solidarity forever! free Taiwan!

What was your experience with the union? I guess it was already there when you began working there. I think you can choose whether to join or not, but if you don’t you still have to pay the equivalent of union dues. I think you said that at one time you were some kind of union official or something, so what was that all about?

The closest I ever got to a union was when I was substitute teaching and all the regular teachers were union. You wouldn’t notice it much, but sometimes I would end up attending a teacher’s meeting, I assume because they didn’t know what else to do with me, and at some point the union steward (yes that’s the word I was looking for earlier) would point out this and that. Nobody broke into solidarity forever or anything, in fact a few looked a little annoyed, but nobody argued with the steward.

Then a few years back we had a big teacher’s strike. Shut it down for maybe a couple weeks at the beginning of the school year, all the teachers were camped out in front of the schools with signs asking drivers to honk if they supported the strike, and there were a lot of honks. The teachers and their supporters all wore red. I had not been subbing for a few years, but I walked out to the schools where I had subbed and urged them on. I think I said something like you guys go, or something equally inspiring.

And then they won the strike. A lot of their support may have come from the fact that most people hate our mayor Rahm. Myself, I voted for the guy, but I have come to hate him too.

I read a book lately about the Nixon visit to China. Mao was almost comatose when it happened, and Nixon was just his plain old self traveling with that reprobate Kissinger who was making fun of him at every turn. The idea was twofold, to fuck with the Russkies, and to see if they would put the arm on their Vietnamese ‘allies.’ The first part worked out well enough, but Red China wasn’t interested in helping us out of our Vietnam problem, and anyway the Vietnamese hated Red China more than they hated us.

Taiwan, I had to wiki it to make sure it was still there without red paint being poured all over it, but there it is, still sitting there offshore, though you never hear about it anymore. Come to think of it, wasn’t it a big deal with the Birchers? Didn’t they have some wild theory that the US was somehow keeping it from attacking China to topple the commies? There used to be this very conservative magazine in the student union bookstore, American Opinion, that I used to sneak peeks at back in my hippie days, and I believe that was one of their theories.

I really don’t know that we have ever invested much money in Red China, they are touchy about foreigners being involved in their economy. Of course, as we have discussed ad nauseam lately life isn’t fair, but isn’t selling your goods at lower prices fair market practice? Is it fair when the Cardinals beat the Cubs?