

A Mexican food restaurant in South Carolina features the above tee shirt and considers it appropriate and funny. It features a box trap with two tacos placed just-so to entice undocumented immigrants.

Isn’t that a knee slapper? I bet you can’t wait to buy one of your very own, because hey, they are clever-r-r-r! Nothing says “witty” like a racist tee shirt.

And by witty I mean offensive as hell and idiotic.

NBCLatino has reaction to the shirts here, as well as this:

Taco Cid did not respond to an NBC Latino request for comment but updated its website with a statement.

Our t-shirts were created as a witty and comical statement regarding ILLEGAL immigrants. There are NO racial nor hate remarks towards any specific ethnic group. Taco Cid and its employees are not racists,” the statement continued. ”As most tax paying Americans, we do believe ILLEGAL immigrants are taxing the system we support and live under, thereby, causing us to work harder and pay more taxes in support of their illegal activities which our government has simply chosen to look the other way. Is it racist to disagree with those who are not supporting the American system?”

Taco Cid employees wear the shirts and they are also available for purchase, according to Think Progress.

Brian Cohen, is the owner of BeWild.com, which also sells the shirts and says the shirts are not his designs — they just sell them.

Oh well, then, if it’s a “statement regarding ILLEGAL immigrants” it’s perfectly acceptable, A-OK, hunky dory. Carry on!

As of now, Yelp.com has them at a one-star rating:

yelp rating mexican restaurant racist tee

“Drug front” indeed. You’d have to be on drugs to patronize that place.

Denver restaurant receives threats after passing on Romney campaign stop

See the vid above to get what kind of people own this restaurant. The kind of people the right wing thugs and bullies hone in on. They just didn’t want to be props.

DENVER – A Mexican restaurant in the Highlands neighborhood declined a Mitt Romney campaign stop.

Now the owners of Rosa Linda’s Mexican Café are getting death threats, nasty threatening phone calls, and insulting e-mails criticizing their choice.

“I don’t want people to be angry at me,” Rosa Linda Aguirre, the owner of the neighborhood staple, said. “I feel that this is really going out of proportion. I’m sorry if I offended somebody or everybody. I did not mean to do that.”

The café has been in the neighborhood for a very long time. The Aguirres, originally from Mexico, are U.S. citizens. They’re Mormon.

(snip)

“We don’t want to be a tool. We don’t want to be anything more than a place of gathering and a home,” Oscar Aguirre, Rosa Linda’s son and a restaurant employee, said.

“People are saying they want to see us out of business. I’m like, we didn’t do anything,” he said. “We just didn’t want to be a campaign stop. Mr. Romney, come and eat tomorrow. He’s welcome. President Obama is welcome; former President Bush is welcome; President Clinton, they’re welcome. It doesn’t matter. We’re a place of family and a place of community.”

Aguirre said he’s been receiving death threats and ugly emails. A customer Wednesday ordered $120 worth of food, and then cancelled the order when it was already cooked.

“People are hateful,” Oscar said. “I got death threats last night, people calling me, telling me that they live down the street. They’re going to come and get me. The phone has been ringing off the hook.”

VIDEO: Cafe owner after hosting Romney event: It “felt like mocking. You don’t want to have him back. With how he treated me, is that how he’s going to treat others?”

Watch and listen to an Iowa cafe owner’s account of what it was like to have Team Romney visit. Let’s just say she was not impressed with their, as she called it, arrogance. And after all the aggravation, she never even got to meet Willard.

According to the news anchor in the video, “he left a pretty big mess.” The campaign broke several items and “forgot their manners.” Imagine how he’d treat America (and the rest of the world) were he to become president.

Then again, after how he and Bain Capital threw away livelihoods, “ripped off and wadded up” people like they were cafe table cloths, and fired, aka “broke,” employees, this incident comes as no surprise. Romney’s a cold, uncaring automaton who gets what he wants regardless of how others feel or are (mis)treated.

Via, of all places, Fox News:

She described many of their demeanors as “arrogant”.

Stuff got broke. My table cloths they just got ripped off, wadded up and thrown in the back room… My dad’s picture, an emblem my dad gave me, it got broke. Those aren’t things you can replace.”

“[Romney] responded, ‘Well, I’m sorry your table cloths got ripped off, wadded up and thrown in the back room’ and I took it as a mocking. We’re the ones he’s wanting to get the votes from. You’d think we would have been treated better. With how he treated me, is that how he’s going to treat others? You know, if he gets in office is he going to be that way to us little people?”

This is what it will be like if Willard Romney lies his way into a win.

VIDEO: Banker leaves 1% tip, tells waitress to “get a real job”

Via Yahoo:

UPDATE: According to The Smoking Gun, the restaurant says they found the original merchant copy, and the receipt going around the Web is Photoshopped. We are waiting to hear back from the restaurant for confirmation.

Video by . FYI, there is a moment of pretty graphic language at about 3:45, so lower the volume at work.

A banker ordered over $130 worth of food at a restaurant in Newport Beach, California, and then left a 1% tip and a nasty note. Yes, Mr. One Percent is so enamored with his own financial status that he felt it necessary to belittle his server and 99% of America.

What exactly is a “real job” Banker Putz? Does it include long hours working your ass off in order to earn barely enough money to pay rent/mortgage, food bills, medical bills, education bills, clothing bills, transportation to and from work at which you serve people who can afford to pay you?

Or is it sitting in a corporate jet getting corporate foot massages and eating catered corporate gourmet meals trotted out by servants who you can delight in insulting on the way to the next corporate meeting?

Here’s an idea, Mr. One Percent: Create some “real jobs” at which there are improved working conditions that would prohibit abuse like the kind you dished out.

Occupy.

Yahoo has more.

H/t: @TheShowstopper1