What It's Always About

... Stopping the rabble's demands for rights,
as workers and citizens:

Caption:

From Oklahoma farm (April 1938) to strike leader in California. Cotton strike
(Nov. 1938).
He displays his union membership book.
"Vote No on No. 1" refers to proposed anti-picketing law which was later defeated by California electorate.

Kern County, California.

Photographer: Dorothea Lange
Library of Congress FSA/OWI Archive

John Nichols connects Martin Luther King's role in labor struggles—and 1968 assassination during his trip in support of striking workers—to the current attack on public employees:

The sanitation workers of Memphis had experienced not just racial discrimination but the disregard and disrespect that is so often directed at those who perform essential public services.

No one should miss the fact that AFSCME, the union that they joined and the union with which King worked so closely, is now under attack by right-wingers who would have us believe that public workers are to blame for the problems that occur when policymakers blow the budget on tax cuts for the rich, bailouts for big banks and military adventures abroad.

HTML Mencken's post on continued right-wing response to the Tucson shootings has a particularly good comment from Bilo—

Essentially, what the rageified Teahad and noise machine are saying is, This guy was just a nut, and all the violent & assassin-y language we've been using didn't cause it, so the prudent thing to do is for us to keep doing it until you can PROVE it has done it.

Except, well, it already has (Universalist Church.)

And in many ways, it's similar to their corporate masters' attitudes towards product safety, carcinogens, pollution, etc etc: Until you can PROVE, I mean, really, really, really PROVE that, how about we just keep doing what we want for another generation or three?