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2024-03-28T10:21:32Z
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https://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Esprit_de_Corpse
Esprit de Corpse
2024-03-17T05:34:03Z
<p>Ccarlsson: </p>
<hr />
<div>'''<font face = Papyrus> <font color = maroon> <font size = 4>"I was there..."</font></font> </font>'''<br />
<br />
:''"Foundsf.org is republishing a series of "Tales of Toil" that appeared in [[Processed World: A Political History|''Processed World magazine'']] between 1981 and 2004. As first-hand accounts of what it was like working at various jobs during those years, these accounts provide a unique view into an aspect of labor history rarely archived, or shared.''<br />
<br />
''—from Processed World #23, published in Winter, 1988.''<br />
<br />
[[Image:Esprit-title-processedworld23.jpg]]<br />
<br />
''Introduction by Primitivo Morales''<br />
<br />
::"It's like if I see a fat, ugly girl walking down the street in an Esprit sweatshirt. I don't want that kind of advertising."<br />
:::—Doug Tompkins, co-owner of Esprit<br />
<br />
::"These are not clothes for people who sit behind desks every day and hate their jobs."<br />
:::—Tom Direnzo, Esprit outlet manager<br />
<br />
The substance of fashion is in its perception. The designer sees the design refracted through the consumers' eyes. The world of fashion is also one of contradictions and illusion. Ordinary people doing ordinary things become extraordinary; advertisement and ideology become blurred. Dreams and dollars collide and scatter new fashions and forms in their wake.<br />
<br />
A case in point is [[ESPRIT: Sweatshops Behind the Labels|Esprit de Corp]]. It is a dream: of its owners—or perhaps the label "parents" better describes Doug and Susie Tompkins—its consumers and the fashion oracles. It practices what it preaches and it never never tells the truth.<br />
<br />
Which came first: The current marital problems of the Esprit owners or the divergent views of the company's product? This is perhaps a conundrum on the order of the egg and the chicken, for the polarity of their relation has to all accounts been part and parcel of both success and failure.<br />
<br />
The company is virulently anti-union, a feeling dating back to the Tompkins' creation of the Great Chinese American Sewing Co. in San Francisco. Following an ILGWU attempt at organizing, the Tompkins fired a worker who signed a union card, and then closed the plant entirely. The union won a lawsuit (after 10 years) and collected $1.25 million in back wages. Since then, Esprit has relocated its production to offshore trade zones. Apparently the workers who actually produce the clothes are excluded from the mandate of former Senior Vice President Thomas Moncho: "It's a sin here not to develop your potential."<br />
<br />
Esprit retail clerks must look elsewhere for development subsidies: the hourly wage (in 1987) at the SF store (gross sales of $20 million) is a munificent $5.00-down from $5.50! The salesworkers are sold discounted shirts but are required to wear black slacks and dark socks and shoes.<br />
<br />
The designers of image, however, fared better—the corporate headquarters boasts many amenities, as well as subsidized vacations and the use of company facilities. Perhaps the method to this discrimination is found in the effort to shape The Image, which 1s everything in this business.<br />
<br />
The image began to tarnish in late 1986, as problems emerged. Said one observer, "Suddenly Esprit ran into this incredible wall of consumer resistance." Although sales remained flat, profits fell by 80%. The expansion into retail stores foundered; overseas sales were doing well (in places like Chile) but remitted insufficient funds to the home office. There have been wholesale replacements of personnel at senior levels, the introduction of executives from other fashion companies, and a new sales force. With the prospect of reduced profits, the company showed its professional staff the same courtesies it had previously bestowed only on garment workers—a 30% layoff, wages and bonus reductions, warehouse closings, and extensive "perk" rollbacks. Employees now buy their own coffee and pay for personal phone calls. The days are gone when a manager, considered to be "negative and burnt out," would be sent on a European trip in the hope that she would conclude that she no longer belonged at Esprit.<br />
<br />
According to Susie, "Doug has always known we'd get through... he doesn't ever think things will get out of his control."<br />
<br />
And control is indeed a central concept here. Says Patagonia owner Yvon Chouinard, one of Mr. Tompkins' closest friends, "Doug is not an Evel Knievel type. Before he jumps, he knows he can do it." Behind the "carefree" and "breezy" look of the fashion, behind the amicable surroundings and benevolent attentions is an overpowering need for domination and an almost obsessive attention to detail.<br />
<br />
He once told his workers, “If ask you what books you’ve read to stimulate your brains, what adventures you’ve had… what love affair was fulfilling… like good coaches, we want answers and actions.” Of his alleged “septigon” of sexual relationships among Esprit employees, according to author Leonard Koren, “He believes that if you want to harness [sic] the entire employee, you have to engage the entire being.” Could it be the emperor of old fashioned harassment and self-indulgence dressed up in new age clothes?<br />
<br />
Management style differs as much as Image management, with Ms. Tompkins favoring a more “career” look, maturing the line with the customer. Says she, “I’m the product person and that’s what I fight for.” She professes to have outgrown the leisure lifestyle, and she is deeply concerned with AIDS and the homeless (wouldn’t it be “nice” if her concern extended to Esprit’s far-flung employees?).<br />
<br />
Mr. Tompkins continues to look to youth as the icon of fashion and sex. He prefers the vision of Esprit’s photographer Olivero Toscani, saying “This company will never have a career orientation. Will I listen to Toscani before I listen to Susie? You bet. He’s the image maker and she isn’t.”<br />
<br />
Said Corrado Federico, chief operating officer of Esprit’s flagging fortunes, “You an have all the image and panache in the world, but without substance forget it.” Substance, in the world of fashion?<br />
<br />
Come with us now into the twilight between image and reality.<br />
<br />
<hr><br />
<br />
[[Image:Desprit processedworld23.jpg]]<br />
<br />
''By Dan Herman''<br />
<br />
The chic tanned receptionist took in my surplus pea coat and weathered boots with disdainful curiosity, wondering what might possess this rustic intruder to pose as a new employee of Esprit De Corp., San Francisco's homegrown fashion capital. Indeed I felt none too sure myself. My career plans hardly included typing business letters for the trendsetter of flashy fashions for the 1980's. But as I explained to the young woman, I was a mere transient in the church of trendiness having been taken aboard as a temporary word processor.<br />
<br />
Once admitted to the inner sanctum, I saw immediately that the creator of Esprit had no love of things convention al. Esprit is the mission control of haute couture: a cathedral-like assemblage of glass walls and redwood beams; every chair made of wicker and every desk made of oak; and resting appropriately atop each, state-of-the-art computers of all shapes and sizes.<br />
<br />
Yet Esprit is far more than bold architecture—it is a sort of corporate utopia. It boasts its own gourmet cafe, a greenhouse, a small park, even a lawn tennis court (the only one in Northern California). On its walls hangs perhaps the world's foremost collection of Amish quilts, as well as exhibits of photos from exotic lands. To keep all this impeccable and orderly, Esprit hires full-time landscapers, carpenters, even an architect or two. And moving gracefully through this stylish complex like bright colored tropical fish are the Esprit executives themselves: predominantly healthy lithe, nubile, young women, attired in bold, modern styles and chic Italian shoes (to keep them healthy, lithe and nubile Esprit employs a full-time fitness director).<br />
<br />
As if to cement my first impressions, my smiling Esprit coworkers happily informed me that all the rave media reviews (''Newsweek, Us Magazine'', and so forth) of Esprit are true. I was told that Esprit is a progressive company that cares about its workers; that it hires diverse, "international" people; that it believes in health and youthful vigor; and that it is a darn fun place to work where employees dress and act just as they wish (so long as they're stylish). And what's more 'exciting' —Esprit is on the verge of becoming a fashion empire like [[LEVI's, Too?!?|Levi-Strauss]]. In addition to some 2,000 San Francisco employees, Esprit has set up shop in over twenty foreign countries.<br />
<br />
But the more I saw, the more doubtful I became. Whisk aside the saccharine Esprit public relations and you find something quite unglamorous: an old fashioned, anti-union, anti-worker company run by a man who discriminates against the old and unattractive, who has no qualms about doing business in South Africa and Chile, and whose success is based on paying slave wages to foreign textile workers.<br />
<br />
The spiritual and financial force behind Esprit is Doug Tompkins, the 45-year old president and owner (along with wife Susie) of the company. Babyfaced, silver-haired, trim and tanned, he seems the distillation of the Esprit ideal: fun-loving, lighthearted, yet success-oriented. In keeping with Esprit's 'fitness' consciousness, he spends only about half the year on the job. The rest of the time he jaunts around the world to climb mountains, run rapids, and consort with other high-powered fashion industry types.<br />
<br />
Yct like most everything else at Esprit, the real Doug Tompkins sharply contrasts with the image of Doug Tompkins. Doug master-minded the image of the friendly, happy Espriter, yet he remains aloof and enigmatic to his workers. Most Espriters refer to him as "Doug," but few know him well enough to say hello. He occasionally dines with upper-echelon employees, but he scarcely notices the rank and file, and he smiles only in photographs. His employees reason that the pressures of the industry keep him preoccupied. In any event, most agree that his diffidence is surely not symptomatic of low self-esteem.<br />
<br />
Despite the fact that Doug spends little time at Esprit, he controls the cosmetic details of the premises with totalitarian fervor. Doug demands final approval of any new furnishings, lighting, even small accessories like typing stands.<br />
<br />
Another cosmetic detail to which Doug pays inordinate attention is hiring policy. “When I first arrived at Esprit, I asked a coworker why everyone looked under 21. She shrugged, assuring me that many were closer to 25 (she herself was 19). Almost without exception Esprit hires the bright, cheery-faced young people you might see in Club Med ads. It is easy to imagine that Esprit manufactures its cute employees in Hong Kong right alongside its cotton v-necks and acetate skirts. The assembly line does not, however, tend to produce many blacks, Hispanics or middle-aged employees.<br />
<br />
Whatever their age or race, the company treats all workers the same: like children. High-heeled shoes are banned (ostensibly they could damage the wooden floor); workers are forbidden to bring snacks or open beverages near the work area (special mugs with hinged lids are provided); workers may not wear clothing with flashy logos other than Esprit, etc. With all the rules, Esprit could easily be mistaken for a boarding school. On the wall in the cafe hangs a framed aphorism that sums up the atmosphere of the place; "Please pick up after yourself, your mother doesn't work here."<br />
<br />
In fact, your mother couldn't get a job here—she would be too old. But more to the point, your mother wouldn't want to work at Esprit for fear of breaking her neck. It is a good thing indeed that Esprit stresses youth and fitness, because Espriters must be agile and well-coordinated to avoid slipping down the narrow stairways of polished wood. Workers say that Doug refuses to mar their treacherous beauty with traction strips (just about everyone recalls falling down the stairs at least once).<br />
<br />
Likewise, Espriters must be quick-witted enough to dodge a glass partition now and then (Doug believes in the illusion of openness and communication among workers, and thus installed glass walls. The glass also offers the advantage of exhibiting Doug's stable of colorful employees—rather like a Macy's window display). Visitors at Esprit, conspicuous by their clumsiness, often see walls materialize within inches of their faces, which is usually too late.<br />
<br />
And if invisible walls and slippery stairs aren't enough to keep Espriters agile and alert, there are the wicker chairs, which sounds harmless enough until you have sat in one for a day. Only then do you realize that Espriters must have especially strong backs, since their chairs give no support whatsoever. Esprit once supplied workers with dull, old office chairs but Doug tossed them out in favor of the cute but rickety wicker. Workers sometimes complain of chronic backaches but are promptly reminded that at Esprit image is everything.<br />
<br />
Of course, if you think about it, image is not everything. It is mere illusion. Yet Doug Tompkins and Esprit have bravely ventured beyond the realm of image and into the realm of the callous. Back in 1974, a youthful Esprit celebrated its puberty by [[Jung Sai Garment Workers Strike 1974|locking out some 125 manual workers at the company-owned Great Chinese American Sewing Company in Chinatown]]. This magnanimous step was taken because the workers wanted to join a union. After a lengthy legal battle, the National Labor Relations Board awarded the workers $1.25 million in back wages. Tompkins, however, is not a man who likes being told how to run his business. Esprit moved its manufacturing overseas mostly to the Far East where workers know their place.<br />
<br />
Doing business in repressive nations has subsequently become something of a crusade for Tompkins. Not only does Esprit conduct a thriving business in South Africa and Chile, but Tompkins has also launched the "American Free Trade Council," an organization that lobbies for the lofty principle of, what else, free trade. Despite its noble ideals, Esprit refuses to comment on any of this. Either the company does not wish to brag of good works, or its spokesmen are fearful of the provision in the company manual threatening dismissal for any negative statements made to the press.<br />
<br />
The best way to describe the brave new world at Esprit is, in fact, 'see no evil, hear no evil.' Whatever its shortcomings, Esprit continues to be inundated with resumes from credulous young grads who are attracted to the company's image. Esprit is even now planning to build a "campus-like Esprit City" for its deserving executives. And Esprit continues to present itself as a populist organization by using 'real people' in its ads (which greatly cuts down on modeling costs).<br />
<br />
Such a real person is Ariel O'Donnell, a San Francisco waitress who had the good fortune of serving Doug and Susie one evening. Over the next several days she was ushered into the Esprit head quarters for a photography session and an interview. Her face appeared in Esprit ads in ''Mademoiselle, Glamour. Vanity Fair, Elle'' and ''Metropolitan Home''. The caption in the ads reads: Ariel O'Donnell, San Francisco, California. Age 21. Waitress/Bartender. Non professional AIDS Educator. Cyclist. Art Restoration Student. Anglophile. Neo-Feminist. Clearly a model citizen of the Esprit utopia.<br />
<br />
In fact, however, a 1987 issue of Image magazine reported O'Donnell's true biography like this: "Waitress, bartender and cyclist are factual descriptions. Non-professional AIDS educator and neo-feminist, O'Donnell assumes, were extrapolations from her interview remark. 'No longer can we be sexually free. We have to be safe. So if I were sleeping with someone new, I'd insist he use a condom.' An interest in art restoration became ·an art restoration student.<br />
<br />
From the perspective of history, all of this blurring of reality doesn't really matter—utopias don't usually last long. But Esprit is somehow above history. With its existence based on a gaseous cloud of image, Esprit has proven as resilient as superstition itself. Perhaps it's time to call an exorcist.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
[[category:Labor]] [[category:Tales of Toil]] [[category:1980s]] [[category:Dogpatch]] [[category:Dissent]] [[category:Chinatown]] [[category:Technology]]</div>
Ccarlsson
https://foundsf.org/index.php?title=A_Teaching_Temp_Talks_Back
A Teaching Temp Talks Back
2024-03-17T05:13:12Z
<p>Ccarlsson: Created page with "'''<font face = Papyrus> <font color = maroon> <font size = 4>"I was there..."</font></font> </font>''' :''"Foundsf.org is republishing a series of "Tales of Toil" that appeared in ''Processed World magazine'' between 1981 and 2004. As first-hand accounts of what it was like working at various jobs during those years, these accounts provide a unique view into an aspect of labor history rarely archived, or shared.'' ''by Sophia F..."</p>
<hr />
<div>'''<font face = Papyrus> <font color = maroon> <font size = 4>"I was there..."</font></font> </font>'''<br />
<br />
:''"Foundsf.org is republishing a series of "Tales of Toil" that appeared in [[Processed World: A Political History|''Processed World magazine'']] between 1981 and 2004. As first-hand accounts of what it was like working at various jobs during those years, these accounts provide a unique view into an aspect of labor history rarely archived, or shared.''<br />
<br />
''by Sophia Fury''<br />
<br />
''—from Processed World #19, published in April 1987.''<br />
<br />
[[Image:Teaching-temp-talks-back processedworld19.jpg]]<br />
<br />
I work as a part-time instructor at a San Francisco Bay Area community college. The California public university system, which includes universities, state universities and community colleges, was designed in the 1960s (when there was lots of money kicking around) to enable any young Californian who wanted one to get a college degree, regardless of economic level. I myself was a product of the education boom. Thanks to the largesse of financial aid, I armed myself (along with the rest of the hordes) with my liberal arts degree, ready to tackle the world. I'm still tethered to the public university system, but now I'm looking at it from the inside as an employee, and, along with my fellow part time instructors, watching it disintegrate.<br />
<br />
Nowhere do you see the insidious undoing of the promise of equal opportunity as in the current California community college system. With the passage of the tax cutting Proposition 13 and the election of a short-sighted, "bottom-line" governor, the California community colleges had begun their slow decline. Government funds have been reduced to a trickle over the last few years. Administrators moan and groan over the restrictions imposed on them. Classes have been cut. Tuition is raised yearly. Attendance is down. Lowincome teenagers have proven to be a completely expendable commodity in the highly competitive, high-tech job market of the 1980s, and the California system of education has remorselessly abandoned them.<br />
<br />
The university system is also abandoning the very graduates it spawned-the new crop of mainly extraneous teachers in the arts, humanities and social sciences. In the community colleges, the teaching profession is slowly but surely going the route of two-tiered polarization, just like the thousands of traditional, skilled jobs that are currently being degraded. On the top, you have the twenty-year veterans protected by the American Federation of Teachers and an antiquated tenure system in which incompetence, egotism and banality unfortunately run rampant. On the bottom, you have people like me-people who want to teach and therefore accept low-rung jobs working as temporaries in the colleges.<br />
<br />
Budget-minded administrators knew it would be impossible to disturb the sanctity of the "ivory tower," so they found a way to screw the new teachers-by simply not letting them in. In California, whenever a college-level teacher retires, he or she is increasingly replaced by a disposable, cheap, part-time teacher. More than half of the faculty at the college where I work is part-time and temporary. The ratio is even higher at other schools. The "teaching temp" is paid an hourly wage for class room time only. There is no vacation pay, holiday pay, or health or retirement bene fits. Months like December and April are total hell. While the old-timers bask "in the luxury of periodic paid weeks off, part timers get stuck with paychecks about half their normally miserable size. Nor is there compensation for classroom preparation time or "office hours," the customary time in which the teacher and student can talk one-on-one. At the end of the semester they “1et you go”—unless, that is, they keep you on for the next semester... and keep you on for the next summer... and the next... and the next.<br />
<br />
The result is that at the college level these days, half the faculty are walking zombies who are disillusioned, insecure... and tired. Part-timers spend their off-hours scrambling for other part-time jobs that can support their teaching habit. I work as a part-time word processor; an acquaintance of mine tutors high school kids. Many part-timers have families that rely on their income. It's not unusual for them to dash off after class, in a mad race to make a decent living. Most likely they jump in the car, get on the freeway, and drive 45 minutes or an hour to their next class at another school, or else they run home to grade piles of exams and papers, a grueling activity for which they don't get paid.<br />
<br />
As a consequence, part-timers hardly ever see one another. I only know two other part-timers at my school, and I see them very infrequently. The implications are obvious: we are too alienated, isolated and enervated to develop the camaraderie required for serious job organization. The AFT reps encourage us to attend their meetings, but we know they don't really represent us. We know we're going to have to organize ourselves if we want change, yet we're overcome with a paralyzing malaise, underneath which rage battles bum-out. But from day to day we mainly accept things, silently praying that enough of the old-timers will die so that we can get their jobs.<br />
<br />
It's not just the part-timers who are suffering here: it's the whole system of education that's going down the tubes. Parttimers, generally speaking, do not participate in departmental affairs. Curriculum and policy are decided by the twentyyear veterans (the full-timers) who have generally given in to their apathy. A more cynical and beaten bunch you'd be hardpressed to find. For the most part they're appalled at the degradation of education, yet they're overcome by inertia. They shrug apologetically when they see you in the halls, stopping to chat about "how the teaching's going," yet their primary goal is to reduce the amount of work they have to do themselves. Decision-making by the discouraged is a dreary business. Policy is either nondescript or totally inconsistent. Passing the buck has become elevated to an art.<br />
<br />
In addition many full-timers strike me as having completely lost touch with student needs. Wracked by insecurity at being low level professoriate, and despairing at the shrinking level of esteem society affords them, faculty members unconsciously vent frustration on their students. I've been ap palled at the disparaging words exchanged among teachers in reference to the declining abilities of the students. That the students try their best, given inadequate intellectual preparation in high school and at home, isn't much considered. Nor does it strike the full-timers that perhaps building intellectual skills in the classroom first requires recognizing the validity of ignorance and understanding some of its origins.<br />
<br />
It's funny, the community college teachers seem to think that the professors at the university level have it made because students there are "so much more intellectually motivated." But having just arrived at the community college from the university, I know better. Faculty alienation from students—and vice versa—is omnipresent in the university system. Students arrive at college less trained for critical analysis than for stifling obedience from which they understandably long to escape. Oversized classrooms and psychologically insensitive teaching methods have made instruction in the public schools a matter of power and submission. Professors at the college level interpret the younger student's indifference as '1ack of academic ability and interest" rather than a healthy response to bullshit drudgery. Professional egos get bruised ("why should I have to teach incompetents?"), and students are punished for it.<br />
<br />
The academy gets its steam from intellectual self-hatred. Professors rush to the library in their off-hours for research, to convince scrutinizing administrators and fellow academicians they are worthy of tenure. The competition is fierce, the work ethic unbounded. Professors then carry this weak-kneed egotism into the classroom, where they try to impress their poor students with what scholarly hot shit they are. Students are then blamed for not being smart enough to understand abstruse, self-obsessive, disorganized academic mumbo-jumbo. If they give up trying, as so many students have, then they're totally ignored by the education system. Many students have become "bottom-line" thinkers—the value of the intellectual effort is measured by its cost effectiveness ("what’ll this effort get me?").<br />
<br />
The whole milieu for mind expansion and personal growth has become warped beyond belief. Used to be, a professor would hang out in office hours and students would drift in to discuss intellectual issues, learning problems or personal dilemmas. A good teacher could really make a difference in somebody's life. Students often looked to a teacher for encouragement and advice and attention, stuff the student probably wasn't getting a lot of at home. But today, neither full-time nor part-time teachers have the psychic energy required to reach out and inspire. And students often seem more interested in their economic futures than in ideas or abstractions.<br />
<br />
Nevertheless, many of my students strike me as starved for positive feedback, kind words, and strong role models. They're also hungry for something interesting that they can relate to. I myself am torn between my desire to provide them sympathetic guidance and adult friendship, which is so lacking for young people these days, and my unwillingness to donate too many hours of my already busy week. I usually volunteer three or four hours to office time, and I'm glad I do it, but it's not really enough. The sad truth is, with the majority of teachers on the run, the student who is slower or less confident will probably get overlooked. Students with learning disabilities or family problems often drop out.<br />
<br />
Something pretty tragic's going on here: with a few minor exceptions, the personal relationship between student and teacher is becoming a thing of the past. Enrollments are declining as a result, creating more cutbacks, more substandard teaching, and less intellectually capable students. It's a bureaucratic vicious circle that's completely out of control, and virtually paralyzing education. And it's the kind of organizational dysfunction you see everywhere these days.<br />
<br />
The decline of education in America offends me to the core for a couple of different reasons. First of all, it represents the arrival of a new socio-economic lineup here in the richest country in the world. Today, even the myth of America as a "nation of middle-class people" is dying a rapid death. Social classes are polarized and the growing numbers of poor, without access to better opportunities, are mercilessly shut out of the system, Life in the eighties has become a survival-of-the-fittest aerobic scramble to the top, in order to join the closing ranks of the “boomoisie.” The majority is undeniably being left behind.<br />
<br />
But the decline of education has other ramifications that I find equally frightening. Critical thinking and the thirst for knowledge are becoming rare. Mass media has chipped away at intelligent reasoning by offering fluff packages as "information." People are increasingly rendered passive by their ignorance. The old myths have made a comeback. Americans today are accepting responsibility for their own "failure," instead of lashing out at the appropriate instigators who value money over lives. We're at a dangerous crossroads. It'd be easy at this point to give in to fear or despair. I sense that tendency in me on the one hand—but I'm also too fucking angry to give up.<br />
<br />
[[category:Labor]] [[category:Tales of Toil]] [[category:1980s]] [[category:Schools]] [[category:South Bay and Peninsula]] [[category:Excelsior]] [[category:Women]]</div>
Ccarlsson
https://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Help,_I%27m_Doing_Hard_Time_in_the_Federal_(or_state_or_county_or_city)_Bureaucracy
Help, I'm Doing Hard Time in the Federal (or state or county or city) Bureaucracy
2024-03-17T05:06:54Z
<p>Ccarlsson: Created page with "'''<font face = Papyrus> <font color = maroon> <font size = 4>"I was there..."</font></font> </font>''' :''"Foundsf.org is republishing a series of "Tales of Toil" that appeared in ''Processed World magazine'' between 1981 and 2004. As first-hand accounts of what it was like working at various jobs during those years, these accounts provide a unique view into an aspect of labor history rarely archived, or shared.'' ''by THEMIS,..."</p>
<hr />
<div>'''<font face = Papyrus> <font color = maroon> <font size = 4>"I was there..."</font></font> </font>'''<br />
<br />
:''"Foundsf.org is republishing a series of "Tales of Toil" that appeared in [[Processed World: A Political History|''Processed World magazine'']] between 1981 and 2004. As first-hand accounts of what it was like working at various jobs during those years, these accounts provide a unique view into an aspect of labor history rarely archived, or shared.''<br />
<br />
''by THEMIS, that complaining bitch over on the fifth floor''<br />
<br />
''—from Processed World #5, published in Summer, 1982.''<br />
<br />
[[Image:Tales-of-toil-pw05.jpg]]<br />
<br />
George Orwell MUST have worked for the government at one time. How else could he have known so much about doublethink, or the fact that 2 + 2 = 4 when you're talking about engineering but 5 when you're talking about the budget.<br />
<br />
We were sitting around the bar talking after (during?) working hours, talking about a promotional exam we had to take. Jerry (all names are naturally fictitious) said how part of the exam was to see if you could write logical, terse, to-the-point para graphs. I said that they should have selected people who could write paragraphs that were as ambiguous as possible, so that when policy changed with changes in administrations. no one would be embarrassed.<br />
<br />
Susie added that she would have picked people who could mention as many supervisors' prejudices as possible, without offending any of them. This is one organization where they pay good money (taxpayers' money, remember?) to send you to school to learn how to write, and then shitcan your letters and documents because they're too honest. "That isn't the way we do things. So-and-so doesn't like that word."<br />
<br />
I could handle it if it was the ordinary business bullshit. What gets to me though is that this is supposed to be an agency that has some responsibility toward environmental protection, and although they glorify it mightily in all their statements of policy, the truth of the matter is that no one could give less of a fuck about the environment, because it just gets in ,the way of the REAL work of the agency, which is building dams or roads, or dislocating Indian tribes, or tearing down neighborhoods, or whatever. So part of my job is to MAKE IT APPEAR that the agency is doing everything humanly possible to comply with our many state, county, and federal environmental regulations, while in ACTUALITY I have to minimize or downright quash or at best find a nice convenient loophole to get around any real environmental problems and hope they don't hit the light of day.<br />
<br />
[[Image:Joan-notes-pw05.jpg]]<br />
<br />
It isn't just my agency that does this. They all do it. I know this because I have to work with them all. But that's just part of it. Part of it is the way you lose your job skills through over-specialization, so that after a couple of years you're as useless on the job market as a dodo bird. Part of it is the crummy and demoralizing work atmosphere. Part of it is being as a "professional" and finding out a computer program could probably do your job... with a good deal less anguish to all concerned. And part of it is the total illogicality of the red tape itself, which somehow transcends mere human pettiness, and becomes something awesome and immovable, like a glacier.<br />
<br />
I once figured out that to do my job according to the book, following all the procedures, would take 32 working days per item. Then I figured out how many were allowed me by all the time limits in the system. 15 working days. So I HAVE to do my job wrong in order to follow the rules. Theoretically, what I'm doing should take thought, analysis, independent judgment, and professional standards. But I don't HAVE THE TIME. If you have 15 days to do a 32 day-job, you don't have time to think. You have time to use buzzwords and recycled phrases from other documents. Then this stuff gets unloaded on the unfortunate public and they complain about gobbledygook. No wonder!<br />
<br />
It took me about a year to figure out why government has the lousiest reputation in the world. Then I realized it's because they're denied even the elemental satisfaction of doing a good job. The politics change too fast. They change the rules in the middle of the project. Things you write, work on for months, disappear and you never see them again. Original thought is about as welcome as a nun in a whorehouse. So after a while you drop out spiritually. You have to keep going there to pay the rent and feed the kids. But nothing in the world can induce you to feel involved, or God forbid, responsible.<br />
<br />
Needless to say, this is not very good for you.<br />
<br />
That's why I spend as much of my working time as possible drunk or stoned. When you're drunk, you don't feel. When you're stoned, you at least have a handle on what's going on. You can watch your mind go CRUNCH as you step in from the sunny streets into the dull, stale smelling building. You can see every body avoiding eye contact. You see how damn programmed everybody is, sitting at their desks, trying to or pretending to work. Not thinking. Daydreaming about the next 3-day weekend. Thinking about that glorious day when they'll be too old to work.<br />
<br />
You watch people deteriorate. Like in any other institution, the longer you stay there, the crazier you get. The 25-year-olds look at each other with terror in their eyes, as the possibility occurs to them that they may be there the rest of their lives. Just like a prison. Or an insane asylum. Except we're respectable. We're government workers.<br />
<br />
[[Image:Collage processedworld05.jpg]]<br />
<br />
[[category:Labor]] [[category:Tales of Toil]] [[category:1980s]] [[category:Civic Center]] [[category:downtown]]</div>
Ccarlsson
https://foundsf.org/index.php?title=45_Westpoint:_A_World_of_Possibilities
45 Westpoint: A World of Possibilities
2024-03-12T19:29:57Z
<p>Ccarlsson: </p>
<hr />
<div>'''<font face = Papyrus> <font color = maroon> <font size = 4>"I was there..."</font></font> </font>'''<br />
<br />
''by James Tracy''<br />
<br />
''—originally published in [[Processed World: A Political History|''Processed World'']] #2.005, published in Winter, 2005.''<br />
<br />
[[Image:JSmooke03-69no27.jpg|right]]<br />
<br />
''Photo: Joseph Smooke''<br />
<br />
Thanksgiving Morning 2003. At the intersection of 30th and Mission an odd assortment of humanity gathered—even by San Franciscan standards. Homeless families, most with strollers in tow, cautiously mingled with trade union activists. College students tried out their Spanish on Latino day laborers. Street punks, checked out the non-profit workers with a sneer that acknowledged “I’ll probably be you one day.” The crowd of about 140 had diversity written all over it—elderly and young, and enough ethnicity to make even the most jaded observer speak about Rainbow Coalitions as if the idea was just invented five minutes ago.<br />
<br />
Protest signs handed out casually read “Let Us In!” below a cartoon of a global village angry mob. The mood remained mellow, maybe strangely so for a group of people who, in an hour’s time would be participating in an illegal takeover of vacant housing; one unit among thousands owned by the San Francisco Housing Authority—the often troubled agency that is charged with providing homes for the city’s most impoverished.<br />
<br />
Announcements are made: the bus chartered to bring the protesters to the secret takeover site is late, but will arrive shortly. The driver of the bus had been reached by cell phone and reported a hangover from which he’d just woken up. He would be stopping for a strong cup of coffee. Even on Thanksgiving Day, there was more than one protest going on in San Francisco. A couple of hundred feet away, United Food and Commercial Workers members picketed Safeway in the ongoing battle over the company’s attempts to do away with healthcare benefits. A delegation went over to wish the unionists well as one nervous housing protester tried to conceal the Safeway logo on her fresh cup of coffee.<br />
<br />
The press showed up early to search for a spokesperson, played today by Carrie Goodspeed, a twenty-four-year-old community organizer with Family Rights and Dignity (FRD), part of the Coalition On Homelessness. She’s nervous at first but then relaxes. “The Authority owns over one thousand units of vacant housing that could be used to house families. We will risk arrest to make this point.”<br />
<br />
“Is this the right thing to do?” blurted one reporter. There’s silence and an expression on Godspeed’s face of someone with second thoughts. Suddenly that expression disappears.<br />
<br />
“Definitely. It’s the right thing to do.”<br />
<br />
TAKEOVER! The caravan consisting of five autos, some bikes and the long-awaited bus arrived at the tip of the West Point Housing Development. Banners in the windows proclaim: “HOMES NOT JAILS FOR HOMELESS FAMILIES,” and “THESE UNITS SIT VACANT WHILE FAMILIES SLEEP ON THE STREETS.” The dwelling was opened up the night before by a team of members of FRD, Homes Not Jails (HNJ), and other assorted individuals. Some were there to pressure the SFHA into rehabilitating the vacant units and have a very politically correct Thanksgiving. Homeless people added another thoroughly practical aspect: “If I get busted, I sleep inside. If I don’t, I sleep inside,” one person remarked.<br />
<br />
A speakout commenced in front of the building. Camila Watson, a resident of the development took the microphone. Watson is one of the reasons this action landed here—due to her outreach most of the neighbors are reasonably supportive.<br />
<br />
When Watson was homeless, she turned for help to [[The Race Card|Bianca Henry]] of FRD, one of the women occupying the apartment. Watson’s name had “disappeared” from the SFHA’s waiting list. Extremely aggressive advocacy on Henry’s part, coupled with a clever media event the previous year, had helped the agency to “find” Watson and offer her a place to live.<br />
<br />
“I used to come by here and think ‘Why can’t I live in apartment 41, or 45, or 47. Give me paint and a hammer and I’ll fix it up.” With housing, other good things have come to pass. Watson now holds down a job, and is doing well at City College. The experience left her determined to fight for those still stuck in the shelter system.<br />
<br />
[[Image:JSmooke03-69-no25.jpg]]<br />
<br />
''Photo: Joseph Smooke''<br />
<br />
“They say these units are vacant because people don’t want to live here. I haven’t met a mother yet that wouldn’t move here over the streets and the shelter.”<br />
<br />
Another woman told a story of how her homelessness began the day the government demolished the public housing development she lived in, and reneged on promises for replacement housing for all tenants. One resident remarked how she feared taking homeless family members into her home, since her contract with the SFHA made that act of compassion an evictable offense. A young poet named Puff spoke in a style that was equal parts poetry slam, evangelical and comical. By the end of her microphone time she managed to connect homelessness, minimum-wage work, consumerism, police abuse, war and genocide. From someone with less passion and less street experience, it might have been indulgent. From Puff, it was a clear-eyed ghetto manifesto, and a call to arms.<br />
<br />
The San Francisco Labor Chorus rallied the group in rousing renditions of post-revolutionary holiday favorites such as “Budget La-La-Land,” stretched to fit “Winter Wonderland,” and “Share the Dough,” set to the tune of “Let It Snow”. At first the very white group of trade unionists seemed a little out of place in the projects.<br />
<br />
As many neighbors stopped by, a trio of young men came down the hill.<br />
<br />
“Is that where the homeless people are going to live?” the tallest one asked.<br />
<br />
“We hope so!” yelled Bianca Henry from the second floor window.<br />
<br />
“How many rooms?”<br />
<br />
“Three!” Henry replied.<br />
<br />
The youngest looking of the three flashed a smile gleeming with gold caps “Happy Thanksgiving, yo!” as the trio continued down the hill.<br />
<br />
'''The San Francisco Housing Authority and Hope VI'''<br />
<br />
Life as San Francisco’s largest landlord and last line of defense against homelessness has never been easy. [[San Francisco Housing Authority 1937-1965: The Early Decades|Born in 1940, the agency]] initially housed returning servicemen and their families. Over the years, it has grown to operate over 6,575 units of housing and administer another 10,000 units in conjunction with other providers.<br />
<br />
In the 1980s then-Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Jack Kemp announced the creation of the Housing Opportunities For People Everywhere (HOPE) program that would tear down public housing and rebuild it. HOPE was intended to get the feds out of housing provision by transferring ownership to resident cooperatives. President Clinton took most of the hope out of the HOPE program (now called HOPE VI) when requirements for resident participation, return, and unit replacement were stricken from the federal record.<br />
<br />
In San Francisco the HOPE VI program produced very mixed results. When it worked, it worked because tenant organizations forced it to work. Some developments lost units and the agency’s own numbers show that not every former tenant made it back to their former neighborhood. Many residents, some who lived through the “urban removal,” of the 1960s saw the demolition as one more attempt to kick Blacks out of town. It was widely believed that then Executive Director Ronnie Davis gave free reign to his staff to evict outspoken tenants, forge documents, and take bribes. Davis was never convicted of any wrongdoing while in San Francisco, but was convicted of embezzling from his former job—the Cayahuga Housing Authority in Cleveland, Ohio.<br />
<br />
Today, the SFHA is led by Gregg Fortner, who is regarded by most as honest, if a bit inaccessible. Continued federal funding cuts have kept vacated units vacant—about 905 vacant units or 16%, total. To meet the deficit in operating costs, the agency requested proposals from both for-profit and nonprofit developers to redevelop eighteen properties—again raising the specter of displacement—dubbed “The Plan” by activists and residents.<br />
<br />
'''This Town is Headed for a Ghost Town?'''<br />
<br />
Ted Gullicksen, a co-founder of HNJ, knows how to use a bullhorn. Speaking from the broken window he invites the press and anyone else to check out the apartment. “It won’t take thousands of dollars to fix it up.”<br />
<br />
Gullicksen, a working-class Bostonian helped to create HNJ to add a direct action complement to the San Francisco Tenants Union, which he directs. HNJ helps several “survival squats” (buildings seized for shelter not protest) in San Francisco. 45 Westpoint is a “political squat” used to protest the housing crisis, popularize demands, and generally raise a ruckus.<br />
<br />
This ruckus is usually raised on major holidays, especially the very cold ones. San Francisco’s press is usually quick to broadcast sensationalistic stories about homeless people using drugs or having mental health episodes in public places. Such “journalism” has played a major role in mustering public support for punitive anti-homeless legislation.<br />
<br />
On takeover days, the camera is forced to observe pictures of homeless people at their most powerful, not at their most vulnerable. Images of poor people and their allies repairing broken apartments replace one-dimensional images of addiction. HNJ specializes in the strategic use of a slow news day. Throughout the day facts, figures and theories on homelessness are thrown about, yet one message remains constant: “Nothing about us, without us.”<br />
<br />
What about the former residents of 45 Westpoint? What happened to them and who were they? The house holds a few clues. Stickers on the upstairs bedroom door read “Audrina loves Biz.” Judging from the demographic of the development, they were likely Black or Samoan. Large plastic “Little Tykes” toys left behind suggest a child, probably two. A sewing machine, a conch shell and a broken entertainment center might be what’s left of a ruined family, but who knows?<br />
<br />
What caused their exit? Maybe the family left in response to the gang turf wars that periodically erupt on the hill. They may have been recipients of the federal “One Strike Eviction,” Clinton’s Orwellian gift to public housing residents. “One Strike” passed in 1996, allowing eviction on hearsay for crimes committed by an acquaintance. Grandparents have been evicted for alleged crimes of grandchildren. A woman in Texas lost her home after calling the police to end a domestic violence incident in her unit.<br />
<br />
'''Beyond “Services”'''<br />
<br />
Bianca Henry surveys the Thanksgiving rebellion with pride, a grin playing at her lips. This is the first time she has ever committed an act of non-violent direct action. For someone who was raised in the projects and knows first-hand the over-reaching arm of the law, the fact that she is purposely risking arrest for the cause is a small, but dramatic personal revolution.<br />
<br />
Henry’s pride in her work as an organizer is evident throughout. The takeover is part of an ongoing campaign to force the SFHA to house and respect families. Together with other parents, she has done one of the hardest things a community organizer can do: inspire poor people to move beyond “Case Management,” and “Services,” and take things to the next level: collective action, risky, scary, but potentially wonderful.<br />
<br />
By design, the action is separated into two zones: the Arrest Zone (inside the house) and the Safe Zone (on the grass outside). It assumes a social contract with the police to respect Arrest and Safe zones. Henry knows first-hand that even minor brushes with the law can bring the wrath of the C.P.S., I.N.S., P.O.s and PDs and various other Big Brother-like institutions adept at tearing families apart.<br />
<br />
Henry knows that if you want to get anything done, you can’t just wait for the next election. She might have been a Panther in the 1960s but there’s a pragmatic streak in her as well. She can effortlessly rattle off obscure public policy points and arcane aspects of the Code of Federal Regulations as they pertain to housing poor people.<br />
<br />
Starr Smith is Bianca’s co-organizer. A single mom who came to work with FRD when she was still homeless, she’s on the outside fielding questions and dealing with the dozens of unforeseen snafus cropping up by the minute. They make an interesting team. Henry grew up in the thick of gangs and her neighborhood was devastated by the crack cocaine industry. She exemplifies the Tupac generation of young people who grew up in the era where every reform won during previous upheavals was being stripped away. Smith came of age following the Grateful Dead in the final days of Jerry Garcia. Both faced down long-prison sentences and have built the FRD’s housing campaign from scratch. In many ways the eclectic crowd is a reflection of this partnership.<br />
<br />
Later in the afternoon one neighbor the group forgot to outreach to is steaming pissed—the President of the Tenants Association. She confers with Jim Williams, Head of Security of the SFHA. He in turn, asks Jennifer Freidenbach of the Coalition On Homelessness, to please call the agency when the protest is over.<br />
<br />
“We’re not leaving, we’re moving more people in,” Freidenbach answers.<br />
<br />
“Yeah right.” Williams retorted.<br />
<br />
“Really.”<br />
<br />
“Well…Why don’t we have our legal people call yours?”<br />
<br />
Within the next 24 hours, the San Francisco Police Department had indeed cleared 45 Westpoint and the other units that had been reclaimed. This “Autonomous Zone” was finished, but the world of possibilities opened through good old fashioned mutual aid and a crowbar remained.<br />
<br />
'''Rebuilding the Left One Block at a Time'''<br />
<br />
<blockquote>''“More often than not, reliance on voting in periodic elections has sidetracked them from the more powerful weapons of direct action. By engaging in the continuous struggle for justice and human welfare, workers will gain a realistic political education and cast the only ballot worth casting—the daily ballot for freedom for all.”''<br />
<br />
—Bayard Rustin, ''New South…Old Politics''</blockquote><br />
<br />
After the [[Seeing the Elephant in Seattle|1999 anti-WTO protests in Seattle]], Elizabeth Betita Martinez, wrote an influential essay entitled “Where Was the Color in Seattle?” Unfortunately, one never needs to ask that question about prisons, slum housing, and homeless shelters. These are some of the most integrated institutions in the United States. Nevertheless, the loosely dubbed “Global Justice Movement” and those actually at the receiving end of global injustice are usually separated by vast cultural, political, and economic spaces.<br />
<br />
For a day or so in San Francisco, this wasn’t the case.<br />
<br />
In September 2003, the U.S. Department of Labor reported that over 34 million people lived in poverty inside the United States. This statistic should have annihilated propaganda that the cause of poverty is personal pathology. In a more honest world, factors such as a shift towards a low-wage service sector, welfare reform and out-of-control military spending would replace such distractions as marital status and personality in discussions of homelessness.<br />
<br />
It could be a very good time for economic justice organizing in this country. Yet, as elections near, actions such as housing takeovers remain isolated by the liberal Left—marginalized by the urgency to “Elect Anyone But Bush.”<br />
<br />
The women of Family Rights and Dignity and the squatters of Homes Not Jails aren’t waiting for the next election. They embody a spirit of past movements, such as the Unemployed Workers’ of the 1930s, which is rooted in the everyday needs of community members. They build direct democracy with crowbars as their ballots and vacant housing as their ballot boxes. Election strategies might occasionally produce short-term good—but survival politics outside of the formal legislative system are better at producing organizers from the ground-up. That builds movements without illusions—ready to rumble no matter a Bush or Kerry victory.<br />
<br />
As an action initiated mostly by working-class women of color it also shows alliances can be built between America’s different dissident factions. It begins with supporting self-organized actions such as this and respecting the fact the communities who find themselves under the boot of poverty need people to have their back—not to act as spokespeople for their cause. Despite gentrification spasms, the city functions in a way similar to factories of old: a place where people of disparate backgrounds can meet, find common grievances and hopefully common collective action.<br />
<br />
P.S. 45 Westpoint was made available to homeless families in late February 2004. <br />
<br />
[[category:Housing]] [[category:Bayview/Hunter's Point]] [[category:2000s]] [[category:African-American]] [[category:Racism]] [[category:Homeless]] [[category:Gentrification]]</div>
Ccarlsson
https://foundsf.org/index.php?title=I_Live_in_the_Past:_The_Rent_is_Cheaper!
I Live in the Past: The Rent is Cheaper!
2024-03-06T07:00:32Z
<p>Ccarlsson: </p>
<hr />
<div>'''<font face = Papyrus> <font color = maroon> <font size = 4>"I was there..."</font></font> </font>'''<br />
<br />
:''"Foundsf.org is republishing a series of "Tales of Toil" that appeared in [[Processed World: A Political History|''Processed World magazine'']] between 1981 and 2004. As first-hand accounts of what it was like working at various jobs during those years, these accounts provide a unique view into an aspect of labor history rarely archived, or shared.''<br />
<br />
''by Zoe Noe''<br />
<br />
''—from Processed World #2.001, published in Summer, 2001.''<br />
<br />
I used to think sometimes, after visiting a place like New York, how thankful I was to have wound up in San Francisco. New York seemed the kind of place you’d get buried alive if you weren’t careful and didn’t have a plan, but San Francisco afforded me the chance to spend years basically bumbling around without a clue about what I might eventually want to do. I had a poignant moment last summer when we needed to fill a room for a couple months. No friends were expressing interest, so we posted an ad on Craigslist.<br />
<br />
I was unprepared for the response. The phone ringing off the hook. Hundreds of emails. The answering machine tape filled up within the hour. I got home from work to find that my roommate had told everyone who called to just come on over that evening between 8 and 10 and take a look at the room.<br />
<br />
During our insane impromptu open house, with my attention flitting from one desperate seeker to another (and some who were just taking in the scene, I got into a conversation with a 22-year-old, who had just moved out here from St. Louis. He reminded me a lot of me when I first arrived. I was 22, from the Midwest: gentle, soft-spoken, full of hope and curiosity. The biggest difference was that he came with $4,000 saved up, Internet job contacts arranged ahead of time; yet he had been couch-surfing for months in San Mateo, chasing after that elusive place in the city. I couldn’t help thinking how different it was for me when I came here in 1981, fresh off a Greyhound with $300 in my pocket.<br />
<br />
[[Image:Glenn w greyhound.png|400px|right]]<br />
<br />
I was anything but focused in those days. In my first couple of years here, I think I had close to 30 jobs; some lasting only a matter of hours, others dragging on for several months. (See [[Lose Jobs Now! Ask Me How!|“Lose Jobs Now, Ask Me How!”]]) One week it might be conducting telephone surveys, another substitute teaching at a day program for retarded adults. (More like glorified babysitting; it didn’t seem to matter that I lacked formal qualification. I showed them a few “letters of recommendation” that I’d instructed a classroom of 3rd graders to write for me on April Fool’s Day at a Catholic school in the Mission District.)<br />
<br />
Job security was not a concept I could relate to. But then my rent was only $100 a month for a tiny converted laundry room with a loft in the back of a huge, rambling flat on Haight St. As many as 12 people lived there, all sharing the same phone line with no answering machine, amazingly enough. Hardly anyone had a regular job, quite a few were unemployed, and some dealt drugs to get by * (*Folks still deal drugs to get by, although the price of pot has kept pace with San Francisco rents!)<br />
<br />
If you were broke it was easy to scam on MUNI. (We had a complete set of the color-coded transfers they were using at the time—we’d find out what transfer they were using that day, then consult our collection, or paste like-colored transfers together to make them longer. Some months we’d be styling with color xeroxed fast passes. I went two whole years once without paying fare!)<br />
<br />
[[Image:Red e or not.png|375px|left]]<br />
<br />
Food stamps were easier to get then, and there were numerous soup kitchens, plus the fun free feast on Saturdays at the [[Kaliflower and the Dream Continues|KaliFlower Kollective]] that was both soup kitchen and cabaret—very theatrical! Failing that, one of the roommates would often show up with one of those huge plastic bags filled with day-old bagels.<br />
<br />
Being so sketchily employed meant having time to spare. I could put in lots of time on ''Processed World'', and do the street theatre/magazine hawking every Friday lunchtime in the Financial District. There was time to indulge flights of whim—take a Super-8 film class at City College, sew a rug out of carpet samples, or just walk in the park.<br />
<br />
There is still the occasional sweet deal that manages to slip through the cracks in the real estate market (though usually it means you need to have lived here a long time to even know about it, and then you can never move again). About six years ago I was fortunate to move into a revolving house- hold which had held the same lease since the mid 1980s. The landlord was a cranky old Irishman who took care of his body like he took care of his buildings, which is to say largely by neglect.<br />
<br />
The Dept. of Inspections kept trying to nail him, but he always ignored them or told them to fuck off. I found an inspection report from 1985 urging replacement of the back stairs, which still hadn’t been done when he passed away in 2000 (at the height of the dot-com juggernaut on the city’s neighborhoods). Oh, Fix—he patched them up numerous times; some oddly-spaced planks pounded in here, a little All there.<br />
<br />
He would usually shuffle through with a kind word, and he kept the rent cheap. I’m not even sure if he knew just what market rents were, as his were about 10 years behind the times, and most years he would forget to years of being deflected, and started tightening the screws. After he ignored another hearing, they seized his three houses and put them in court-appointed receivership. I think that’s what killed him. His health, which never had been robust in the time that we knew him, suddenly declined precipitously. Cancer spread like wildfire, and he was dead within three weeks. The house has been in a strange state of limbo since then— which has been advantageous for us despite the lingering uncertainty. Our rent has stayed the same. We pay it to the receiver, who has ostensibly used it to fund the repairs that Mike had been so delinquent on. We’ve been satisfied to see the repairs drag on and on, since the building can’t really go on the open market until it’s out of receivership, and the San Francisco housing market has cooled considerably.<br />
<br />
Now it seems that raise it. Legends abounded about his generosity. When San Francisco has become much more like New York, and a young person arriving today our friend Tyrrell first went to meet him and see the apartment, she showed up in her peasant dress and lively Irish smile, and he was so charmed that he rented the place to her and told this pair of uptight yuppies to beat it. Or another time, later, when a bunch of extra folks were crashing at the apartment, Tyrrell got nervous that he might find out how many people were staying at the flat. He did find out—and he actually commended her for taking in all these extra people and putting a roof over their heads—and even gave her back $100 of the rent!<br />
<br />
The Dept. of Inspections finally caught up with him after hardly has the same options I did; to land in San Francisco with only $300 and know everything will be alright. A luxury of unstructured time that San Francisco used to be so generous in giving. (It’s weird to think of it as a luxury!) The San Francisco I’m eulogizing hasn’t completely disappeared, but you have to be damn lucky to find it.<br />
<br />
<br />
[[category:Housing]] [[category:Tales of Toil]] [[category:1980s]] [[category:2000s]] [[category:Haight-Ashbury]] [[category:Dissent]] [[category:Technology]] [[category:Media]]</div>
Ccarlsson
https://foundsf.org/index.php?title=My_Life_in_the_Search_Engine
My Life in the Search Engine
2024-03-06T06:38:20Z
<p>Ccarlsson: Created page with "'''<font face = Papyrus> <font color = maroon> <font size = 4>"I was there..."</font></font> </font>''' :''"Foundsf.org is republishing a series of "Tales of Toil" that appeared in ''Processed World magazine'' between 1981 and 2004. As first-hand accounts of what it was like working at various jobs during those years, these accounts provide a unique view into an aspect of labor history rarely archived, or shared.'' ''by Netizen..."</p>
<hr />
<div>'''<font face = Papyrus> <font color = maroon> <font size = 4>"I was there..."</font></font> </font>'''<br />
<br />
:''"Foundsf.org is republishing a series of "Tales of Toil" that appeared in [[Processed World: A Political History|''Processed World magazine'']] between 1981 and 2004. As first-hand accounts of what it was like working at various jobs during those years, these accounts provide a unique view into an aspect of labor history rarely archived, or shared.''<br />
<br />
<br />
''by Netizen X''<br />
<br />
''—from Processed World #2.001, published in Summer, 2001.''<br />
<br />
We all came to the Internet because it was cool. Like moths to a bug lamp we swarmed around the exciting new technology, which allowed any average schmuck to get up and say his thing online. All you had to learn was some basic HTML and get a few pictures up there and then you could rant about anything you wanted to go off on. It was a level playing field and an open forum.<br />
<br />
[[Image:Pw2001 Minna-Eloranta Life in Search Engine-2.jpg|350px|right]]<br />
<br />
''Graphic: Minna Eloranta''<br />
<br />
I moved to San Francisco to find out what multimedia was and get into it. Lots of fresh young college grads like me were learning some software and making a living on the Internet. It was emergent—it was uncharted territory and big corporations that didn’t know exactly what was going on were throwing money at young people in the Bay Area to “create their online presence” and forge new territory in a new medium they did not yet understand. We were only happy to take their money.<br />
<br />
First, I worked as a reviewer for a company called Netguide that aimed to be ''TV Guide'' of the Internet. They sent us out—brave collegians—to review hundreds of thousands of Web sites for their comprehensive online directory. They appeared to want to catalogue the entire Internet, because they had us reviewing entirely trivial sites, like the home pages of Pakistani grad students who had posted pictures of their cats. The World Wide Web seemed like a small place back then… entirely categorizable. We clattered away on the night shift, turning in review after review of sites great and small. They paid us well (for writers) and periodically threw open-bar parties where everybody got shitfaced. It was a good job for the slacker mentality, leaving plenty of room for games of Duke Nukem.<br />
<br />
But it could not last. Eventually, the parent company in New York grew weary of shelling out cash on a company that showed no signs of profitability in the near future. They axed us in mass, but my friend Stuart and I just laughed. This gravy train had pulled into the station. What’s funny is that, if the company had just stayed the course, they would have been miles ahead of all the subsequent companies trying to be the welcome mat to the Internet. The term ''du jour'' was “portal.” All companies wanted to be the first stop on the Internet. All companies wanted to be Yahoo! Instead, they bailed and simply threw away their wads of venture capital. But who really cares anyway?<br />
<br />
I went to work for CNET. They told me I was working on a top-secret project that would shake the foundation of the Internet with its originality. It would be the portal of portals. All people would turn to it for guidance on the World Wide Web. They gave the project the code name “Gunsmoke” and they made us swear that we would not dis- cuss it with friends or family. Eventually the project would be knighted “Snap!” to give it the same exclamatory immediacy of Yahoo!, I suppose. They implied that we would all have nice tasty slices of the pie for our extra time and energy. They cajoled us into working weekends and holidays, extolling the virtues of sacrifice and subtly threatening our job security for lack of enthusiasm.<br />
<br />
It was the one time in my entire tour of the industry that employees discussed forming a union. One friend of mine, who, like so many of us, had hauled over from Netguide, called an impromptu meeting of producers to discuss the veiled threats of management. There was the snap! of discontent in the air—a collective feeling of disgust at the scare tactics of management forces. The time had come to put a foot down and declare that there is at least some bullshit that won’t fly.<br />
<br />
But, like so many worker kvetch-ins, it blew over. The employees at the meeting decided not to press the issue and the ardent sense of injustice fizzled. After it got wind of the meeting, management successfully completed a program of divide-and-conquer that eventually ran troublesome elements out of the company, to be replaced by those who would dance to their tune.They introduced some new benefits, like back massages, to caress that nagging feeling of exploitation away. Eventually, it was only the yes-men that remained.<br />
<br />
I left the company on no particular terms with anyone. I had successfully made myself invisible in the office, coasting on my blind acceptance of mediocrity and voicing no adverse opinions. Eventually, my self-loathing and complete disregard for the project at hand forced me to quit, even though I had no other job to fall back on. At that point, I was numb to my desires, because they had no relation to what I did for a living. I had become a Dilbert.<br />
<br />
In my final week in the company, they put up one of those scrolling LED displays to flash information down on us.The wise-ass who installed it posted comical messages on it, like “Get back to work, slaves!” It was funny because, at that point, it simply acknowledged the actual situation. A rare bit of office honesty.<br />
<br />
After a brief stint of trying to do my own thing, I re- entered the Internet corporate world through the doors of LookSmart.This time I wore the hat of HTML coder, but, factually, I was little more than a glorified temp, commissioned to the most repetitive and mindless tasks. I justified it to myself, saying I needed the experience, eyeing the options, and taking solace in the steady paycheck. The work was monotonous, to say the least, but the atmosphere was not overly oppressive. In the beginning…<br />
<br />
After a few months, we were moved to a Soma building that had recently been converted from a sweat shop. Employees made jokes about how it had just become a different kind of sweat shop, but—all jokes aside—it was not pleasant.There was no air conditioning during the summer months and the whirring fans could do little more than stir hot air around. In order to get any ventilation, we had to keep the windows open on a construction site where a pneumatic pile driver would ceaselessly clang through the day. I recall one day in particular when a pipe in the middle of the room suddenly began hissing violently and half the office jumped out of their chairs and made for the door.<br />
<br />
It is the sacrifice that a start-up expects of you. Employees have to suck it in for the good of the company and give their all and not complain about unreasonable working conditions because the big payoff is around the bend.There’s no room for slackers or complainers here, only self- starter problem solvers. That was all well and good, except that LookSmart had been around for four years. I also hasten to point out that the offices of marketing and advertising were pleasant and cool.<br />
<br />
I coded away through the year, keeping out of office politics and waiting for the ballyhooed Initial Public Offering. When the company went public, the stock price floated nicely and everyone let out a huzzah of success. Unfortunately, when the stock price was nice and high, many of us could not act on it because our options had not yet vested; by the time they had, the stock had dropped to around half its value and by the time the imposed holding period was over, it was already headed down the crapper. Today, the stock price hangs out at around $2, which is less than what I paid for it. Many people suffered the same fate, in addition to facing severe tax liabilities for exercising their options when the price was high.The giddy intoxication of the IPO faded away into the sober reality of the Internet stock-market plummet.<br />
<br />
After the IPO, LookSmart moved to shiny new offices on 2nd Street. We were moved to lovely new half-cubes in a converted SOMA warehouse and there was plenty of hot cocoa in the concession room. No longer did we hear the incessant banging of the pile driver—just the occasional crowd roar from the newly renovated [[Pac Bell Ballpark|Pac Bell park]]. Now that it was a public company, LookSmart had to straighten its proverbial tie and institute certain corporate features to make sure it was reaching maximum productivity. All of sudden, there seemed to be four meetings a day about monetizing every page, maximizing dollar amounts on every ad-banner click- thru, and massaging the design needs of our many corporate partners. The business department was cutting affiliate deals and dumping work on the production team that we really couldn’t handle. With each new step toward productivity, I felt more and more uncomfortable with my working environment. I felt shaggy and unkempt and increasingly irrelevant. I found myself in more and more meetings where I appeared to have absolutely no idea what was going on and could not bring myself to find out. I was doing the bare minimum to stay employed and had long since lost interest in creating the Internet’s best Web portal. I could really give a rat’s ass. Meanwhile, they put up a sign at the entry hall to the building with the company logo, peppered with inspirational descriptors that had presumably popped out of the mouths of satisfied LookSmartians. “Fun!” “Focused!” “Savvy!”, etc. It was supposed to put a little spring in your step on the way to the grind, but I took it more as a sign that I needed to be leaving the company.<br />
<br />
I went on to another start-up that is now moribund and bears no mention. It was, in fact, a good job, insofar as I worked only part-time and nobody seemed to care that I didn’t really give a shit. I was in the first round of layoffs, which was really no surprise, considering my status and attitude. Part-timers and contractors usually get the axe first. However, the market is now sputtering and there is very little work to be had. A year ago I could have bounced into my next job with a couple of well-placed e-mails. Instead, I’ve been out of work for two months now and nothing’s on the horizon.<br />
<br />
But there is very little sympathy for the belly-aching Dot Bomb casualties, and why should there be? The Internet workers, originally so hip and groovy, came to be seen as money-grubbing carpetbaggers with oversized cars and little imagination. They bought up artist spaces, co-ops and cafes and turned them into offices. They ran the rents up sky high and ran the poor people out of town. If I wasn’t an SUV-driving yuppie, I was still digging for gold along with everybody else and came up with a fistful of empty promises. I got screwed, but can I ask you to cry for me? Does anybody want to hear my rendition of the “Dot Bomb Blues”? If I wasn’t part of the solution, was I part of the problem?<br />
<br />
You can bring it up at my next peer review…<br />
<br />
[[category:Labor]] [[category:Tales of Toil]] [[category:1990s]] [[category:2000s]] [[category:SOMA]] [[category:Dissent]] [[category:Technology]] [[category:Media]]</div>
Ccarlsson
https://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Disappeared_of_Silicon_Valley
Disappeared of Silicon Valley
2024-03-05T22:08:34Z
<p>Ccarlsson: </p>
<hr />
<div>'''<font face = Papyrus> <font color = maroon> <font size = 4>"I was there..."</font></font> </font>'''<br />
<br />
:''"Foundsf.org is republishing a series of "Tales of Toil" that appeared in [[Processed World: A Political History|''Processed World magazine'']] between 1981 and 2004. As first-hand accounts of what it was like working at various jobs during those years, these accounts provide a unique view into an aspect of labor history rarely archived, or shared.''<br />
<br />
<big>'''(or, why I couldn’t get that story)'''</big><br />
<br />
''by Paulina Borsook''<br />
<br />
''—from Processed World #2.001, published in Summer, 2001.''<br />
<br />
It began innocently enough in early winter 1999. I had been working on a book for three years, and wanted to take a break by doing something shorter and not so wholly excavated from my own grim brain. So I called Kerry Lauerman, then an editor at ''Mother Jones''. Lauerman told me they had been kicking around the idea of doing the anti-free-agent-nation story, about the people for whom being way-new-kewl-entrepreneurial just hadn’t worked out. I told him he had to let me pursue this: being contrarian, and fond of underbellies, I leapt at the chance to work on such a piece.<br />
<br />
I didn’t anticipate huge problems: I had been knocking around high-tech since the early 1980s, had written for the trades and for corporations and for Wired and had a habit of overreporting, which meant I always talked to 10 people where most folks would talk to one. All of which meant I felt confident that my mesh of connections would serve well enough to find the people who might have revelatory things to say.<br />
<br />
So I went to work, tracking down developers from game companies gone broke, founders of companies that died. I talked with bankruptcy lawyers and current employees of Hewlett-Packard in contact with ex-employees of Hewlett-Packard. I even interviewed my boyfriend’s father, a worker in Silicon Valley’s satellite industry since the 60s, figuring he’d know displaced older electronics industry workers. I was on the case daily and I was getting nowhere: no one wanted to talk to me.<br />
<br />
[[Image:Pw2001 hugh-w-disappeared.jpg]]<br />
<br />
''Graphic: Hugh d'Andrade''<br />
<br />
I found this extremely odd, for I had bought into the Silicon Valley myth that it’s OK to fail and everyone jokes about it and moves on and we are not hidebound scaredy-cats like those old smokestack Dow Jones Industrials corporate drones Back East—so I couldn’t figure out what was going on. I wasn’t on assignment for the ''National Enquirer''; I had a reputation for being fair, even if folks didn’t always like what I had to say. The only other time I had run into such stonewalling was when I played classic investigative reporter for a ''Wired'' profile on Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen. In that case, many people had a stake in keeping their sugar daddy pacified and distracted, and not letting certain disquieting facts be known. But as I wasn’t focusing on any one particular person, and don’t generally believe in conspiracy theories, I was puzzled.<br />
<br />
Meanwhile, Lauerman left ''Mother Jones'', so I approached the good and wise Scott Rosenberg of ''Salon'', then the editor of the publication’s technology section, and asked him if he would be interested in the story I had come to think of as “the disappeared of Silicon Valley”—for if, as the long-established statistic stated, nine out of 10 startups fail, and many companies limp along as zombies (that is, they never go public but they never abjectly fail and they stumble on for years) or get folded into other companies at rates that in no way compensate founders and original employees for their labor and lost lives—where were these people? Rosenberg agreed to take over the assignment, so to speak, and I kept trying.<br />
<br />
I contacted Career Action Center (CAC) in Cupertino, Silicon Valley’s main vocational-counseling resource. The counselor I talked to thought the story was a great idea, that it would make her clientele feel less alone, less prone to self-blame. She said she’d ask around to see if anyone was willing to talk. No one was. Same thing happened when I spoke with Alumnae Resources, the well-respected CAC San Francisco analog, and when I talked to a psychologist whose private practice was focused on helping people with career issues and reconstructing themselves after a business failure. Again, radio silence.<br />
<br />
Flailing about and getting nowhere, I ran into Heidi Roizen, a former software company founder/CEO whom I had gotten to know as a source when she had been vice-president at Apple, and who had since gone on to be a world-class high-tech professional investor. When I explained what I was trying to do, she agreed that it was a story that needed to be told. Did she think any of her friends for whom the culture of startup and cash-out hadn’t worked would be willing to talk to me? No, even though she did know folks who’d lost their houses or faced bankruptcy—but she did suggest I talk to one of her closest friends, a nice man named Tom Koznik, a consultant and business professor who taught entrepreneurship and marketing at the engineering school at Stanford.<br />
<br />
Koznik invited me to sit in on his classes—where students worked on marketing plans and VCs gave guest-lectures—and spent a lot of time talking with me and trying to set me up with folks from his vast network who might be willing to talk.<br />
<br />
Koznik had been a professor and a high-tech consultant for a long time, but even so, out of his huge network of connections, only two possible native informants for my piece came forward, each currently one of his students. As background, it’s important to know that graduates of Stanford engineering have pretty much been guaranteed their choice of $100,000 per year jobs, plus options and sign-on bonuses. They are young, mostly mortgage- and offspring-free, and are at the time in their lives where when young adults are generally reserved the right to deviate and flounder. Job security just cannot realistically be a concern of theirs.<br />
<br />
But Silicon Valley, and Stanford in particular, has been a place where the specter of Yahoo founder/former Stanford graduate student Jerry Yang stalks the land; it’s so obvious and it’s so easy to make a billion dollars only the morally and intellectually defective can’t make it. Never stated anywhere explicitly, it’s been a statement of high-tech faith that’s everywhere implicit.<br />
<br />
One of the two kids who originally volunteered backed down, deciding he didn’t want to talk to me about his experience with a failed venture. I promised anonymity, stating the amazing true fact that I have never broken my word to a source and always honored confidentiality. But no, he wouldn’t talk, word came through to me a third-party that he was just too worried that what he told me might get traced to him and jeopardize his future. This, from an undergraduate, living in the longest peace-time boom the U.S. has seen, in the economic hotspot of the globe. The other young man actually did let me interview him: a Ph.D. candidate, he left graduate school to self-fund his idea; it didn’t work out; and he had to spend a year or so working full-time to pay down his debt before returning to school. Nothing tragic here—but the strange part came when he told me that I was one of the first people he’d told about it all, his friends and family really hadn’t known much about it. Failure is too inconceivably shameful in his world.<br />
<br />
As I was about to admit defeat on the piece, I was coincidentally given an assignment for ''San Francisco'' magazine to write about the endless stream of high-tech business books that all seemed to follow the same format where the heroic entrepreneur overcomes all obstacles, asserts individualistic behavior, and is rewarded with scads of money and inflated self-concept. What I realized, and what I wrote about for their September 1999 issue, is that these books were business-porn, as strict in their conventions as emotion-porn is vis-a-vis Harlequin Romances or action-porn is for Tom Clancy novels.<br />
<br />
And thus, I reasoned, if all people were being fed in their media diet can be represented by the business porn that is “Business 2.0” and “Fast Company”, and high-tech reportage in mainstream business mags has been just as breathless and celebratory, and newspaper business-reporting on high-tech equally gushy about what those rich crazy kids were up to next—how could anyone, for whom things hadn’t worked out possibly feel anything but a deep personal shame that would require affirmations far beyond what Stuart Smalley could offer?<br />
<br />
What I realized is that if you are of the elect, you can fail as the Silicon Valley myth has it. But if you are not, it’s doubly unbearable because all you’ve heard is the success stories. It’s rather like going through the pain of divorce but living in a culture where only happy marriages are ever described; or trying desperately and unsuccessfully to have kids when all about you all you hear is about large families. In fact, one of the people who did talk to me about her failed startup, shrugged off the experience as ‘that’s just life, it’s like when a relationship fails.” But when a relationship fails, all culture, friends, and family understands, sanctions your right to grieve and suffer, knows it will take time to heal, that you’ve undergone something wrenching and awful. But not so in Silicon Valley—if you’ve failed, you can’t talk about it, it’s no big deal, and it never happens anyway. Never mind that start- ups demand heart, soul, and life—so if they crash, burn, or drive you away, what has happened to that heart, soul, life?<br />
<br />
There was a perverse timeliness to the conclusion I was coming to, for Po Bronson had just published his best-selling “Nudist on the Late Shift”, true tales of winning in Silicon Valley. In that summer of 1999, Bronson also wrote a ''New York Times'' magazine story, “Instant Company,” which was a classic of the ‘it’s all so easy/we strike it rich to beat the band’ genre. Bronson, whose prose is graceful, smart, and funny, probably didn’t realize what his feature really said: that if you worked at a glam startup (such as Yahoo before it went public) or for a major Wall Street i-bank or previously for a VC or have a pedigree that includes an MBA or CS degree from one of the Silicon Valley designated-hitter institutions of higher learning—then all is well. But reading his piece—where all the founders of the high-concept, if unimaginative, epinions (let’s use collaborative filtering so that we can make money off other people doing the work/providing the content!) had just such elite pedigrees—was rather like reading C. Wright Mills’ ''The Power Elite'', updated for Internet Age. Of course these guys can raise money, never need flounder, are damage-proof. How different, really, was their fate from that of George W. Bush, who didn’t really have the qualifications for Andover nor Harvard Business School, but got in anyway because he had been anointed?<br />
<br />
When I finally gave up—or rather, realized the real story was a meta-story, about how and why the story I had wanted to do couldn’t be written—was after a phone interview with one of my long-time excellent sources whom I always keep anonymous. A high-end high-tech headhunter who had been of great help to me in times past, she sympathized with what I was trying to do but told me that someone from ''The Wall Street Journal'' had tried to do the same story a few years before—and that reporter hadn’t gotten anywhere, either.<br />
<br />
Just as I had finally let go, someone finally did surface from all the networking I’d done who was willing to talk about his bruising startup experience. He was smart, self-aware, rueful—and married to a minister and displayed an overall level of psychological insight and emotional maturity that’s very narrowly distributed in the general population—and is kazillion times more rare in high-tech. For in high-tech, introspection and attention to interpersonal dynamics are not fungible assets. In fact, they get in the way of being on on on all the time and selling all the time to investors and potential employees and maybe even customers and and and...<br />
<br />
[[Image:Told me I was skilled.png]]<br />
<br />
''Graphic: Chris Carlsson''<br />
<br />
My Deep Throat had worked on Wall Street and did have the requisite Stanford MBA. He told me the sad complex story of how his startup did well initially then got screwed over by bad management. He spoke of the damage to health and relationships and family life of going the start-up way. He reminded me that most startups are not high-tech and are not venture-funded. He emphasized that you can lose your savings, your salary, and your sanity. He went on about the looting and lying that often characterize startups and that the heroes of a new company—the unsung techies or managers who actually get the work done—often get screwed when the company folds or gets acquired at a discount or goes public then tanks. He had put his life savings into the company and was still in deep personal debt when I talked to him (his parents had needed to help him out with his wedding celebration).<br />
<br />
I admired him for talking to me, but I couldn’t figure out how to use one person to peg an entire piece. And professionally, I got overtaken by other projects and needed to be working on other things. As mercifully quirky as ''Salon'' is, I just couldn’t see how a story about how a story about how I couldn’t get the story, could interest them. And that was that.<br />
<br />
But the failed entrepreneur who had come through for me checked back in the late autumn of 1999, wanting to know what I’d been able to do with his so-valuable confession. I told him that a story about how I couldn’t get that story would only matter to cultural-studies types and journalism professors; that the concepts of self-censorship and the importance of what’s there but that you don’t hear about were too abstract, and not what most people want to read. He was sorry that the piece wouldn’t run.<br />
<br />
But the more I thought about it, as ''The Industry Standard'' was growing ever fatter and Time Inc. launched a new magazine solely devoted to the New New Economy, ''“E- Company”'', the more important it seemed that I did try to talk about what no one wanted to talk about. That the stigma of failure exists and is cruel in Silicon Valley, maybe more so because no one admits it’s there. Folks may not have filed bankruptcy petitions but may have taken on an impossibly burdensome second mortgage; or have sacrificed their personal life to no end; or had to move away because it didn’t work out—these are the disappeared of Silicon Valley.<br />
<br />
What I thought was the validating, if bittersweet, coda to my failure came at the monthly dinner I attend from time to time in San Francisco peopled by an ever-changing cast of sweet smart nerds. There, I ran into a guy I knew from one of his earlier lives as a telecommunications policy wonk. He’s since cycled through the public sector to academia into think-tank land and is now into startupsville. As a consequence, he’s now involved with Silicon Valley’s Entrepreneur’s Forum (self-help and mentoring for the startupiste on the go). When I mentioned to him about my unfinished business writing about the shame-ridden disappeared of Silicon Valley, he nodded in recognition.<br />
<br />
“We’ve tried to get those guys to come talk to our group about how they’ve dealt with failure.”<br />
<br />
“I know,” I said, “They won’t talk until they’re back up on top.”<br />
<br />
“No,” he explained,“they won’t talk to us at all about their failures, even when they’ve succeeded once again.”<br />
<br />
“Even the billionaires?” “Even the billionaires.”<br />
<br />
But the story didn’t end quite then. This very same tale of media collusion and market-timing in post-Netscape IPO irrational exuberance was eventually commissioned for ''Brill’s Content''. But alas, it was killed as it was heading from fact-checking to galleys by its Bright Young Editor-in-Chief (newly arrived from Tina Brown mentorship) in June 2000, because the first stories had started appearing in the national media about the shakeout from the NASDAQ crash of March 2000. Fashion (and timing) is everything.<br />
<br />
'''EPILOGUE''': Of course, in spring 2001, the stories of dotbombs and dotgones and vulture capitalists have replaced in the media the earlier techno-utopian free-market fairy stories. A website deadpool, www.fuckedcompany.com, allows people to rant and rave about the specifics of the collapse of the Ponzi scheme high-tech economy of the roaring 90s, how paperthin and Potemkin-village it has been. But when I read those postings on FC’s Happy Fun Slander Corner, I have the disquieting feeling of reading daily transcripts from the trials of French war criminals. It’s been said that when the Nazis invaded France, 90 per- cent of the French collaborated. But by the time the Allies invaded Normandy, 90 percent of the French were with the Resistance. No one much spoke up or out when their friends and neighbors were hauled away and the trains kept running East during the War, but everyone after the War proclaimed it was all such a pity, about the Disappeared.<br />
<br />
[[category:Labor]] [[category:Tales of Toil]] [[category:1990s]] [[category:2000s]] [[category:South Bay and Peninsula]] [[category:Dissent]] [[category:Technology]] [[category:Media]]</div>
Ccarlsson
https://foundsf.org/index.php?title=On_the_Bleeding_Edge
On the Bleeding Edge
2024-03-05T06:53:42Z
<p>Ccarlsson: </p>
<hr />
<div>'''<font face = Papyrus> <font color = maroon> <font size = 4>"I was there..."</font></font> </font>'''<br />
<br />
:''"Foundsf.org is republishing a series of "Tales of Toil" that appeared in [[Processed World: A Political History|''Processed World magazine'']] between 1981 and 2004. As first-hand accounts of what it was like working at various jobs during those years, these accounts provide a unique view into an aspect of labor history rarely archived, or shared.''<br />
<br />
''by Greg Williamson (Primitivo Morales)''<br />
<br />
''—from Processed World #2.005, published in Winter, 2005.''<br />
<br />
[[Image:Commute-work-sleep.jpg|right]]<br />
<br />
It’s a decent job—lots of “bleeding-edge” technology and every day is a learning experience. Of course, half the time I would tell you it’s horrible. On balance, since I sometimes refer to the company as “we,” it is apparently a good enough job to seduce my on-and-off allegiance.<br />
<br />
I am, in essence, a glorified file clerk: a Database Administrator, or DBA. Actually, my business card calls me a “Database Engineer” but I think that’s either wishful thinking on the part of my employers or one of those “title-instead-of-money” deals. My job is to keep track of a lot of information—no different than any other clerk’s tasks.<br />
<br />
Traditional file clerks usually only deal with small amounts of documents—a few hundred thousand, maybe. The Pentagon devised a unit of measurement called a “linear drawer foot”—one foot of closely packed documents—to describe the total capacity of some of their stores of documents, which even in the 1970s were measured in miles. The principles remain the same—be able to find “stuff” quickly.<br />
<br />
A vague analogy can be made with pilots on combat missions; long periods of boredom interspersed with moments of terror. OK, my terror is not for my life but the principle remains the same. For example, about once a week I am “on call,” meaning computers that I have never seen send me messages about problems I don’t understand. I have a list of instructions to follow which mostly resolves the issues. Most of the problems can be passed on to someone else—networking issues, for instance. But others become “mine” and we then enter into an intimate relationship, the problem and I. So far I have resolved, or at least explained away, all of these. But one day I may be handed a problem I can’t solve and then the company will replace me with someone who can.<br />
<br />
Busy doing what, you might ask ? Or does it really matter? The conditions I am describing exist throughout the industry from Silicon Valley through “Silicon Gulch” (Austin) all the way to the 128 corridor around Boston, and for all I know, all the way to Mumbai. The ‘product’ is of little importance, as long as it makes a profit.<br />
<br />
A goodly portion of my work for many years is best summed up as “helping businessmen count money faster and more accurately” (I’ve worked in banks and for VISA, among other esteemed handlers of currency). This is the core of most computer professionals’ jobs, at least in the “applications” world; people who make operating systems and other tools are more akin to workers who make the machine tools that companies like GM use to make cars.<br />
<br />
And we do indeed have a “product”—pictures. We sell aerial and satellite imagery both from a web site and on CD/DVD. The company does not produce the images—they are bought or rented from companies that have satellites or fly the aircraft that take the pictures. My job is making sure that when some client (an architect, a district attorney, a city planner, a “hi-tech” worker in India digitizing maps of roads, etc.) looks at a picture of some sagebrush outside of Phoenix, we know how much money we got for it, and that the proper cut goes to the owner of the image (“Royalty Check, honey” in Frank Zappa’s words). At peak we produce about 25 images a second, which can work out to a lot of companies accumulating absurdly small amounts of money (forty percent of one-third of one-half cent). But hey, no amount of money is absurd, it adds up, right?<br />
<br />
There are interesting contradictions in this product. We spend more computer time (which may in a sense be equated with money) making a large image than a small one, so the company likes to charge by size. Sensible enough, as far as it goes. But whenever someone looks at our imagery—whether browsing or just window-shopping—we splash a logo over it to make it worthless for resale. In so doing we “burn quite a few cycles,” i.e. spend computer time to add the watermarks. Of course, sometimes there is a charge for nothing at all; we charge extra money to show little lines with text—representing roads, for instance—because it takes additional cycles to figure what roads are in the area, but if you use this feature and draw an image of a place with no roads, you still get charged—knowing that nothing is there is information, too.<br />
<br />
I get paid well—about twice the median income of people in the San Francisco area; when I was hired three years ago it was on the upper side of wages for comparable work; with no raises since then my real income has decreased by a measurable percentage. Bonus ? You get to keep working next year (actually, I was given a Christmas bonus for 2003—$100.00!). The dollar amount disguises the long hours—lots of our work needs to be done at night at home because the computers are less busy and we will cause less disruption to paying clients. On the other hand, management never can trust the worker to work, so we all have to spend 25+ hours at our desks just so they can see and feel reassured. People commute from the Central Valley—Modesto and Tracy for instance—and are spending hours driving back and forth when they could be working; a terrible loss to business. It is a rare week that any of us logs less than 50 hours; some tend more towards the 70+ work week. Perhaps not coincidentally, there were major layoffs in spring 2002—one-third of the company. Since I started, no less than half of the jobs have been eliminated with a few new hires in sales.<br />
<br />
In the past week, as I write this, my boss has quit. Apparently the thinking (if you can call it that) was that her job would get spread over two other people and there would be no impact on delivery dates or site performance. On her last day there was a clash between her sidekick (the head of operations per se, and a very knowledgeable fellow) and management. Sometime between 10:30 and noon he was removed from email and had his accounts shut off. The rest of us responded by drinking rum for the remainder of the day. It will be interesting to see if management continues its policy of reality denial and fantasy. As least part of their psychosis is the belief that software, and the workforce that produces it, is standardized in the same way automotive parts have been. Interchangeability is not simple in the world of computers, or at least outside of the assembly lines that produce the hardware itself. The creation of programs is much more like the craft industries of the mid-nineteenth century. In the meantime, the rest of us are busy trying to do our jobs as well as covering for others.<br />
<br />
My stock in trade, as it were, is not the imagery itself—some 25-30 terabytes1 of highly compressed imagery in all. My interest is information about the images—their spatial coordinates, when they were taken, their origin. The databases contain detailed maps of every block of every road in the United States. I’m responsible for moving the data around, keeping it backed up and making sure it’s available when needed. Clerical work at its finest.<br />
<br />
In addition to the administrative chores there is a constant pressure from a source familiar to any reader of Capital—the foremost mechanism by which the industrialists make more money is by renovating their plants, whether by upgrading or by discarding old ones in favor of new ones. And so it is in the computer shop, supposedly so far from the industrial revolution—“silicon” is our avatar, not iron.<br />
<br />
And yet, curiously, the machines themselves are sometimes referred to as “iron”—as in “heavy iron,” meaning fast computers. They are called, again an echo of earlier relationships, “servers” and are kept in “cages” (because they are dangerous?) on a “farm”in Silicon Valley. I’ve never been to our cage, but I’ve seen photos. It is a chain-link cage in a large building run by some corporate giant. While we are isolated in cubicles, our machines are kept on racks connected to each other (and us) with cables, “switches” and “routers” (specialized computers that move data)—even the simple drawings of our “architecture” are complex.<br />
<br />
But having gotten it to work is not enough, we have to replace various bits and pieces. Because of changes in hardware (out go the leased Sun servers, in come the purchased Dell servers), software (Linux instead of Solaris, mostly) and applications (postGres, an Open Source database, replacing Informix, now owned by IBM; old image servers that depended on expensive licensed “libraries” being replaced by new code written in-house, etc.) we have been spending a lot of time replacing almost every component while it is running. Imagine changing almost everything on your car except the chassis and the license plate while driving down the freeway.<br />
<br />
At work we use the analogy of driving down a freeway, almost always in the context of driving by looking only in the rear-view mirror. We are constantly monitoring the site but from a certain distance. Billing issues tend to take a day to be seen, while our computer monitors show nice graphs that are only a few minutes out of date at any given instant. To really see what is happening takes actual people. And when something unexpected (i.e. unpleasant) is happening, four or five or more of us will be communicating by voice, phone, email and instant message, sometimes simultaneously. After a frantic spasm of intensely cooperative work we return to our usual tasks.<br />
<br />
The daily work is itself intensely collaborative, yet also curiously alienated. Each of us has a focus; the operations people deal with various aspects of the site as a whole, the content people set up new imagery, programmers work on different aspects of the software, quality assurance tests and retests things. This is not a company in which the bosses or managers don’t have a clue—my boss knew her stuff, and the head of the company, although not primarily a computer geek, certainly knows the remote sensing/GIS (Geographic Information Systems) business well. Ergo, mistakes are hard to cover up. As the DBA I need to “work closely with” (i.e. get ordered around by) virtually everyone in the company, from accounting and sales, programmers and ops people. Even my boss and the CEO occasionally give me direct tasks.<br />
<br />
There is the usual grousing about conditions common to most workplaces. Yet there is no feeling of solidarity, even among the people I have the most in common with (shared interest in jazz, or cooking, etc.). There’s a shared inaction based in part in the sense that there’s nothing we can do and in part on a lack of trust. Confronted with the inexorable logic of business and cost containment, the ideology of “professionalism” becomes paralyzing. Professionalism means quite a few things—a vaguely positive attitude is a must, and a positive disdain for direct confrontation is mandatory. We adopt the common face and voice to discuss the “problems”—all of which have been specified before we confront them and as such have already had all possible solutions defined before we even see them.<br />
<br />
In one of the odd contradictions of such a “professional” environment, we are treated with a certain degree of respect, but we’re all expendable. Even as we watch one of our people hustled out the door after a summary layoff, the most we might do is have a sotto-voce discussion, usually with a friend of the departed.<br />
<br />
My attitude is not the best, and I’ve been officially warned that the only reason I am still employed is because everyone who works with me thinks I do a stellar job. The problem? Apparently an anonymous someone has taken offense at some of my emails or IM sessions—no serious vulgarities but perhaps a mild expletive or two. That’s enough, along with management’s irritation at my continuous asking of the old utilitarian “qui bono?” (whose good—who benefits?) when confronted with stupid decisions. We get more and more of those, as the company is owned by a real estate company whose computer types are particularly clueless—they like to put “MSCE” after their names … bragging about being a Microsoft Certified Engineer!<br />
<br />
So people show a certain wariness in endorsing my opinions now, at least in public; it is not unusual for people to support me privately, after the fact. Although not allowed to formally question some business decisions, I can at least greet them with all the warmth that they deserve. Not much of a weapon.<br />
<br />
But the battle is not necessarily totally one-sided. A slight plus in our column as workers in the software industry is that the process is not well rationalized—not “Taylorized.” It is very hard to predict how long a given (non-trivial) software project will take even for people who know the tools and problem well. There are no easy methods for determining productivity—counting key strokes works for typists but not for programmers—and because the problems are often ill-defined, we can sometimes get time back from the job, help each other by passing the buck on responsibilities and covering for each other. Such small actions do help build the sense of trust, or at least of common ground, that is a prerequisite for more meaningful solidarity.<br />
<br />
We also have a shared interest in reliable tools and processes, and the advent of Open Source software—typically software whose “source-code” (original instructions, as opposed to a “compiled” program) is available to all. There are usually groups of people committed to a given tool who work collaboratively for its improvement, even though they may never meet. Applications that are available include graphics manipulation programs, office tools like spreadsheet and word processor, operating systems and HTML servers such a Linux or Apache, programs for creating maps or plotting spatial data, databases and so on. Because the people who create tools have an inherent interest in them there is little need for an incomplete or flawed version of the software to be released simply to meet a schedule. Problems tend to be well-documented and discussed, as opposed to the corporate model, where issues are often hard to discover because of non-disclosure contracts and company perversity. The programs themselves sometimes lack the bells-and-whistles of commercial products, but because the source code is available it can be extended or modified, and there are many people to help with support issues.<br />
<br />
As a programmer I gain a better tool; as a person I am sharing in something that has an end result other than some money. It also helps to undermine the arrogant behemoths such as Microsoft and Oracle. The company gets quality software without having to pay endless license fees. One source of tension though, is that the company is benefiting from other organization paying to develop software (the spatial data tool we use was developed by a Canadian company paid by the Canadian government, which did not want to continue to pay large fees to US companies). Yet my bosses are agonized when faced with the need to spend a small amount of money to improve the tool—some other business might be able to benefit from this money! Amazingly short sighted—spend a few thousand to save a few hundred thousand dollars, and then whine about it.<br />
<br />
Recent events give me more of a sense of how my co-workers regard the company. A few months ago we were subjected to a company-wide survey conducted by a consultant using a web site. They claimed that all answers would be confidential, but the way we logged in guaranteed that they could track who had said what. So I suspect that the answers they got were slanted in the company’s favor. On the last possible day I answered most of the questions, mostly honestly, after my then-boss got in my face about her group’s low participation rate.<br />
<br />
Afterwards, corporate sent a person from “Human Resources” to explain (away) the results. We were generally in line with the company on most of the survey but had responses in two major areas wildly lower than the company averages: benefits and company support for us. Now, keep in mind that the parent company is in the real-estate business, which has a peculiarly exploitative relationship with its workers—real estate agents, for instance, typically get only a commission and then have to pay money to “their”office to rent a desk, etc.<br />
<br />
In the session I was in, everyone criticized the benefits. Sales, engineering and operations all criticized the insurance as expensive, “substandard” (this from someone who knows the insurance industry) and difficult to use. Everyone had harsh words for the “401K” plan: 6% is not “matching” the employees’ contributions, and their proposed scheme actually seemed to ignore federal law about limits on employee contributions. Everyone had critical words for our time-off policy as well, again ranging from “illegal” (they don’t roll unused vacation time over to the new year, nor do they pay you for it) to “cheap” and “outrageous.”<br />
<br />
The company’s pretty words don’t ever seem to have any money behind them. Fellow employees were not delighted with their pay, either, as most have had no raises for years. On paper the management supports employee’s education, but in practice they have no money for technical classes of the sort I might need (typically one week with about 40 hours of instruction, costing between two and five thousand dollars, depending). We actually got this worthy functionary to laugh when, in the course of discussing how the company does not give us adequate support, we told her that our high-tech company gets hand-me-downs from a local (bankrupt) school system.<br />
<br />
I am sure that in subsequent surveys we will simply be asked if we have been adequately informed about our crappy benefits, rather than the more risky ground exposed by the open-ended questions. And because the company is actually making money now on a month-by-month basis, they may actually provide us more of the tools we need to make them more money.<br />
<br />
In the short run, however, we’ve had a Company Meeting in which they tried a smoke & mirrors production to pump us up—poorly mixed and stale rock tunes played over a slide show of company content and tools. This was followed with a passionate speech by the president about how hard he had fought for us, the ungrateful employees, when the company was sold to the tejanos. He pointed out that he had no stock or other vesting in the parent company, and was an employee just like us.<br />
<br />
This may be true, as far as it goes, but management still is in denial: he was frustrated that only thirty percent of our projects were delivered on time. Given the sparse resources and constantly shifting requirements, doing a third of our deliveries on time is an excellent statistic. According to them, the problem is “communication” so now we’ll spend more time in meetings. As one engineer said to me, “I spend 7 hours in one day now on meetings—how long until they realize that that is seven hours that I am not working?”<br />
<br />
We have been put on committees with no power that will be able to make recommendations that management will be free to ignore; or if they are implemented it will be “at manager’s discretion,” a nice way of saying “never.”<br />
<br />
It is possible that we can gain some leverage over the situation now. It is clear that there is widespread dissatisfaction, but what exactly can be done is not clear. Hopes of controlling our local bosses are a bit thin; bringing our Texican masters to heel is a rather remote possibility. I can’t see us actually having a picket line, but I think some combination of working only forty hours a week, declining those extra work shifts, and perhaps proposing that we all take time off together might provide leverage. Or perhaps not—there are no guarantees.<br />
<br />
Well, it’s 1:30 in the morning, and I have puzzles to solve before I sleep.<br />
<br />
'''Can you Tell Which Woman is A'''<br />
[[Image:Pw can-you-tell.jpg|left]]<br />
'''Treehugger? / Suicide Bomber? / Outside Agitator? '''<br />
<br />
<br />
<hr><br />
<br />
<big>'''the digital salute'''</big><br />
<br />
Dissatisfaction tends to make itself known, although sometimes in ways that are hard to see. For example, one company that makes digital maps of streets found a curious set of lines in some work. The regular QA people had found no problems, but there was an automated QA process that examined all of the incoming work, and it applied rules that would be impossible for a human: in a computer model of roads there will never be a road segment that is not attached to other segments. Yet in this particular batch they found a number of lines attached to nothing else. When they zoomed all the way in they could see these lines with no labels or other data, but they made no sense. When they zoomed out to look at the whole US the lines couldn’t be seen because of the way scaling and zooming work. Eventually they wrote a special filter to show just the lines with no connections. It made a large sketch of a big “fuck you” with an upraised finger in salute. Alas, these lines were removed before the world at large ever saw them, but it makes you wonder what else might be out there.<br />
<br />
[[category:Labor]] [[category:Tales of Toil]] [[category:2000s]] [[category:East Bay]] [[category:Dissent]] [[category:Technology]]</div>
Ccarlsson
https://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Trauma_Tango
Trauma Tango
2024-03-05T06:45:26Z
<p>Ccarlsson: </p>
<hr />
<div>'''<font face = Papyrus> <font color = maroon> <font size = 4>"I was there..."</font></font> </font>'''<br />
<br />
:''"Foundsf.org is republishing a series of "Tales of Toil" that appeared in [[Processed World: A Political History|''Processed World magazine'']] between 1981 and 2004. As first-hand accounts of what it was like working at various jobs during those years, these accounts provide a unique view into an aspect of labor history rarely archived, or shared.''<br />
<br />
''by Tom Messmer''<br />
<br />
''—from Processed World #2.005, published in Winter, 2005.''<br />
<br />
[[Image:Raven-buffalo-in-Manhattan.jpg]]<br />
<br />
'''Buffalo in Manhattan.'''<br />
<br />
''Collage by Raven''<br />
<br />
::“The apocalypse has been announced so many times that it cannot occur. And even if it did it would be hard to distinguish it from the everyday fate already reserved for individual and community alike.”<br />
:::—Raoul Vaneigem, The Movement of the Free Spirit<br />
<br />
::“They hang the man and flog the woman<br />
::who steal the goose from off the common<br />
::But let the greater villain loose<br />
::who steals the common from the goose”<br />
:::—English folk poem, 17th century<br />
<br />
1. I’m outside waiting for an ambulance to bring in another trauma. It’s one of those foggy-yet-sunny, surreal San Francisco afternoons that occur in the fall, which is actually somehow our summer. I noticed a few pigeons congregating to my left and as I glanced over I realized to my horror that they were all happily dining on human blood and tissue from an ambulance backboard.<br />
<br />
2. The budget crisis in San Francisco has become truly dire, and according to the folks who calculate such things, sacrifices are in order. What amounts to a 7.5% pay decrease is proposed for many who work for the city in such job capacities as health aides, janitors, groundskeepers, and, in my case, social workers. The union puts this proposal to a vote and it narrowly passes. For some reason the union was unprepared to propose any alternative to this pay cut for the lowest-paid workers in the city. And the membership was frightened by the prospect of layoffs: many have recently bought homes in the Bay Area and are deeply in debt. Still, many are pissed about this, particularly since a large pay increase simultaneously came through for the city supervisors.<br />
<br />
3. A man jumped off a freeway overpass and fell 740 feet onto the roadway. He was quite dead, but they attempted to revive him as a matter of course. I walked into the trauma room after they officially pronounced him dead, the floor was covered with blood and bloody footprints, he was partially covered with a sheet. Medical staff stood about quietly filling out paperwork. For some reason someone was pumping music throughout the hospital’s PA system and the Temptations’ “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg” was blaring in the room. I went back into the room a few minutes later and they were playing Aretha’s “Natural Woman” and a nurse was actually singing and dancing to the music.<br />
<br />
4. The pay decrease got to me, and I thought to myself, “Someone ought to do something.” Then it occurred to me that this in of itself isn’t a particularly helpful sentiment. Terry Pratchett quipped that this thought is never followed up with the rider “and that someone is me.” I’d been reading Saul Alinsky for some odd reason and I decide I want to rile people up, so I distribute flyers and petitions slamming the union for not fighting, and demanding action. I get a bunch of signatures and people call the Union griping, so they contact me and set up a meeting about what to do.<br />
<br />
5. A homeless Haight Street kid maybe 17 years old is brought in by the police. His friends were worried about him because he had what looked like burns all over his body. The police didn’t like the way he looked so they brought him down. He has a pretty high fever and he tells me he thinks he fell asleep in the sun or something. The docs are puzzled and wonder if maybe a speed lab blew up on him. I talk with him a while and he tells me he ran away from home, which was a trailer park somewhere in the Midwest. He has one of those squatter symbols badly tattooed on his arm. He’s quite frightened and tells me he really wants to get into a drug treatment program so I agree to help him once he’s better. I take my half-hour regulation dinner and when I come back the room he is in is packed with doctors and he has a breathing tube in. They don’t know what’s wrong with him but it appears he is suffering from some sort of systemic sepsis. He dies that night of complications from necrotizing fasciitis, aka “flesh-eating bacteria”, which he got from a dirty needle.<br />
<br />
6. I meet with the rep and some other activists on the very day Schwarzenegger is elected governor. They all have stunned, tired expressions on their faces and have been precinct-walking and rushing from meeting to meeting for years, probably. With a sinking heart I imagine myself clutching a tattered datebook, or even a palm pilot packed full of meetings and rallies, public forums, and phone banking. This is unattractive to me in the extreme and I decide to play music and spend time with my fiancé instead.<br />
<br />
7. I receive a subpoena from a lawyer about a case I worked on in which a 2-year-old Latino child was injured in her apartment in the Mission district. The family is suing the landlord and the landlord’s lawyer tells me that the kid is really OK and that the family is trying to take advantage of his client, an “honest, hard-working landlord” who happens to live in the wealthy Marina district. I tell him that I can’t recall a single fact from the case, but that I’ve lived in those Mission tenements and that none of my landlords tended to the buildings very well. For some reason they don’t call me to testify.<br />
<br />
8. I’m speaking to a homeless man who is what is referred to as a “frequent flyer”. He is in the ER at least 3 times a week, mostly for alcohol intoxication or being the victim of an assault. Between the alcohol and blunt head trauma he has become profoundly demented, and his mental capacity is about that of a ten year old, with a short-term memory that lasts 5 minutes. If I find him a shelter bed and ask him to wait for the van to come pick him up and bring him down there he will either a) wander off and get drunk; b) go back to the triage window and re-register, forgetting that he’s already been seen (interestingly, if a shift has changed recently, oftentimes the triage nurses won’t notice that he’s left the hospital); or c) sit in the chair all night staring at the television. There is not one, or two, but a dozen or more people like this who come to the ER regularly.<br />
<br />
9. One of my favorite websites is called [https://www.thecommoner.org.uk/ The Commoner], a commie website which recently featured a discussion of the ancient notion of “The Commons.” It occurs to me that health and caring for others’ bodies must be part of this. If it isn’t, what could be? The Commons are simply those things that ought not to be part of the marketplace. In the United States in 2004 this concept is viewed by some as close to treason, and by most with suspicion. We seem to have learned our lessons well, though if I suggest to one of the hospital police officers that his job may some day be privatized, indeed that it almost certainly will be, he scoffs. Could the sort of sentimentality Americans reserve for police and fire fighters be enough to stave off another Enclosure, or will we return to the days where the rich have private security and fire fighters and everyone else has what they happen to be able to pay for? Will the poor have to rely on bucket brigades?<br />
<br />
10. A rapacious local “public” university that is also somehow a famous private research hospital system is increasingly involved in the operations of the hospital where I work. One proposal calls for a relocation of the entire hospital to the area that included Mission Rock, a former hellhole of a homeless shelter where murder, extortion, drug dealing, and pimping were everyday occurrences. It is common knowledge that the move is being driven in part by top-tier physicians who complain of parking problems at the current facility. This hospital has recently proposed a new initiative in their world-famous cardiology program in which wealthy donors could gain “enhanced access” to same-day appointments, house calls(!), a special hotline, even physicians’ private pager numbers in case of emergency. These donors include the elite of our society, CEOs of major corporations, national political figures, the usual suspects. This boutique medical system may be the wave of the future, despite local outcry, even from the physicians forced to play a part in it.<br />
<br />
11. I’m waiting at the ambulance bay for another trauma to come in. As the ambulance pulls up and the EMTs open the door I find myself looking into the eyes of a dead black teenager from some particularly violent local projects. He has a bullet hole directly in the middle of his forehead. I can feel myself about to faint as my stomach is empty and the shock hits me hard. I grab something quick to eat and wait for the crowd of family and friends to arrive. As a social worker I earn my pay by somehow offering comfort and assistance in situations exactly like this. But what can one say? I do a lot of listening and nodding; sometimes I’ve broken down and cried with people, not your stereotypical civil servant response. I’m paid to maintain a human presence in the midst of real horror. I ask myself what kind of system we have created that requires us to pay someone to remain human.<br />
<br />
12. I’m walking through the ER on my rounds and realize that just about every bed is occupied by someone who has actually been admitted to the hospital but is simply parked in the ER waiting for a bed to become available upstairs. There are so many sick people out in the community not getting regular medical care that many come to the ER as a last resort, and when they do they are often very ill and in need of hospitalization. Many of these folks are there with such preventable diseases as diabetes and heart and lung diseases from smoking. The deep love affair our society has with privatization, and the equally deep denial that the market’s hand is neither invisible nor particularly benign, are nowhere more obvious than in an emergency room in the year 2004.<br />
<br />
13. Despite my ambivalence towards the union, I’ll do what I can to help when the fight comes, if for nothing other than solidarity with the people I work with everyday who tend to the sick, the crazy, the suicides, the junkies and drunks, and the ever-growing numbers of those who are working but uninsured that wind up jammed into the waiting room, staring up with glazed, sick expressions at reality programs on the ceiling-mounted television.<br />
<br />
[[category:Labor]] [[category:Tales of Toil]] [[category:2000s]] [[category:Mission]] [[category:Dissent]] [[category:Public Health]]</div>
Ccarlsson
https://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Temporary_Coding
Temporary Coding
2024-03-01T05:21:57Z
<p>Ccarlsson: </p>
<hr />
<div>'''<font face = Papyrus> <font color = maroon> <font size = 4>"I was there..."</font></font> </font>'''<br />
<br />
:''"Foundsf.org is republishing a series of "Tales of Toil" that appeared in [[Processed World: A Political History|''Processed World magazine'']] between 1981 and 2004. As first-hand accounts of what it was like working at various jobs during those years, these accounts provide a unique view into an aspect of labor history rarely archived, or shared.''<br />
<br />
''by Mickey D.''<br />
<br />
''—from Processed World #28, published in August, 1991.''<br />
<br />
[[Image:Ghost man.gif|400px|right]]<br />
<br />
I always worked as a temp, usually doing light industrial work, but it wasn't until I moved to San Francisco that I got a job in a law firm. I had no relevant experience or interest in law; my last job before moving here was cleaning up rat feces in a Lipton warehouse. I got my first job interview through a "clerical" help wanted ad. When I showed up for my interview, I was an hour late, I had holes in my shoes, and I flunked the office competency test. Much to my surprise, I was working right away at one of the biggest law firms in California. Later I realized that the only worthwhile advice I'd been given about job interviews--lie through your teeth—had paid off: I told them I was "thinking about" law school. Truth was, I was thinking about the least painful way to make a buck, and working in a posh office seemed better than crawling around with a Dust Buster in a damp gloomy warehouse looking for piles of rat shit.<br />
<br />
Having stood for hours at photocopiers, my eyes nuked by the rolling strobe light, I've had plenty of time to contemplate my naivete. I always get stuck where no one else will work, so I either fry in direct sunlight behind a plate glass window or freeze in a room with out-of-control air-conditioning. I once worked in an office that every day at 11:30 filled with a mysterious noxious-smelling gas from a vent; despite my numerous complaints, nobody ever responded. So instead of screwing caps on deodorant cans one after another, I'm turning pages of paper. At least I have some energy left at the end of the day to pursue other things. A short stint as a furniture mover cured me of any fond illusions about manual labor (something I often hear among male office workers). As a temp, there's always the hope that you might land an easy job where you can get away with a lot of fucking off; I've had a few.<br />
<br />
For the last four years, off and on, I've temped in about twenty big law firms in the San Francisco financial district. Assignments have varied in length of time from nine months to nine minutes, but the introduction is always the same: you are under suspicion, a likely pick-pocket or information thief.<br />
<br />
You forfeit your rights when you start work as a temp in a law firm. You're asked to sign a statement that looks like a confession, swearing you will divulge absolutely nothing about the case you're working on to any person for any reason. According to the warning, if you so much as mention the case to anybody, the full weight of the law will descend on you. "You might be able to plead spousal immunity," flecked one supervisor after threating us with merciless fines and jail time.<br />
<br />
Law firms "hire" temps, when need arises, to do what they haven't got machines to do yet, or what they can't get their other employees to do: the most monotonous, labor-intensive tasks involved in labeling, indexing, storing and retrieving vast quantities of documents.Whole weeks of my life have been consumed by "bates stamping," a task in which a small numbered sticker is transferred by hand from a computer-generated sheet onto another piece of paper, thus making it a "document." Repeated thousands of times eight hours a day, five days a week, this would give anybody repetitive stress injury as well as brain damage. I recently did this seven days a week, twelve hours a day, while a beserk legal assistant badgered me to "Go faster! Go faster!" so that I wouldn't "cost the client (Cetus Corporation, a biotech giant) so much money."<br />
<br />
A common task I perform is called "coding." That means reading each document (usually something like an invoice) for information (date, names, subject) and entering it onto a form. Its then sent to a word processor, who puts it into a tidy data base which the lawyers can access with the stroke of a finger.<br />
<br />
The emphasis on secrecy is absurd. I'm kept in the dark beyond what's necessary for the job; I have no idea to what ultimate purpose my labor contributes except the meaningless perpetuation of bureaucracy.<br />
<br />
Occasionally while coding I'll see an internal memo which reveals the prepubescent character of your typical lawyer or executive, giving me a bitter laugh. I remember one top honcho drawing analogies between the services his company provides and the superhuman qualities of his favorite toy, Action Man, which he proceeded to describe in admiring detail, as advertised on one of his favorite Saturday morning cartoons.<br />
<br />
My experience at one law firm (appropriately named "Cooley"), coding on a Genentech case, was not an easy job. We were segregated from the main office in a gloomy warehouse down the block, over a hundred of us, working at crowded tables in two six-hour shifts, six days a week. It was explained to us that six hours was the maximum amount of time in a day that a human being could reasonably be expected to perform this mind-mulching work, though later we were put on eight-hour shifts with the expectation that we would do overtime. To read the documents we had to peer into the dim greenish light of a microfilm machine that caused vicious eyestrain. In an office behind us, the supervisor, an insolent, condescending shmuck with an unconscious twitch in his hands as if he was suppressing the urge to strangle somebody, scrutinized us from his window, making sure that no deviation from the work took place. Data entry was done "off-shore" (i.e., the Philippines).<br />
<br />
Temps regularly endure periodic purges, the random process by which you or your co-workers are suddenly "let go." You don't get sentimental about getting laid off from a lousy job, but suddenly being unemployed in the middle of the month and not knowing where you're going to get the rent sucks.<br />
<br />
The first layoffs at Cooley took place the day before Christmas Eve (holidays being a good time to cut temp costs). About a third of the temps went home from work to find messages on their answering machines giving them the axe. This is the preferred method of termination, I was informed by a temp who had been there for five years (known as a "permanent temporary"). The theory, probably correct, being that if told ahead of time or on location, vengeful temps would trash the place in a desperate effort to get even with all the abuses they had endured.<br />
<br />
Those of us who remained were selected because our handwriting was considered legible enough for a Tagalog-speaking word processor to decipher. Over the next couple of months, they weeded out more and more of us, until the last five masochists were called into Psycho Boss's office and informed that we were now on Cooley's payroll. "We can finally start to make some money off you now," he said. There was no change in our status—we still were denied paid holidays, sick days and vacations; still without benefits of any kind. The only difference was that we no longer had temporary status and were now Cooley property. Outraged, I called the job placement lady at the agency, Gratified Flex-staff.<br />
<br />
"They just told us we're working for them now," I gasped. "I don't want to work for them! I want another assignment."<br />
<br />
The old crow officiated. "Ohhhh, what kind of assignment?" I was never informed of it, but Cooley had paid a substantial amount of money to Gratified to buy my services off them, and she was probably amused at my stupidity.<br />
<br />
"One where I don't have to work too hard," I told her, in all honesty, figuring that since now I was on Cooley's payroll I had a bit of clout with them. She feigned shock. I never saw a penny of that money I was auctioned for.<br />
<br />
The relation of temp to agency is one of indentured servitude. The temp agency puts the most positive spin possible on it: they offer "flexibility" to workers who are "in between" jobs. They get you a job in exchange for a hefty cut of your wages. Usually, the temp agencies have a monopoly on the job market in the form of contracts with employers; job-seekers who go to law firms looking for benefits (usually older people for whom such things are a necesity) are told that the quickest way to permanent status is through a temp job—which could last for years. Or a few days. Temp agencies start you out with the worst assignments, jerk you from place to place—each of which writes a review of your performance for the agency--until they figure out how much you're worth. Because the work is erratic, temps are assumed to be eager to do as much overtime as humanly possible. You're usually called in right before a deadline and worked around the clock. Most times you're desperate for the money since its usually several weeks between jobs.<br />
<br />
The only real function that the agency plays is to screen potential temps to make sure they aren't sending drooling zombies out on assignments. Its now common for employers to request an additional interview, even for a week-long assignment.<br />
<br />
If you misbehave, talk back to your boss, cheat on your hours, or even turn down an assignment, you get blacklisted by the agency. I had a friend who was working in an office that was destroyed by an out-of-control crane from a nearby construction site; if he had been sitting just yards from where he was, he would have been killed instantly. When he told the agency he didn't want to return to that job, they were pissed that they lost a valuable contract. He never got another job, even though he worked for Gratified for years.<br />
<br />
Receiving unemployment insurance is next to impossible if you're a full-time temp. The agencies balk at nothing to make a case against you. They once called my roommates to ask questions about my whereabouts in order to (successfully) contest a claim I made with the EDD for $120. I've never seen more than $11,000 a year. Sweetheart contracts enrich both the temp agencies and the law firms. At my last job, I was getting paid $10 an hour. The temp agency was billing the law firm $20 an hour. The law firm, in turn, was billing their client $40 an hour. Other than what I earned hourly, I got zilch. Once I got a plastic coffee cup with the Gratified logo emblazoned on it in order to "increase [my] environmental awareness for Earth Day," as I was told in all seriousness by my "assignment cooordinator."<br />
<br />
Another benefit to the two employers' partnership is that whenever a problem comes up, they can pass the buck endlessly. If there's ever a pay discrepancy or a raise due, the ball is always in the other court. They wear you out going back and forth.<br />
<br />
Fortunately I don't have to deal with attorneys, although riding in the elevators with these jackoffs, listening to them boast about the macho magnitude of their settlements, give me fantasies of ultra-violence.<br />
<br />
One time I worked as a filer for a fascist Cuban named Carlos Bea, a multi-millionaire "exile" whose family owned a roof-tile manufacturing business. He considered being a lawyer a past-time befitting a man of his station, and specialized in giving his secretaries nervous breakdowns. A member of such illustrious organizations as Nixon's CREEP and the Bohemian Club, he spent his time soaping up powerful people who could do him political favors; I remember a personal letter he wrote to Ed Meese, who was staying at his castle in Spain, warning about Basque terrorism. Evidently, his cronyism paid off. His friend Governor Deukmejian appointed him to replace a retiring district judge in San Francisco. When his term was over, an expensive election campaign was run on his behalf, covering the streets with his smiling face, his name seemingly everywhere: buses, streetlights, billboards. It was torture.<br />
<br />
An assignment coordinator from Gratified once informed my supervisor (in my presence) that she "tries to group people together who I don't think will have anything in common so they'll be less likely to talk." Not much opportunity for collective action when you're deliberately stuck with people you'll probably hate.<br />
<br />
There seemed to be a different spirit among the temps I encountered four years ago. They were more likely to be struggling punk rock musicians, ne'er-do-wells or students. Now temping seems to be more of a way for careerist office drones to a gain a foothold into a big corporation. Temps tend to be older, people suddenly out of work or law students awaiting their bar scores.Temps can be cutthroat. Most would rat on you in a minute for the slightest crime if it meant enhancing their status with the boss. "Permanent" jobs are secured through these means. I was once fired from a job thanks to a goateed and granny glassed temp supervisor who I thought was my friend, sharing a common interest in Latin American fiction.<br />
<br />
Law firms extract an amazing degree of ideological loyalty ("positive attitude") from their employees. Even temps who work on a case for no more than 10 minutes refer to "us" as in "which side are we on?" Most yearn to work on a pro-bono case which they imagine will be socially beneficial.<br />
<br />
I've heard few inspiring ideas from temps about challenging our degrading situation. One (a law school grad) made a lot of noise about how he was going into politics so he could go to Washington D.C. and get a law passed prohibiting the grosser aspects of temp exploitation; another wanted temps to organize a union. Given that both the government and the unions are big contractors of temp labor, I considered these ideas unfeasible; large institutions don't slash their own throats. In any event, temps move around so much that conventional workplace organizing is futile.<br />
<br />
Actually, what makes temping bearable for me is the tenuous nature of the employment. I don't participate in the ass-kissing, smiley face office etiquette. I've never worn a tie in all my years of "white collar" employment. A necessary tool of the trade is a walkman, for 1) giving me some sort of sensual stimulation so that I know I'm not dead and 2) sending a symbolic "fuck you" to my surroundings.<br />
<br />
The temp agency, the law firm, other temps, every financial district lifer expects me to have an alibi for temping. It's not enough that I'm trying to keep a roof over my head while I pursue my interests, I have to have some deeper reason to explain why I'm not pursuing a career. They're worried that there might be people who have no work ethic.<br />
<br />
By the estimate of one big law firm I worked at (Heller, Ehrman) ninety percent of the labor on a big case is what's called "discovery"—that's the paper-shuffling that temps do. The other ten percent—meeting with clients, legal research, drafting pleadings—is supposedly done by lawyers, though most of that is done by secretaries and legal assistants. Legal assistants boss around temps.<br />
<br />
When I was at Heller there were over 50 temps working full-time. Heller specializes in suing insurance companies, so they keep their fees (which temps contribute to) as high as possible. They milk their client to give them the incentive to settle. They then sue the insurance company, thus generating a whole new round of litigation and legal costs.<br />
<br />
Legal assistants are usually nephews and nieces of lawyers who participate in a carefully cultivated preppy culture (skiing in Tahoe on weekends, lunches at the Hard Rock Cafe) meant to instill the ethics of the law business. One legal assistant took the ethic too seriously. She did nothing for six months and billed enormous overtime, accruing a small fortune before her boss got wise. Heller was happy with the booty, but she made the error of indiscretion so they fired her. She threatened a wrongful termination suit in which she would drag Heller's dirty laundry into the courtroom. She settled out-of-court for $14,000 shut up money.<br />
<br />
I managed my own form of revenge, by stealing my life back. The whole time I worked at Heller, I never took less than a two and a half hour lunch and always took several hour long breaks during the day. When the Gulf war began I got paid for two days of disruptive activity in the streets of SF. Still, given the rules of the game, my fictitious labor time contributes to enriching the parasites who suck me dry day after day. What would bother them is that I found the loopholes in the rules governing their office. Drinking a beer in the park, I toasted the loopholes. <br />
<br />
[[category:Labor]] [[category:Tales of Toil]] [[category:1980s]] [[category:Downtown]] [[category:Dissent]]</div>
Ccarlsson
https://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Making_of_a_Bad_Attitude
Making of a Bad Attitude
2024-03-01T05:05:06Z
<p>Ccarlsson: </p>
<hr />
<div>'''<font face = Papyrus> <font color = maroon> <font size = 4>"I was there..."</font></font> </font>'''<br />
<br />
:''"Foundsf.org is republishing a series of "Tales of Toil" that appeared in [[Processed World: A Political History|''Processed World magazine'']] between 1981 and 2004. As first-hand accounts of what it was like working at various jobs during those years, these accounts provide a unique view into an aspect of labor history rarely archived, or shared.''<br />
<br />
''by Chris Carlsson''<br />
<br />
''—from Processed World #17, published in August, 1986.''<br />
<br />
<big>'''an abridged history of my wage slavery'''</big><br />
<br />
I've been working for money since I was fourteen years old. I've held a variety of jobs: caddy, baker, house painter, furniture refinisher, bookstore clerk, environmental door-to-door canvasser, warehouseman, information desk clerk, temporary word processor, secretary, and now typesetter/graphic artist. For the past five years I've been involved with Processed World, and its bad attitude has been a part of my employment history for years.<br />
<br />
What is a bad attitude? I'd say it's a general unwillingness to submit to the conditions of wage-slavery. It's demonstrated most dramatically in a surly, uncooperative manner on the job, but must usually be more subtle. The worker with a bad attitude is always looking for ways to work less (procrastination, losing things), to surrender less time to the job (coming in late, leaving early, long breaks and lunches, lots of sick days), to further private pleasures and human interaction on the job (talking a lot, smoking dope), and by doing one's own creative work on the job.<br />
<br />
[[Image:Cc-at-typesetting-machine-at-460-Ashbury-c-1984 010.jpg|360px|right]]<br />
<br />
'''During the early days of my self-employed life, 1984, at 460 Ashbury.'''<br />
<br />
A bad attitude is a fundamentally normal, human response to the utter absurdity of most modern work. It's a mystery to me why more people don't demonstrate a bad attitude--i suppose it's because they fear unemployment and/or lost income and have learned to smile and hide their true feelings. Of course I've done that too, and all too often. You can't get a job in the first place without smiling and lying through your teeth!<br />
<br />
Sometimes people don't demonstrate bad attitudes because they actually enjoy their work. Why people enjoy work is harder to explain, but I postulate three basic reasons: 1) the work is a convergence of avocational interests and paying work (this is extremely rare); 2) the work, though boring and/or frustrating, is preferable to the individual's life with family, or friends, or lack thereof; and 3) going to work saves one from finding and creating meaning, of deciding what's worth doing (this is obviously not an explicit motivation, but I think it is a subterranean spur). In the latter two cases, the job serves as a safe haven from the vacuum of meaninglessness in which this society would otherwise leave the individual. Providing economic security reinforces this feeling.<br />
<br />
A bad attitude is also a strategic choice in terms of on-the-job resistance and organizing. It may not always be the best choice either! Often, as in my situations at Waldenbooks and at Pacific Software, my attitude pissed off my coworkers as much as the management. This in turn increased my isolation and despair, which undermined the possibility of active resistance. All too often coworkers are as likely to be adversaries as allies owing to their identification with management, or to their own fear. Alienating oneself from gung-ho co-workers can also be an effective survival strategy.<br />
<br />
My bad attitude didn't result from a specific job, or erupt suddenly. I had felt stunted and that I was wasting my time in public school. Growing up in Chicago and Oakland I found myself in classrooms where I almost always sat through reviews of material I already knew like the back of my hand. Busywork was the rule, not the exception. Little did I realize then that my work life would be remarkably similar.<br />
<br />
I should qualify the story of my bad attitude by pointing out that I've had an extremely easy time finding work. My status as an educated, articulate, white male with decent typing skills has ensured that. I've seldom feared losing a job so much that I'd endure any humiliation, so having a bad attitude has been easy for me.<br />
<br />
I should also mention that I'm a good worker. I actually enjoy doing a wide variety of tasks and hope to live someday in a society where I can freely use my numerous skills in my community without getting locked into a "career path." I tend to be over-efficient and organized, but this leaves me feeling stupid on paying jobs because virtually all of them have been fundamentally useless to society, and my skills benefited the owners, not me. I don't think all work is stupid and useless, but even when there is a tangible purpose and value, the work is organized to ensure that more than half of the time spent is taken up with superfluous paperwork, redundant busywork, and meeting the needs of the money system, not the actual human needs it ostensibly serves.<br />
<br />
'''WALDENBOOKS'''<br />
<br />
My first "real" job came in 1974 when I got hired by Waldenbooks in a new mall outside Philadelphia, for $2.10 an hour (minimum wage at the time). I felt lucky because at 17 I wasn't really eligible for employment under Pennsylvania's child labor laws. As it turned out, it was the first time my common sense ran smack into the rules of the job and hence my first display of a bad attitude.<br />
<br />
Business was pretty slow, so after dutifully cruising the store to straighten tables and replace sold books, I ended up behind the register with a good book. Much to my amazement, this was not allowed by Waldenbooks's chainwide rules! I was supposed to be on my feet for the entire 8-hour shift (it was presumably an act of kindness that my boss allowed a chair behind the counter), and furthermore, we clerks were to greet each customer at the door and try to sell him or her books. Allowing people to browse, thattime-honored bookstore tradition, was considered bad management. Our manager was frequently chastised for her staff's lack of aggressiveness!<br />
<br />
In spite of regular admonitions to stop, I continued to read behind the counter, arguing that no one could possibly be offended by a bookstore clerk reading! Of course I also did a huge share of basic store maintenance--book stocking and ordering, minor bookkeeping, etc.--plus I knew where books were better than the other employees--they needed my labor and knew it, so the standoff lasted for months.<br />
<br />
I left for college after Xmas and they begged me to come back for the summer. When I did, I was informed that all males must wear ties while working. That was really too much; no way was I going to wear a tie as a flunky sales clerk for $2.25 an hour!<br />
<br />
After some heavy scenes with the store and district managers, I finally submitted. But I always took my tie off for lunch and "forgot" to put it on afterward. This omission permanently ruined relationships with my more obedient coworkers, who weren't inclined to fight about this. I lasted a few more weeks and then quit--I had completely stopped wearing a tie and blatantly spent time reading at the register. My days were numbered, so I self-terminated.<br />
<br />
This job taught me that work wasn't much different from school. I had learned a foolproof strategy in junior high school: work really hard and impress teachers during the first weeks; they'll label you an overachiever and leave you alone the rest of the year. My early work experience taught me that the same strategy worked just as well on the job. Wage work depends on busywork just as public school does.<br />
<br />
Common sense told me that if I had created some "free" time I should be the beneficiary of that "freedom." Obviously this flies right in the face of management's idiotic view that every minute of the work day is theirs and if you finish something that was supposed to take all day, you owe it to them to ask for more (usually unnecessary) work.<br />
<br />
'''BOOKS, INC.'''<br />
<br />
I decided to work full-time at Books Inc. in Santa Rosa in August 1977. What I liked best about the job was its difference from my Waldenbooks one. We could dress comfortably, talk with each other when it wasn't busy, and "borrow" books freely (everyone did, even the store manager). But then my closest friend on the job, Karen, became assistant manager. After our brief affair had soured she suddenly wanted us underlings to restock the shelves more often, cruise the store and not read behind the register. I felt she should be our mouthpiece to management, but she identified with management. Later she accused me of being too political and disobedient.<br />
<br />
In October I first approached the Retail Clerks Union, which had an office in the mall. But it was always empty, and no one ever called me back after I'd left a message. I tried again once or twice, not really knowing what I wanted from them. They never did get back to me.<br />
<br />
The Xmas rush started in November, and the frenzy continued to mount after the big day. The store was wildly successful, and we workers could tell by our fatigue, sales, and the happy reports from our manager. Loretta, and the chain owner, Lou. We were frequently encouraged to look at the books to see just how well we were doing.<br />
<br />
In early January I took a short, much needed vacation before which I had figured out how much more the store made in the just-passed holiday season than in the previous one. My calculations indicated a 41% increase in revenues, and so I wrote a letter to Loretta detailing this information and encouraged her to ask for 15% raises for everyone. But I had made the mistake of telling her mousy niece, who did the books, that I was writing this letter, thinking she'd be glad for a raise.<br />
<br />
When I got back from my vacation, a message directed me to call Loretta before I went to work on Monday morning--highly unusual. I called her, and she said, "I hear you've written a letter to Lou over my head, demanding a raise. Well, you know I have to fire you." I protested because I still had the letter in hand, and it was addressed to her, but she had made up her mind, blaming it all on my attitude problem.<br />
<br />
Unjustly canned, I called the National Labor Relations Board. My NLRB staffer didn't think I had much of a case but was very sympathetic and ultimately convinced Lou to settle with me for 2 weeks pay and to post a notice in all Books Inc. stores. prohibiting management's discharge of workers for their "protected, concerted activities." The fact that I had called the union a couple of times, and that some of the other workers would have probably defended me in a hearing, saying that I represented them in appealing for a raise, is what won the case for me. A pleasant postscript: three years later, another Processed Worlder told me that he had worked at a Books Inc. in Pale Alto at the same time. Both workers and management thought a big union battle had erupted in the Santa Rosa store!<br />
<br />
I learned a lot about organizing, although in a halfhearted and undeliberate way. For one thing, it's vital to document that you're trying to improve wages and conditions for all the workers, not just yourself. If you can't prove that, you aren't even technically protected from being fired. Establish a committee clandestinely with the people you know you can count on. Then determine when and if you should go public; often your best protection from management harassment is announcing that you are a union organizer (not necessarily affiliated) because management can be accused of illegal labor practices for any trouble they give you.<br />
<br />
'''DOWNTOWN COMMUNITY COLLEGE CENTER'''<br />
<br />
My stint at the Downtown Community College at 4th and Mission in San Francisco lasted a mere three months. But it was a turning point for a couple of reasons. For one thing I learned word processing there, which catapulted me from $5-$6/hr. jobs up to $10-$12/hr. ones. It also made me aware that most people worked in offices, especially in SF, and I wanted to address this fact, since I too was suddenly an "information handler." As an information clerk I sat right inside the front door and spent seven hours a day telling people where the bathroom was, when and where classes met, and about English as a second language. The school provided two basic services, both primarily for the benefit of the downtown office world: basic training in office skills and English classes for newly arrived immigrants and refugees that prepared them for rudimentary data entry jobs at very low wages.<br />
<br />
The job's nemesis was familiar—I wasn't allowed to read, even when there was nothing to do. I was supposed to "look professional" according to my insecure, dressed-for-success, corporate climbing boss. Ms. Walton. She was appallingly dumb, and as far as I could tell she hardly knew anything about goings-on in the school. I think she was an image-builder for the community colleges. Knowing little and being self-conscious about it, she was pressured to accomplish things she didn't understand, and she'd vent her fears by admonishing me for reading the paper at my desk during lulls. My feeling was that if I could do my job well I should be able to pass dead time in any way I pleased. Much to my chagrin my "superiors" didn't share this outlook.<br />
<br />
I had never planned to stay long, despite the two-year minimum I promised in the interview. Instead I was going east for a nice, long, summer vacation. About six weeks before I planned to quit, I composed a fake advertisement for the DCCC and had it printed up. This ad summarized all my jaded views of the purpose of this "training institute for the clerical working-class" after a few months of being there 40 hours a week. About ten days before I had planned to quit, I began surreptitiously placing them inside the Fall schedules of SF City College, which I distributed at the front desk. A few days later the shit hit the fan. A coworker came running up to me when I came to work in the morning and asked if I had done a yellow leaflet that had the entire school in an uproar. Apparently a Bechtel executive had turned it in to the administration the night before. I smiled and told her "No, never heard of it." It was nonetheless obvious to my coworkers, who knew of my bad attitude, that I was the culprit.<br />
<br />
I was absent from my work station when the snooty director, Dr. B, came in, oblivious to my "crime." She gave me a dark look as I scurried back to my position. Five minutes later the phone rang, and I was told to come to her office. She looked rather pale as I entered. She was boiling but tried to act calm. From beneath a 16-inch pile of papers she pulled out a copy of the leaflet—she had only seen it moments ago and had already hidden it--and thrust it at me, saying "What can you tell me about this?!"<br />
<br />
I said, "Oh, is that the orange leaflet I was told about? Can I see it?" I took it and sat down and slowly read it as if I had never seen it before. I chuckled at the funny parts, dragging out my feigned surprise until she finally exploded:<br />
<br />
"You are SICK! You must be deranged to do something like this; it's damaging to our institute, YOU'RE FIRED!!" I denied responsibility just in case some kind of lawsuit resulted (I had put her name and the school's actual logo on it) and protested that I wanted to complete my final week, but she told me to go. I left feeling quite satisfied with the extra days off before my vacation...<br />
<br />
[[Image:Downtown-Community-College-Center 20240229-2048.jpg]]<br />
<br />
'''The original flyer that got me fired.'''<br />
<br />
'''TEMPING'''<br />
<br />
Later, with my new word processing skills, I plunged into the sordid world of office work in downtown San Francisco. Through a couple of different employment agencies, I quickly found work. After a few one- or two-day jobs, I was placed at the Bank of America data center. Two other temps and I produced a manual that would eventually train computer operators in Florida how to use the BofA computer systems. It was here that I wrote a couple of articles for the first Processed World and also got most of the paper for that issue--"two reams a day keep the paper bills away!" Other early PWers got paper from the Federal Reserve Bank (we must buy our paper now, alas, having greater needs).<br />
<br />
My other notable temp job was for Arthur Andersen, the big accounting firm. I remember being amazed to get $1l/hr. to sit around all day, answer the phone occasionally and type a few pages of this or that. The corporate ego seemingly dictated that someone sit at every desk. I think my being male really confused a number of the accountants. They had difficulty asking me to do things and probably saved them for the "regular girl" when she got back. Their consternation drove home the importance of sexist social relations in the office.<br />
<br />
Temping confirmed that many people shared similar circumstances. Like me, they worked in an office but self-identified as dancers, writers, photographers, painters, etc. Thinking about this while on the thirty-seventh floor of the Spear Street Tower, I wrote "The Rise of the Six-Month Worker," which appeared in PW #2.<br />
<br />
'''PACIFIC SOFTWARE'''<br />
<br />
While I was on vacation in 1981 I heard from some Berkeley friends about secretarial work for the Community Memory Project. The CMP, in keeping with its attempt to be a "different" enterprise, particularly wanted a male secretary.<br />
<br />
The Community Memory Project was set up in the early seventies as a public bulletin board/discussion through which anyone could create news using public microcomputers linked to a larger computer, with installations in public places.*<br />
<br />
:''[*The SF Chronicle Teleguide system in BART stations in the Bay Area is exactly what Community Memory has tried to avoid. Set up in three locations in Berkeley, allows any user to put any message on any subject the system. Other users can read the message, comment. The content ranges from ads for rummage sales, to erudite philosophical discussions. The Teleguide system, however, only allows the user to access numbered menus advertising local businesses that have paid to be listed.]''<br />
<br />
I took the job at $10 an hour, Monday to Thursday (I insisted on a four-day week). The CM collective had recently decided to create its own for-profit company to sell the software components of its system. My new job was as secretary for this new company, Pacific Software.<br />
<br />
For the first year or so, PS operated out of the same quarters as CM, a large Berkeley warehouse. My job was pretty cushy. I could read the paper and start out easy every morning. I could play pool with my coworkers, who were mostly "programmers with politics."<br />
<br />
I liked this atmosphere far better than that of regular jobs partly because everyone was paid the same wage, but I quickly discovered that it really was a regular job. My boss, an eccentric fellow named Miller, wanted to make it in the software industry. My job was to fulfill all the tasks he could think of, which were plenty. He was fond of initiating them with rude, cryptic notes; e.g. "please don't fail to mail a c compiler list to Marcelius (just do it)" What was a "c compiler list"? Who was Marcelius? "Just do it"--was the problem in my head?<br />
<br />
On a typical day, I had to send out fifteen to forty information packages on our software "soon to be shipped!"--this turned out to be a joke, since the products weren't really ready for more than another year--and answer the incessant phone calls.<br />
<br />
PS slowly abandoned its alternativist pretension and became more of a normal business, eventually moving to plusher quarters a couple of blocks away. The company struggled to stay alive, the founders pumping in new money regularly because the software was permanently just a few weeks away from shipment. After a year of Miller's idiosyncratic leadership--he was interested in what size rubber bands were ordered and how water ran through the postage meter--and the staffs growth to about eight workers, the collective hired real management staff. It seemed that it was the absence of a business plan and experienced managers to carry it out that held back the certain and explosive growth that was "just around the corner.<br />
<br />
We old-timers saw this as a threat. The new management's "Pacific Software Salary & Wages Policy" of December 1982 innocuously addressed vacations, overtime, holidays, and educational benefits, but a key parenthetical point provoked my ire. We now had to sign out for lunch. This meant I would either have to take a pay cut or work extra hours for my former pay. Incidentally, many of my coworkers had been docking themselves for lunch all along, but I wrote a memo outlining my position on "free" lunches anyway:<br />
<br />
"The assumption underlying the notion that one shouldn't be paid for lunch can only be that it is not working time, that it is in fact "free" time. This is obviously absurd...the hour is entirely circumscribed by work, and its primary purpose is to gain nutritional sustenance and a brief respite from the work routine in order to be able to continue working. Without it the afternoon's productivity would probably go into the negative in a short time..."<br />
<br />
Miller responded with a memo full of numbers, claiming that my paid lunch cost the primary backer $10,400 per year, and that if we didn't have paid lunches we could hire an additional five and two-thirds people. But as his word processor I was already wise to his fabricating numbers to suit his purposes. A year earlier I had typed at least 30 different drafts of a prospectus in which he freely changed the numbers to suit his mood. So it was a standoff, and I continued to get paid for my lunch hour while several coworkers continued to sign out.<br />
<br />
Meanwhile we employees had created an Employee Bill of Rights for Pacific Software. Most important for us was the establishment of clear job descriptions, because the crisis management style led to enormous tension as demands on people's time and energy escalated. Another key point for us was to have absolute control over who represented us on the "management team," via regular elections and rotations. The response of John Dickerson, our nice-guy MBA who'd been brought in as General Manager, was both direct and indirect. A memo he wrote clearly showed that he would work to undermine our efforts: "I will not operate in a General Management capacity in a situation that allows the institutional possibility of sustained Guerrilla Warfare on the part of a segment of the staff against Management..."<br />
<br />
The new management staff stonewalled this proposal over a period of months, and it was never formally adopted. As late as Feb. '83 they were still making totally unacceptable counter-proposals. Nevertheless, the fact that the staff had been having meetings and formulating demands (and that there was this history of "collective self-management") put management in a defensive position from which it never escaped.<br />
<br />
Not surprisingly, I was known for having the worst attitude, which I didn't mind at all because it prevented almost everyone from dumping extra work on me. I often felt very isolated from my coworkers, who were willing to work unpaid overtime, make extra efforts, adapt to arbitrary policy changes, and try to maintain cheerful attitudes. The people I felt closest to had fluctuating attitudes depending on their views of the future and whether they were getting the status and responsibility they wanted.<br />
<br />
I had always maintained that I didn't want to be promoted because I have always thought it worse to create gibberish than to process it. I did nibble, however, at the possibility of developing print media for the company's products (since I had been working on PW I had learned how to do typesetting, layout, design, etc.). Better to get out of being a secretary than be a lifer.<br />
<br />
Well, Pacific Software just couldn't cut it in the marketplace. The software products had missed their "window" demolished by the competition. The backers ran out of money and couldn't keep a sinking ship afloat any longer. One day in June 1983, there was a Monday morning massacre. More than half the workers were laid off with no warning or severance pay. The strategic planners of this "realignment of staffing levels" foolishly figured that I could and would go back to doing the work of six people, as I had done in the pre-expansion days. Well, I saw my chance, and took it. The day after the massacre, I told my boss I was about to walk out on the spot, unless he would lay me off too, in which case I would work another three weeks to train replacements. What choice did they have? NONE!! So I got my nine months of unemployment benefits and loved every minute of it.<br />
SELF-EMPLOYMENT<br />
<br />
Unemployment gave me the chance to launch self-employment, namely typesetting and graphic design, which I'm doing to this day. I decided to try it to avoid further misery in the corporate office, and because my partner and I were going to have a child and I would need a lot more time available for parenting responsibilities. Self-employment has certain enormous advantages over regular jobs--total control over my labor process, my being the direct beneficiary of my own efficiency (finally!), and working fewer hours (my open hours are 12-5 Mon-Fri).<br />
<br />
But self-employment has disadvantages too. Because I'm a one-man show, taking days off is risky. I lose income when I do. I also have to do all the bullshit work that holds any enterprise together--bookkeeping, marketing, accounts payable, ordering, etc.--for which I am not paid directly, as I would be working for someone else. And worst of all, I can't count on a fixed amount of money from month to month, so there's insecurity too. Nor does self-employment solve the problem of selling my time. While no one is raking off a percentage just by being the owner, I must still play the same games: making clients feel good about my services, doing jobs that lack purpose or value, and using my creative abilities in unwelcome ways to make a living. I haven't found any more satisfaction in having a more "professional" job, or in being self-employed per se.<br />
<br />
Presently, I plan to go on with this for another year and a half and then take off on a long trip with my partner and child. After that, who knows? Maybe I'll be forced back into temporary word processing; maybe I'll find work as a typesetter or graphic artist. Or perhaps I'll find something totally new to do. Whatever it is, after a few months I'll probably dislike it at best or hate it at worst. You see, I've got this bad attitude, and I just don't like selling my time to anyone for any purpose. That will never change. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
[[category:Labor]] [[category:Tales of Toil]] [[category:1980s]] [[category:Downtown]] [[category:Dissent]] [[category:East Bay]] [[category:Technology]] [[category:Haight-Ashbury]]</div>
Ccarlsson
https://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Safe_with_the_Gaping_Maw
Safe with the Gaping Maw
2024-03-01T04:31:18Z
<p>Ccarlsson: Created page with "'''<font face = Papyrus> <font color = maroon> <font size = 4>"I was there..."</font></font> </font>''' :''"Foundsf.org is republishing a series of "Tales of Toil" that appeared in ''Processed World magazine'' between 1981 and 2004. As first-hand accounts of what it was like working at various jobs during those years, these accounts provide a unique view into an aspect of labor history rarely archived, or shared.'' ''by Bill Dol..."</p>
<hr />
<div>'''<font face = Papyrus> <font color = maroon> <font size = 4>"I was there..."</font></font> </font>'''<br />
<br />
:''"Foundsf.org is republishing a series of "Tales of Toil" that appeared in [[Processed World: A Political History|''Processed World magazine'']] between 1981 and 2004. As first-hand accounts of what it was like working at various jobs during those years, these accounts provide a unique view into an aspect of labor history rarely archived, or shared.''<br />
<br />
''by Bill Dollar''<br />
<br />
''—from Processed World #17, published in August, 1986.''<br />
<br />
[[Image:Somalia.gif]]<br />
<br />
''Graphic: JR Swanson, 1992''<br />
<br />
Recently, at CALA supermarket in San Francisco, I came to the check-out with a quart of buttermilk for myself, and an expensive bottle of ale for a friend, and the young woman at the cash register charged me only for the buttermilk. The boy who was bagging scoped what she did, and we all three caught each other's eye, and nobody said anything, but the girl smiled slightly, and then I said "Thankyoubye" and left, feeling great from the experience. I'm sure they enjoyed the joke, too.<br />
<br />
Ten years ago I worked as a clerk in a very popular health food store in San Francisco, stocking shelves, minding the produce and occasionally tending the cash register. The place was very successful, doing in excess of a million dollars worth of business annually when worked there. The owner was a very driven, "Type A" kind of guy, who showed great single-mindedness in pursuit of the bucks. I didn't care for him much. He was a sleaze who chased the female employees.<br />
<br />
The longer I worked in this place, the more I took to a practice which some European intellectuals have (I believe) called "self-reduction," that is, using my place in the system to subvert the system. Friends of mine, friends of friends, and anyone who looked like their food budget was a major concern got fabulous discounts. Fabulous discounts. During the time I worked in that store I made a hobby out of doing that type of thing. I know it always made me feel great.<br />
<br />
Other people who worked there engaged in the same sort of thing, to one degree or another, and certainly everyone took food for themselves, the boss expected it. Despite all this, the store continued to be very profitable. There was a concrete drop safe in the back of the store, with a slot in it through which the cashiers were to drop, at the end of their shifts, the envelopes containing their cash register tape, cash and checks. Sometimes the take from a particular shift would be so massive the cashiers would have problems jamming the wads of cash through the narrow slot. A couple of them found it very frustrating to have to do this after a tiring shift, and they complained of it. So the boss widened the slot in the concrete with a cold chisel and hammer. A short while later, it was widened again (thick wads of cash) so that a young boy could get his hand and forearm in there easily. Once, when was in the back of the store getting high with a friend, my friend scoped the drop safe with the gaping maw, and he started listing ways I could fish the cash back out, but I never did use any of them. I certainly wish I had.<br />
<br />
Somebody else took the initiative. One morning they came up a thousand dollars short (the tape was there, the cash was not) and the proverbial shit hit the fan. Management's solution to this thorny problem was to get everybody to take a lie detector test, or else they could take a walk. Within a day or two the lie detector test guys showed up, and all the employees had to be there, too, or else.<br />
<br />
There were two lie detector test guys, and they came in two customized vans with lie detectors inside. No waiting! I said no way was going to take that lie detector test. The straw boss (a guy I actually liked) said fine, get lost, and by the way that proves to me that you took the thousand bucks. Well that got me steamed. It was a total Catch-22 ! So I decided, since I was going to be fired anyway, that I would take that test, and confess to all my little crimes (which I thought might actually be fun) and exonerate myself of that one big crime. Wrong, Wrong, Wrong!!! I don't really want to go into too much detail about my ordeal in the customized van. It was horrid, naturally. sat in this plush chair wired up to this machine like a laboratory animal, while this Marcus Welby android asked me questions and studied the readings on his machine. He started with some really dumb questions, I guess to make sure his machine was working, and then he started asking me questions about the store, and what did there, and I told only the truth, which was certainly enough to get me fired, make no mistake. Then he asked me point blank, did take the thousand? and I told him point blank, "No." And he said well the machine says you are lying, so he asked me again, and I told the truth again, and he said well the machine says you're lying again, as far as I'm concerned you did it. So he fingered me. Hey, Kafka ain't in it!<br />
<br />
So I left the place in shame and disgrace, with everybody secretly respecting me for being a bad dude (ha-ha, just kidding) because the lie detector test guy said did it. I'm sure that everybody who asked about my sudden disappearance from the store got the same story. It occurs to me as I write this (reflecting back on that sordid affair for this first time in quite a few years) that I might actually have sued them for defamation of character and won, because the guy who did it (ex-boyfriend of one of the cashiers, I think) came forward, not to confess, but to brag about it to the boss's face (good for him!). This was about a month later, too late for them to make a case, guess. Anyway the young buck just couldn't resist bragging about what he did. I really do wish it had been me. Oh well, at least there is in this story a moral for us all, which is: DO NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, CONSENT TO TAKE A [[I Take a Polygraph Test|LIE DETECTOR TEST]], FOR ANY REASON! LIE DETECTOR TESTS LIE!!!<br />
<br />
Thank you.<br />
<br />
[[category:Labor]] [[category:Tales of Toil]] [[category:1980s]] [[category:Haight-Ashbury]] [[category:Dissent]]</div>
Ccarlsson
https://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Lose_Jobs_Now!_Ask_Me_How!
Lose Jobs Now! Ask Me How!
2024-02-29T06:38:02Z
<p>Ccarlsson: </p>
<hr />
<div>'''<font face = Papyrus> <font color = maroon> <font size = 4>"I was there..."</font></font> </font>'''<br />
<br />
:''"Foundsf.org is republishing a series of "Tales of Toil" that appeared in [[Processed World: A Political History|''Processed World magazine'']] between 1981 and 2004. As first-hand accounts of what it was like working at various jobs during those years, these accounts provide a unique view into an aspect of labor history rarely archived, or shared.''<br />
<br />
''by Zoe Noe''<br />
<br />
''—from Processed World #17, published in August, 1986.''<br />
<br />
[[Image:Jobsare.gif]]<br />
<br />
All jobs are temporary. That's a lesson that I've been fortunate to learn early in life; there's no such thing as a 'permanent' job. I never could understand the need to make distinctions between "permanent" and "temporary" job situations.<br />
<br />
I lost my first job at age 16 due to an attitude clash with new management. I wasn't willing to give them all the respect they deserved, and didn't help things one day when the brand-new manager had just finished covering a wall with tacky "wood" paneling, and came walking through and asked, "What's that?" He said, "What do you think it looks like?", and I said, ''I think it looks like shit."<br />
<br />
My worst job experiences were in food handling, and I've never escaped any of them on my own prompting. When the manager at McDonald's fired me, he said, "You're a good worker, but you just don't fit the McDonald's image." I lasted 4 days bussing tables at a suburban Chinese restaurant before the owner handed me $50 in cash and told me to beat it.<br />
<br />
[[Image:Zoe-noe-pw7 IMG00058.jpg|350px|right]]<br />
<br />
During a disastrous week-long stint at the SF State dorm cafeteria, I arrived at 11:00 instead of 10:00 one morning, and sneaked into the basement to avoid my boss, slip into my uniform and pretend I'd been there working the whole time. Who did I run into downstairs but my asshole boss, who shocked me by asking, "What are you doing here? You're not supposed to be here until 3:00! " I never ran out of any place so fast as I did at that moment. It was the kindly manager of a 24-hour breakfast place called Waffle House (which we affectionately dubbed the ''Awful Waffle'') who did me a favor when he fired me by strongly suggesting that I try something other than restaurant work for a living.<br />
<br />
A few weeks after my high school graduation, I was enticed by a classified ad promising "Travel! Adventure! Excitement!" That same day I found myself on a Greyhound to Chicago, with two suitcases packed, anticipating a whole summer's worth of travel, adventure and excitement. I didn't find out until I got there that I had been seduced by one of those door-to-door magazine subscription seams. I was booked for a 2-week training/probationary period, during which wouldn't make anything except maybe a bonus for reaching quota. My hotel expenses were covered, and I got ten dollars a day for meals.<br />
<br />
We were all trained, or should I say brainwashed, in the art of sales; in rebuffing the questions of even the most skeptical residents. If they say, "Oh, I tried this sort of thing before and got ripped off," we would tell them that of course that was some other company, blah, blah, blah.<br />
<br />
It was like a Moonie brainwashing retreat. We slept four to a hotel room, trainer and trainee in the same room. Basically we were all together 24 hours a day, except, of course, for the 15 hours in the "field." I was expected to spend all my free time with the veteran salesmen selling me on what a great life it was; the money, the freedom, the wild parties, getting laid, etc. Fortunately I made a friend there, a young woman from Indianapolis who was also a rookie. We would sneak out of the hotel between "structured activities," smoke joints, and plot our escapes. She managed it a few days before I did, and took the Greyhound back to Indianapolis. I was very blue after she left, and any traces of enthusiasm I'd had vanished fast, baring my disillusionment.<br />
<br />
Out in the "field" I began to identify with the skeptics I was supposedly trying to win over, and it dawned on me that, yes, it probably was this company that had ripped them off; no wonder the owner-boss, Sibiski, was able to retire at 33! But what really did my attitude in was a morning in which I made one of the day's first sales. The customer invited me in for some coffee, and later we smoked a joint so strong that I wandered around high the rest of the day. I had stayed listening to records with her for an hour and a half, and couldn't possibly sell another subscription.<br />
<br />
The next morning I woke up earlier than usual and surprised Steve, my trainer, by slipping into my old blue jeans and a t-shirt. He asked me what I was doing, and I said I was getting out of here. He said I had to call Sibiski and tell him, which I did. But I hung up on Sibiski after he started cussing a blue streak at me about owing him for hotel and meal expenses, and daring to leave before my 2-week training/probationary period was over. Nonchalant, I finished packing my bags, walked down the hallway with Steve, and waited by the exit while he went inside Sibiski's room to calm him down. I listened to the room roar and shake for about 5 minutes, and then Steve emerged, visibly shaken, and said, "Just split, man!"<br />
<br />
In the parking lot I ran into Jim, one of the veteran salespeople, who just couldn't believe I was leaving, and threw his best sales pitch to change my mind. "Forget about college, man. You'll have more fun doing this. Man, when I was a rookie here I hated it and packed my bags every day for a solid month. But now I'm glad I stayed because I love it!" And I thought, "Yeah, stupid, you stayed just long enough to get completely brainwashed!", and kept walking, and found the spaghetti mess of freeway connections back eventually to Indianapolis. That day I also learned an important lesson for the first and last time: never hitchhike with two suitcases. I almost didn't think my arms were going to make it!<br />
<br />
During a long hand-to-mouth period in San Francisco, during which I procured food stamps, tried to get G.A., and was too desperately broke to really relax with being unemployed (this was when an unemployment benefit seam would have been nice), but I did use the time well. It was around this same time that I got involved with Processed World, and the extra time certainly came in handy to help with production. The state Employment Development Department's job counselors, who are supposed to give us more access to information on all the shit jobs out there, arranged for me to interview at the Leland Hotel on Polk Street, where I was hired as a graveyard-shift desk clerk for a paltry $3.50/hour. Roughly a third of the residents were older folks who had been there, paying rent faithfully, for years. Another third were transients. And a third were young adults, attracted to the Polk Street nightlife, many of them worked as prostitutes (both male and female), and it was these late-night people I got to know the best. Often they would invite me to their rooms to party in the morning after my shift was over. It was an interesting window on the world.<br />
<br />
I'm a late-night person. I get my best work and best thinking done after midnight. I do love mornings but only if I can spend them at the kitchen table, with more than one cup of coffee and an interesting conversation. I don't function well when my morning belongs to an employer.<br />
<br />
It took me weeks, however, to adjust to my new schedule, but as soon as I had I was fired for showing that I was more sympathetic to the tenants than desk clerks were supposed to be. We were only expected to take their rent money, dispense clean linen, and make wake-up calls. Still I was surprised that I hadn't been fired sooner.<br />
<br />
A week earlier I had had a major run-in with my supervisor, who came in to relieve me at 7 AM. He started bitching at me for an insignificant transgression I can't even remember now. He only needed to mention it once but wouldn't let up about it. It didn't help that I was sick. I went straight home and slept until about 10:30 PM, when I had to get up, order a take-out sandwich and salad and ride the bus to work. When I showed up for my shift at 11:00, the same supervisor was there, drunk, and he started raving about the same stupid shit he'd already given me hell for that morning. I warned him that I was in no mood to endure it, but he ignored me. I got mad, and as I grabbed my salad I was thinking, I don't even care that there are other people in the lobby or if I get fired, and I yelled "Shut the fuck up!" and heaved the salad at him. Perfectly, I might add, so that the dressing ran all over his splendidly manicured beard and expensive perm, all over his open shirt, gold chains, and hairy chest. The funniest thing, aside from seeing him covered with dressing, was that he didn't fire me right then and there. He looked dazed for a few moments, and then apologized for being such an asshole. After that, until I was fired, he was always real nice to me.<br />
<br />
After losing the hotel job, I decided to enter the temp world. The next several months were a kaleidoscope of numbing, unbearable days, and sabotage at every opportunity. I was sort of unique among the Processed World collective, because I started doing office work after becoming involved with the magazine. And I sometimes got into trouble for mixing the contents of PW with life (?) on the job.<br />
<br />
I was always being let go without a specific reason. It was frustrating that the hiring and firing hierarchy could have the power to dispose of me and not tell me the truth about why they were doing it; and I would always be left wondering, "Did they really mean it when they said they had too many people, or was it because they saw the sticker I put up in the bathroom and suspected me?" I could never tell. Most supervisors are chickenshit when it comes to letting people go; they do whatever they can to avoid controversy and open resentment. I hate those kinds of bloodless purges. I always preferred the situations when I was at least given a reason for being fired. Especially if the supervisor or boss was noticeably upset about something that I did; I would feel a sense of accomplishment. The next job was like that.<br />
<br />
I'm the only person I know to actually be fired from a temporary agency. I got away with a lot, however, before it caught up with me.<br />
<br />
At Macy's executive personnel office I stuffed gray pinstripe folders titled "The Macy's Management Career Training Program" with various brochures. They were then packaged up and shipped off to college seniors majoring in business. A few hours into the job I noticed that the folders were simply packed without further inspection and got a great idea. I raced home at lunchtime and grabbed a big stack of Processed World brochures, which I secretly stuffed into the rest of the folders. I delighted in watching them be packed up for their destinations.<br />
<br />
With the same agency's help, I got to sabotage Wells Fargo Bank. Although I had stormed through countless modern, partitioned offices in my bike messenger days, I'd never actually been stuck in one. I seriously thought I was losing my mind until I discovered the xerox machine. It wasn't clear whose flunky I was, so many supervisors brought me their extra work, and I would take advantage of the confusion by selecting only the most palatable assignments. One of these was a lengthy prospectus that had to be copied and collated hundreds of times, which made the xerox machine pretty much my domain that week. I did my best to drag the project out in order to recreate hundreds of rare issues of PW. How my heart would pound when the machine had jammed up inside with PW copy, and I'd hurriedly pull it out, with the Wells Fargo prospectus concealing more bootleg material on top of the machine! Fortunately no-one ever caught me with the machine jammed up on PW.<br />
<br />
I never felt bad about using Wells Fargo's paper and time to benefit PW. Once, in this same office, I had been on an assembly line of temps stuffing 9,000 large envelopes. We were finally finishing up when a supervisor appeared and announced that we had to unstuff all 9,000 envelopes because the signature on the cover letter wasn't bold enough! Otherwise the replacement was exactly the same! I remember staring in amazement as a custodian carted off a 4-foot stack of the old letter to the dump. I figured I must be doing Wells Fargo a favor by actually putting some of their paper to good use.<br />
<br />
Two weeks later I was back at the same office helping assemble a prospectus for Wells Fargo employees on leave. Having been asked to xerox about 300 copies of the cover letter, on the way to the familiar copy machine, I stopped at my desk to find something I could copy on the other side of the letter. I chose the "Office Workers Olympics" from PW #2, and we temps spent the rest of the afternoon stuffing the "improved" cover letter into envelopes.<br />
<br />
I was much less secretive than usual on this occasion, and my co-workers responded coolly, which concerned me. It's possible that one of them finked on me, but I didn't hear a thing about it until I phoned the agency to see about getting more work. My "counselor" seemed upset and said, "We have reports from Wells Fargo that last Friday you were photocopying your own material and including it with the mailing. Did you do that?"<br />
<br />
Realizing my cover was blown, I said, "Yes, that's true." When she asked why, I replied, "it was fun!"<br />
<br />
"Well, your 'fun' cost both our companies a lot of money because we had to hire three temps the next day to undo your work." ("Wow, three temps!" I thought, feeling proud.) "I'm afraid we can't trust you on any more jobs, so I have to fire you!<br />
<br />
Another, smaller agency I'd registered with invited me to the company Xmas party even though they hadn't assigned me to any jobs yet. I showed up at the party, got pleasantly drunk, and found not only many of the temps interesting but even some of the agency managers. And of course I brought along a bunch of Processed Worlds and gave out several to the temps. Some of the managers bought them because they looked interesting, including my "counselor" who was sympathetic to me despite my dismal typing test score. Several weeks later I ran into her on Market Street at lunchtime while hawking PW in costume. She was wearing a gray coat and looked cold, turning a shade grayer when she saw me. I walked up to her and asked happily if she liked the magazine. She looked terrified and said, "It's horrible!", and moved quickly past me. <br />
<br />
[[category:Labor]] [[category:Tales of Toil]] [[category:1980s]] [[category:Downtown]] [[category:Dissent]] [[category:SFSU]]</div>
Ccarlsson
https://foundsf.org/index.php?title=I_Take_a_Polygraph_Test
I Take a Polygraph Test
2024-02-29T06:23:46Z
<p>Ccarlsson: </p>
<hr />
<div>'''<font face = Papyrus> <font color = maroon> <font size = 4>"I was there..."</font></font> </font>'''<br />
<br />
:''"Foundsf.org is republishing a series of "Tales of Toil" that appeared in [[Processed World: A Political History|''Processed World magazine'']] between 1981 and 2004. As first-hand accounts of what it was like working at various jobs during those years, these accounts provide a unique view into an aspect of labor history rarely archived, or shared.''<br />
<br />
''by Mark Leger''<br />
<br />
''—published originally under the title "Would You? Have You?? Did You?!?" from Processed World #20, published in September, 1987.''<br />
<br />
[[Image:Stress graphic.jpg]]<br />
<br />
The job paid $6.50 an hour to push petunias at a "garden center"attached to a cheap carpet store on Bayshore Boulevard, a place called Floorcraft. Well at least it would get me out of the office and into the gardening business. Nurseries are good gossip centers: I would learn who's hiring, talk to people and make arrangements to work for them, develop my own business.<br />
<br />
OK, I'm interested.<br />
<br />
Well, there is one thing, I don't approve of it, but we're part of a larger operation, and the management requires it. I'm going to have to ask you to take a polygraph test.<br />
<br />
Whooah. Creepout city.<br />
<br />
Yeah, I know. A lot of people have problems with it. They just ask questions about whether or not you've ever shoplifted, whether you've stolen from an employer, whether you're on any hard drugs. I can tell you should have no problem with it.<br />
<br />
I've always been fascinated by things like phone taps, bugs, surveillance data bases, but especially lie detectors—machines that circumvents fibbing, that lovely act that makes social life possible. I once did civil disobedience, not because I think it's a great tactic, but because I wanted see what it's like inside a jail. Such forays are a way of confronting a power in a contained way, learning what its about, shedding its secrecy, robbing its strength. Kind of like S and M!<br />
<br />
'''Tuesday, June 16, 1987'''. Summer of Love in the Haight Ashbury twenty years later. The office was at 1781 Haight Street near Stanyan. A hippy answered the door. He lead me into a rambling, musty and worn railroad flat, a former crash pad. Now the place was strewn with used office furniture instead of Indian cotton bedspreads and streaks of fluorescent orange glimmered underneath beige paint. Stopping in front of a battered naugahyde sofa in the hall, the hippy stopped and told the "interviewer" would be just a few minutes late but that I could just have a seat and look through those magazines, pointing at a tiny ''formica etagere''. No thanks. I chose to study the details of a "decorator painting" of Venice, harvest gold dome of St. Marks, avocado green gondolas. Fifteen minutes later, having permanently corrupted my visual memory of Venice, I broke down and looked through the bookcase. Sure enough, underneath piles of Readers Digest and TWA flight magazines was a copy of Acid Dreams: LSD, the CIA, and the Sixties Rebellion. Piss and love.<br />
<br />
I listened to the guy talk to a prospective customer on the phone. Yes the tests are very thorough and conclusive. We go through the clients' work histories, their personal finances, whether they've ever stolen from employer, and "custom questions" to fit your situation. Of course, people are a little nervous when they first come in. But the test is painless and 99 percent thank us when its through. We charge $60.<br />
<br />
Thirty five minutes later and I was getting pretty fucking disgusted with waiting around. Finally, I heard fumblings at the door—one minute, two. The stupidest people in the world always turn out to be cops. This jerk couldn't even turn his own lock. I got up and swung the door open, startling this bimbo, hair dyed Lucille Ball red, reeking of perfume and dripping bright rayon scarfs and dross chains. Sort of Gypsy style but without the design integrity.<br />
<br />
Gee, this is a change, a client answering the door. Are you my nine o'clock?<br />
<br />
I raised my wrist and looked at my watch. Yes.<br />
<br />
Behind her was a man—neat, contained, firm pot belly, cowboy boots. I could tell he had spent too much time in either the police or the military or both. After a quick look we knew we despised each other.<br />
<br />
I was given a form--name, date, address, position applying for, read the release and sign. The release says that under California law, an employer cannot ask an employee to take a polygraph test as a condition either of hire or of continued employment. The form asked me to recognize this, sign, and take the test anyway. Ironic--in the name of employee honesty, Floorcraft was doing something illegal. I wrote an addendum restricting the firm from releasing the results of the test to anybody but Floorcraft—something not mentioned in the release.<br />
<br />
They all went to the back of the flat and jabbered. I waited five minutes after completing the form, just to build up my exasperation, marched in and announced to the three I'm ready. I was led into a small room containing a desk and two chairs. The redneck was to be my interrogator. He had a photocopied form. He explained that he was just visiting, that he had his own business someplace else, excuse him if stumbles on some of the questions, but gee, the forms are pretty similar after all.<br />
<br />
The strategy of the interrogation is to extract detailed responses before hooking you up to the machine. After you're hooked up, the interrogator goes down the list of themes, asking if you had answered truthfully. The machine is not accurate, especially if you're out to beat it. It's a psychological torture device, a shortcut to wearing down your resistance.<br />
<br />
He began by asking me about my medical history. Am I seeing a doctor. Yes. What about. I get migraines. Are they treatable, do they ever stop you from going to work. I mused about claiming that I had anal warts and that was why I was trying to get out of office work--too much sitting.<br />
<br />
Have I ever lied. Of course. Please wait till I finish a question before you answer. Have you ever lied in order to stay out of serious trouble.<br />
<br />
How much do you estimate that you drink on any given night. How much in a week? Do you now have, or have you ever had, a drinking problem.<br />
<br />
He started to question me about "street" drugs. I told him flat out that I refused to answer any questions about drugs. So we skipped a list of maybe thirty drugs. He would have wanted to know when I had taken them, how much I had taken, if I was continuing to take them.<br />
<br />
If I had to pay all off all my debts, what would that come to. Have I ever been past due on a payment. Have I ever declared bankruptcy. There were big spaces on his form for this one. Have I ever been convicted by a court. My driving record--any moving violations that were my fault.<br />
<br />
He had an elaborate introduction for have-you-ever-stolen-from-an-employer: We realize that there are no little angels running around out there. All we ask is that you answer truthfully. If you mess up, forget something, that's all right. I'll go back and help you through it. I told him that I have been working in offices and I have taken pens now and then you know how you stick them in your shirt pocket you take them home lay them on your desk and somehow you never have to buy pens. Oh yeah and I took a binder once to hold notes.<br />
<br />
Disappointed, he asked is that all? I think long and hard. No. What would you estimate the total value of all you've stolen. Uh, nineteen dollars and fifty three cents. Did I fill out my application accurately and completely. Have I ever been fired or asked to resign from a job. I'm sure there would have been requests for details if I said yes. Was my resume truthful.<br />
<br />
That was it. He ran through what he would ask me on the machine. One new question--would I lie if I thought I would get away with it. The rest were short summations of the previous lengthy interrogation. Do I have a medical problem that would interfere with the performance of my job duties. Have I ever lied to stay out of serious trouble. Do I have a drinking problem.<br />
<br />
Next he connected me to the machine: a chain with an expansion gauge around my chest, another around my abdomen, an inflatable cuff pulse monitor (like they use to take your blood pressure) around my upper arm, and two jingly tingle sensors on my fingertips (my favorite accessory).<br />
<br />
He announced that he was going to ask me six questions, to all of which I would answer no, and consequently lie to one. This would show him what it looked like when I lied. Is it Sunday? No. A longish pause while he waits for my body signs to get back to normal. Is it Monday? No. Pause. Is it Tuesday? No. (The lie, you see). Pause. Is it...<br />
<br />
In PW issue 10 we ran a fact sheet on how to pass a lie detector test (reprint below). I followed the strategy of tensing up when I lied, relaxing when I told the truth. Feet flat on the floor, we began. Would you. Have you. Did you.<br />
<br />
The interrogator was irritated with me. I fucked around with my pulse rate and breathing patterns, he couldn't arrive at what was normal for me. Also, I moved around too much. That is, I would move my head and sigh in exasperation at the invasive questions. He barked, stop moving. There is a very sensitive component in this machine that costs $700 to replace.<br />
<br />
Oh, you mean if I thrash around like this<br />
<br />
[draw squiggles]<br />
<br />
it breaks something?<br />
<br />
I didn't thrash.<br />
<br />
I should have. But I didn't, partly because the guy was big and I felt physically intimidated. But partly I was having a hard time keeping my thoughts straight. Let's see, is it relax when you tell the truth and tense up when you lie. Or is it the other way around. I couldn't remember. So by now I was just tense all the time. I wanted it to end.<br />
<br />
Well, I can't tell what's going on, he said. We're going to have to go through the questions one more time. Remain still. When you move your head, it causes your neck to move and that causes your chest to move. If you have to take a deep breath, do it between questions. The test is about to begin. Would you. Have you. Did you.<br />
<br />
Finally, it was over. Remain still until I take the equipment off you. I looked down at my right hand. It was blue from being bound by the cuff. As I write this account two days later, I stop now and then to massage my arm, still sore from having the circulation constricted for almost half an hour.<br />
<br />
When I was unleashed, the man said, I can't tell whether you were lying or telling the truth, but I can tell you didn't like taking the test. Why not.<br />
<br />
I told him I thought it was wrong, a poor substitute for paying employees decent wages, conducting informative interviews, checking references. Let me ask you this, if you had a business from which employees were stealing millions of dollars, what would you do.<br />
<br />
That's a stupid question, I would never place myself in that position.<br />
<br />
He leans back. The two questions that I'm getting a slightly unusual response on are stealing from previous employers and being accurate on your resume. Well, I said, I was honest about stealing. Then I made a mistake. I said resumes are by nature amplified. But everything is correct and documentable (the truth).<br />
<br />
What do you mean, what was amplified.<br />
<br />
By this time I was unnerved. I should not have drawn him past where we had already been. I had been unnerved and was tripping over hurdles that thirty minutes earlier I would have easily avoided. I blocked: if Floorcraft has any specific questions, I would be glad to address them directly.<br />
<br />
The guy leaned forward. People like you make my job ten times harder.<br />
<br />
I leave feeling elated. I really frustrated that guy. But I am sick for two days, fending off migraines and nausea. Describing the encounter later, my voice breaks and I know I could cry very easily. I am hyperaware of the presence of police. When I go to a store and notice that several of the clerks are new, I wonder, has there been a purge, did they all have to take polygraph tests?<br />
<br />
Don't take polygraph tests. Check to see if you are legally protected from the compulsion. If you're not, still don't take it. After one sordid hour, someone will have a file of information on you that you will regret. But if you are forced, really forced to take the test, practice responding to the questions above with a friend. Make your responses brief. Don't divulge any real information. I would not have told the guy about my migraines. No elaborate stories--they get too hard to keep straight. If you're going to lie, lie all the way. For instance, instead of admitting to ever having taken pens and a binder, I would have said I have never taken anything of substantial value that I can remember. The questioner will ask for details, what you mean. But stick to your first response. Store those responses in a little cell in your head. Make them real, they are real, certainly more real than their hypocritical morality.<br />
<br />
A few days later, the nursery manager calls. Well, when can you come to work.<br />
<br />
That's ok. I've decided not to take the job.<br />
<br />
<hr><br />
<br />
<big>'''HOW TO TAKE A LIE DETECTOR TEST'''</big><br />
<br />
The polygraph test, also known as the lie detector, is an example of technology at its worst. It is used by the ruling class—bosses and cops—to frighten the working class into submission, and to blacklist those who won't cooperate.<br />
<br />
The victim of the polygraph is told to have a seat. Devices are then attached to the victim's body to measure the breathing rate, the pulse, the blood pressure, and the electrical resistance of the skin.<br />
<br />
The polygraph is not fool-proof. It works best on people who believe in it.<br />
<br />
According to the federal Office of Technology Assessment, these are some effective ways to beat the lie detector.<br />
<br />
'''Physical Methods''': When you're answering truthfully, bite your tongue or tense your muscles to heighten your pulse rate and blood pressure. Then when you're lying, try to relax.<br />
<br />
'''Drugs''': The tranquilizer meprobamate, known as Miltown, has helped liars beat the polygraph.<br />
<br />
'''Hypnosis and Biofeedback''': For people who have training in these techniques, they can be used to control the physical responses. The physiological variables that the polygraph records, such as pulse rate, respiratory frequency and skin conductivity, are altered by many stresses other than guilt over telling lies. Examples are fear, anger, embarrassment or even guilt about something totally unrelated to what is in the questioner's mind.<br />
<br />
'''Mental Methods''': An experienced member of the Free Orlando Group says you can't really calm yourself down with the machine hooked up to you and your job on the line. The important thing is not to worry about being calm, but rather to keep your mind off the questions.<br />
<br />
There is a pause of several seconds between each question. During this time you must get your mind focused on something other than the question. Some people do increasingly complex math problems to distract their attention: 2x4=8, 2x8=16, 2x16=32, etc. A few people have had good results from concentrating on their favorite top 40 song.<br />
<br />
Another method is to decide that the question means something different from what the examiner thinks it means. If you are asked if you've ever taken anything from an employer, remind yourself that the results of your labor rightfully belong to you and your fellow-workers, not to your profiteering employer.<br />
<br />
Polygraph operators are usually over-confident; they don't know that the human spirit is more powerful than their nasty little machines.<br />
<br />
''This originally appeared in Processed World #10, and was sent in by the Free Orlando Group.<br />
<br />
<br />
[[category:Labor]] [[category:Tales of Toil]] [[category:1980s]] [[category:Haight-Ashbury]] [[category:Bernal Heights]] [[category:Technology]]</div>
Ccarlsson
https://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Work_Sickness_at_the_Health_Factory
Work Sickness at the Health Factory
2024-02-29T06:10:09Z
<p>Ccarlsson: </p>
<hr />
<div>'''<font face = Papyrus> <font color = maroon> <font size = 4>"I was there..."</font></font> </font>'''<br />
<br />
:''"Foundsf.org is republishing a series of "Tales of Toil" that appeared in [[Processed World: A Political History|''Processed World magazine'']] between 1981 and 2004. As first-hand accounts of what it was like working at various jobs during those years, these accounts provide a unique view into an aspect of labor history rarely archived, or shared.''<br />
<br />
''by Summer Brenner''<br />
<br />
''—from Processed World #20, published in September, 1987.''<br />
<br />
[[Image:Highbloodpressure.jpg]]<br />
<br />
There is a difference between work and working. All my adult life I've been hard at work as a writer. And although writing is not always a perfect activity, it is the work I love to do. However, with the economic pressures of the 1980s and the additional responsibilities of solely supporting two children, my subsistence on menial jobs and an occasional royalty ended, and I was forced to really start working. The first thing I discovered about working was that it made me sick.<br />
<br />
Ironically enough, my sickening new job was at the Data Center of the Kaiser Medical Care Program, one of the largest health care organizations in the country. For the first few weeks at the Data Center, my problem was exhaustion. Besides showing up at work every day in Walnut Creek, a suburban town thirty freeway minutes away, I had a commitment to my son's soccer games, my daughter's gymnastics class. Then I had to manage grocery shopping after the children's bedtime, and what seemed like a thousand errands on the weekend. In addition, there were the cherished friendships that at first I tried to maintain, not to mention the unfinished stories that lay in heaps on my desk at home, waiting for a few seconds of attention. Suddenly, I had money, but no time. No time to think, no time to relax, and no time to do my real work of writing.<br />
<br />
The fatigue gradually eased. I discovered that errands could be taken care of during lunch hour. Clothes could be dropped at the cleaners in Walnut Creek. Not only thinking, but even actual writing—scribbled on notepads—could be done during the commute in the car. The children were adjusting to my absences in the late afternoon, my frenzies in the evening, and my shorter and shorter temper as the week wore on. Although I was unavailable during the week, suddenly I could buy them presents on the weekend. My friends too got used to my excuses, and the manuscripts were put on hold.<br />
<br />
My job as a technical writer required that I operate a computer terminal most of the day. At the end of my inaugural month, I made an appointment for my first pair of glasses. Not only did this work aggravate my astigmatism, but I needed glasses to shield my eyes from the glare of the computer screen and the fluorescent lights. I soon noticed that all the 400-odd employees in this building wore glasses too, and when I inquired among my co-workers how long they had been wearing them, many responded that it had been since they had arrived there. <br />
<br />
In the second month, my nasal passages began to resemble a sewer system. Although I didn't have a cold, I sneezed, wheezed, coughed, and spewed. My boss looked on sympathetically. She assured me that it was not hay fever and suggested I stock up on the boxes of cheap tissues stored for the personnel. Apparently, everyone in my department had experienced a similar reaction to the closed atmosphere, and I was consoled that I would soon adjust to the air or the absence thereof. My boss was right. I adjusted and moved on to deeper maledictions.<br />
<br />
By the seventh week my scalp itched so badly that I had myself inspected for head lice. Rather than a colony of small living creatures on my head, there were giant flakes of dead skin amassing under my hair like icebergs. I was told that this was a simple and common nervous condition and that with tar shampoo and a metal comb, I could stifle the uncomfortable itch. One visit to the drug store fixed me right up.<br />
<br />
Herpes is an unwelcome guest that visits me from time to time. I had had rare occurrences of this pesky virus, but during my third month working, I experienced four outbreaks in four weeks. Finally, on advice from a friend, I took large doses of lysine, and my herpes rage subsided.<br />
<br />
After three days of actually feeling good, I believed that my days of initiation had passed, and that I was now a perfectly adjusted worker.<br />
<br />
I was wrong. I woke up the first Thursday of my fourth month with a pain that spanned the distance between my top vertebrae, aptly called the atlas, and my left armpit. Suddenly, I was a cripple. I couldn't raise my left arm above the elbow. The weight of a coat or the strap of a purse was intolerable. Sleep was only possible with a heating pad and several pillows to hoist my upper left quadrant like a cast. I immediately made appointments with the physical therapist and apologized to my boss that I would be leaving early on Friday for a massage.<br />
<br />
Although the pain in my shoulder felt as if it would never go away, by Christmas things had improved. Our family took a short trip to the mountains, and by the first of the year, I was rehabilitated. Then, on January 6, the beginning of my fifth month, I experienced a totally new physical sensation. Stuffy noses were old hat, back and neck tension the side effects of adulthood, herpes the scourge of my generation, dandruff a cosmetic inconvenience, but breathlessness was unprecedented. My inability to catch my breath terrified me, and for a split second every quarter hour, I suspected I was close to dying. Although I had cross-country skied at 8000 feet the week before, as soon as I recommenced by work schedule, I couldn't breathe. I rationalized that it was a reaction to a mid-month deadline, but the deadline came and went. The breathlessness did not.<br />
<br />
I sat down and thought about it. Obviously, I couldn't catch my breath because I didn't have time. At home I set a few minutes aside to take deep, slow inhalations. At these times I told myself that the rush of life coursing through my lungs faster than it should could slow down. It could rest. I would try to help it. I pleaded with my circulatory system to make it happen soon.<br />
<br />
And yes, this malady mysteriously subsided, and I began to inhale at a normal rate. Again, I fell prey to the illusion that I was well. True, I was managing my days. But at night I had begun to experience an onslaught of nightmares. The gruesome thought occurred to me that as one ailment resolved itself, it was replaced by another, more ominous than its predecessor. The mythical Hydra was rearing its ugly heads, and they were all inside my own.<br />
<br />
I didn't have to look far for the causes of my trauma. One was the building itself. A prison architect had designed it. Its few windows were slits that only ten executives had the privilege of looking through. The ceilings were hung low, and every fifth rectangle of particle board was replaced with a fluorescent light. The inside walls, the industrial carpeting, and the desk and file cabinets were a matching beige. The tiny cubicles were separated by five-foot high dividers, and the sounds of office machines, conversations, nail clippers, and occasional groans dispersed into the open space above them.<br />
<br />
Privacy here was a ludicrous concept, and I considered it perverted good fortune to overhear the phone conversations of my immediate neighbor. This man had a Korean girlfriend whom he spoke to daily. His questions to her were in stilted, ''sotto voce'' English, apparently in imitation of her own. Phrases like, "We go there together" were suggestive enough on a Tuesday afternoon to sound racy. By Friday, his monosyllabic exchanges were downright pornographic.<br />
<br />
With this exception, however, the human sounds that filled the background were white noise. The atmosphere was profoundly lifeless even while filled with people. When I worked my first weekend, I was shocked, then depressed, to realize that inside this completely empty building the impression was exactly the same as a regular workday: it felt like no one was ever there.<br />
<br />
Another source of deep irritation was the surrounding environment. The building was located in a suburban industrial park. Put all white collar workers together in clean buildings, and everything will begin to resemble everything else. People included. Hang the sadist who thought of this innovation.<br />
<br />
Within one to six blocks of this building in any direction were identical shopping centers. There were large grocery stores distinguished only by the name of the chain. There were also one repulsive Chinese restaurant, three shoe stores, a deli for the ethnics, a yogurt bar for the unconventional dieters, and a hardware store.<br />
<br />
Actually, it was wonderful mental exercise to imagine the terrain without the blight of human mediocrity. Walnut Creek had both young and old trees flourishing, and the impressive peak of Mount Diablo hovered above only a few miles away. The highways and industrial complexes were less than five years old, the housing subdivisions only slightly older.<br />
<br />
For diversion at noon I walked out into the streets, sometimes venturing past the satellite commercial centers into the housing areas. Generally, there were no sidewalks, and except for landscaped spots of botanical wonders, the area was desolate, a human desert with garages and lawns.<br />
<br />
Once back in the shopping center, I strolled along studying the display windows, looking for anything that I might find curious. Until my forays into these suburban dead zones, life had always presented itself to me as a series of curiosities—strange images, bizarre happenings, ridiculous juxtapositions—and my job was to hunt them down, take note, and wonder. Here, I found not even one. There was nothing coming out of this environment, and, as I feared, there was nothing coming out of me. Except for the money that I could exchange with the human beings behind the various counters, these walks were voids. Usually, they climaxed with a small purchase—a Baby Ruth, an Almond Roca, a bowl of wonton soup.<br />
<br />
Back inside, I followed the suit of my co-workers. I tried to beautify, or rather personalize, my half of my cubicle. I brought in colorful drawings by my daughter, photos of my loved ones. My cube-mate had pictures of her cats, an extensive collection of African violets, and a worn copy of John Donne's poems. Most people in the building exhibited some such paraphernalia, reminding them who they were and informing the rest of us who they might be—if we were to meet by chance at a bar, a political rally, or a P.T.A. meeting. These remnants of each person that I noticed while walking through the maze of halls were always vivid and sad to me. They reminded me of cultural rituals in which the dead are buried with their most prized possessions. Despite this, I took deep pleasure in looking at my six-year-old's watercolors. They served to remind me of the world outside: spontaneous, playful, lovely.<br />
<br />
[[Image:Mystery malady1.jpg|380px|right]]<br />
<br />
[[Image:Mystery malady2.jpg|380px|right]]<br />
<br />
[[Image:Mystery malady3.jpg|380px|right]]<br />
<br />
[[Image:Mystery malady4.jpg|380px|right]]<br />
<br />
[[Image:Mystery malady5.jpg|380px|right]]<br />
<br />
[[Image:Mystery malady6.jpg|380px|right]]<br />
<br />
Eight hours a day, I felt confined to something little better than a prison. I could have been accused of ingratitude. After all, I wasn't unemployed, living in a shelter, or on welfare. And if this was prison, I was decently paid. How could I be such a whiner? Did I think painting watercolors was a way to earn a living? Why did I have such a distorted view of my life? Why did I think I was special?<br />
<br />
Most of us white baby boomers were raised in incredible prosperity. Our childhood years fostered a myth that the middle classes have only partaken of once or twice in history -- perhaps in England during the Victorian Era, and certainly in the United States after the Second World War. Money then could buy many, many people not only tons of material goods, but lots of leisure time. The myth, of course, was that this prosperous time would go on and on. It hasn't. Today, most middle-class women work outside the home. And they have little choice in the matter.<br />
<br />
I wasn't shirking, but I was dumbfounded by the drudgery. Around me, co-workers talked of new cars and boats and plans for vacations, home remodeling and shopping sprees. These things outside of work, that only the money made working could finance, were their incentives to come not only in day after day, but decade after decade.<br />
<br />
Before taking this authentic job, I had lived with the premise that doing the things important to me was the highest priority. Raising my children with interest and love, writing stories and poems, were at the top of the list. Working for various social causes, listening to music, making food and learning crafts, driving to the beach, or dancing came next. During one decade of my young adult life, I might have been called a hippie or a revolutionary. Now those words have other connotations, but the spirit that they represented did allow me, and many thousands of others, to live simply with the important things at the top of the list. Livelihood was not slighted. It was simply not consuming.<br />
<br />
So I had lived. But worrying about money became incessant, and, at over 35 years old, I set out to seek gainful, full-time employment. And for a time, even though I felt physically tortured by my new circumstances, I was proud that I had made a decision and executed it. Relieved that I hadn't ruined my future with drugs or alcohol. Pleased that my good education was proof of my intelligence. Assured that I was capable of doing things that I didn't particularly like to do. And grateful that I could come out of the woodwork with a half-page resume and be given professional duties and a bonafide salary. Now I could buy brand-new clothes for my children, donate money to worthy causes, and afford a vacation. I had joined up for the old-fashioned American dream.<br />
<br />
Eventually, these satisfactions wore away. However, the physical ailments also started to ease, and the nightmares subsided. Instead, I was filled with a tremendous shame. I was not ashamed because the work I did was undervalued by the company and meaningless in the context of the rest of my life and most of the rest of the world. I was ashamed of the society that considered me its fit and useful member, one of its own. Ashamed that anyone, no matter how harmful their work might be, was respectable by these standards if only they committed themselves to a job, and that the unemployed were to be pitied above all others. Not that I proposed that we should live without work—just that working should be so entirely disconnected from our lives struck me as dismal. This conclusion was not merely theoretical. It was drawn from first-hand experience.<br />
<br />
In our division, the computer programmers, systems experts, and other technical staff, myself included, were non-union. Our building was some distance from any of the hospitals. However, when several thousand union workers in the hospitals went out on strike, the non-union workers were expected, in fact obliged, to cross the picket lines around the hospitals and get the job done. At the time, I was assigned an emergency project that exempted me from hospital duty. My boss knew I would be relieved, but I was already sickened. Or rather, as I said before, ashamed that the quality of people's lives should be a bargaining chip, one that these strikers would eventually lose.<br />
<br />
The first week of the strike, I handed in my resignation. I had found another job. I would be a few miles from home, with my own office, two windows, flexible hours, in a small computer software company. Although the demands of the new job were more strenuous, the deadlines more serious, the atmosphere was friendly and unbureaucratic. Admittedly, I wasn't doing work I loved or even thought meaningful, but I had found a tolerable situation.<br />
<br />
Except for me, no one at the old job has left. It's been too risky to trade in security for the unknown, even though they all complain that they hate the place. My memories have faded. I have other business that fills my day, but my twelve-month taste of what this country serves most of its citizens leaves a permanent sympathy for my co-workers everywhere. They wear stockings or ties and hold college degrees, but they experience the monotony of assembly line work. The white-collar class is a disguised serfdom. And I can't put it entirely behind me. Someday I may be forced to go back.<br />
<br />
[[category:Labor]] [[category:Tales of Toil]] [[category:1980s]] [[category:Public Health]] [[category:Women]] [[category:East Bay]]</div>
Ccarlsson
https://foundsf.org/index.php?title=863-AIDS
863-AIDS
2024-02-29T05:55:02Z
<p>Ccarlsson: </p>
<hr />
<div>'''<font face = Papyrus> <font color = maroon> <font size = 4>"I was there..."</font></font> </font>'''<br />
<br />
:''"Foundsf.org is republishing a series of "Tales of Toil" that appeared in [[Processed World: A Political History|''Processed World magazine'']] between 1981 and 2004. As first-hand accounts of what it was like working at various jobs during those years, these accounts provide a unique view into an aspect of labor history rarely archived, or shared.''<br />
<br />
''by Mark Leger''<br />
<br />
''—from Processed World #18, published in December, 1986.''<br />
<br />
[[Image:Plug in.gif|450px|right]]<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
'''No! Wait! My Feet are Wet!'''<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<big>Working at the AIDS Hotline</big><br />
<br />
'''"How many cases of AIDS have been reported in Kentucky?"'''<br />
<br />
"Can you hold while I look that up?" <br />
<br />
I turn to the printout at the front of the AIDS Hotline Encyclopedia. "OK, looking at the Center for Disease Control list here, it shows Kentucky as the 39th highest state at 56 reported cases. <br />
<br />
"Really? Well, how about Georgia?" <br />
<br />
"Georgia is 9th with 148 reported cases." <br />
<br />
"Can you look up Oregon?" <br />
<br />
"25th with 101 cases." <br />
<br />
"Delaware, what's Delaware?..."<br />
<br />
The woman asks for at least 5 more states before I finally ask why she wants to know. "Are you writing an article?" <br />
<br />
"No, uh, I just want to know." <br />
<br />
Perhaps she is just idly curious. But I suspect she wants to know where to move to be "safe." But I'11 never know for sure. All I can do is give out the information. It's up to the receiver to determine how she wants to use it.<br />
<br />
I've been volunteering at the San Francisco AIDS Foundation hotline for a few months now. I do it because it is a good way to keep up on AIDS research, treatment, education and politics. I do it because I think education is the best way to stop the spread of the disease. Hotline workers go through an intensive 16-hour training that covers the gamut of the epidemic: the biology of the AIDS virus, immunology, safe sex, safe needles, talking comfortably about sex, community resources. At the start of each shift, each hotline worker reads through the "This Week" section to find out what's new in the "Encyclopedia," a loose-leaf compendium of articles, memos, brochures arranged by subject. The subjects include things like: oral sex, opportunistic infections, alternative treatments, women and AIDS.<br />
<br />
The calls are a steady test of how much I've absorbed. At least once very fifteen minutes, sometimes three or four times in a row, someone calls up wanting to know where to get the AIDS antibody test. Quick, easy, boring. I have the San Francisco number memorized, and I'm a person who barely knows his own phone number. California has set up anonymous testing sites in most regions. Instead of using names, the patient is assigned a number that is used through the whole process of counseling, testing, disclosing results. The test is conclusive and can alleviate fears. It's especially useful in cases like where the caller guiltily obsesses about a one night stand they had three years ago. When the test was first announced, some feared it would be used for work and insurance screening. Some people stupidly and callously use it for selecting lovers. The test is a good thing, but open for abuse.<br />
<br />
I like the sex calls best. Not that they're titillating; they're mostly matter of fact, humorless even. People take their sex lives very seriously. I'm touched by the way people pursue pleasure in a repressive period: the guy in Georgia who likes to go to strip joints, the married woman in Sacramento who has a lover in San Francisco who she understands 'lives quite the wild life, the straight guy in Walnut Creek who likes to go home with men "now and then, when I'm in the mood." I talk with them about what they do, and how they can do it with less risk. Condoms, condoms, condoms. It's probably safe to kiss, here's why. Please, go right ahead and use that dildo, as long as you don't share it.<br />
<br />
The hotline is getting more and more calls about using drug needles. These callers are not incoherent, crazed freaks. And while frequent bouts of safe sex are probably healthier than frequent bouts of intravenous methadrine, like with the sex calls, these people have found something that gives them pleasure and they want to know how to do it safely. We tell the callers to plunge the needle in a bleach and water solution, as little as 1 part bleach to 10 parts water works. Afterwards, draw water up and out at least twice to clean the works out; bleach can be very caustic to veins. I had a caller protest that the bleach also breaks down the needle's rubber stopper, which must be true. The best solution would be to legalize over the counter sale of needles, or even free needle distribution. But the drug moralists would rather see long painful deaths from AIDS than allow the easy obtaining of "paraphernalia."<br />
<br />
Some things I hate. I hate when the TV cameras come to film. The reporters are very distracting. I remember talking to a man who thought he had caught AIDS from his girlfriend. He wanted to beat her up--a touchy emotional scene. All the while cameras were filming my "live drama." I was trying to focus on this caller,each word was being excruciatingly judged. I couldn't concentrate; the call ended badly. Television may be the ultimate means of mass communication; but mass media is mass voyeurism, using other people's trauma to titillate a population of couch potatoes.<br />
<br />
The AIDS Foundation's Media Director is the worst sort of self-important boss. She orders volunteers around in a way that no one else would dare, or perhaps care to. When she's not being a bruiser, pie book. The chapter she forgot to read is "How Not To Be Obvious." The Foundation is a bureaucracy. It may be "politically progressive, gay sympathetic, equal opp. [sic], maybe even self-critical. But it's still bureaucracy with all the impulses toward self-preservation and self-importance. The slavishness to mass media and the consequent distortion of the Media Director's personality is one expression of this. Another expression is a survey released earlier this year. The survey inflated the AIDS carrier base among the Bay Area heterosexual population. It supported an argument that the Bay Area needed a larger educational campaign. Of course the Foundation would be the contractor for a huge portion of this campaign-institutional preservation overrides the real truth.<br />
<br />
Despite these problems, I'm drawn back week after week. I like the busy days best, the days when the calls come in at a manageable pace--not too fast, not too many long gaps. If it's too busy, I leave feeling on edge. At my last shift, I fielded more than 20 calls during a three hour shift. By the end, I felt like an overworked Bell operator, checking myself from being too snappy, not always succeeding. Slow days can be pleasant, if the other hotline workers are amiable. It's odd though. I guess because the calls set such a strong emotional tone, I develop strong feelings about other workers, even though I see them maybe once for three hours every three weeks and hardly talk to them even then. If I run into a coworker I like on the street, it's instant ease and friendliness. If I run into one I dislike, I skirt around, avoiding them like an old boyfriend from whom I parted awkwardly.<br />
<br />
My life was a lot less busy when I started working at the hotline. I should stop. But I'm still answering calls. <br />
<br />
[[category:Labor]] [[category:Tales of Toil]] [[category:Public Health]] [[category:1980s]] [[category:LGBTQI]]</div>
Ccarlsson
https://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Charley_Brown%27s%E2%80%94Where_Everything_is_Prime%3F
Charley Brown's—Where Everything is Prime?
2024-02-29T05:45:08Z
<p>Ccarlsson: </p>
<hr />
<div>'''<font face = Papyrus> <font color = maroon> <font size = 4>"I was there..."</font></font> </font>'''<br />
<br />
:''"Foundsf.org is republishing a series of "Tales of Toil" that appeared in [[Processed World: A Political History|''Processed World magazine'']] between 1981 and 2004. As first-hand accounts of what it was like working at various jobs during those years, these accounts provide a unique view into an aspect of labor history rarely archived, or shared.''<br />
<br />
''by Lucille Brown''<br />
<br />
''—from Processed World #17, published in August, 1986.''<br />
<br />
I was on the third floor of the Cannery where a new Charley Brown's restaurant was opening. I had come on a lark and didn't expect even to fill out an application for a waitress job, much less be interviewed. My fellow applicants looked more experienced. "Are you a good salesperson!" he asked in a very disinterested, disdainfully bored manner. "I can be," I answered meekly, thinking that I wanted out of there.<br />
<br />
[[Image:Cannery-Del-Monte-logo 20210528 002738990.jpg]]<br />
<br />
'''Del Monte logo preserved on side of Cannery, 2021.'''<br />
<br />
''Photo: Chris Carlsson''<br />
<br />
Also, it was already clear that Mr. Arrogant Dining Room Manager and I were not exactly hitting it off. Mr. Arrogant left me feeling about two inches tall, so couldn't believe it when I was scheduled for a second interview with the general manager. My beefed-up waitress experience must have been convincing after all. The second interview went much better, and I was asked to return that coming Saturday at 1 pm with two legal-size self-addressed stamped envelopes. "Can you handle that?" he asked.<br />
<br />
When I arrived it was clear that I had been hired. The first speech was from the head of operations for Northern California, who said: "You should congratulate yourselves for being among the 110 or so people chosen out of about 1200 applicants." He made it clear that it was an honor to be chosen as food servers, hostesses, busboys or cooks by Charley Brown's Restaurant, and stressed that the company had gone to a lot of trouble and expense to fly up a team of trainers from Southern California to provide us with a week of intensive orientation. We were then handed our training schedule and uniform requirements. Training would last for four days, 10 am-6 pm, with one day off in between. "You'll need that day off to rest," he smiled ominously. I scanned the uniform requirements for food servers: black A-line skirt, white button-down oxford shirt, black leather pumps with a 1'/2 inch minimum heel. An apron and a tie would be supplied by the restaurant.<br />
<br />
I wasn't, however, prepared for the training. From the moment we arrived for our first day of training until we left at night we were kept so busy we barely had time to breathe, let alone go to the bathroom. I soon came to feel as though we were being indoctrinated into some bizarre cult.<br />
<br />
Our Teflon Trainers had personalities that combined those of a stereotypical cheerleader and an army drill sergeant. They were slick, hard, and so rah-rah enthusiastic about Charley Brown's that I became suspicious. We were promptly divided into teams, each with a trainer as its captain. Scores were kept for each of the many tests and games. In our first huddle we were made to come up with names for our teams. "The Prime Cut Pranksters," "The Waitrons" or "The Dreamboats" were what they had in mind. Our captain a woman named Malory, gushed about how much she loved working for Charley Brown's and how much money she made. She also mumbled something about employee softball games and parties. She was trying to convince us that working for Charley Brown's would be like belonging to some big happy family.<br />
<br />
At our first lecture we were presented with Charley Brown's bible, a 70-page food server manual which we were to study faithfully, along with another 20 pages of handouts. The manual covered everything from detailed personal appearance standards, to portion sizes and all the brands of liquor sold at CB's, to the words of CB's Under personal appearance standards were listed the following commandments: Personal Hygiene -"Bathe or shower and use deodorant daily; brush teeth regularly"; Nails—"Nails well manicured, medium length; nail polish may be any shade of medium red or pink frosted or unfrosted. May not wear exotic shades of green, purple, sparkled, flowered, etc."; Jewelry—"One small ring per hand to be worn on ring finger only." And let's not forget Undergarments—"White or nude color only, style to complement outfit, undergarments must be worn!"<br />
<br />
he rest of the day was a whirlwind of activity. We viewed slides of all the entrees and appetizers and were told to memorize all the prices, codes, ingredients, methods of preparation, portions and appropriate garnishes. The presentation was given by Anna, director of Sales and Service. I promptly developed an aversion to Anna, who was always unnaturally and impeccably coifed and color-coordinated from her head to her pointy patent leather high heels. She batted her heavily shadowed eyes and opened them wide whenever anyone asked her a question--a perfect little kewpie doll.<br />
<br />
The day also included a rather terrifying relay race in which we had to carry loaded<br />
<br />
food serving trays and cocktail trays, a lecture on company benefits, and a bizarre speech on "Sanitation as a Way of Life." The grand finale was a contest over which team could sing Charley Brown birthday songs the "best," i.e. the most enthusiastically. Songs were sung to the tunes of "Hey Big Spender" and "Baby Face," and had lyrics like: "Here at Charley's we always say Celebrate, you really rate, and have a great birthday!"<br />
<br />
At the end of the first day we were told what to study for the test the following morning. The list was long; I felt as if I were back in college as I stayed up until 3:30 a.m. cramming codes, prices, portions and ingredients.<br />
<br />
The next two days again brought a dizzying number of things to learn. There were lessons in writing guest checks and obtaining credit card authorization on the computer, a video on wine serving and selling, a wine bottle-opening session and instruction on everything to do with the bar. I discovered that we were to be cocktail waitresses, too. To top it all off there was a cash and carry system; we were responsible for all the money. At the end of each evening we were required to fill out a very long and complicated accountability sheet, and of course any shortages would come out of our own pockets.<br />
<br />
Throughout the training we were instructed in "Charley Brown's Sequence of Service." Everything we were to do or say was programmed from the moment the patrons sat down. Into this program we were expected to insert our own "personality" and be friendly and enthusiastic. The motto was: "No silent service." Everything placed on the table had to be introduced; for example: "Your hot sourdough bread, Sir!" When customers gave us an order we were to compliment them with an enthusiastic "Excellent choice!" or "Great!" In fact, "Great!" was the most frequently used word among the trainers at Charley Brown's. We were also taught never to ask: "How would you like your meat prepared?" The word "meat" was too open to "loose" interpretation according to our team captain, who confided: "I have a very dirty mind, and if someone asked me how I wanted my meat prepared..."<br />
<br />
Meanwhile, throughout each day's training, the only break was a half hour for cold sandwiches, which we lined up for and ate together. The only really enjoyable part of the training came when we got to sample all the desserts served at the restaurant. The rest of the experience was painful and tension-producing. At first the group seemed to have some awareness that the training experience was, as one fellow commented, "like joining the Moonies." But soon many trainees seemed to have swallowed the Charley Brown line; some were even getting chummy with our trainers. I imagined them becoming clones of the clones. They would start talking alike, dressing alike, acting alike, thinking alike. Horrors! Would I too start incorporating Charley Brown vocabulary into my speech, saying "Great!" and referring to a drink or food item as a "puppy?" Would I start wearing shiny patent leather high heels that hurt my little "tootsies" and so much make-up on my eyes that I would have to bat them to keep them open? Did I want co-workers like Gary, a tall, blond, slick-looking Southern California type who didn't have an ounce of warmth or compassion in his steel-grey eyes, only utter boredom and emptiness?<br />
<br />
On the last day of training I was ready with my new uniform ($75 for shirt and shoes alone). The only thing I didn't have was motivation. Still, I thought I would try it for a couple of days, for curiosity's sake.<br />
<br />
However, when I walked in that morning I was called into the general manager's office. Somehow I knew what was coming. They told me I was being terminated because I didn't "fit in" and mumbled something about test performance, although I had done well on all the tests. They handed me my pay for the past three days and asked for the apron and the tie. "Good luck," said Mr. Dining Room Manager. "Good luck to you," I said with all the civility I could muster. Suddenly my head was spinning. "Try to have a nice day," he said. I felt as if I might cry if I tried to say anything else. It was the indignity of the thing, and the shock. I had never been fired before. I had barely made enough money to cover the cost of the high heels and the shirt.<br />
<br />
As I left the office and walked out of the dining room filled with my former co-workers taking their daily training exam, I suddenly started feeling better. I walked outside into the brilliant sunshine with the sapphire blue bay as backdrop. Feeling wonderfully free. I decided I was going to have a great day after all. <br />
<br />
[[category:Labor]] [[category:Tales of Toil]] [[category:Fisherman's Wharf]] [[category:1980s]]</div>
Ccarlsson
https://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Them_That%27s_Not
Them That's Not
2024-02-29T05:21:52Z
<p>Ccarlsson: </p>
<hr />
<div>'''<font face = Papyrus> <font color = maroon> <font size = 4>"I was there..."</font></font> </font>'''<br />
<br />
:''"Foundsf.org is republishing a series of "Tales of Toil" that appeared in [[Processed World: A Political History|''Processed World magazine'']] between 1981 and 2004. As first-hand accounts of what it was like working at various jobs during those years, these accounts provide a unique view into an aspect of labor history rarely archived, or shared.''<br />
<br />
''by Peter Wentworth''<br />
<br />
''—from Processed World #12, published in November, 1984.''<br />
<br />
[[Image:Them.gif]]<br />
<br />
The clangor of the nine o'clock bell jerks me out of my seat in the warmth of the Teacher's Room and hurries me down the corridor and out into the playground. It is a raw, gusty November day. I clutch my mug of tea like a talisman as I approach the wobbly, wriggling line of kids back up behind the big white "20" painted on the worn asphalt. All down the length of the building, the other teachers are doing the same with their lines of kids.<br />
<br />
"Good morning," I say, unconsciously slipping on the teacher's mask (impartial friendliness, enthusiasm, and firmness in equal part) and the teacher's voice (the same mix, pitched to carry without effort, pushed out by the belly muscles like an actor's). A couple of rather desultory "Hi's" and "Good morning, Mr. Wentworth's." Antennae up, I move down the line of kids like a politician, shaking hands, checking body temperatures. This is the toughest hour of the day. If we can get through this without any major incidents, it's all downhill until 3:15.<br />
<br />
The typical day in Grades 1-3 kicks off with an hour for Reading. At Warren G. Harding Primary School (a pseudonym, as are all the other names associated with the school I'm writing about) we have "split reading." That is, about half the children in my second-grade class come in for reading and "Language Arts" at 9:00 and leave at 2:00 while the other half arrive and leave an hour later. Following the near-universal practice, my slower group is the one that comes in early. When the faster comes in we have roll call, "sharing time," and the baroque business of collecting lunch money. This involves sorting through the change that flustered parents scrabble out of purses and pockets while the school bus mumbles and honks fretfully at the corner, and passing out the tickets (free, half rate, full rate, single, multiple, milk only). If a teacher is lucky, she/he has an aide to deal with this. If not, bang goes teacher's recess.<br />
<br />
[[Image:School1.gif|left]]<br />
<br />
After recess, usually Math. After Math, lunch—a blessed forty-five minutes at Harding, most other places only allow half an hour. Then comes the loosest hour in the day - Science, Social Studies, Art, or whatever usually in half-hour chunks. At two o'clock, the early group packs up and heads for the bus while the late group gets ten minutes recess before struggling back in for its dose of Language Arts. After dispatching this last group at 3: 10, most teachers spend a couple more hours preparing lessons and materials for tomorrow, correcting children's work, and cleaning up the classroom. Depending on the complexity of the plan, one may be there as late as 4:45 to 6:00 pm. Bilingual teachers, who have to plan two sets of reading lessons routinely stay until 5:30.<br />
<br />
As I walk down the line little Teresa Paganloc wraps herself around my hip with a joyful grin. Richard Guiton, handsome as an Ashanti warrior, shows me an elaborate paper airplane his dad helped him to make. Aminah Freeman, big and sassy, grabs my hand and tries to yank me next to her. Billy Erskine stands glowering, hands jammed in pockets, jacket hood up.<br />
<br />
"Hey, Billy," I say. "Looks like somebody hit you with the grumpy stick." No response. "What's the trouble, Billy?" I insist.<br />
<br />
"Ma-a--a-n," he growls softly, staring at the ground.<br />
<br />
"Spit it out," I urge him.<br />
<br />
"These two kids been teasin' me on the bus. I didn't say nothin' to 'in, but they won't leave me alone., Ma-a-a-n, after school I'm gonna kick their butts!" He smacks his fist into his palm two or three times, sealing his resolve.<br />
<br />
"Relax," I say—a word I probably use with him more than any other. "During recess you tell me who those kids are and I'll talk to their teacher. Meanwhile, we've got work to do, OK?" Billy nods sullenly.<br />
<br />
My heart sinks. If Jaharie and Angie are in the same kind of mood, the chain reaction will blow their reading group clean out of the water. It will also probably mean the Principal's office and parent call before the end of the day.<br />
<br />
An increasing proportion of children in urban public schools are from what used to be called "broken homes." That is, they are being raised by their mothers, sometimes in tandem with grandparents and aunts. Father is (check where applicable, as they say on Welfare applications): separated; on the lam; in the joint; psychopathic; alcoholic or heavy drug user; and/all of the above.<br />
<br />
Nowhere are the deeper consequences of "Reaganomics" (i.e. current capitalist reality, whoever's in charge) more visible than in public schools. The decrepit buildings, obsolete textbooks, and overworked, underpaid staff are trivial side-effects compared with the havoc the 80's corporate counterattack is wreaking on poor and working-class children in the home. 55% of Black children are born to single mothers, many in their teens; unemployment for Black men is officially around 20%; men are leaving the labor force at about the same rate as women are entering it; rape and child abuse are on the rise. In my classroom, these statistics take on a savage three dimensionality.<br />
<br />
Billy is a case in point. Mrs. Erskine is a computer programmer in a downtown office, clinging to job and income by the skin of her teeth, but at least making the same rate as her white female counterparts. Billy's father hasn't had regular work in four years. They separated two years ago, after a good deal of misery and some violence. Most of what I know about him comes from Billy, since Mrs. Erskine hardly speaks of him. I've met him once on the street, a soft-spoken, gentle-eyed man in worn slacks and watch-cap, taking Billy out for a cheese-steak sandwich on a Friday night. Billy introduces us, with surprising pride in both of us. My teacher. My Daddy.<br />
<br />
"I know Billy got some problems in school, but we always tellin' him to study," Mr. Erskine said. We shook hands. Walking away, I thought about the millions of women working for five and six dollars an hour in offices while their men, workers who once pulled twelve hundred a month before tax, along with health, dental and retirement plan, mope in front of the TV or haunt the corner by the liquor store. Now the rage and humiliation accumulates - inside them, abruptly grounding its voltage through the bodies of the very women and children they have been trained to believe it is their masculine responsibility to "provide for." These are the actual human consequences of what economists call "the shift to a post-industrial, service-based economy.<br />
<br />
The other children in line are getting restless and testy. "Hey, Mr. Wentworth, can we go inside? It's freezin' out here!" Thomas yells. There is a small chorus of agreement. "OK, let's go," I call. Behind me the line shuffles toward the door.<br />
<br />
It takes three minutes to get everyone up two flights of stairs. Mrs. Atkins, my aide, lets in the first arrivals, while I break up the two quarrels that have developed at the rear. This is a worse morning than usual, but not an exceptional one.<br />
<br />
Mrs. Atkins is fairly typical of the classroom aides in our district—a tough, shrewd, good-humored Black woman of about forty. I was an aide for about a year and a half before I became a teacher, so I know the group pretty well. Most got their jobs when the district was integrated in the mid-sixties. They were mothers of children in the same schools in which they now work, who came in (initially often as volunteers) to save White teachers who had not the faintest idea how to cope with working-class Black children.<br />
<br />
The aides' miserable pay—$5.33-6.20 per hour for what are usually twenty-five or thirty-hour-a-week jobs—and low status is a result of this situation. While most aides have become literate enough to teach elementary school children, few have formal qualifications beyond a high-school diploma. Nevertheless, they are indispensible—and to a young, inexperienced teacher like me, invaluable. I learned more about managing young children from the aides in three months than I learned from my "master teacher" in a year.<br />
<br />
When I was an aide, I once asked our Business Agent, a puffy, thirty-fivish little bureaucrat, why our pay was so bad. At first he took this a personal affront, but after a little he settled into a confidential, one-white-man-to-another knowingness. Without actually saying so, he implied that "these ladies". couldn't possibly earn more anywhere else, that after all they mostly weren't too bright, that besides, the fringes were good for part-time and that when you came right down to it, they were pretty lucky. I walked away cursing myself for being too cowardly to tell him what I really thought of him: but at the time I needed the job and knew he could screw me with the district if he took a disliking to me.<br />
<br />
Mrs. A takes the most advanced subgroup to read a story out loud together from the reader. I assign the middle-level kids some pages in their workbook and steel myself for the lowest group Billy, Jaharie, and Angie. I've tried some "Language Experience" when I've had time—getting Billy to dictate a sentence which I write down, then having him copy it over and read it out loud, then draw a picture of what it says, that kind of thing - but I can't work one-on-one very much of the time. So the Reading Specialist (who can't work with them himself until they've gone through the lengthy bureaucratic procedure of Referral to Special Ed) has prescribed a "linguistic reader." This is a simple narrative that builds on "word families" (chub/cub/tub, hen/Jen/ men) via extensive repetition of a tiny vocabulary. The group has already read the story about three or four times and is crawling through the workbook an inch at a time; filling blanks, checking boxes, tracing letters.<br />
<br />
I settle the three of them around me in one corner of the room.<br />
<br />
Billy groans. "Oh man, not again! I don' wanna read this dumb book!"<br />
<br />
Jaharie sees his chance to score off Billy." I do, Mr. Wentworth! I do! I wanna read it. I can read this book good!" Billy scrunches down in his chair with his arms folded tight across his chest, pouting, Angie makes a face at him and giggles sneakily.<br />
<br />
"Be quiet, Angie!" Billy snarls. Angie grins triumphantly.<br />
<br />
"OK, let's read," I say. "Jaharie, you start." I have long ago given up trying to get Billy to read when he refuses like this. Jaharie reads a page at a reasonable pace with few errors. At the end of the page he pauses triumphantly.<br />
<br />
"I did good, hub, Mr. Wentworth?" Before I can say a word he goes on "Hey, Billy, you only doin' that 'cause you can't hardly read nothin!"<br />
<br />
Billy does his fist-in-palm routine and throws his book on the floor.<br />
<br />
"Knock it off, Jaharie!" I say, sharply. "Now Angie, you read a little." Angie, as usual, has not been paying attention. She divides most of her time between day dreaming and trying to get attention from the boys in the class—mostly by flirting and "love notes," sometimes, as with Billy, by provocation. Now she giggles again and starts reading, stumbling over every second word.<br />
<br />
"Oooh, you readin' bad, Angie!" Jaharie coos, with a brilliant smile on his guilelessly beautiful face. "You almost as bad as Billy."<br />
<br />
"Shut yo' mouth!" Angie snaps.<br />
<br />
"Shut up yourself, faggot!" yells Jaharie, illogically. Angie begins to cry and kicks Jaharie. I send her back to her desk with her workbook, threaten Jaharie with being sent outside, and concentrate on Billy.<br />
<br />
With me at his side, encouraging, giving total attention, Billy struggles through a sentence word by word, like someone crossing a river by leaping from one slippery, wobbly rock to the next, his whole body tense with the effort. Another sentence, the same way.<br />
<br />
"Good, Billy, great!"<br />
<br />
Billy shakes his head. "I don' wanna read this book no mo'!" He pulls his jacket over his head, which usually means he's going to cry. At her desk, Angie is sitting, eyes unfocused, occasionally giving her head a little shake or giggling, otherwise doing nothing. Jaharie is actually writing in his workbook. In a few minutes, or tomorrow, I'll try again.<br />
<br />
Every urban elementary classroom I've worked in has contained at least one or two "emotionally disturbed" children who "act out": in other words, angry, bitter, self-hating kids who can't get along with their peers, their teachers or themselves. Most I've met were Black or White, some Latino, very rarely Asian. Most also come from Billy's kind of home - raised by their mothers alone, by foster parents, or shuffled around between relatives. Many are also "learning disabled": that is, they have trouble learning to read. These three problems—damaged family, anger and self-hatred, and learning difficulties - interact in complicated and destructive ways.<br />
<br />
Declining test scores have forced a widespread recognition that the obviously "disturbed" and "disabled" children are only extreme cases of problems that afflict much larger numbers of children a lot more diffusely. In the recent flurry of anxiety over the decline in public education, the Blame Thrower has been trained in all directions—at teachers of course, at "permissive" curricula and parents, at TV, and so on. There are grains of truth to most of the accusations (except the idea, favored by Reaganoids, that the abolition of, school prayer is where everything went wrong) but none of them really get the whole picture.<br />
<br />
It begins with parents—single or couples—under terrible economic and social pressures. Too much work or none at all, not enough money, isolation, frustration, boredom, despair. Children born into this set-up—often into a relationship that's already coming apart by the time they can talk—are chronically insecure. They depend for emotional sustenance on one or two adults who, worn out by survival, seldom have enough time and energy for them.<br />
<br />
Mrs. Erskine, a handsome, well-dressed woman in her mid-thirties, sits trembling at the corner of my desk for our twice quarterly conference, which we've had to schedule during recess.<br />
<br />
"Often times when I get home I'm really exhausted," she tells me, tears forming at the corners of her eyes. "And, you know, Billy want to play, he's got, so much energy, but I'm just too beat, so he keep on at me and then I speak harsh to him... I just don't know what to do sometimes." She wants me to find some solution, some magic that will put Billy back on track. Every month or two a parent will unburden her or his soul to me as she/he never would to a psychiatrist ("I'm not sick!") and expect me as a "professional" to be able to sort it out. Even as teachers are denigrated in the mass media, working-class parents are turning to them more and more as primary collaborators in the basic socialization of their children.<br />
<br />
School is merely a continuation of the problem. Harassed teachers with classes of twenty-five to thirty children cannot possibly provide enough individual or small-group attention to make up for nurturing deficiencies in the home. Nor can they substitute for the home's crucial educational function. Children learn the essentials of language in the home, not at school. If the home lacks "complex verbal transactions" (i.e. real conversation) between its adult members, the child's early language learning may be critically impaired. Meanwhile, the child in the "language-poor" home usually winds up parked in front of the TV—a world of constant exciting violence, of flashy expensive toys dangled before her eyes, of reality chopped into three-minute segments. Children thus electronically weaned can only be infuriated by the relatively rigid collective structures of the classroom, the static dullness of words on paper - and utterly unprepared for the complex tasks it requires of them.<br />
<br />
By 11:45, Billy is in a bad way. He has thrown his books and pencils on the floor several times and is hiding under his jacket again. If I try to get him to do anything, he just shakes his head violently. Finally he mumbles: "Gimme a knife."<br />
<br />
"A knife? What do you need a knife for?"<br />
<br />
"I wanna cut myself."<br />
<br />
In a horrified rush of understanding, I put my arm around his shoulders and speak very quietly in his ear. "Billy, it's not your fault. You've been trying hard, and when you don't get angry you do good work. You're a good guy, Billy, and I'm your friend."<br />
<br />
In a moment his anger melts and he begins to cry, pulling the jacket over his head again. I stay with him for a while, wishing I could just take him out of there—out of the noisy, chalky, faded room into the open air, and walk and talk with him. But I have twenty-seven other children I am paid to deal with. I get up and go back to the front of the classroom to line the children up for lunch.<br />
<br />
Everything conspires to make children like Billy blame themselves for the disaster that is befalling them—the short tempers of exhausted, frustrated parents, the reproaches and punishments of exasperated teachers, the fact that the majority of their peers seem to be doing all right. When they see those peers outstripping them in reading, math, drawing - peers whose parents have time enough to talk to them, education enough to fill in for the teacher, money enough to stock the house with books and educational toys—they feel inferior. They are trapped in a violent oscillation between self-hatred (manifested as depression, inability to concentrate, bitter contempt for every scrap of schoolwork they actually manage to do) and outbursts of rage (smashing things, verbal or physical attacks on other children). In between are more subtle symptoms compulsive lying and stealing. The fact that their parents often feel the same way about themselves slams the trap shut.<br />
<br />
At 12:07, the Teachers' Room is already full of conversation, clattering plates and tobacco smoke. Most of my colleagues are women over 45, several only a few years from retirement. Since declining enrollments and slashed budgets resulted in a virtual hiring freeze throughout the late '70's, new teachers like me are still a relative rarity except in Bilingual, where the majority are young. As a result, there are cliques, pecking orders, unwritten rules that have evolved over decades of association. The same groups tend to sit at the same tables, day after day. I've long ago given up trying to spot the Invisible Shields around this or that chair, table, or conversation and simply plop down wherever I feet like it, ignoring snubs. Sometimes I'll select the most likely conversation, other times I'll seek out somebody who can give me advice on a particular student.<br />
<br />
Most are glad to be asked. Teachers (like jazz musicians, field surgeons, and any number of other kinds of skilled workers) instinctively socialize their knowledge and experience, not out of ideological conviction but out of necessity. Standard openers over the Tupperware boxes of chicken salad and glistening mounds of Saran Wrap:<br />
<br />
"What do you do with a child who ... ?"<br />
<br />
"You know what Lamont did today?"<br />
<br />
"How's your little Marina these days? Any further out of the zone?"<br />
<br />
"How'd that egg-carton activity work out?"<br />
<br />
Good teachers are obsessed. They trade advice, references, anecdotes about the children the way other people trade recipes and gossip. Mediocre teachers join in too, because it's easier than trying to go it alone. Yet in all this rich exchange of information, the amount of social reflection, of stepping back from the trees to look at the forest is generally negligible. Not that they can't make the connections if they get around to it. I once heard a group of aides and teachers go from the comings of the school lunch program, to increased military spending, to the risks of intervention in Central America, to the dismal future for their pupils, all in less than five minutes.<br />
<br />
As a rule, though, primary teachers don't talk much about social questions. Nor do they think of themselves as workers, although some participate in union affairs. When a strike is called, they go along. Unlike high school and junior-high teachers, who tend to be militant, elementary teachers seem to regard teaching as simultaneously a profession (rather than a job) and as a duty, an extension of the mothering they have given their own children, part of their traditional role as women. For the most part, they do not question this role (nor the continuing grotesque sexism of many teaching materials, and, for that matter, of children's TV, books, etc.), any more than they question the content of schooling, the power relationships within the educational apparatus, or the class division of society which presents itself so painfully in the lives of many of their pupils. But also for the most part, and for some of the same reasons, they do their best within the terms of their situation.<br />
<br />
I watch the "two-o'clockers" charging across the playground to where others are already lined up waiting for the buses. Billy, whose parents helplessly love him but can't live with each other. Jaharie, whose junkie father goes in and out of jail and in and out of marriage with Jaharie's mother. Angie, whose father from all the signs (extreme aversive reaction to adult male touch alternating with open sexual suggestiveness) molested her until her mother kicked him out. Brian and Jake, my two White working-class toughs, whose parents keep them awake screaming at each other. Aminah, bounced back and forth between an easygoing alcoholic father and an ultra-authoritarian Fundamentalist mother. Teresa, whose struggling immigrant parents punish her unmercifully every time her grades are less than perfect.<br />
<br />
Then I turn back toward the room as the "Three-o'clockers" come in from recess—almost all of them cheerful, studious, cooperative kids. Kids who have at least one parent already there to welcome and talk and play with them when they get home at three-thirty. Kids who are read aloud to every night, who have their endless questions about the world patiently answered, who get to travel to faraway fascinating places, who are encouraged to dream, who are regularly celebrated as the center of attention. For them, the foundations of learning are so firmly established at home that the deficiencies of the schools - the insufficient individualization of learning, the dreariness of the classroom situation, the necessity for over-restrained and uniform behavior that is imposed by this situation - affect them relatively little. For them, the problems will come later when the kindly, luminous world of middle-class childhood starts to wither around sixth or seventh grade. Even then, for many, the pleasure they take in learning will survive the schools and everything else, though it may well be extinguished by the necessities of selling their lives away in order to survive.<br />
<br />
Conversely, some of the "two-o'clockers" may find some emotional stability and some jump-start of motivation that will enable them to catch up with the others and escape the trap that has been prepared for them. But the fate of the majority has already been decided:<br />
::"Them that's got shall get,<br />
::Them that's not shall lose.<br />
::God bless the child<br />
::That's got its own."<br />
<br />
[[category:Schools]] [[category:Tales of Toil]] [[category:Labor]] [[category:1980s]]</div>
Ccarlsson
https://foundsf.org/index.php?title=A_Day_in_the_Life_of_Employee_85292
A Day in the Life of Employee 85292
2024-02-29T05:06:15Z
<p>Ccarlsson: </p>
<hr />
<div>'''<font face = Papyrus> <font color = maroon> <font size = 4>"I was there..."</font></font> </font>'''<br />
<br />
:''"Foundsf.org is republishing a series of "Tales of Toil" that appeared in [[Processed World: A Political History|''Processed World magazine'']] between 1981 and 2004. As first-hand accounts of what it was like working at various jobs during those years, these accounts provide a unique view into an aspect of labor history rarely archived, or shared.''<br />
<br />
''by Jesse Drew''<br />
<br />
''—from Processed World #14, published in July, 1985.''<br />
<br />
[[Image:14 85292.gif]]<br />
<br />
The acrid aroma of warm ketchup and vinegar revives me as I step into the cool rose-hued early morning air. I crawl into my tin-plated subcompact and rev the engine into a dull roar. I'm gliding onto the Nimitz Freeway, past the ketchup factories and canneries, past the "outdated" industrial plants, the factories and warehouses. Past the abandoned bus factory, where rusted engines and bus chassis lay strewn over the yard. Past the truck plant employee parking lot, once a dense concentration of pickups and chevys, now a desolate landscape of tumbleweeds and beer cans. I'm cruising over the San Mateo bridge and veering south, into the future. The signs say Palo Alto, Mountain View, Sunnyvale but I'm reading Silicon Valley on each one. No more smokestacks, no more peaked tin roofs. Instead we have "university style buildings." Flat roofs. Rolling lawns. I pull into the parking lot of Hewlett- Packard's Santa Clara Division, slowing down to flash my badge to the guard on duty but not really bothering to stop. Why waste precious time? We receive a notice on this once a month. "All employees must come to a full stop and show the guard their badge." For our own safety and security of course.<br />
<br />
[[Image:14superhpman trans.gif|right]]<br />
<br />
I walk across the vast parking lot in the slanting morning sun clutching my paper bag of lunch. I remember my first days at HP being ridiculed for bringing my lunch in a tin bucket, like everyone did at the factory. HA HA, where do you come from? It reminded people of Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble going to work at the stone quarry. Here we bring lunch in paper bags. That's progress.<br />
<br />
I show my badge to the guard at the desk and walk into the stale conditioned air of building 2A. My building is only one of five at this division employing almost 2000 people. The building is a sea of modular partitions and workbenches. I mumble my hellos to the technicians at their benches hunched over their data books, catching up on a little sleep. I wave hello in the direction of the women assemblers, already perched over their chassis, trying to remember what goes where. I make my way to my bench, mechanical assembler position, a fifteen-foot-long bench with trays and trays of nuts, bolts, screws, washers, and hardware stretched out before me. A pile of tools at my elbows. I quickly take off my jacket and fumble my tools around, coughing and clearing my throat to announce my presence. There are no time clocks to punch here so you are clocked in by the several busybodies who make it their business to see when you come in. The eyes and ears of the supervisors. If your jacket is still on, it means that you just walked in the door.<br />
<br />
I make a short trip to the main coffee dispenser in the main building. Got to start waking up. I stare at the skeleton of an instrument before me on my workbench. Where did I leave off? It starts coming back to me and I slowly start piecing the skeleton together, destined to become yet another Hewlett-Packard Fourier Analyzer. Nothing to look forward to until 9 o'clock break. The morning is a blur of humming fluorescent lights and lukewarm coffee. I am lost in my work until, finally, the break trays are spotted rolling down the aisles. It's Tuesday, cookie day. I see the forewarned are already heading the cart off at the pass, grabbing the best cookies. The cart arrives and two pots of coffee and the tray of cookies are placed on our rack before rolling off to distribute to other break areas. A line is quickly formed and we grab our rations and join our respective social circles to talk and gossip. I edge into an assembler station and talk with some friends. <br />
<br />
"Where's Ellen today?," I ask the group.<br />
<br />
Marie perks up, "You didn't see her get the escort yesterday? She got canned yesterday about 2:30."<br />
<br />
"What!!," I shout in disbelief. I lower my voice instantly and everyone looks nervously around. "Why?"<br />
<br />
"That bitch of a lead didn't like her. Prob'ly 'cause she's black. I talked to her last night. She's glad to be out of here, she was sick of this place."<br />
<br />
"She really needed this job though," says Becky. "It's hard to find work these days."<br />
<br />
Everyone nods.<br />
<br />
"She'll find something," says Marie. <br />
<br />
The conspiracy of the five of us talk quietly, making sure one of the supervisors, or their eyes or ears, aren't listening in. We all keep smiles on our faces. HP, you see, doesn't have layoffs. Never. There'll be no unemployment insurance for them to pay. Coincidentally, when the economy goes sour, there seems to be a rash of firings. In the afternoon, there'll be a tap on the back, a quick trip to personnel, and out the door without one chance to say "goodbye, I'm fired." Not one chance to tell your coworkers what's happening or exchange phone numbers. Spiriting people out the door like that makes most people feel they're to blame themselves. Most are too embarrassed to even come back for their belongings.<br />
<br />
"I was just getting to know Ellen, too bad," I mutter to myself.<br />
<br />
And then, much too soon, break's over. We all saunter back to our work stations. I'm up to my elbows in hardware. I'm assembling frames for instruments. Assembling the chassis, installing the transformer, the switch assembly, the fuseholders, the lights and LED's, the cardholders. I'm installing the mini box fan, to keep the instrument cool and calm. Me and these fans have a history. I got tired of watching the heavy solder smoke curl up the women's nostrils over in chassis wiring area.<br />
<br />
"How can you stand breathing that stuff all day long?," I would ask.<br />
<br />
"HMM, oh, you get used to it," Mae said. She ought to know, she's been working for HP for thirty years now. One of the few who still remember Bill and Dave handing out the Christmas checks.<br />
<br />
"It's really bad to breathe that stuff you know."<br />
<br />
"Oh, everything is bad for your these days."<br />
<br />
Mae is a tough, loyal old-timer type. The other women on the line detested breathing fumes all day long, however. So, I started requisitioning extra box fans from the stock room, since my job enabled me to procure spare parts for repair work. I would wire the little fans and put them on the workbenches and they would at least blow the solder smoke away from the nostrils. Soon, everyone wanted a little fan of their own. I was having a hard time filling orders. All was well for several months when, boom, our breath of fresh air died. The management caught on to our poor judgement and misuse of company assets. Fans were for cool and breezy instruments, not for assemblers' faces. The fans were rounded up and herded back into the stockroom. No one, it seemed, really knew where those little fans came from all wired up like that though. Mysterious.<br />
<br />
At one of our little department meetings, I requested ventilation for all the employees' benches. Sherry, our new supervisor, was horrified. Supes were rated on keeping department expenditures down. She smiled benevolently, after regaining her composure, and chided us little children for asking for exorbitant luxuries like ventilation. Sherry was a new hire fresh from Stanford who had never worked a day in her life before now, yet here she was telling the electronic facts of life to people who have been working in the industry for many years. No one, however, backed me up on my proposal after she ridiculed it like that.<br />
<br />
Around a month later, Mae came back from a three week vacation, all tan and relaxed. Her second day back on the job she came in furious.<br />
<br />
"Do you know, Sherry, that I've had blisters in my nostrils for as long as I can remember. They actually went away while I was on my vacation. I could actually breathe properly. Do you know that one day back on the job and they're back again! It's that damn solder smoke, I'm sure of it. We must have some vents in here!"<br />
<br />
Sherry's face was a flustred pink while Mae continued her story to all the women in the area as they sat around the big table wiring chassis. Big festering sores in her nose for twenty-some odd years and never placed the cause.<br />
<br />
On break time I wrote up a petition demanding ventilation and everyone quickly signed. I xeroxed it and left it on Sherry's desk. I told her I'm giving a copy to the area manager. She was in a panic. Letting rebellion spread is an unpardonable offense for a supervisor. Several days later, installation people were installing a central vent with individual air scoops for the work stations. Sherry's hatred of me stems from this day.<br />
<br />
I'm installing a cable harness and a subassembly which comes from yet another area. Now it's ready for the chassis working. I put it on a shelf for the wiring people to take. It will take them about eight hours to wire just one of them. I go back to another chassis and repeat the same steps. I work automatically, grabbing the right crinkle washer, the right locknuts, screws, tinnermans. Working miniature little nuts in the tiny space between the transformer and the frame. What a pain. My hands fly from tweezers to screwdrivers, to needle nose pliers to wirecutters, solder irons, solder suckers, crescent wrenches, allen wrenches, bus wire, the tools of the trade. I'm like an automaton. I know this particular instrument well so I can daydream and still work.<br />
<br />
I listen to the chatter of the technicians behind me. I catch snatches of their conversation: the 49ers, some asshole of a referee, Willy Nelson's concert, some blonde in a ferrari... I see Louie hunched over his work station. He's strapping a just tested laser on the vibration board. Straps it down with a big black rubber strap. Turns on the motor and it shakes, rattles and rolls with the sound of an outboard motor. They build these lasers tough. Louie shuts the motor off and prepares another one. Last week Louie was walking the line between getting fired or electrocuted. The company had been talking for months of the dangers of static electrical damage to delicate CMOS parts. Just think of it, miniature lightning bolts at our fingertips, this static electricity. They corraled us all into the conference room for a thirty minute film on the danger. We saw crashing F-111's all for the sake of a burnt out little CMOS chip. Sounded like a good idea to me. A little later we were all handed a big black mat that was electrically grounded to our workstations to protect these chips. No more coffee cups at our area since stryofoam harbors these dangerous electrical charges. Certain fabrics were not allowed to be worn to work. Then they handed us all little bracelets with straps to strap ourselves to the tables. To ground ourselves to not damage the chips. Amazingly enough most people did not want to be leashed like dogs to their work stations. To the assemblers it was an insulting thought, but to the technicians it was like telling them to stand in a puddle of water and stick their finger in an electrical socket.<br />
<br />
Louie expressed his fears to me. "I spend my whole technical career trying to remember the old axiom of never grounding yourself and they ask me to do it voluntarily. I work with 10,000 volts on the power supply of this laser. One slip and I'm cooked meat with this grounding strap."<br />
<br />
Louie is a quiet guy. He agonized privately over this dilemma for several days, disturbed that all his coworkers saw no problem with the arrangement. One afternoon he exploded into a tirade against the grounding strap, pointing out the dangers to his coworkers. Seems no one had really thought about it. They all trusted the company's engineers to think it through and make a good decision. They all saw Louie's side and agreed unanimously to refuse to use the strap. They scheduled a meeting the next day with the big boss who also agreed it was a stupid idea. Seems the office people had been sold on all this stuff by the marketing group. Sounded reasonable to them as they never work on electronics. That was the end of the "Leash Law." Louie retreated back into his shy little corner again.<br />
<br />
I see Mike and Pam winding their way through the burn-in area, coming to get me for lunch. We join the stream of the hungry in the aisle and walk up the stairs and through a long sunlit corridor to the cafeteria. We take our trays outside, for some fresh air. Some people are playing volleyball at the net stretched across the courtyard area outside the cafeteria. The famed silicon valley recreation area. This isn't a factory, it's a country club. Actually, you'd be a fool to use your thirty minute lunchbreak to bat a ball around. You eat, talk a little and it's back to work. The people who play volleyball are either on a diet or have no lunch money. I suppose the engineers could play volleyball in between designing new technology but I've never seen them. They go to their private health clubs that are scattered throughout silicon valley. We gossip and bullshit about who's been fired, how we managed to goof off today and who's been getting it on with who. We plan our upcoming weekend. Before we know it it's time to troop back down to our workstations. It was nice seeing the sun as there're no windows in the building downstairs. No distractions. Groups of us are drifting back to work, a parade of happy-faced clones. We all wear painted smiles. All one big family. Management wear shirts with the sleeves rolled up and no ties. That's their uniform. Most have no doors on their offices. They have the "open door policy" here. We refer to that policy when they fire someone. "They open the door and throw them out."<br />
<br />
When I was first hired, at a different HP facility, my boss told me, "You don't come here to make money. You come here to make a contribution. We don't discuss wages here with each other, that's strictly personal." I remember my final interview with this guy, my original boss. With his pen he wrote these letters in capitals for me. M-E-R-I-T. "This is the key to your success here," he told me. "Merit—not seniority like union jobs or cost of living or stuff like that. That's the old days." I noticed he had a pack of Merit cigarettes sticking out of his breast pocket. "What a loser this guy is," I thought as I shook his hand happily and agreed on my future career with HP. I had lied about my work history. I knew I couldn't tell him that my last job, before I was laid off, was a lumper with the Teamsters Union making twice the wage I was to start out as at HP. Anyone with union background is tainted at HP.<br />
<br />
I was sent to a big introduction to the company, to "see the garage" as they say. It was a four-hour media extravaganza with a talk by some VIP, a slideshow, and a big presentation by personnel on "The HP Way." The garage was the highlight of the slide show, the garage being the place where Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard built their first instrument, an oscillator for the Walt Disney production of ''Fantasia.'' I was fully indoctrinated by the end of these four hours and found myself becoming an android for Bill and Dave.<br />
<br />
I kept trying not to think about the time when Dave Packard was Undersecretary of Defense for Nixon during the Vietnam War and a group of us lit fire to the hotel he was speaking at. The flames were licking around the hotel and we could actually see Packard and his buddies at the top of the hotel. We all chanted "Pig Nixon, you're never gonna kill us all" as we blocked the arrival of firetrucks. It took several squads of riot cops to break us loose and send us scattering into the balmy Palo Alto night. That was a long time ago, however.<br />
<br />
My first place of employment at HP was phased out of existence as they moved to their Santa Rosa facility where the wages were cheaper. They started moving regular employees to other worksites and bringing temporaries in to take their places until production was halted for good. Almost every temporary was black. That was weird. There were one or two black employees out of several hundred in my area. HP claims its racial percentage is better than average. HP is a very large employer for the area and obviously hires very few blacks. This leaves a lopsided percentage to look for work as temporaries. My boss explained it to me at one "Beer Bust." This is where they roll out a few kegs of beer and some hot dogs to express their appreciation of us.<br />
<br />
"Blacks aren't good workers," my boss explained to me, quickly looking around making sure no one was in earshot. He was quite delighted at sharing his little philosophy with me, an obviously sympathetic white man. "They're just troublemakers, we prefer orientals." The plant was full of Filipinos, Vietnamese, Mexicans and Latin Americans. HP ensures its workforce will be people who are not in a good position to make "selfish" demands on the company.<br />
<br />
I arrive back at my bench. It's time for "button up." I receive a finished instrument from the technician after it's been assembled, wired, and burned in, i.e. run in a hot box for several days. It's now ready to get the final covers on it. I bring it over to the button up area. I fill in the forms for shipping/receiving and check the instrument for damage or paint chips. I clean the unit up. Put it on a cart and I'm off wheeling this new machine to the stock room.<br />
<br />
None of us assemblers really know what these things do. We only know it goes with a bunch of other instruments, a computer, a CRT screen and a keyboard and costs around 200,000 dollars. Occasionally we see who buys them. General Motors, Lockheed, the Swedish Air Force. They are Fourier Analyzers. That's not the only thing we make here though. Within these five buildings we produce hundreds of different instruments. From lasers to custom integrated circuits. I wheel my cart around into the stockroom and dump it on another table. Will comes and checks it off on his list. Will is a different breed of employee. Most of the workers here are young; Will is in his fifties, from the old school of electronics—electron tubes and military jargon. He's head of the HP garden club.<br />
<br />
There is a several acre lot outside the building that has been plowed up and fenced in. It was divided into about 50 parcels of land. We could sign up for one of them and grow crops on it. I signed up as I love gardening and could use some free vegetables. Several days a week I would join scores of others filing out to the garden to hoe, plant, and water in the slanting afternoon sun, the HP monolith hovering in the background. The scene brought to mind a post-1984 nightmare, serfdom of the future. Working in the plant all day and growing your crops outside. It just lacked the barracks to sleep in. Our crops were coming along OK. At least I thought so. From the front of the garden, with the factory in the background my cucumbers and tomatoes were doing fine. Most of my plot went to corn though. I noticed that as I walked into the corn patch the closest rows were lush and green, but as I walked closer to the factory, the plants were sickly and yellow and the last third of them had not even come up at all. I thought at first that I was just lazy and not watering the rear as much as the front, but one day I took a sweeping look at the whole HP garden club and noticed that a giant line of sickly yellow had been drawn down the width of the garden plot. One third of the garden was poisoned! Then I realized that the whole plot of land that stretched from the garden plot to the building had not one blade of grass or weed on it. We were gardening on the edge of some sea of poisonous chemicals! I was thankful that I hadn't carried home a load of chemical soaked vegetables to my wife who was pregnant at the time. I pointed this chemical sweep out to the garden club officials, but they thought it would still be OK to eat the vegetables that survived the chemical holocaust. That was the end of my green thumb. I let my poor garden shrivel in the sun.<br />
<br />
I'm back at my bench again, assembling, assembling, assembling. I've run out of excuses to leave my bench. I've gotten parts out of the stockroom, I've delivered to the stockroom, I've gone to the bathroom, I went to get some more shipping forms. I've accepted the fact of working till the afternoon break. It's amazing what you will get used to. You do develop some pride in your ability to do simple things. I can assemble these things very fast when I want to, which is not very often. Me and one other woman are the only ones who know how to assemble these things. She trained me since she will retire in several years. Bess has been doing this job for almost thirty years, another old-timer. I was asked to document the assembly of this product as I learned the procedure, but I stopped after a few weeks. We're more valuable without documentation.<br />
<br />
Second break. More coffee comes rolling down the aisle. I grab a cup and I'm off at a fast pace to visit some friends in another building. It's about a three minute walk to get there and I only have ten minutes. I run past the stock area, past the machine shop, past the degreasing area with its vats of steaming chemicals. I walk into the vast Printed Circuit Board area. There's about 50 women sitting in front of little racks of Printed Circuit boards, loading them up with capacitors, Integrated Circuits, and resistors. Pairs of reddening eyes look up from their giant illuminated magnifying glasses and microscopes. I see my friends, Laura and Rose, standing up and stretching in the walkway. Laura had worked with me at my last jobsite for HP and transferred here also. We go out the back door and cross the parking lot to smoke a joint in Rose's car. Both complain about their supervisors. The printed circuit area is a very harassed area. Lots of bickering and quarreling. The stories they tell remind me of the movie "Caged" where the matronly women jailers harass and torment their prisoners, mostly young women. We finish the joint and run back to the building. I still must reach my area in a matter of minutes. Being a few minutes late from break time can be an excuse for a lousy or no pay raise come review time.<br />
<br />
It won't be long now. The final stretch of the afternoon has begun. My eyes are fatigued. My fingers are trembling from dexterously manipulating hardware all day. I'm bored to death. I've run out of reminiscences, sexual fantasies, and daydreams. I think of what I'm going to do tonight. The early risers are starting to drift out. Our "flextime" enables us to come to work within a two hour time slot, work our hours and leave. Sometimes I appreciate this flexibility, but I really miss the power I felt working in the factory when we all arrived en masse to take control of the machines. Even as wage slaves, there is something very powerful when a shift of workers leaves the production lines at the same time and march out of the plant together. Something that reinforced and gave the impression of unity and solidarity. Here, in silicon valley, they have us believe that we voluntarily come to work on our own accord and at our own convenience. What a joke.<br />
<br />
Finally I have five minutes to go. I start cleaning up my area. Put away the tools. I nod goodbye to my co-workers. "See ya tomorrow, take it easy." I'm out the door. Fresh air, how great. Cars are revving up and twisting out of the parking lot. I check the paint on my car. A few rust spots, that's all. A few weeks ago it was discovered that the ventilation system was fouled up and raw chemical fumes were being emitted from the "smoke stacks." It had stripped the paint off of 300 cars and HP paid for new paint jobs for all of them. At first I thought how generous, but what other damage had been done? What did it do to our lungs or the lungs of nearby housing tract neighbors? New paint jobs were a small price to pay. I was surprised that not one thing about it appeared in the newspapers. Electronics is such a "clean" industry. But then many stories I've heard about chemical dumping and poisonous fumes never appear in the papers.<br />
<br />
I cruise out of the parking lot and join the crawling freeway traffic back to the East Bay. Hi tech workers creeping alongside auto workers and warehouse workers. The only difference between us high-tech workers and industrials is that we get paid half the amount. But then, that's the HP way. <br />
<br />
[[category:Labor]] [[category:Tales of Toil]] [[category:1980s]] [[category:Technology]] [[category:South Bay and Peninsula]]</div>
Ccarlsson
https://foundsf.org/index.php?title=It_Takes_a_Janitor_._._.
It Takes a Janitor . . .
2024-02-28T06:42:41Z
<p>Ccarlsson: </p>
<hr />
<div>'''<font face = Papyrus> <font color = maroon> <font size = 4>"I was there..."</font></font> </font>'''<br />
<br />
:''"Foundsf.org is republishing a series of "Tales of Toil" that appeared in [[Processed World: A Political History|''Processed World magazine'']] between 1981 and 2004. As first-hand accounts of what it was like working at various jobs during those years, these accounts provide a unique view into an aspect of labor history rarely archived, or shared.''<br />
<br />
''by Zoe Noe''<br />
<br />
''—from Processed World #11, published in 1984.''<br />
<br />
<br />
<big>'''. . . To Tell This Tale'''</big><br />
<br />
''by Anonymous''<br />
<br />
[[Image:Janitor-title-processedworld11proc-26.jpg]] <br />
<br />
I'm a janitor in a downtown San Francisco Financial District building. I've been a janitor for about three years, since I was laid off my last job in industry. I have been a production worker most of my life, went to college for a year, but it just seemed like such a waste of time. I was older than the other students (the Vietnam era intervened in my life some) and they were mostly into getting a career and getting all set in some corporation. Today they are called Yuppies. Back then they were just hungry for money. I chose working in a shipyard over sitting in a classroom; nobody was counting on the industrial sector of the American working class being kicked out in the cold back in '74.<br />
<br />
I've had occasion to regret not choosing a white collar profession, especially in the last couple of years. It's getting harder and harder to make a living as a janitor. The pay is a living wage if you don't mind living in an apartment for the price of a house with a yard, riding Muni to work crammed into a car full of strangers and eating a sandwich out of a brown paper bag to save money because you can't afford the prices of a decent restaurant or tolerate the stuff they turn out as food at McDonald's. It's the same story all over. Life in the City is disappointing and dreary, but there's no work in the outlying areas that pays enough to live.<br />
<br />
The last place I worked paid less than scale ($10.24 an hour) because it wasn't covered by the Building Owners and Managers contract. Since I worked there less than the six months necessary to be considered "permanent" personnel, I got laid off when they reorganized the night janitors to cut maintenance costs. The "reorganization" involved adding work that was once the responsibility of "floaters" to the already speeded-up schedule of the station janitors. As a floater, I had been assigned to scrubbing bathrooms (why they call a room where you go to smoke, shit, or wash your hands a bathroom, I do not know). Sometimes I vacuumed furniture or cleaned air convectors in offices. All of these jobs are more or less undesirable, but better than being unemployed. At least, more lucrative.<br />
<br />
Sometimes, when a station janitor was sick I would have to do two complete floors. We all get sick a lot, probably because we're exposed to everybody's garbage and because they cut off the air conditioning at 6:30 p.m. to save money, meaning we breathe the stale, dust-laden air all night.<br />
<br />
'''The Union'''<br />
<br />
Everybody says the Union is gutless. The president of the local (Service Employees Union International, Local 87), Wray Jacobs, is perceived as a real adversary by the bosses. He promised to clean up the job-selling and favoritism in the local, but it still goes on. Used to be that the secretaries and assistants up at the union office were all related to the business agents; their wives, girlfriends, whatever. Union politics are perceived as the personal domain of those people on the "inside." If you try and talk about it, look into the recent history of the local, you get a lot of vague answers from everyone involved. Jacobs was removed from office once for squandering union funds on an expensive telephone system and a computer to keep track of dues. Dues doubled to pay for it.<br />
<br />
There are a lot of immigrant janitors. Central Americans, Nicaraguans, Salvadorans, Guatemalans, they tend to stick together and are a big force in the union. The janitors from the Middle East, Saudi Arabia, North and South Yemen, Iran, Iraq stick together, too, because they speak a language almost nobody else can understand. They can talk about the Supervisor with him standing right there, call him names, insult his mother, whatever--he understands nothing. A supervisor that speaks Farsi tends to be a two-edged sword, he acts like a defender to the Arabs and ridicules them to the boss.<br />
<br />
The other major group is the Chinese and US-born older immigrants, and new immigrants from Hong Kong. They also stick together, but they are a very conservative influence on the union. Only the new guys from Hong Kong, the Vietnamese or the other Southeast Asians are very rebellious. The old Chinese are scared for their jobs, and hardly ever say anything to anybody.<br />
<br />
The smallest minorities are whites and blacks. Where I worked we had about twenty-five guys, two whites, two blacks, and the rest were Asian, Central American, or Arab. The other white guy used to tell me that now he knew what it was like to be black. The foremen were Spanish-speaking. They favored C.A.s from their own country (Nicaragua) and always saved the real shit work for the whites and the blacks.<br />
<br />
The job market for janitors is so over-loaded with unemployed production workers that I have seen fistfights at the Union Hall for a place in line to get on the sign-up roster. They changed the rules so as to eliminate that competitive aspect of job assignment, but there is always a crowd of people with that desperate I-gotta-get-a-job look in their eyes.<br />
<br />
[[Image:Your-shit-is-our-bread-and-butter-processedworld11proc-31.jpg]]<br />
<br />
I'm waiting in line to pay my dues. The phones in the office haven't stopped ringing since I arrived. The secretaries and assistants and business agents are apparently all gone somewhere. One young woman wearing a skirt and looking harassed keeps answering them and saying "Local 87, hold please," "Local 87, hold please." As soon as she puts the phone on hold, the light goes out as the caller immediately hangs up and begins to re-dial.<br />
<br />
The woman running the dues computer looks like she sincerely wishes she had a job somewhere else. "Name and Social Security Number." I tell her. "Yah. You owe for January and February." I asked her if she would take a check. "Yah." I pay and go sign up on the roster. The young college kid behind the counter tells me that dispatching will be at 3:00 p.m. at the picket line at such-and-such a place, where the Union contractor was recently replaced by a scab outfit from Washington state that exclusively employs Korean immigrants. We look at each other.<br />
<br />
"You run a buffer?"<br />
<br />
"You bet."<br />
<br />
"See ya at three."<br />
<br />
I have an unspoken understanding. I run a floor maintainer machine. He needs an operator, maybe I'll get the job, maybe he's bullshitting me.<br />
<br />
'''On the Job'''<br />
<br />
When we start work at 5:00 p.m., usually there are still secretaries and executives in the offices. Some of the offices have people working a swing shift using computers or Wang word processors. Compared to ours, their jobs seems really free. They spend a lot of time talking on the phone and can drink coffee or a Coke whenever they feel like it. Day shift people are really condescending compared to swing shift office workers. They wear typical office clothes, little suits, heels, nylons. The night shift wears blue jeans and has less of a status-oriented attitude towards the janitors. I guess they figure we aren't all that much below a Wang operator when all is said and done. But there is still this attitude of geez-I'm-glad-I'm-not-scrubbing-commodes-for-a-living that sort of lets you know that they might go out for a beer with the boys from the mail room but there is a limit. Sometimes we get around to how-much-do-they-pay-you-guys-anyway and some are shocked to find out they make less "than a janitor, for god-sakes!" But still and all, they are a hell of a lot nicer than even the most sympathetic executive types.<br />
<br />
We can't use the phones at night—ten thousand phones and we have to go to the basement to make a phone call and race thirty other guys to be first. Personal emergencies have to wait—only hysterical calls with screaming children in the background get a foreman to take the elevator up to your floor and tell you to go down and call your old lady. And if you leave to take the kid to the hospital, they bitch.<br />
<br />
If you got caught sitting down, you'd be fired. If you got caught talking on the phone, reading, looking out the window, you'd get suspended. Once, when we were buffing the hard floors in a transportation company, I opened a door to an office and caught two executives (one male, one female) making it on the desk. I just said excuse me and closed the door. They came out of there like a shot, staggering drunk and in disarray (she was patting her hair and murmuring over and over "You little bastard, you little bastard. . ."). I looked at the Central American guy with me and we both were thinking "Uh-oh, these guys are going to try and cover their asses by reporting us for something." The guy came back after a few minutes and tried to give us money. We wouldn't take it. The next day I expected to be fired for some bullshit story, but nothing happened. Of course, if anything like this had happened the other way around—Bam! We would have been fired in a heartbeat.<br />
<br />
I used to have a set routine, every night. I had figured out how to make a job look like 7.5 hours of work when I could do it in a pinch in less than six. If I busted ass. If I did a crummy job. On a normal night I dumped trash for a couple of hours. It is one of the more disagreeable aspects of janitorial work, along with scrubbing shitters.<br />
<br />
People put all kinds of horrible stuff in their trash cans. It really offends the janitors. "How can they put coffee in a trash can? Don't they realize it gets all over us when we empty the can?" I hate those Cuppa Soup things and take-out Chinese the most. It's sticky and messy, and after four or five hours (or over a weekend), it stinks.<br />
<br />
Trash tells a lot about people. Smokers are the worst, the can stinks like hell and it's real dirty and dusty. Our whole job would be easy and relatively clean without coffee or cigarettes in the office environment. Of course, without coffee and cigarettes, most offices couldn't even function. While I dump the trash, I use a feather duster on the desk to snap off the worst of the dust and cigarette ashes and little round punchouts from loose-leaf binders and computer print-outs.<br />
<br />
After I dump the trash another janitor picks it up in a freight elevator and hauls it down to a collection point in the sub- basement where the garbage truck comes to get it via the sidewalk elevator. A foremen always supervises this so the garbage guy doesn't run off with a couple of Selectrics or something.<br />
<br />
After dumping trash it's time to scrub the shitters. It's impossible to really ever accept this job. I've scrubbed a million of them, and I still find it distasteful. People smoke in the shitter, so there is a film of tobacco smoke all over the walls and mirrors. The foreman comes around and rubs a towel over all the vertical surfaces and if he finds grease, smoke or whatever you get a slip, or at least he bitches at you and you have to clean them again.<br />
<br />
For some reason the women throw paper on the floor around the commodes. There is always water all over the place, too, and of course hair from hairbrushes thrown on the floor, make-up, etc. The little "sanitary" boxes in the stalls are anything but, with all manner of junk in there besides sanitary napkins neatly wrapped in toilet paper. This means that the box has to be cleaned of mayonnaise, Coca-Cola or whatever else is spilled all over the inside. I can take Tampax, that's what the box is for, but I resent all the damned lunchroom garbage that requires extra time and effort to clean up. What kind of person eats their lunch in a toilet booth???<br />
<br />
The men are not better. They piss on the floor around the urinals and it never enters their heads that it is their fault and they should bend down and wipe it up. Who trained these people in how to use a public restroom anyway? The last stall in line in every men's room is always the one with the Sports section of the ''Ex-Chron'' and usually the one with the sticky copy of ''Club magazine''. How a grown man can masturbate in a public restroom during working hours is beyond me. I couldn't even do that as a kid, much less now. I always wonder who these guys are. Director of Marketing? Vice President in Charge of Bent Paperclips? The mail room kid? And of course, the butts. Always cigarette ashes and butts on the floor, sometimes booze bottles in the hand towel trash can. And why do men crap on the seat and fail to wipe it off? The women do, so what's wrong with the men?<br />
<br />
Does this strike you as a gross subject? Well, hoss, I deal with it every night in the flesh, and I'M FUCKING TIRED of nasty, inconsiderate "superior" people shitting on the seat and then acting like there is something wrong with the service people who clean up their little "accidents." Believe me, if I fail to clean up their little problem I definitely hear about it!<br />
<br />
After lunch we usually vacuumed the rest of the night. You start in one corner of the office block and just pick a direction and start vacuuming. I vacuumed straight, two and a half or three hours a night. Every night, five days a week. My forearms got quite strong. Once I got tendonitis from it; my wrist hurt like the dickens, and I couldn't vacuum. They put me on garbage detail, hauling the heavy paper sacks of garbage thrown down to the pick-up area.<br />
<br />
While you're vacuuming you can hardly hear anything; my ears would ring from the noise. Commercial vacuum cleaners are built without any noise reducing insulation. I understand that Hoover once marketed a soundless vacuum cleaner and it crashed because people associate power with noise and thought it was wimpy. Sometimes I used to turn around and find the foreman, watching me vacuum, with his arms crossed. I'd cut it off and ask him if I was doing a satisfactory job of running a damned vacuum and he'd just walk away.<br />
<br />
Janitors where I worked were once prohibited from wearing Walkman-type radios. They said it was too distracting and slowed down the work. After a while though, everybody was wearing them anyway and the Foremen were having some fairly hostile conversations with people so they got off that trip. It was building towards some genuine militant union activity, so they dropped it. I was surprised. Guys who wouldn't even attend union meetings were willing to stab a foreman over a Walkman radio. Well, they were willing to threaten to stab a foreman over it anyway.<br />
<br />
There is rarely any way to get a decent meal on the night shift. First we had a little coin-operated lunchroom, but it seems like the goddamn change machine was always out of order or there was nothing but sawdust sandwiches in the sandwich machine. Then there was the Ptomaine Truck. One of the best deals in town is the M & M Cafeteria that takes lunch orders by phone. If you really beat feet, you can get down to the M & M, wolf down your chow and get back within the lunch period. Dave lets you run a tab for meals and beer (he doesn't care if you drink your lunch).<br />
<br />
About a quarter of the guys I worked with were alcoholic and they drank everywhere. The guys with passkeys to various "secured" areas were the worst about stashing booze there or in telephone connection boxes. Most janitors had to make do with swilling down a six-pack on a thirty minute lunch period and then coasting until they could get off. I saw guys breaking out a pint on the way to their car, for crissake. The kids smoked dope. Stick your head out into the fire escape staircase anytime, and the fumes would dilate your eyes right there.<br />
<br />
[[Image:Jesus-as-janitor-processedworld11proc-29.jpg]]<br />
<br />
''Graphics from original ''Processed World'' #11.''<br />
<br />
Out of high school, no money for college, the kid gets a "good job" (i.e. one that pays a living wage) and when he looks up five years later he's locked in. It takes tremendous effort to go to school and work full-time as a janitor. Everybody was doing about three or four different things at the same time, trying to start their own business, going to City College part-time, going to Auto Mechanics School at John O'Connell, something.<br />
<br />
People's personal lives were usually talked about only when someone had a baby or a death in the family. If the person was popular, a collection was always taken up. If nobody liked the person, no collection—no matter what disaster befell him. Sometimes I felt like personal lives were better left undiscussed.<br />
<br />
We had a few janitors who used to "be somebody" and were now sort of in "reduced circumstances." Some of the women janitors were divorcees who had been out of the office environment too long to be able to cut it, some just preferred to spend time during the day with their kids and left the rug-rats with their husband or their mother while they worked at night. They had a tough deal, mainly working with men, isolated most of the time. It gets spooky in those buildings at night. They were jumpy and I don't blame them. Almost everybody carried knives for "scraping carpet stains," and the supervisor used to bitch like hell. If he caught you wearing a buck knife in a belt pouch he'd make you take it off. He was scared of getting cut if he harassed people too far and they went off on him.<br />
<br />
I had a couple of daytime jobs. I was relieving some older guy who had a ton of seniority and had worked his way (at last!) to a daytime job with the contractor and was on vacation or something. You can't be a day janitor and maintain a bizarre appearance. Some places have uniforms for the janitors, some do not. If the employer requires uniforms he must provide them at no cost. He must also provide work gloves and some other clothing associated with the job. Try and get them! You'll immediately get laid off if you persist. Some places even frown on beards, or long hair or whatever.<br />
<br />
I always kind of liked the bicycle messengers since they are a crazy element in a uniformly dull world. But I have a message for all bicycle messengers from the janitors: "Please stop writing graffiti where bosses can see it. We have to clean it up, and usually it's not even very interesting graffiti. If you must write things in the elevators or hallways, do it in indelible ink, so I won't have to scrub it. Pencil, crayon, and paint are no good. Use Marks-a-Lot. Thanks."<br />
<br />
Usually everybody ignores the bicycle messengers if at all possible, but when I work days we always have something to say, hello, howzit goin' or whatever. Occasionally I get a negative response, but most acknowledge our common oppression with a nod or a grin or something. Even if pierced noses do freak me out a little, I still have more in common with a sweaty bicyclist than I do with some asshole who makes his living manipulating other peoples' lives.<br />
<br />
All of us, the Wang operator, the VDT jockey, the receptionist, file clerk, temp, janitor, engineer and even the bicycle messenger (Hey buddy, he's radio dispatched. Do you need a radio to stay in minute-by-minute communication with where you work?) are all victims of/vital components of/supporters of/plotters against the system of modern business life (if you can call this shit a life). I'm up for it. Unplug the fuckin' system.<br />
<br />
[[category:Labor]] [[category:1980s]] [[category:downtown]] [[category:SOMA]] [[category:Tales of Toil]]</div>
Ccarlsson
https://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Horrors_of_Pooper-Scooper_U.
Horrors of Pooper-Scooper U.
2024-02-28T06:29:33Z
<p>Ccarlsson: </p>
<hr />
<div>'''<font face = Papyrus> <font color = maroon> <font size = 4>"I was there..."</font></font> </font>'''<br />
<br />
:''"Foundsf.org is republishing a series of "Tales of Toil" that appeared in [[Processed World: A Political History|''Processed World magazine'']] between 1981 and 2004. As first-hand accounts of what it was like working at various jobs during those years, these accounts provide a unique view into an aspect of labor history rarely archived, or shared.''<br />
<br />
''by Melinda Gebbie''<br />
<br />
''—from Processed World #3, published in 1982.''<br />
<br />
Pooperscooper U.—a pet hospital stuck like a hairball in the throat of one of San Francisco's poshest enclaves. I got myself hired as a receptionist there in a moment of economic panic.<br />
<br />
[[Image:Dog-walkers 5701.jpg]]<br />
<br />
'''Dogs take over Bernal Heights, 2010.'''<br />
<br />
''Photo: Chris Carlsson''<br />
<br />
Three months later, the obsessive cocker-suckers and poodle-diddlers that stump and stagger through P.U.'s piddle-varnished portals have me baring my teeth. So has my supervisor, an obese Sha-Na-Na fan and neo-Nazi known to the rest of us "girls" as the Elephant Woman. Not to mention the stunningly meager pay rate ($3.75/hr.) or the exalted status I enjoy as one of the kickballs on the front desk. But the best part of this nine-to-six stint is that it offers no opportunity for advancement, let alone for taking a creative five minutes on the crapper.<br />
<br />
The duties assigned to us, the under-underdogs, are varied and colorful. First, there is check-in. Say a cluster of German-speaking ladies come hurtling in—mother, grandmother and three teenage daughters, all dressed in tight skirts and tennis shoes. They are moaning up a storm—something about a fluffy my own has been hit! A big black limousine has crushed his tiny bones. I whip out a registration form. With a confident flourish, I indicate to the larger of the two matrons which sections she must fill out.<br />
<br />
"But my address—who can remember? What is a Sip Code? Fuffy-- he is a male—could you not tell?" (Sure, lady, with a microscope.)<br />
<br />
"Okay, now what exactly happened to (guk) Fifi?" The moaning starts again in five-part harmony. Just then a tired-looking bald guy emerges from an equally tired-looking black Volkswagon outside and tries to explain, while the women go into a huddle. "Look, this little fuzzy thing took a hike across the street just as the light turns green. I'm sorry—I thought it was a piece of laundry." Nice try, but they don't let him go until he's proved he can't finance a week's vacation for five at the Mark Hopkins. Poor Mr. VW ends up being allowed to pay for Foofy's body-lift and a bonus full-length sweater, whether sleeved or sleeveless to be determined at a later date. ''Mein Gott!''<br />
<br />
The (very) personal habits of the doctors must also be considered at all times. One never snarls: "Young Doctor Doctor is having a bowel movement, and if everything comes out all right, he'll call you back." Rather, one chirps: "Doctor Doctor is presently in long-distance consultation with the Philippines. When he is through, he will be most happy to guide your beloved Doberman through the miraculous journey of her first natural birthing."<br />
<br />
Nor does one mention that nice old Doc Rictus has a tendency to fight back when Kitty won't sit still for a shave-'n-shot. "What's that slamming noise?" Kitty's mom may ask. "Why, didn't you know? We have a handball court between the lunchroom and the back office." Beaming, the Doc comes out holding a limp Bobo or Noodles in her claw-torn hand. "He's just a bit groggy from the sedative—don't mind the drooling. He may bleed an eensy bit when he wakes up. Don't hesitate to call, Monday through Saturday, between nine and six—" And they don't.<br />
<br />
Yes, P.U.'s receptionists must know their stuff, especially over the phone. Suppose a young interior decorator wants his cat declawed and dyed violet within three days. Never mind the cat's feelings—will it be detrimental to the orange-focused bedroom scheme? And telephone procedure is inflexible. When a pug plummets from a seventh-story window and the owner inquires: "Juno's listless—do you think it's due to the fall?," you must go through the catechism with the demure calm of a nun on Valium: "Has he seen a doctor since the accident/Is he bleeding/Is his stool abnormal/Is he vomiting/Is he eating? (Amen)."<br />
<br />
"Well he hasn't really moved much—he just lies on his back and he's sort of stiff when I pet him." Then, and only then, you coo: "Sir—here is the number of Bubbling Wells Pet Cemetery, located in picturesque Sonoma."<br />
<br />
Most traditional feminine occupations exploit our maternal impulses—the teacher's aid cleaning up after brutish children and the secretary after childish brutes. P.U. expects its desk-jockeys to extend this motherly attitude not only to the furry parasites which are its patients but to their owners and the doctors as well.<br />
<br />
Just let some unruly, unloving female at the front desk ask for a raise, let alone gag when a fresh fecal sample wiggling with worms is shoved under her nose, let alone scream back at one of the stethoscope-toting prima donnas in the surgery, let alone lose her cool with even one of the spoiled, peevish or penultimately stupid clients or their drooling, scabrous, psychotic mammals. Instantly her decades of training are played upon to make her feel like a monster, unfit to be a member of the U.S. Feminine Love-of-Babies-and-Fuzzy-Cripples Institute.<br />
<br />
No one but a congenital idiot would pursue a clerical "career" at P.U. Even the pink-collar hoboes, the temp-worker types who change jobs the way richer women change hairstyles, don't stop here much. They choke on the mingled stench of piss, puke and panic even before they hear about the pay.<br />
<br />
The rest? Like the patients, they come in combinations of four basic shades: newborn, desperate, decrepit, and anesthetized. Girls fresh out of high school grabbing for the bottom rung; shellshocked divorcees tiptoeing timidly into the labor market; weary spinsters whom inflation has elbowed out of an early retirement; aging "young ladies" still listening for the hoofbeats of Prince Charming's charger...<br />
<br />
"Solidarity" might as well be a brand of margarine to most of them, especially Miz Fink whose favorite trick is to yell at her colleagues for making filing errors just as the Elephant Woman lumbers by. Some even join in the Guilting Bee, like prim little Jersey-`n-Pearls who never tires of asking: "But isn't it the animals we're here for?" Only the real basket cases can stand it for long. P.U.'s door doesn't just revolve, it spins like a centrifuge.<br />
<br />
So goodbye to Pooperscooper U. Goodbye to the Puppy Paramedic Corps and its pissing and moaning, yapping and scratching clientele. Goodbye too to the Kat Kare Klub where tortoise shell curry-combs and French satin ribbons decorate lumps of hairy fat that can hardly waddle from bowl to box to bed. Goodbye to being ranked lower in the scheme of things than Persians and their fleas. Pit-bulls and their diarrhea. Goodbye to all the mental cases who hallucinate an intimate world of love and understanding around retarded mutant carnivores like Elmo the Basset Hound, known to his owner as "the only man in my life."<br />
<br />
My case is closed. But there will be many more to follow in my footsteps on this particular hamster-wheel. A world which mass-produces loneliness and boredom, always a little faster than it mass-produces the merchandise meant to make up for them, will see to that.<br />
<br />
<br />
[[category:Labor]] [[category:1980s]] [[category:Western Addition]] [[category:Tales of Toil]] [[category:Public Health]]</div>
Ccarlsson
https://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Get_Hot!_A_Messenger_Tale_of_Toil
Get Hot! A Messenger Tale of Toil
2024-02-28T05:59:52Z
<p>Ccarlsson: </p>
<hr />
<div>'''<font face = Papyrus> <font color = maroon> <font size = 4>"I was there..."</font></font> </font>'''<br />
<br />
:''"Foundsf.org is republishing a series of "Tales of Toil" that appeared in [[Processed World: A Political History|''Processed World magazine'']] between 1981 and 2004. As first-hand accounts of what it was like working at various jobs during those years, these accounts provide a unique view into an aspect of labor history rarely archived, or shared.''<br />
<br />
''by Zoe Noe''<br />
<br />
''—from Processed World #8, published in June, 1983.''<br />
<br />
[[Image:labor1$get-hot.jpg]]<br />
<br />
'''Get Hot! Bike Messenger in action.''' <br />
<br />
''Photo: Glenn Bachmann''<br />
<br />
<br />
[[Image:Ted-Kurihara-bike-messenger-1968 0732-m-003-copy.jpg|350px|right]]<br />
<br />
'''Bike messenger poses for portrait, 1968.'''<br />
<br />
''Photo: © [https://tedkuriharaphotography.com/ Ted Kurihara]''<br />
<br />
I picked up my last paycheck on Friday. Afterwards I passed by the usual crowd of bike messengers hanging outside Harvey's 5th Street Market, buying beers on credit and shooting the shit at the end of a working day. I turned the corner and entered an alley, where I ran into a young black woman, unkempt and shabbily dressed. She practically grabbed me for a handout, and someone to spill to:<br />
<br />
<blockquote>"I was a good biker. I could fly—do 40 tags a day. And then they fired me—they fired me! I went in this afternoon, but they wouldn't hire me back. Nobody will hire me, and here I am in this alley now, reduced to. . .to. .PANHANDLING!" She screamed the last word, and went on. "I need a job! I'm going back to that motherfucker and say, 'I'll kill you motherfucker if you don't hire me back—I'll kill you!'" </blockquote><br />
<br />
She raved on with spite, kicking and screaming. It was useless for me to stand there with her longer. There was nothing I could do for her.<br />
<br />
I myself could fly on occasion, and make pretty good money at it when I wanted to. Yet when I was working, I felt oppressed by a different kind of poverty—a poverty of spirit, of time trapped. I worked over 40 hours a week, with plenty of unpaid duties. I would get home after dark with no energy left for anything else. It was life on the run, without medical coverage, expendable, unprotected, easy prey to any maniac behind the wheel of a Cadillac or MUNI bus—any driver who doesn't believe in turn signals or decides to open his car door at the wrong moment. I was vulnerable to horizontal showers in rainy season, and ticket-happy cops who hate bike messengers. I endured the hatred of men in 3-piece suits who depend on bike messengers and yet look upon them as something less than human. I challenge any of them to try being a bike messenger for even one day!<br />
<br />
I had never seen bike messengers before I had my first job in San Francisco, as a legal file clerk/part-time secretary in the Financial District. I was fascinated and inspired by crazy long-hairs in propellered baseball caps, howling loud and long as they hurtled down hills. I saw a subculture in action as they zipped about the city on their one-speeds. I wanted to be a bike messenger!<br />
<br />
I landed a job with Fly By Night Messenger Service in June. There were days it was such fun that it hardly seemed like work, but after half a year and months into the rainy season, I lost most of my enthusiasm. I felt I was wasting my days, chained to a dangerous dead-end job, and I knew I could do a lot more creative things with my time.<br />
<br />
The comforting delusion that I was at least making an honest living was amusingly shattered for me one day in November when I was dispatched to a law office in 1 Embarcadero Center for a return trip going to a copy service and back. A matronly secretary handed me a manila envelope marked with strident instructions for the copy service: that this was a third try, to color-xerox it, and could they please get it right this time. She also handed me a five dollar bill. I arrived at the copy service in the basement of a building on California Street and perused through magazines while waiting. I overheard snatches of conversation from the back room—that these were transcripts, so both sides needed to be registered perfectly. That seemed odd, and I asked the woman behind the counter why transcripts would need to be color-xeroxed. She confided to me that they were the lady's daughter's high school transcripts, and a couple of grades needed to be "changed," and that color-xerox was the only way to duplicate it to look authentic.<br />
<br />
"In other words it's called cheating," I said.<br />
<br />
"She keeps sending it back to us, bugging us to get it right. We're making money off it, so why should we complain?" she answered.<br />
<br />
I felt like a partner in crime. I got the completed transcripts, had the tag signed, and was off with the return. In the elevator, to satisfy my own curiosity, I opened the unsealed envelope and had myself a look. Sure enough, two tiny "C's" were pasted on the original transcript. The copy looked perfect, as if it had been printed that way. I peeled the C's off, revealing two "F's" underneath. For a moment, I thought of aborting the mission, but realized I couldn't be that moralistic either. I was part of the scam, and had an extra five dollar bill in my pocket. It was such a mild scam, but symptomatic nonetheless, and I was thinking, "I don't even want to know what's inside the rest of the innocuous-looking manila envelopes I deliver!"<br />
<br />
Like most delivery services, Fly By Night did not pay its bikers an hourly wage. Pay was based on a strict commission—a percentage of the delivery cost. That meant having to bust your ass to make any kind of livable wage. When you tried your bloody best to go fast and make money, everything and everybody seemed to be doing their best to slow you down. In such situations I occasionally lost my temper (and perhaps supported certain people's assumptions that bike messengers are indeed something other than human.)<br />
<br />
For instance, I have the distinction of having been banned from the Pacific Telephone Company building at 666 Folsom Street. PT&T offices are a bike messenger's nightmare. Each "room" is like a labyrinth: a whole floor of partitions, each bearing a different room number. Room 500-F might be next to room 512-G, but nobody can tell you where any of the other room numbers are. I was in a hurried mood on a busy afternoon, and I had to pick up a super-hot payroll delivery on the 8th floor at 666 Folsom, nonstop. Most phone company buildings make you sign in and out; a cumbersome process if one is in a hurry. I signed in and out at 666, flew, and was back at 666 in 5 minutes with the return, and refused to sign in again. The lobby guard, a short, grouchy man with a pencil-mustache, was furious that I actually just walked right by him, completely disregarding the rules.<br />
<br />
"Come back here! You have to sign into the building!"<br />
<br />
"I just signed in 5 minutes ago, and I'm not going to sign in again. This is a super-rush that has to get there yesterday!"<br />
<br />
"Well if you signed out last time, you have to sign in again!" I was struck with the absurd logic that if I had not signed out the last time, I would not have to sign in again this time. I ignored him and boarded the elevator, and he immediately gave chase, stopping the elevator before it could move. Another bouncer-type appeared out of nowhere to assist him in removing me from the elevator, where I stood defiant and a few secretaries stood surprised, their routine interrupted. The guard led me back to his station, towards the door, and said, "You're never allowed back in this building again!"<br />
<br />
I laughed back at him. "That's fine—I hate this building anyway, and I would never come here if I didn't have to!"<br />
<br />
"By your conduct," he stormed, "you're showing that you have no respect for the phone company and its employees!"<br />
<br />
"You're damn right. I have no respect for the phone company at all!" How I had always wanted to say that! I thrust the package at him and said, "Since you won't let me upstairs, you'll have to do the delivery yourself. They`re in room 880. Get hot!—They're dying on it!"<br />
<br />
On another day, truth serum ran deep when I went into Crank Litho, one of Fly By Night's biggest accounts. Crank got anything it wanted: till 5:15 p.m. to call in overtimes, instead of 5:00, and a handsome price break of $1.25 per delivery instead of the $2.00 we normally charged. They generated enough business so that Fly By Night could turn a tidy profit, but we messengers were the ones getting screwed. We even had to chronicle our own oppression by adding the price of the delivery to the tag, which we never had to do for anyone else. Most of us bikers resented this insult—I remember that one guy, whenever dispatched to Crank, would always emit an obnoxious foghornish "Rog!" over the radio, instead of the customary "10-4."<br />
<br />
One day I showed up to work wearing a large button I had fashioned, that read "I (heart) Crank Litho's Prices!" and managed to cause quite an uproar in their office without even saying a word. Later that day when I was back, the president of the company pulled me aside and said, "I would appreciate it if you don't wear that button anymore." I smiled, and calmly removed the button.<br />
<br />
On the return trip, I encountered the man next in charge (who handled the business end of the account with Fly By Night), and he shit a brick when he saw the delivery cost—$11.25 for an overtime rush—and at first refused to sign the tag. He called up my office and bitched for a few minutes, then hung up and turned to me. "I'll sign it, but I'm going to take it up with your boss in the morning. How do you figure your price for overtime deliveries? Your regular price is $1.25..."<br />
<br />
I cut him off, sensing the opportunity. "Our regular price is $2.00. You guys are getting a break at $1.25 which I think is scandalous, but that's from my point of view as a biker." He looked surprised, yet surprised me by saying that he could understand it from my point of view. Of course, not another word was ever said about the matter.<br />
<br />
Around that same time I knew my days as a bike messenger were numbered. My attitude was garnering numerous complaints from miffed customers, and I started taking days off to refund my sanity. The taste of life off the treadmill just made me more dissatisfied. The rainy season was becoming endless, and my favorite dispatcher was now out on bike; obviously the result of a power-struggle. The boss had frequently complained that he was being much too close with the bikers, telling us things about the company and about our paychecks that we weren't supposed to know. I had fond memories of late evenings when he was behind the boards, when a few of us would have our own little "proletarian office parties," when the office was ours and we spent hours bitching about the bosses, or got crazy and sent me out with bike and radio, and dispatched me out for coffee and donuts. Somebody had to pull the plug soon. My boss got to it before I did, and I was fired.<br />
<br />
About a week before I got the jerk to the big desk in the back office and the axe came down, I had taken an unsolicited day off—it was storming and I felt miserable. The next day, a rare sunny one, I arrived early, feeling better and ready to roll. The boss, trying to put the fear of authority into me, said, "I'm not ready to let you roll. I haven't decided what I'm going to do with you! Come back tomorrow." (It was too obvious to me what he would have done with me had it been raining as usual.) I figured myself fired, and wasted no time getting out of there. Walking up Kearny Street that same morning, with a spring in my step, enjoying the sun without having to "get hot;" I felt like somebody had unlocked the door of my jail cell, woke me gently and said, "You're free to go." <br />
<br />
<hr><br />
<br />
<big>'''POETRY IN MOTION (a geography primer)'''</big><br />
<br />
I got off the bike.<br />
:I took a journey up Kearny,<br />
::got weary by Geary,<br />
:::drank a beer on Spear,<br />
::::smoked a joint on North Point,<br />
:::::and lost my way on Clay.<br />
<br />
I'm looking handsome on Sansome<br />
:and feeling wholesome on Folsom.<br />
<br />
I met a coward on Howard<br />
:who lives in a garrison on Harrison,<br />
::and a sailor on Taylor<br />
:::who lives in a gutter on Sutter.<br />
<br />
We drank tonics on Masonic,<br />
:met the Hulk on Polk,<br />
::who was straight on Haight<br />
:::but turned gay on Bay.<br />
<br />
We met a witch on Ritch<br />
:who reads the Tarot on DeHaro —<br />
::and tried to save us on Davis.<br />
<br />
I saw a politician on Mission<br />
:who made a speech on Beach<br />
::about a welfare cheat on Treat<br />
:::who uses food stamps to buy wine on Pine.<br />
<br />
I saw a Giant on Bryant<br />
:who teamed up with a 49er on Steiner,<br />
::and went around beating up Dodgers on Rodgers<br />
:::and Raiders on Shrader<br />
::::(not to mention Lakers on Baker<br />
:::::and A's on Hayes).<br />
<br />
You met a whore on Dore<br />
:who tried to rent'cha on Valencia;<br />
::I used to ball her on Waller,<br />
:::& we'd fuck some on Bluxome,<br />
::::& she would give great moans on Jones,<br />
:::::& would always come on Drumm.<br />
<br />
I remember you well—you drove a bus on Russ<br />
:until it lost a wheel on Beale,<br />
::& then you used to park it on Market.<br />
<br />
“Did I get your package to you quick enough, sir?”<br><br />
“Thanks, Zoe Noe, you're humble and lovable.”<br><br />
“Fuck you, sir!”<br />
<br />
''— by Zoe Noe'' <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
[[category:Labor]] [[category:1980s]] [[category:transit]] [[category:downtown]] [[category:Bicycling]] [[category:Literary San Francisco]] [[category:SOMA]] [[category:Tales of Toil]]</div>
Ccarlsson
https://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Willie_Mays:_A_Tribute
Willie Mays: A Tribute
2024-02-08T05:54:06Z
<p>Ccarlsson: </p>
<hr />
<div>'''<font face = Papyrus> <font color = maroon> <font size = 4>Historical Essay</font></font> </font>'''<br />
<br />
''by Howard Isaac Williams''<br />
<br />
[[Image:Willie Mays finishing home run trot at Candlestick c 1964, congrats from Tom Haller and batboy opensfhistory wnp14.6478.jpg|800px]]<br />
<br />
'''Willie Mays crossing home after a home run at Candlestick Park, c 1964.'''<br />
<br />
''Photo: OpenSFhistory.org wnp14.6478''<br />
<br />
<br />
Willie Mays was one of the greatest baseball players of all time. Many who appreciate the game call him the greatest. <br />
<br />
Every Giants fan from New York and San Francisco who enjoyed the game in the 1950s and 60s has vivid memories of Mays delivering a clutch hit, making a leaping catch or throwing out a baserunner from deep in the outfield. <br />
<br />
Or making a daring dash along the base paths.<br />
<br />
One of the most difficult plays in baseball is to score from first base on a single. A fan is far more likely to see a batter swat a pitch 400 feet than to see a runner successfully dash 270 feet from first to home on a one base hit.<br />
<br />
[[Image:SF Giants Opening Day, 1966--Willie Mays, being introduced opensfhistory wnp28.6189.jpg|800px]]<br />
<br />
'''San Francisco Giants opening day, 1966. Willie Mays steps forward as he's introduced to the cheering crowd.'''<br />
<br />
''Photo: OpenSFHistory.org wnp28.6189''<br />
<br />
Near the finish of the 1966 season, the Giants were battling the Los Angeles Dodgers for the National League pennant. It would become another illustrious chapter in what many consider America’s paramount sports rivalry. That heritage had started in New York City when the Giants played in Manhattan and the Dodgers in Brooklyn. By 1958, when both teams decamped from the Big Apple and moved west—the Giants to San Francisco and the Dodgers to Los Angeles—their legendary rivalry had already transformed baseball and America. In 1947, in the first great postwar triumph of the Civil Rights Movement, the Dodgers had broken baseball’s color line when Jackie Robinson joined them. The Giants quickly signed Black ballplayers and by 1949, both teams had become the first National League teams with two Black players on the field. America’s first nationally televised baseball game was the third and deciding game of the 1951 National League playoff series between the two teams. The entire season that had seen the Giants whittle down the Dodgers 13 1/2 game lead in mid August to a tie at the end of regular play came down to the last of the 9th inning with Brooklyn leading 4 to 2. With two Giants on base, Dodger pitcher Ralph Branca faced the Giants’ Bobby Thomson at the plate. Twenty year old rookie Willie Mays waited on deck. <br />
<br />
Even if you know what happened next, here is the clip of Russ Hodges announcing the incredible conclusion to the game:<br />
<br />
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WWIGfBQghJs?si=I-TPGax_rdyiJfl9" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe> <br />
<br />
(One “person” who never found out what happened next was Sonny Corleone. That was the ballgame that Sonny was listening to on his car radio when he was gunned down at the toll booth in The Godfather.) <br />
<br />
After the two teams moved west, their historic rivalry intensified in the 1960s as one or both teams were in every pennant race from 1961 to 1966. In 1965, their fight for the pennant became a literal one on August 22 when the two teams brawled at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park. Both teams’ dugouts emptied after Dodger catcher Johnny Roseboro was injured when Juan Marichal of the Giants struck him with a bat. Willie Mays quickly intervened to save Roseboro from more serious injury and halt the brawl. Although Marichal was suspended and fined, Roseboro had charged at him with his catcher’s mask. Before Marichal retired in 1975, he and Roseboro reconciled.<br />
<br />
[[Image:After an Opening Day win over the Cubs-- Mays homered and Marichal pitched complete game 3-hitter opensfhistory wnp14.2503.jpg|800px]]<br />
<br />
'''After an opening day win in 1966 over the Cubs—Mays homered and Marichal pitched a complete game 3-hitter at Candlestick Park.'''<br />
<br />
''Photo: OpenSFHistory.org wnp14.2503<br />
<br />
In September 1966, the two teams were again in a close race for the National League title when the Giants came to Los Angeles for a three game series. The teams split the first two games. <br />
<br />
The third game was played at night on September 7. At the end of the 9th, the score was 2-2, forcing the game into extra innings. The 10th and 11th innings passed without any scoring and at the top of the 12th the first two Giant batters were retired. But then Willie Mays came to the plate and singled. Now rookie Frank Johnson stood at bat. The 23 year old outfielder had just been called up from the minor leagues and was playing in his first major league game. He had been hitless in his first at bat. Sixty feet and six inches away on the pitcher’s mound stood Dodger reliever Joe Moeller. Mays took a safe leadoff from first. At the relatively “old” age of 35 and with two outs, he was not a threat to steal. He had slowed down a step or two but had compensated with a daring born of experience yet tempered by the shrewd judgement developed during his amazing career. <br />
<br />
In the announcer’s booth was Russ Hodges, the same man who had broadcast Thomson’s historic home run in 1951. Like all Giants games played in Los Angeles, this one was televised throughout most of Northern California. Games on TV allow the announcer to choose which camera to broadcast the game’s action. Announcers usually direct the cameras to “follow the ball,” showing the pitcher throw to the batter and then following the ball’s course after it’s hit. But good announcers sometimes improvise.<br />
<br />
With two outs, Mays would take off if Johnson’s bat made any contact with the pitch.<br />
<br />
Moeller threw and Johnson cracked a single into right field. <br />
<br />
Up in the broadcasters booth, Hodges directed the camera crew: “Let’s watch Mays!”<br />
<br />
In barely an instant longer than it took to say that, Mays had darted along the 60 yards between first and third bases. The camera showed him round third and look toward right field. Home plate lay about 30 yards away.<br />
<br />
"He may try it!" Hodges exclaimed. <br />
<br />
Mays hesitated, then took off. <br />
<br />
“He’s gonna try it!”<br />
<br />
The throw from right field was perfect. Catcher Johnny Roseboro made a sweeping tag as Mays slid into home. The umpire’s right hand came down hard and fast like a judge’s gavel.<br />
<br />
“He’s out,” Hodges said.<br />
<br />
But Mays jumped up and pointed at the ground. The ball was rolling away ! Coming at the end of his 90 yard sprint from first base, Mays’ power slide had knocked the ball away from one of the game’s best defensive catchers. The umpire changed his mind and quickly waved both arms wide.<br />
<br />
“He’s safe! The Giants lead!”<br />
<br />
And the Giants went on to hold their lead in the bottom of the 12th to beat the Dodgers 3 to 2.<br />
<br />
The greats make others better. On that night in Los Angeles, Willie Mays had shown us a measure of his greatness but had also given young Frank Johnson a chance to make his first major league hit a game winning one. He had given the veteran sports announcer Russ Hodges a chance to use his broadcast skills to showcase the Hall of Fame player’s base running virtuosity. <br />
<br />
And the greats can even make their opponents better. Although the Dodgers lost that game, they bounced back to win the pennant on the last day of the season, finishing a scant 1 1/2 games ahead of the Giants.<br />
<br />
[[category:Baseball]] [[category:1950s]] [[category:1960s]] [[category:Famous characters]]</div>
Ccarlsson
https://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Diane_di_Prima,_Beat_Generation_Poet
Diane di Prima, Beat Generation Poet
2024-02-08T05:22:03Z
<p>Ccarlsson: </p>
<hr />
<div>'''<font face = Papyrus> <font color = maroon> <font size = 4>Historical Essay</font></font> </font>'''<br />
<br />
''by Nancy Snyder, originally published at the [https://www.literaryladiesguide.com/author-biography/diane-di-prima-beat-generation-poet/ Literary Ladies Guide], August, 2022.''<br />
<br />
[[Image:Diane-di-prima.jpg|380px|right]]<br />
<br />
'''Diane di Prima'''<br />
<br />
''Photo: Estate of Diane di Prima''<br />
<br />
The extraordinary feminist and Beat generation poet Diane di Prima (August 6, 1934– October 5, 2020) was an active participant in the cultural and political movements of the last half of the twentieth century. She embodied the awareness of a poet’s sensibility required for these political fights to evolve. <br />
<br />
Di Prima wrote the poem following when she was named as the San Francisco Poet Laureate in 2009. In eight seemingly simple lines, she brings the credo of her life’s visionary work: <br />
<br />
::my vow is:<br />
::to remind us all<br />
::to celebrate<br />
::there is no time<br />
::desperate<br />
::no season<br />
::that is not <br />
::a Season of Song<br />
<br />
:::(from “First Draft: Poet Laureate Oath of Office,” 2009)<br />
<br />
On October 25, 2020, in her beloved adopted hometown of San Francisco, di Prima passed away with her husband, family, and friends at her bedside. She was eighty-six years old and had been in assisted living for the past two years. <br />
<br />
Despite her physical struggles, di Prima continued to write every day and had several book projects in the works. It would be hard to accept that her gritty and tough poetic voice would now be silent—with her heart in every word, after creating fifty books and chapbooks of poetry over nearly sixty years.<br />
<br />
<big>'''Childhood and formative years'''</big><br />
<br />
Diane Rose di Prima was born on August 6, 1934 in Brooklyn, New York. She grew up in the Italian-American neighborhood of Carrol Gardens, the oldest child of Frank di Prima, a lawyer, and his wife Emma, a schoolteacher. <br />
<br />
In Di Prima’s 2003 memoir, ''Recollections of My Life as a Woman'', the reader notices the dominant influence of her maternal grandparents, Domenico and Antoinette Mazzolli. Domenico was an anarchist and an Italian immigrant who worked as a tailor; his friends and colleagues included fellow anarchists [[Emma Goldman in San Francisco|Emma Goldman]] and Carlo Tresca.<br />
<br />
::Today is your<br />
::birthday and I have tried<br />
::writing these things before,<br />
::but now<br />
::in the gathering madness, I want to <br />
::thank you<br />
::for telling me what to expect<br />
::for pulling<br />
::no punches, back there in that scrubbed Bronx parlor.<br />
<br />
:::(from “April Fool Birthday Poem for Grandpa”)<br />
<br />
Di Prima remembers back to the time when she was three to four years old and her grandfather, Domenico, shared a secret from the family: they would spend long hours listening to Italian opera—a treat that was forbidden to Domenico. Italian opera, with its sorrows and its vicissitudes of its heroes and heroines, had his doctors warning him that his bad heart may give out from the emotional strain of the opera. <br />
<br />
Domenico was a popular anarchist speaker; di Prima remembered one of those speeches, when “the arts shine down on us, the leaves glow in the electric lights of the park. I am proud of him, and afraid, but mostly amazed. His words have awakened my full acknowledgment, consent, I hear what he says as truth, and I seem to have always known it.”<br />
<br />
Di Prima’s grandmother, Antoinette, shared a grand passion with Domenico but also imparted sound advice to the young Diane that yes, men may be considered special, but women can survive without them. <br />
<br />
<blockquote>“My Grandmother’s Catholicism was of the distinctive Mediterranean variety: tolerant and full of humor. ‘Eh!’ my Grandmother would say, ‘The Virgin Mary is a woman, she’ll explain it to God.’ It indicated on one hand, the Virgin Mary knew much better than God the ins and outs human nature, what we were up to, and that she had a tolerance and intelligence and humor that was perhaps missing from the male godhead.”</blockquote><br />
<br />
It was a comfortable home; di Prima went to the Parochial school in her neighborhood and helped her younger brothers with their homework. When it came time for her to choose a high school, she took the exam for the prestigious Hunter College High School in Manhattan and broke the record for the highest score on the written test. <br />
<br />
Di Prima and a group of seven other students (including the brilliant poet Audre Lorde) had formed a poetry circle: young women sharing their work and dedicating themselves to the art of the written word. At fifteen years old, di Prima made her commitment to her life’s destiny known: she would spend her life being a poet. <br />
<br />
“Seeing a life of striving, possibility of living within a vision … I know I will be a poet, and knowing that knowing what I will lose. Keats said it: I am certain of nothing, but the holiness of the Heart’s Affections and the Truth of the Imagination,” she wrote of her revelation during adolescence. She drew on the strength of her maternal grandparents’ political anarchist ideals and their passion for art, decided to risk everything and write. <br />
<br />
[[Image:Diane-Di-Prima-in-1959.jpg]]<br />
<br />
'''Diane di Prima in 1959.'''<br />
<br />
''Photo: James Oliver Mitchell''<br />
<br />
<br />
<big>'''The Greenwich Village years'''</big><br />
<br />
When it came time to consider college, di Prima entered a New York City competition for excellence in Latin and earned a scholarship to the prestigious Swarthmore University. Di Prima had decided to study physics, but after three semesters, she dropped out and became an integral part of the Greenwich Village literary scene that dominated the late 1950s and 1960s. <br />
<br />
Di Prima rented a flat for thirty-three dollars a month and became friends with [[Allen Ginsberg|Allen Ginsberg]], [[Jack Kerouac|Jack Kerouac]], Frank O’Hara, and Denise Levertov. She became a co-founder of the Poets Press and the New York Poets Theatre and co-editor of the literary magazine ''The Floating Bear''. <br />
<br />
“She was important as the feminist voice of the Beat generation,” said Lawrence Ferlinghetti, co-founder of San Francisco’s [[Publishers as Enemies of the State: City Lights Books|City Lights Bookstore]]. Di Prima wrote about “the equality of the sexes,” fellow poet and close friend Amber Tamblyn wrote in ''The New Yorker'', “She saw herself as a weapon to be deployed—no, detonated—against her oppressors. She wrote about women as wolves, women as predators, as hunters, as villains. She wrote about fat women, queer women, androgynous women, disobedient women, women as Gods, as birds, as the wind.”<br />
<br />
::I have just realized that the stakes are myself<br />
::I have no other ransom money, nothing to break or barter but my life<br />
::my spirit measured out, in bits, spread over<br />
::the roulette table, I recoup what I can<br />
<br />
:::(from “Revolutionary Letter #1”)<br />
<br />
<br />
<big>'''San Francisco'''</big><br />
<br />
In 1968, di Prima packed up her four children and settled in San Francisco. This time she settled into a fourteen-room flat on the corner of Laguna and Page. The location was at the epicenter of the cultural and political awakenings happening in San Francisco in the 1960s and early 1970s. <br />
<br />
Di Prima was an active participant in the movements against the [[:Category:Vietnam War|Vietnam War]], and the fight for civil, labor, immigrant, and LGBTQ rights. As with her writing, Di Prima’s activism never waned.<br />
<br />
::The value of an individual life a credo they taught us<br />
::to instill fear, and inaction, ‘you only live once’<br />
::a fog on our eyes, we are<br />
::endless as the sea, not separate, we die<br />
::a million times a day, we are born<br />
::a million times, each breath life and death:<br />
::get up. put on your shoes, get<br />
::started, someone will finish.<br />
<br />
:::(from “Revolutionary Letter #3”)<br />
<br />
Although di Prima had chosen Greenwich Village instead of an academic path, she landed several jobs as a college instructor at The San Francisco Art Institute and the California College of the Arts.<br />
<br />
For many years, she would load her children into the family’s truck to teach at the [https://www.naropa.edu/academics/schools-centers/jack-kerouac-school-disembodied-poetics/ Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poets] with fellow Beats Allen Ginsberg, Anne Waldman, William Burroughs, and Gregory Corso.<br />
<br />
::Sweetheart<br />
::when you break thru<br />
::you’ll find<br />
::a poet here<br />
::not quite what one would choose.<br />
::I won’t promise <br />
::you’ll never go hungry<br />
::that you won’t be sad<br />
::on this gutted <br />
::breaking <br />
::globe<br />
::but I can show you<br />
::baby<br />
::enough to love<br />
::to break your heart<br />
::forever<br />
<br />
:::(from “Song for Baby-O, Unborn”)<br />
<br />
[[Image:Revolutionary-Letters-50th-anniversary-edition.jpg|right]]<br />
<br />
<big>'''Diane di Prima’s Legacy'''</big><br />
<br />
Di Prima’s life was unconventional by conventional standards: light-years removed from the standards of conformity that choked one’s creativity and authenticity. “So much of the woman I am today is because of the woman Diane once was,” Amber Tamblyn remembered. <br />
<br />
One of di Prima’s most seminal works is ''Loba'', first published in 1978 as an open-ended poem and as the feminist answer to Allen Ginsberg’s ''Howl''. In 1998, twenty years after its debut, ''Loba'' was published again in a more expansive eight-part poem and she finally considered the work complete.<br />
<br />
The same creative process happened with ''Revolutionary Letters''. First begun in the 1960s, with portions being published for the next few decades, until 2014 when di Prima completed the book.<br />
<br />
In an interview given three years before her death, di Prima spoke of her legacy to her readers as “giving them the courage to change their lives. People get caught in the conventions of society and they forget what they are really after.”<br />
<br />
::I’d like my daily bread however<br />
::you arrange it, and I’d also like<br />
::to be bread, or sustenance for<br />
::some others even after I’ve left.<br />
<br />
:::(from “The Poetry Deal,” 1993)<br />
<br />
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_wXMrfej18Q?si=iH9lqwudCNXBYx3o" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe><br />
<br />
Diane di Prima was incredibly prolific, with numerous published collections of her work. See an [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diane_di_Prima#Bibliography extensive bibliography here].<br />
<br />
[[category:Literary San Francisco]] [[category:Beats]] [[category:Women]] [[category:1960s]] [[category:1970s]] [[category:Western Addition]] [[category:Anarchism]]</div>
Ccarlsson
https://foundsf.org/index.php?title=New_Potrero_Theater
New Potrero Theater
2024-01-21T00:30:21Z
<p>Ccarlsson: Created page with "'''<font face = Papyrus> <font color = maroon> <font size = 4>Historical Essay</font></font> </font>''' ''by Peter Linenthal'', Potrero Hill Archives Project, originally published as "An Unusual Past and Uncertain Future" in the [https://www.potreroview.net/an-unusual-past-and-uncertain-future/ February 2023 ''Potrero View'']. 800px '''New Potrero Theater at 312 Connecticut, circa 1929.''' ''Photo: Cour..."</p>
<hr />
<div>'''<font face = Papyrus> <font color = maroon> <font size = 4>Historical Essay</font></font> </font>'''<br />
<br />
''by Peter Linenthal'', Potrero Hill Archives Project, originally published as "An Unusual Past and Uncertain Future" in the [https://www.potreroview.net/an-unusual-past-and-uncertain-future/ February 2023 ''Potrero View''].<br />
<br />
[[Image:PotreroView 2023-02 NewPotreroTheater1929-1024x633.png|800px]]<br />
<br />
'''New Potrero Theater at 312 Connecticut, circa 1929.'''<br />
<br />
''Photo: Courtesy of Peter Linenthal, Potrero Archive Project''<br />
<br />
The brick building with black columns at 312 Connecticut Street, just up the slope from Goat Hill Pizza, has an unusual history and an uncertain future. For the last 30 years it’s been home to the San Francisco Gurdjieff Society, which bought it in 1993 for $280,000, and has been making extensive renovations ever since. The three-story building features 8,300 square feet of usable space, has been seismically upgraded, with a top-floor apartment and gymnasium featuring a 16-foot ceiling.<br />
<br />
In 2013, Velocity Realty purchased the structure under an agreement which allowed the Society to continue its occupancy under a kind of reverse mortgage arrangement. That deal is now in default. The property, appraised at $6 million, is being offered for $3.5 million. <br />
<br />
Built in 1913, the Connecticut Street building opened as the Alta Theater, showing silent moving pictures, including the 1914 serial, ''The Perils of Pauline''. In 1929, the theater converted to sound and was renamed the New Potrero Theater, serving as a neighborhood movie house until 1963. Old timers called it “The Nick,” and later “The Flea Bag,” treasuring China dishware given out on ‘Dish Night, Free to the Ladies’. A 1937 film of a St. Teresa’s Church’s saint’s day procession was made to be shown at the New Potrero Theater exclusively. The theater appears briefly in the clip below:<br />
<br />
<iframe src="https://archive.org/embed/ssfPOTHILL2" width="640" height="480" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen="true" mozallowfullscreen="true" allowfullscreen></iframe><br />
<br />
'''1937 Feast Day Celebration on Potrero Hill.'''<br />
<br />
''Video: courtesy Potrero Hill Archives Project''<br />
<br />
In 1968, the Grateful Dead used the theater to work on their album, “Anthem of the Sun.” In 1973, The New Potrero Theater appeared in the television series Streets of San Francisco, Season 1, Episode 20: “Trail of the Serpent.” In 2012, the Potrero Hill Archives Project sponsored vintage movie screenings in the cavernous downstairs space. <br />
<br />
There aren’t many traces of the building’s theater years; the ticket booth, marquee, and sloping interior floor were removed years ago.<br />
<br />
[[Image:PotreroView 2023-02 312Connecticut.png|800px]]<br />
<br />
'''312 Connecticut Street.'''<br />
<br />
''Photo: Photo: Peter Linenthal''<br />
<br />
The Gurdjieff Society emerged from the work of George Gurdjieff, who travelled extensively in Asia from 1890 to 1912 and taught a Fourth Way of self-discovery, combining traditions of physical, emotional and intellectual development. Terry Lindahl, the Gurdjieff Society’s director, has occupied the Connecticut Street building for the past thirty years. He’s presently completing The Universe Works, which postulates that the biosphere is a religious organ of the solar system, and that religion is a biological instinct oriented towards harmonizing human’s reptile, emotional, and neo-cortical brains to a higher vibration. Lindahl was featured in the October 2019 ''Potrero View'', “The Last Philosopher in San Francisco.”<br />
<br />
Lindahl, 91, has formed the Bay Area College of Humanity Consortium to support his continued work at Connecticut Street. <br />
<br />
[[category:Potrero Hill]] [[category:Buildings]] [[category:2020s]] [[category:1910s]] [[category:1930s]] [[category:Theaters]] [[category:Churches]]</div>
Ccarlsson
https://foundsf.org/index.php?title=1936_Soap_Box_Derby
1936 Soap Box Derby
2024-01-21T00:09:03Z
<p>Ccarlsson: Created page with "'''<font face = Papyrus> <font color = maroon> <font size = 4>Historical Essay</font></font> </font>''' ''by Peter Linenthal'', Potrero Hill Archives Project, originally published in the [https://www.potreroview.net/1936-soap-box-derby/ December 2023 ''Potrero View'']. 800px '''Photo: John Gutmann'' The first All-American Soap Box Derby, advertised as ‘the greatest amateur racing event in the world’, was held in S..."</p>
<hr />
<div>'''<font face = Papyrus> <font color = maroon> <font size = 4>Historical Essay</font></font> </font>'''<br />
<br />
''by Peter Linenthal'', Potrero Hill Archives Project, originally published in the [https://www.potreroview.net/1936-soap-box-derby/ December 2023 ''Potrero View''].<br />
<br />
[[Image:PotreroView 2023-12 soap-box-derby1.png|800px]]<br />
<br />
'''Photo: John Gutmann''<br />
<br />
The first All-American Soap Box Derby, advertised as ‘the greatest amateur racing event in the world’, was held in San Francisco on July 31, 1936. The event drew thousands of spectators and a hundred participants to Carolina Street between 19th and Mariposa streets. Racers sped past the Pioneer & Queen Lily Soap factory at 18th Street, now Pioneer Square, to a rope net which caught those whose brakes failed. <br />
<br />
First place went to 15-year-old Russel Scott of San Rafael with a time of 25.1 seconds on the 900-foot course. He earned a trip to the national finals in Akron, Ohio, held at Derby Downs, on a track built by the Works Progress Administration, an event which can be seen at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StE8b_hPmng.<br />
<br />
San Francisco kids found baby buggy wheels at a South-of-Market dump nicknamed The Crematory to build their gravity-powered racers, some named for girlfriends, others “The Tear Drop” and “Green Dragon.” Girls weren’t welcomed as racers until 1971. <br />
<br />
[[Image:PotreroView 2023-12 soap-box-derby2.png|800px]]<br />
<br />
''Photo: John Gutmann''<br />
<br />
Photo-journalist John Gutmann documented the race. He’d arrived in San Francisco in the early-1930s, fleeing Nazi Germany, and taught at San Francisco State College, where he established creative photography, international film, and modern art history programs. Thousands of his distinctive photos are online at Arizona’s Center for Creative Photography. <br />
<br />
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art held a popular derby for artist-designed cars in 1975 and 2022 at McLaren Park, awarding trophies for Most Colorful and Most Amorphous. Bernal Hill was the site of 2007 derbies organized by the [[Soapbox Society|Illegal Soapbox Society]]. Each Easter, BYOBW brings big wheels together to race down the twisty stretch of Vermont Street. <br />
<br />
[[category:Potrero Hill]] [[category:1930s]] [[category:transit]]</div>
Ccarlsson
https://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Coronado_Playground,_21st_and_Folsom
Coronado Playground, 21st and Folsom
2024-01-17T06:36:53Z
<p>Ccarlsson: </p>
<hr />
<div>'''<font face = arial light> <font color = maroon> <font size = 3>Unfinished History</font></font> </font>'''<br />
<br />
[[Image:Jose Coronado Playground 1930s boys playing baseball view to Folsom wnp26.1615.jpg|800px]]<br />
<br />
'''Boys playing baseball at Jose Coronado Playground, c.1930s, view towards Folsom Street.'''<br />
<br />
''Photo: OpenSFHistory.org wnp26.1615''<br />
<br />
[[Image:Jose-Coronado-Playground 20230613 222255747.jpg]]<br />
<br />
'''Jose Coronado Playground at 21st and Folsom, 2023.'''<br />
<br />
''Photo: Chris Carlsson''<br />
<br />
[[Image:Jose-Coronado-Playground-sign 20230613 222311468.jpg]]<br />
<br />
''Photo: Chris Carlsson''<br />
<br />
[[Image:Jose Coronado Playground 1930s Elevated view to children playing. At corner of 21st and Folsom, United Grocers, National Meat Market, Jim's Grocery. wnp26.1628.jpg|800px]]<br />
<br />
'''Jose Coronado Playground, 1930s. Elevated view of children playing. At corner of 21st and Folsom across from playground are United Grocers, National Meat Market, and Jim's Grocery.'''<br />
<br />
''Photo: OpenSFHistory.org wnp26.1628''<br />
<br />
[[Image:Folsom-and-21st-SE-corner 20230613 222303367.jpg]]<br />
<br />
'''Folsom Street and 21st Street southeast corner, 2023.'''<br />
<br />
''Photo: Chris Carlsson''<br />
<br />
<br />
[[category:Mission]] [[category:Parks]] [[category:1930s]] [[category:2020s]]</div>
Ccarlsson
https://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Dolores_Street_and_27th_Street
Dolores Street and 27th Street
2024-01-17T05:55:16Z
<p>Ccarlsson: </p>
<hr />
<div>'''<font face = arial light> <font color = maroon> <font size = 3>Unfinished History</font></font> </font>'''<br />
<br />
The [[Trains in the Mission|San Jose-San Francisco railroad]] ran across an elevated iron bridge at the intersection of Dolores and 27th Streets for decades, ending during WWII when the bridge was dismantled after the railroad stopped passenger service and the iron was needed for war materiel. <br />
<br />
[[Image:27th and Dolores Northeast sfm002-10044.jpg|800px]]<br />
<br />
'''Northeast view along train bridge, c. 1942.'''<br />
<br />
''Photo: SFMemory.org''<br />
<br />
[[Image:Ne-across-27th-and-dolores 20231205 225258424.jpg]]<br />
<br />
'''Northeast view across 27th and Dolores, 2023.'''<br />
<br />
''Photo: Chris Carlsson''<br />
<br />
[[Image:Dolores and 27th 1942 sfm002-10035.jpg|800px]]<br />
<br />
'''1942.'''<br />
<br />
''Photo: SFMemory.org''<br />
<br />
[[Image:27th and Dolores bridge removed abutment still intact on sw corner sfm002-10052.jpg|800px]]<br />
<br />
'''Removed abutment for iron train bridge still sits on southwest corner of 27th and Dolores, 1942, [[St Paul's|St. Paul's church]] on Church Street in distance.'''<br />
<br />
''Photo: SFMemory.org''<br />
<br />
[[Image:Sw-across-27th-and-Dolores 20231205 225413649.jpg]]<br />
<br />
'''Southwest view across Dolores at 27th, 2023.'''<br />
<br />
''Photo: Chris Carlsson''<br />
<br />
[[Image:Dolores and 27th dismantling for war effort sfm002-10038.jpg]]<br />
<br />
'''Sign indicating dismantling for war effort, 1942.'''<br />
<br />
''Photo: SFMemory.org''<br />
<br />
[[Image:Train on bridge near Dolores 1908 AAB-3476.jpg]]<br />
<br />
'''Train on bridge near Dolores Street, 1908.'''<br />
<br />
''Photo: San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library''<br />
<br />
[[category:Transit]] [[category:1940s]] [[category:Noe Valley]] [[category:2020s]] [[category:roads]] [[category:1900s]]</div>
Ccarlsson
https://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Alexander_Books_Closes
Alexander Books Closes
2024-01-17T05:28:10Z
<p>Ccarlsson: Created page with "'''<font face = Papyrus> <font color = maroon> <font size = 4>I was there. . .</font></font> </font>''' ''by Teresa Moore, originally published in the ''San Francisco Examiner'', April 26, 2023'' Image:Alexander-interior 20230428 213442339.MP.jpg '''The last day at Alexander Books at 50 2nd Street, just south of Market Street, April 28, 2023.''' ''Photo: Chris Carlsson'' San Franciscans know microclimates. Live here long enough and you learn to pack a sweater, s..."</p>
<hr />
<div>'''<font face = Papyrus> <font color = maroon> <font size = 4>I was there. . .</font></font> </font>'''<br />
<br />
''by Teresa Moore, originally published in the ''San Francisco Examiner'', April 26, 2023''<br />
<br />
[[Image:Alexander-interior 20230428 213442339.MP.jpg]]<br />
<br />
'''The last day at Alexander Books at 50 2nd Street, just south of Market Street, April 28, 2023.'''<br />
<br />
''Photo: Chris Carlsson''<br />
<br />
San Franciscans know microclimates. Live here long enough and you learn to pack a sweater, scarf and a jacket because the sun on your back as you leave Potrero Hill in the morning can turn to chilled fog soup by the time you are heading home. San Francisco is also a city of microeras: slivers of time, community and place rich with meaning for those who live through them.<br />
<br />
I got to thinking in terms of microeras when I heard artist Sadie Barnette talking at SFMOMA about the long impact left by her father, Rodney, who ran the New Eagle Creek Saloon, San Francisco’s first Black-owned gay bar in the 1990s. “I believe it’s some people’s job to take care of the future, and for whatever reason, I feel like it’s my job to take care of the past,” she said.<br />
<br />
Places where people of color can feel seen and heard and at home are precious, even in a city celebrated for its diversity. Here’s a farewell to another one.<br />
<br />
Over the past few decades, nearly all the markers of my downtown—Marquard’s newsstand, the M&M, Loehmann’s, the 26 Valencia bus, Hawthorne Lane, Specialty’s, Embarcadero Cinema, Fog City News—have vanished. But no finale has hit me as hard or tracked as closely with my San Francisco as the end of Alexander Books.<br />
<br />
Alexander’s fate is tied to the exodus of downtown workers, the market the store was designed to serve. For most of its 32 years, it was a reader’s oasis on the edge of the Financial District. But what’s an oasis without thirsty wanderers? The store will close for good Friday, April 28.<br />
<br />
[[Image:Alexander-Books-exterior 20230428 213136848.jpg|360px|left]]<br />
<br />
'''Alexander Books opened November 15, 1990, and closed April 28, 2023.'''<br />
<br />
''Photo: Chris Carlsson''<br />
<br />
Alexander Book Company opened on November 15, 1990. I only know the exact date because Bonnie Stuppin, who co-owns the store with her brother Michael, told me so last Friday as I melted down in front of her in the children’s section. Bonnie is what I would call one of my “Sesame Street friends” — the people you see and talk to for years as you go about your day, the merchants and clerks and waiters and bus drivers and UPS drivers who make a place a neighborhood and a neighborhood a home.<br />
<br />
Even though last Friday there were “45% off” closing signs all over the place, Alexander was still full enough to be what I have always thought of as the most beautiful bookstore in my world, the book covers bright as flags against the yellow wood shelving and the exposed brick wall on street level where the ceiling soars nearly as high as the kids’ and cooks’ books nook on the third floor.<br />
<br />
Everywhere you look, there is something worth seeing, but it always seems airy, never cluttered. The effect is a maximalist mind spa.<br />
<br />
Bonnie and I stood there reconstructing the intersections of our downtown timelines. About seven months after Alexander opened, I started as a cub reporter at the oldest surviving San Francisco daily newspaper, back when it shared a building and a publishing arrangement with this august news outlet.<br />
<br />
[[Image:Alexander-Books-upstairs 20230428 214039258.jpg]]<br />
<br />
'''Bonnie Stuppin at register upstairs at Alexander Books.'''<br />
<br />
''Photo: Chris Carlsson''<br />
<br />
One warm afternoon in 1991, I drifted into the store under the spell of Jerry Thompson, the bookseller behind the main counter. I don’t remember what we talked about, but I left with an armload of books feeling as if I’d met a character on the order of Willy Wonka, only Black and gay and handsome and ready to laugh.<br />
<br />
In 1992 I interviewed Jerry for the first story I ever published about race, a reported article about how sometimes Black people who grew up post-Jim Crow endured more subtle and complicated experiences of racism than our parents did. A year or so later, I wrote a story about the Sister Circle, the haven for Black women readers he created in the bookstore’s basement. Alexander Book Company was decades ahead of the curve when it came to diversity, equity and inclusion.<br />
<br />
In this race and equity column, [https://www.sfexaminer.com/culture/faith-ringgold-retrospective-resonates-with-vivid-works-of-black-joy-history-and-activism/article_447dda22-047b-11ed-af68-2f127bf247f7.html I’ve written about] majority-white spaces that have succeeded in or are atte mpting to be more attractive to people of color. Thirty-two years ago, the Stuppin siblings achieved that when they hired Jerry, an artist whose medium is bringing people together, and let him do his thing.<br />
<br />
Even though Alexander is a mainstream, general-interest independent bookstore, for many Black people who shopped there, it could feel like a Black bookstore, too.<br />
<br />
In response to the scores of Black women who worked downtown and came in looking for the latest hot Black books, Jerry created the Sister Circle reading series. The events, featuring Black writers, were open to anyone, but they became part refuge, part clubhouse for Black women — myself included — working in spaces where there were few of us and it was hard to be ourselves. In each other’s company at a Sister Circle event, we could indeed exhale.<br />
<br />
Nikki Giovanni, J. California Cooper, Anna Deavere Smith, Tananarive Due, Bill T. Jones, Michael Eric Dyson, E. Lynn Harris, Colson Whitehead — these are just a few of the Black literary luminaries who lit up the Sister Circle. The last story I wrote for my old newspaper was a profile of Queen Latifah that included her Sister Circle reading. I won’t forget the day Jerry let me in the green room with Ntozake Shange, the playwright and poet, who refused to face the packed basement audience until someone brought her a whiskey and a burrito.<br />
<br />
Jerry made it happen.<br />
<br />
Jerry and I became the kind of friends who hang out outside of work. I’ve seen him hold it together behind the counter in the final days, professional, efficient, and handsome as ever — but his laugh is muted and his light dimmed. This ending is a lot for him and his colleagues.<br />
<br />
[[Image:Jerry-Thompson-last-day-at-Alexander-Books 20230428 213635898.jpg]]<br />
<br />
'''Jerry Thompson on the last day at Alexander Books.'''<br />
<br />
''Photo: Chris Carlsson''<br />
<br />
But having been fortunate to see his genius in effect in lots of other spaces, I know what he’s bringing with him as he leaves this stage. When the secret history of San Francisco is told, Jerry Thompson will have his own chapter. He is the Kevin Bacon of Black, gay, literary, artistic San Francisco—and then some.<br />
<br />
Example: Glide pastor Marvin K. White and I met way back when he was the youngest member of the performance group Pomo Afro Homos at a dinner party Jerry threw for his godmother, the poet Lucille Clifton. There, I also met my chosen brother, the artist Michael Ross, who used to manage Patrick and Co. and now runs The Studios of Key West. Yesterday Michael texted about “the Era (sic) of Jerry’s magic and the blessings to all of us around him.”<br />
<br />
Thirty-two years. More than half of my life. Maybe not so much of a microera as, indeed, an Era.<br />
<br />
Upstairs in the kids’ section, I calmed down long enough to tell Bonnie, “Thank you for so many good stories and memories in the pages and in this place.”<br />
<br />
This will be my last column for the Examiner. I’m not ending it because my favorite bookstore is closing, but because this is the right time. A true microera: 18 months and 27 columns. Multiples of nine, my favorite number.<br />
<br />
Joy is too small a word for what having this space has meant to me. It has been a privilege to connect with regular readers—I see you, Cornelius and Kitty and Ralph and Sunny—to go places and ask questions and recognize that some things will never make sense. There is so much beauty and energy left in San Francisco. I am grateful for the attention and time you have shared with me. Please keep giving that gift of attention to each other.<br />
<br />
[[category:Literary San Francisco]] [[category:African-American]] [[category:Downtown]] [[category:1990s]] [[category:2000s]] [[category:2010s]] [[category:2020s]] [[category:Buildings]]</div>
Ccarlsson
https://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Revolutionary_Art_on_Telegraph_Hill:_the_Coit_Tower_Murals
Revolutionary Art on Telegraph Hill: the Coit Tower Murals
2024-01-14T22:30:25Z
<p>Ccarlsson: </p>
<hr />
<div>'''<font face = Papyrus> <font color = maroon> <font size = 4>Historical Essay</font></font> </font>'''<br />
<br />
''by Nancy Snyder''<br />
<br />
''Originally published at [https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/12/15/revolutionary-art-on-telegraph-hill-the-coit-tower-murals/ counterpunch.org], December 15, 2023''<br />
<br />
<br />
[[Image:1958 Aerial view of Coit Tower, Alcatraz, Marin County beyond. wnp27.5543.jpg|792px]]<br />
<br />
'''1958 aerial view from south to north of Coit Tower, Alcatraz, and Marin County in the distance.'''<br />
<br />
''Photo: OpenSFHistory.org wnp27.5543''<br />
<br />
The story of Coit Tower begins in the City’s earliest days when San Francisco was accessible by ship to the rest of the country and the world. Being that Telegraph Hill, located in the northeastern corner of the City, had the most advantageous and panoramic 360-degree views of San Francisco Bay and its neighboring five counties, in 1849 Telegraph Hill served as a [[California's First Telegraph|signal station]], relaying the news of the incoming ships to San Francisco’s business sector down the hill on Montgomery Street.<br />
<br />
The wealthy socialite [[Lillie Coit's Tribute to Pyromania|Lillie Hitchcock Coit]], born in 1842, consistently disturbed her wealthy socialite colleagues with her eccentric foibles. With the assured confidence that money and privilege brings, Lillie Hitchcock Coit, a denizen of North Beach and Telegraph Hill, flouted convention and loved her exuberant life of hunting and camping and helping the local firefighters whenever a fire erupted. Coit was also an inveterate gambler who wore men’s trousers to to gain admission to the males only gambling establishments. She was known to indulge in hard liquor accompanied by a cigar.<br />
<br />
In appreciation of the City – that Lillie Hitchcock believed was the only city who accepted her eccentricity, when Coit passed away in 1929, she left San Francisco a third of her estate. It was a hefty sum of $118,000 that Hitchcock bequeathed to beautify the City. The San Art Commission president, [[Mortimer Fleishhacker Sr. Lived Here|Herbert Fleishhacker]] proposed that the memorial be built on Telegraph Hill—Lillie Hitchcock Coit’s stomping grounds for pleasure and business.<br />
<br />
San Francisco appropriated $7,000 in additional funds to for an architectural design competition. Architect Henry Howard, from the esteemed architectural firm of Arthur Brown Jr., the firm that had designed San Francisco’s City Hall and the War Memorial Opera House, won the competition for his concrete, 212-foot tower. The monument would be placed on the highest point on Telegraph Hill at Pioneer Part; Howard’s design possessed a symmetrical simplicity that gave the sleek linear monument an Art Deco presence combined with a touch of classicism.<br />
<br />
The idea to cover Coit Tower’s interior walls with murals originated from Dr. Walter Heil, Director of the San Francisco Fine Arts Museums. It was the beginning of the country’s Great Depression, artists and everyone else were out of work.<br />
<br />
Dr. Heil petitioned the Public Works Art Project, one of the beneficial relief programs implemented by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The Coit Tower murals would be the inaugural project of the New Deal federal employment program for artists. Bay Area muralists Ralph Stackpole and Bernard Zakheim successfully sought the commission from the Public Works of Art Project in 1933. The Coit Towers murals would begin work in January 1934.<br />
<br />
Dr. Walter Heil began to hire the other muralists needed for the Coit Tower project. They would be paid $25-$45 a week. The muralists were supervised by Bernard Zakheim and Ralph Stackpole and included: Maxine Albro, Victor Arnautoff, Jane Berlandia, Ray Bertrand, Ry Boynton, Ralph Chesse, Rinaldo Cuneo, Ben F. Cunningham, Mallette “Harold” Dean, Parker Hall, Edith Hamlin, George Albert Harris, William Hesthal, John Langley Howard, Lucien Lebaudt, Gordon Langdon, Jose Moya del Pino, Otis Oldfield, Frederick E. Olmstead Jr., Suzanne Scheuer, Edward Terada, Frede Vidar and Clifford Wright.<br />
<br />
The muralists would be painting in the “fresco” method: a timeworn technique used for wall painting that was discontinued by the late 1600s for more expedient methods. The fresco technique starts when the master plasterer applies a thin coating of fresh plaster – mixed with a bit of lime – to the wall. The amount of plaster used is, about two feet by two feet, would be determined by how much the muralist planned to paint on that day.<br />
<br />
After the plaster is applied, the muralist paints with a wet brush dipped into the dry color pigments painted directly on the fresh lime plaster. When the plaster dries, a chemical bonds the color pigments and the plaster together.<br />
<br />
It was the Los Tres Grandes, or the Big Three, Mexican muralists [[Diego Rivera in San Francisco|Diego Rivera]], David Alfaro Siqueiros and Jose Clemente Orozco, who revived the fresco technique. Los Tres Grandes began the Mexican mural movement in the 1920s when they were commissioned by the incoming government of General Obregón in 1920. Jose Vasconcelos, the incoming Secretary of Education, was asked by General Obregón how best to unite the Mexican people after the 1910 Mexican Revolution that saw the overthrow of Mexican dictator Porfirio Diaz.<br />
<br />
Vasconcelos recommended the painting of murals in public spaces—a tradition of their Mayan ancestors—to educate and motivate the Mexican people. Gone were any remnants of the European schools, where Rivera had studied, that excluded any image of political and cultural strife. Los Tres Grandes put Mexican history on the walls of government buildings, universities and libraries that instilled a sense of recognition to the masses of poor and indigenous people, who had been unrecognized for centuries in the political and arts spheres of Mexican life.<br />
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The unifying theme in the Coit Tower murals was ''Life in California''. The muralists’ designs had been approved by the regional director of the Public Works Art Project. The murals would depict scenes of California industrial life in the urban and rural areas.<br />
<br />
To varying degrees, the Coit Tower muralists were all activists in the movements for racial and economic equality and leftist political ideals that were expressed in their extraordinary work.<br />
<br />
With great excitement and anticipation, the Coit Tower muralists began their work in January 1934. The artists all worked in a cooperative spirit; there was enthusiasm for beginning what would be one of San Francisco’s great artworks; and there was much talk about what was happening to Diego Rivera in New York. In January, 1934, Rockefeller ordered the destruction of Rivera’s masterpiece, ''Man at the Crossroads''.<br />
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The previous year, 1933, Rivera had met with John D. Rockeller, Jr. in New York City. Diego Rivera decided to accept a commission from Rockefeller, for a grand mural in the lobby of the newly completed Rockefeller Center. (A commission that kept Rivera on the outs with the Communist Party, USA).<br />
<br />
John D. Rockefeller, Jr. and his son, Nelson knew of Rivera’s political sympathies. John’s wife Abby was a patron of Rivera and had purchased several of Rivera’s works from the Rivera Exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. The Rockefellers were aware of Rivera’s politics and knew they might be displayed as greedy and decadent capitalists—but hired Rivera anyway.<br />
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Rivera’s plans for the mural, which would be called ''Man at the Crossroads'', had been approved by Nelson and John D. Rockefeller, Jr. The mural would be an expansive depiction of contemporary social and scientific culture; the juxtaposition of capitalism, the New Deal and communism would be expressed.<br />
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When ''Man at the Crossroads'' was nearly finished, Nelson and John D. Rockefeller took great offense at the inclusion of V.I. Lenin in the mural. The New York press had called Rivera’s mural “anti-capitalist propoaganda.” The Rockefellers had their pride and reputation to consider: capitalism would not be condemned in a mural by a Mexican communist artist, whom they had paid, on their property.<br />
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The Rockefellers demanded Rivera remove Lenin’s portrait, Rivera refused, and the Rockefellers did what they always do: Rockefellers pay someone else to carry out their dirty and unconscionable work. ''Man at the Crossroads'' was destroyed by the Rockefeller workmen in January 1934.<br />
<br />
In late 1933, suspecting that ''Man at the Crossroads'' would be destroyed as the press further denounced the mural, Rivera had the foresight for the great photographer Lucien Bloch to take photos of his doomed mural masterpiece. The photos were black and white, but without them, Rivera would not have been able to repaint his mural.<br />
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A tremendous public cultural outcry ensued after this “premeditated art murder.”. Rivera was in Mexico, and replied that he “was not surprised” that Rockefeller destroyed his work. He was now in the process of replicating the masterpiece that would be called ''Man, Controller of the Universe'' at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City.<br />
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Meanwhile, back at Coit Tower in January, 1934, as the destruction in Rockefeller Plaza’s underway and the muralists began their work, a newly formed cultural coalition of 350 artists and writers had formed the San Francisco Artists’ and Writers’ Union and joined the nationwide protest against the “premeditated art murder.”<br />
<br />
The San Francisco Artists’ and Writers’ Union issued their statement when a protest against Rivera’s mural demise was held at Coit Tower. Muralist Maxine Albro began her speech with the observation that the ruin of Rivera’s work was not an isolated incident of any particular person or group, but reflected “an acute symptom of a growing reaction in the American culture which has threatened for years to strangle all creative effort and which is becoming increasingly menacing.”<br />
<br />
As spring 1934 began, the political and economic tensions plaguing the City were about to converge. The Waterfront Employers Association, the company coalition of longshore employers, had refused to even hear the concerns of the International Longshoremen’s Association. The longshoremen’s proposals were simple: an increase in wages, hiring that would happen from the Longshoremen’s union hall and not from the very outdated hiring system that was corrupted by favoritism. The longshoremen knew that their union – independent from any company union – needed to be recognized.<br />
<br />
By May 1934, the International Longshoremen’s Union voted to go on strike. On May 9, 1934, the Longshoremen did not shop up for work and [[The Waterfront Strike|the strike began]]. Imagine over 2,000 miles of commerce coastline that covered the ports of Seattle, Washington down to San Diego, California that had every longshoreman, the Teamsters on the waterfront who walked out in support of the Longshoremen, not showing up. Business did not stall, it stopped.<br />
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The Waterfront Employers Association remained intractable towards the longshoremen’s strike proposals. To channel the public’s anger towards the strikers, and away from the employers responsible for the longshoremen deciding to strike, another timeworn tool was utilized by the San Francisco press: a frenzy of red-baiting supported by the City’s politicians and orchestrated by the Waterfront Employers Association.<br />
<br />
On Coit Tower, as work was winding down on the murals in May and June, the muralists were not spared the wrath of the red-baiting press. Certain that the artists were all communists and using government money to spread their message, the press photographers attempted to take pictures of the mural at night. The press photos that were published falsely edited to depict a hammer and sickle superimposed on the Library mural – lending the impression that the murals were all blessed with the Soviet emblem. And who knows what other communist propaganda were on the walls.<br />
<br />
Furthermore, the right-wing propaganda press machine were certain that the Coit Tower muralists were sending some sort of secret signals down Telegraph Hill to the waterfront strikers. There was no evidence to this fantasy—yet for the press and its readers, it must be have been true: communists were devious, sneaky and it was just something they would have done.<br />
<br />
To address the allegations of the press about the murals—and to ensure that the muralists were keeping to their previously approved upon mural designs—the San Francisco Arts Commission conducted its own tour of Coit Tower murals and came to the conclusion that the murals “were in opposition to the generally accepted tradition of Native Americanism.”<br />
<br />
Therefore, the San Francisco Parks Commission, the local governing body for Pioneer Park, located, decided to close Coit Tower. The official July 7th opening date for the Coit Tower Murals was canceled. No future dates were chosen.<br />
<br />
This unheard-of provocation by the City government enraged the artistic community—being justifiably apprehensive given the Diego Rivera mural destruction—and the San Francisco “patriots” being angered that such murals—rife with socialistic symbolism—existed at taxpayers’ expense.<br />
<br />
There was a group of patriotic Bay Area artists, acting as a vigilante committee, ready to chip away the offensive murals that were shut out by a previous police blockade halfway up Telegraph Hill (the blockade against the artists and possible others “who might throw rocks, or give signals,” to the strikers on the waterfront.).<br />
<br />
The Writers’ and Artists’ Union strategized a counter-offensive and established their own picket line around Coit Tower to protect the murals.<br />
<br />
[[Image:Norbeach$coit-tower$mural itm$victor-arnautoff-coit-mural.jpg]]<br />
<br />
'''Coit Tower Mural — ''City Life'' by Victor Arnautoff'''<br />
<br />
''Photo: Chris Carlsson''<br />
<br />
<br />
[[Image:Close-up_on_Coit_Tower_mural_papers.jpg|340px|right]]<br />
<br />
Summer 1934 arrived with the Coit Tower picket still in place. The SF Arts Commission found there were four mural panels deemed to be “socialistic.” The first errant mural was Victor Arnautoff’s ''City Life''. There was a newsstand portrayed that had left wing publications, ''The New Masses'' and ''The Daily Worker'' but not the ''San Francisco Chronicle''. The Artists’ and Writers’ Union replied that given ''The San Francisco Chronicle'' had been previously depicted Zakheim’s mural, ''Library'', there was no need for further repetition in other murals.<br />
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The second offending mural was John Langley Howard’s ''Industrial Life'', who had also depicted the left wing press: a miner was reading the ''Western Worker'' prominently depicted in front of an angry, and interracial, gathering of unemployed workers—who looked angry and aggressive. Other parts of ''Industrial Life'' made some on the Arts Commission’s observations appear to be self-censoring—given the recent events of Diego Rivera’s destroyed masterpiece.<br />
<br />
''Industrial Life'' included miners glaring at some tourists, who were standing too close to the tourists’ limousine and its chauffeur and lapdog. Next to this image, a broken down Model T Ford and a starving mongrel dog.<br />
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[[Image:John-Langley-Howard Industrial-Scenes-detail-cotton-strikers 20170211 153029.jpg]]<br />
<br />
'''Detail from John Langley Howard's ''Industrial Scenes'' depicting cotton strikers from the 1933 cotton strike in northern California.'''<br />
<br />
''Photo: Chris Carlsson''<br />
<br />
Next was Bernard Zakheim and his mural ''Library''. There were more radical newspapers and a reader, modeled after muralist John Langley Howard, was reaching for a copy of ''Das Kapital'' by Karl Marx. Other library shelves included renowned proletarian authors Maxim Gorky, Erskine Caldwell and Grace Lumpkin.<br />
<br />
[[Image:Zakheim-Library 20170211 153113.jpg]]<br />
<br />
'''Bernard Zakheim's ''Library'', controversial due to the patron reaching for "Das Kapital" by Karl Marx.'''<br />
<br />
''Photo: Chris Carlsson''<br />
<br />
However, it was the image of the hammer and sickle painted by Clifford Wight (a former assistant to Diego Rivera), that had angered so many conventional artists and press people into seeing red. The small hammer and sickle was a minor image in the mural that depicted the images of a steelworker and a surveyor. This was the only deviation in the approval process; Wight had submitted this change directly to the supervising muralist Arnautoff who had approved them.<br />
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The ''San Francisco Chronicle'' ran a scathing piece on July 3rd to further the red-baiting art scandal. Under the headline “Is this Red Propaganda? Murals on Coit Hint Plot for Red Cause.”<br />
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The story answered their headline query with this observation: “Perspiration has begun to bead the brows of members of the Parks Commission and Arts Commission, who are sore put to decide whether the daubings on the interior of the Coit Tower Memorial Tower are art or whether they are merely a grotesque rebellion of starved souls against the existing order.”<br />
<br />
After extensive debate, the Arnautoff, Howard and Zakheim murals would remain unchanged; it was the Wight symbolism of the hammer and sickle that remain in contention. Wight and the Artists’ and Writers’ Union argued for “artistic integrity.” Wight had explained his reasoning for the symbol: the depiction of capitalism, communism and the New Deal nearly required such a symbol.<br />
<br />
Regardless of the sound reasoning given to the Arts Commission, Wight’s hammer and sickle was removed.<br />
<br />
After the [[The Progress Club—1934 and Class Memory|Longshoremen’s strike was settled]] by arbitration and cargo began to be unloaded on July 27th, the red-baiting directed at Coit Tower began to subside. Coit Tower and its masterpiece murals would be open to the public beginning October 20, 1934.<br />
<br />
Local journalist Junius Craven consistently demeaned the murals and the muralists throughout the spring and summer of 1934. Cravens observed that “There is something about fresco painting when it is applied to the walls of public buildings that seems to breed dissension…There have always been naughty little boys who drew vilifications on schoolroom walls when their teachers were not looking. Likewise, there have always been mischievous little artists who put something over while they were not being watched. Of such substance is history made.”<br />
<br />
However, after the October opening of Coit Tower, Cravens changed his perspective. Cravens wrote with a lot less sarcasm and great appreciation, “San Francisco should be not only proud of [the Coit Tower] artists but grateful to them as well. And this not only for what they have given the city but also for the courageous way in which they tackled such a Gargantuan problem, fraught as it was with difficulties and discouragements, and licked it – knocked it out cold.”<br />
<br />
On October 23, 2023, Coit Tower celebrated its 90th birthday with a formal reception from the City. It was a grey day that forecasted heavy rain which may have kept the party small, but the green parrots of Telegraph Hill, the official animal of San Francisco, made their presence known with their high-pitched squawking and flying overhead of Coit Tower.<br />
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Speaker of the House Emerita Nancy Pelosi, along with Aaron Peskin, member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors attended the celebration to represent San Francisco’s political wing.<br />
<br />
What was more interesting was the appearance of two direct descendants of Lily Hitchcock Coit: Mike and Ian Coit. Mike Coit, graduate of San Francisco’s [[Washington High School Murals: We're Getting Them All Wrong|George Washington High School]] (Class of 1981) in the western part of the City, talked to the intimate crowd of birthday celebrants by relaying stories of his youth when he would attempt to impress his dates by driving to Coit Tower and show off his family connection: a move most likely to have brought some laughter to Lily Hitchcock Coit had she been around to witness her wily descendant.<br />
<br />
Twenty years ago, Coit Tower underwent a tremendous restoration to its surrounding property, Pioneer Park and to the murals. For the probable future, its future maintenance and well-being is assured after being designated as a San Francisco landmark in 1984 and in 2008 when Coit Tower was included on the National Register of Historic Places.<br />
<br />
Coit Tower has become a part of the popular cultural landmark. It is used as a backdrop for the Blue Angels—the Navy pilots who perform daring airplane stunts every October—and Coit Tower is a centerpiece in a few movie scenes (think of the high-stakes chase in Clint Eastwood’s ''The Enforcer'', the ''Thin Man'' movies of the 1930s and 1940s and, of course, Kim Novak in ''Vertigo'').<br />
<br />
But forget about the movies and the Blue Angels’ wasteful use of fuel when they circle around Coit Tower every year. Consider the intent of the murals: to educate the public about how California lived during the Great Depression.<br />
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And, when you leave the Coit Tower murals, newly educated, you will hopefully be motivated to agitate alongside the young labor activists of today, and the immigrant rights activists, human rights and disability rights and LGBTQ rights—fulfilling the visions of the Coit Tower muralists.<br />
<br />
<br />
[[Lillie Coit's Tribute to Pyromania|Coit Tower loop]]<br />
<br />
<hr><br />
<br />
''Nancy Snyder is the Recording Secretary Emeritus of SEIU Local 1021. She has a long history of writing about labor issues and labor history and also writes about political literature.''<br />
<br />
[[category:Public Art]] [[category:Telegraph Hill]] [[category:1930s]] [[category:Labor]] [[category:Power and Money]] [[category:North Beach]]</div>
Ccarlsson
https://foundsf.org/index.php?title=I_Was_a_Typesetter!
I Was a Typesetter!
2024-01-13T01:03:18Z
<p>Ccarlsson: added links</p>
<hr />
<div>'''<font face = Papyrus> <font color = maroon> <font size = 4>"I was there..."</font></font> </font>'''<br />
<br />
''by Chris Carlsson, 2024''<br />
<br />
[[Image:Cc typesetting at 460 Ashbury.jpg|380px|right]]<br />
<br />
'''Here I am typesetting on a Compugraphic Jr., fonts (film strips) hanging behind me (to my right), c. 1984.'''<br />
<br />
I learned to type in the 9th grade at Claremont Junior High in Oakland in 1971. Every day we’d spend an hour on old, heavy, dirty manual typewriters, repeatedly pounding the keys of the QWERTY keyboard, slowly becoming accurate typists. This turned out, surprisingly, to be my main saleable skill as I entered the workforce in the late 1970s. My bookstore clerking life preceded my typing life, but after working at information desks I got a chance to take a class in “word processing,” a new skill and a big upgrade. After mastering the use of the IBM Mag Card II (basically an IBM Selectric typewriter with an adjacent box that could read memory cards shaped like old paper punch cards—there was no screen to see what you were doing), my wage jumped from $6/hour to $12/hour at the temp agencies I worked out of in downtown San Francisco (this was 1980). <br />
<br />
Around the same time, Mark Ritchie of Earthworks, a nonprofit dedicated to a radical critique of industrial agriculture, let it be known through the grapevine that he was willing to hand off an actual typesetting machine, a Compugraphic Jr., with a dozen fonts, to anyone willing to take over the remaining lease payments to Chase Manhattan Bank. Caitlin Manning and I decided to do it. Weeks later, we had an actual typesetting machine in our house, and had to create a darkroom space where we could develop the photographic galleys the machine produced. <br />
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A few months later, a couple of local neighborhood journalists came knocking, having heard we had a typesetting machine. Would we be willing to typeset the ''Haight Ashbury Community Perspectives'' monthly newspaper? And soon after that, would we also do the [[Last Days of the Tenderloin Times|''Tenderloin Times'']], a neighborhood newspaper that had been produced on typewriters and Gestetner copiers, but was ready to move up to proper typesetting and newsprint? I took on those jobs briefly before handing them off to another guy who needed the work since I had a job at the time at [[Ambivalent Memories of Virtual Community|Community Memory]] where I was the secretary and working on a long-forgotten early computer called a Sol, using Wordstar 1.0 on an operating system called CP/M (pre MS-DOS, long before Windows or Apple). <br />
<br />
By 1982, I began working out of my house and within a year we’d rented a basement at Ashbury and Page (I learned later it was the childhood home of [[Senator Alan Cranston: Hawkish Dove|Senator Alan Cranston]]), and my life as a typesetter and graphic artist began. For the rest of the 1980s I ran a small business called Typesetting Etc. that typeset the aforementioned newspapers, adding a couple of others along the way, and doing a lot of resumes, flyers, and ads for such thriving businesses as the early gay phone sex “Dial-a-Load” service. <br />
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The technology I was using, originally a Compugraphic Jr., and later Compugraphic IVs, was a big upgrade over the hot metal type that had been used for centuries. Instead of working with lead, setting the letters one by one into trays, this was an early photographic process. Negative film “fonts” with all the letters arranged in vertical rows would be attached to a drum that spun at a high-speed once you had installed the font and closed the lid on the machine. A tiny strobe light rode back and forth along a screw, shooting a flash of light as the correct letter spun by. The operator manually set the width of the column (in picas, 6 to an inch), as well as the leading (the space between lines, using the term for the strips of lead that had once been used, measured in points, 72 to the inch). If you wanted to change the size of the font, you had to open the back and change a belt and pulley and then reset some switches. It was quite manually intensive and clunky. The Compugraphic IVs were much more sophisticated and allowed us to hit a button to change the font size, though only the pre-set sizes available on the front of the machine (8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 18, 24, 36 pt.). For larger sizes we would have to produce the type, develop it in the dark, hang the galley to dry, then use our “copy camera” to blow it up to the size we wanted. We were also able to produce PMTs (photo mechanical transfers) of black and white line art, and halftones by using a halftone screen over the photographic paper on which we shot the enlargement or reduction of a glossy photo. <br />
<br />
Once we had produced galleys of type, along with the art requested, usually we gave that to the client. Sometimes we were hired to do the whole job, including the paste-up and sometimes even the design (we learned how to do all this by producing our own magazine, [[Processed World: A Political History|''Processed World'']]). Either we, or the clients, would work over a light table with the light coming from below so it would illuminate the paste-up boards. The boards were printed in “photo dropout” blue ink in a tiny grid (many different measurement grids were available at the graphic arts supply stores of the time—millimeters, picas, inches). We would run the galley of type through a hot wax machine, which coated the back of the galley with a thin coat of slightly sticky wax. This would allow us to paste it on the layout board, but if we needed to pick it up and move it, it could be done repeatedly. Once you had it laid out exactly how you wanted, you’d put tissue over the paste-up and use a rubber roller, or burnisher, to roll out the page. This would squeeze out air bubbles in the wax, causing it to adhere more firmly to the paste-up board. <br />
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Describing this now seems so arcane and odd. But it was a set of skills, combined with the expensive equipment, that sustained a lot of skilled workers in San Francisco and all over the world for many decades. In San Francisco there was a cluster of typesetting businesses on the northern slopes of Rincon Hill, between the Bay Bridge and downtown. Eventually we moved our office to 37 Clementina and found ourselves neighbors with Jessie Graphics down the street. Other big typesetters were still in the area too, in the late 1980s. But within a few years, nearly all of them went out of business. We almost did too, but instead, we survived thanks to some good luck, and also because as a small business of two partners, we could learn the new technology that was rendering our previous life obsolete. <br />
<br />
Desktop publishing came in like a storm. In the 1980s our typesetting machines had a small 256 character memory (allowing the operator to back up and fix a typo they noticed on the line they were working on—once it reached the end you could hear it printing on the photographic paper inside and it was no longer possible to fix an error except by retyping it later and pasting it over the erroneous line. That’s why you can often see crooked lines in old magazines.) We used computers for email and writing articles, but we couldn’t send the electronic file directly to the typesetting machines that we had. (There were more sophisticated machines on the market with real computer front-ends by the 1980s, but they cost tens of thousands of dollars.) So we thrived at the low end of the market, using equipment that was quickly becoming seriously obsolete. At one point we bought a device sold to us as a front end that would allow us to send computer files to our machines, but it never worked properly. <br />
<br />
Some time in 1991 I remember looking over my partner’s shoulder (Chaz Bufe at the time) as he was fiddling with a new Windows installation. Using Wordperfect, a word processing program, he was able to access several hundred fonts (Truetype) and in ANY size he wanted to use them! This was astonishing! And it meant we were not going to be able to sell galleys of type much longer. In 1991, it was still quite an expense to find a place where you could output to “lino,” that is, have a postscript-encoded page that would print properly on high resolution photographic paper or negative, suitable for high quality printing. Most people who were involved in early desktop publishing (as the new systems were called) were working with Apple MacIntosh machines, which had integrated postscript and were able to generate the files artists were creating. We had never embraced the Apple machines, not the Mac or any of its successors, as they were just so expensive. We were comfortable with the PCs, which we’d been working on for a decade, and we learned how to make Windows do what we wanted. <br />
<br />
[[Image:DPA cc Travis Morache JRS and unk moving compugraphic.jpg|800px]]<br />
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'''Department of Public Art moving our old Compugraphics into position to become a temporary monument, 1994.'''<br />
<br />
''Photo: Glenn Bachmann''<br />
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[[Image:DPA South Park cc and sederberg offloading Aug 1994.jpg|800px]]<br />
<br />
''Photo: Tom Erickson''<br />
<br />
[[Image:Color DPA Monument to Obsolete Tech and Useless Skills August 1994.jpg|800px]]<br />
<br />
'''Monument to Obsolete Technology and Useless Skills'''<br />
<br />
''Department of Public Art, 1994''<br />
<br />
By 1994 we weren’t using our Compugraphic machines any more. They were taking up a good deal of space in our office at the Grant Building at 7th and Market, so we decided finally we had to get rid of them. By then we had 3 machines and all the associated fonts and 4-bath chemical processing machine. We rented a truck and dressed as employees of the Department of Public Art, we used our equipment to build a “Monument to Obsolete Technology and Useless Skills” at the edge of [[SOUTH PARK|South Park]], which was only beginning to emerge as the heart of the new multimedia gulch taking shape in the mid-1990s. Hilariously our little installation got written up in Herb Caen’s column in the ''San Francisco Chronicle'', one of the few times anything we did got noticed like that. <br />
<br />
[[Image:Herb-caen-dpa-south-park-8-10-94.png]]<br />
<br />
'''Herb Caen column in SF Chronicle, August 10, 1994.'''<br />
<br />
Years later I visited the Museum of Printing in Lyon, France, where I saw many of the typesetting machines that preceded my little 1980s moment in the business. Here’s a small gallery of those machines.<br />
<br />
[[Image:Intertype-front P1040164.jpg]]<br />
<br />
'''Intertypet, from Museé de Imprimerie, Lyon, France'''<br />
<br />
''Photo: Chris Carlsson''<br />
<br />
[[Image:Keys P1040170.jpg]]<br />
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[[Image:Lead-type-and-galley P1040157.jpg]]<br />
<br />
'''Lead type and galley.'''<br />
<br />
''Photo: Chris Carlsson''<br />
<br />
[[Image:Lead-type-plate P1040163.jpg]]<br />
<br />
'''How printing and typesetting worked for centuries.'''<br />
<br />
''Photo: Chris Carlsson''<br />
<br />
[[Image:Typsetting-machine-c-1970 P1040173.jpg]]<br />
<br />
'''Typesetting machine, France, c. 1970.'''<br />
<br />
''Photo: Chris Carlsson''<br />
<br />
[[Image:Typesetting-machine-c-1970 P1040176.jpg]]<br />
<br />
Strangely enough, I continue to work on magazines and book publishing, working from my home office now. Every year I am hired to publish a half dozen books for various authors who have decided to “do it themselves” after running into the dire condition of the book trade. And I continue to design and “typeset” several regular publications that still exist in print, though it’s always a question about how much longer they will exist that way. Other clients I have had over the years have converted to electronic only, or gone out of business altogether. Nothing lasts forever! <br />
<br />
It is remarkable to think about how many radicals survived in the centuries preceding the 1990s by becoming skilled typesetters and printers. Many of them, like myself, had their own publications as a primary motivation for learning the skills and acquiring the equipment. Nowadays, anyone can produce an adequately designed publication by using off-the-shelf software, but you can’t beat the people who still know how it was done before push-button simplicity entered the picture. <br />
<br />
<br />
[[category:Technology]] [[category:1970s]] [[category:1980s]] [[category:Labor]] [[category:1990s]] [[category:Haight-Ashbury]] [[category:Civic Center]] [[category:Public Art]] [[category:SOMA]]</div>
Ccarlsson
https://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Working_at_Play%E2%80%94Playing_at_Work
Working at Play—Playing at Work
2024-01-02T07:32:33Z
<p>Ccarlsson: </p>
<hr />
<div>'''<font face = Papyrus> <font color = maroon> <font size = 4>Primary Source</font></font> </font>'''<br />
<br />
[[Image:Playnig-at-work sign.jpg]]<br />
<br />
In mid-1983, the Commmittee for Full Enjoyment made one of its earliest appearances in San Francisco. Consisting of an assorted crew of radicals, some associated with [[Processed World|''Processed World]] magazine, they embarked on a theatrical intervention in the Financial District. It was called "Working at Play—Playing at Work Theater" and consisted of a serious of office tasks portrayed in their full absurdity along Market Street. Here first is the accompanying flyer and text, and after are some images of the "performances."<br />
<br />
[[Image:Working-at-play-side-1.jpg|330px|left]] [[Image:Working-at-play-side-2.jpg|330px|right]]<br />
<br />
<big>'''WORKING AT PLAY—PLAYING AT WORK'''</big><br />
<br />
'''Why are these people out here in the street? Don't they have anything better to do? Don't they have jobs?!?'''<br />
<br />
Some of these questions may have passed through your mind as you watched our antics. To answer them in reverse order:<br />
<br />
Yes, we work to earn money, like you. Few of us, however, work in offices downtown—although many of us have at one time or another.<br />
<br />
In one sense, we do have "better"—that is, easier and possibly more productive things—to do. But there are questions that we feel strongly ought to be raised in public, and we want to have and give as much fun as possible while raising them.<br />
<br />
'''We're out here to get you to think about what you do for a living.''' About what it is. About why you do it. About how it affects you, other people, and the natural environment. That's it.<br />
<br />
(Before going any further, we should add that although we have strong opinions, those opinions are far from uniform, and were not programmed into us by any religious, political, or therapeutic cult. Many of us met for the first time to create this event. So two things we're not doing are selling you anything or recruiting you to anything. Nor do we claim to have prepackaged ultimate answers to the questions we raise.)<br />
<br />
Most people asked about their feelings toward their work, fall into one of three basic groups: they honor it because it demonstrably benefits humanity; they love it because it demands their ingenuity and skill (and/or because it pays well) and try to ignore its ultimate consequences; or they put up with it because it pays the bills and try not to think about it at all. The first group is the smallest, the last the largest. This in itself is a sad comment on our whole society: that most of us spend most of our lives doing things we'd rather forget as soon as we stop doing them. Yet few question that this is the natural, eternal state of affairs.<br />
<br />
But ''we'' question it. Why, in an age when "labor-saving" technology continues to advance by leaps and bounds, do we seem to have to work more and more to get by, rather than less and less as all the futuristic corporate hype keeps promising? And why, when this technology was supposed to eliminate drudgery, does most work get harder, more routinized, more regimented? For that matter, why do starvation and malnutrition keep increasing the more agricultural science and technology are applied? Why are the majority of families now dependent on two full-time incomes?<br />
<br />
These are questions that the mainstream media—not coincidentally—provide little help in answering. Before you throw up your hands in despair, consider this idea:<br />
<br />
'''All of us, all around the world, work for the same boss.''' This boss is not a person but a sort of machine. whose main components are companies and governments, whose control systems are elites and bureaucracies, whose communication network is money, and whose power source is '''work'''. The machine's purpose is simply to reproduce itself on an ever-larger scale, grinding up forests and farmland, rolling over cultures and customs, spewing pollution into air and water, and sucking up human time and energy. All kinds of organized conflict, from business competition to war, are integral to the machine's functioning. Its fuel and engine-temperature gauges are net profit, leading economic indicators, and opinion polls. The machine seeks to make our every living minute into resources for its growth. It does not do this consciously: the human beings who make up its control systems think they direct it, but ultimately it directs them. It does not care whether they call themselves Republicans or Democrats, capitalists or communists, so long as they follow its imperatives. It makes them rich but can replace them as easily as it replaces an assembly-line worker or a secretary—and frequently does.<br />
<br />
The machine's deepest secret is that we are its life. By going to work every day, we collectively reproduce the machine and all its power. Its power is our power. We sell it our power—our strength, intelligence, creativity, skill—in exchange for our wages and salaries. So when working people call into question the nature and purpose of their jobs, they begin to challenge the machine. When they collectively refuse a deal the machine offers them, as in a strike, they may re-own some of their power from it. But if the machine is to be dismantled altogether, the first thing working people need to repossess is their minds. This too is a collective process. It must be begun again and again. Our presence here is one such beginning.<br />
<br />
—Committee For Full Enjoyment <br />
<br />
<hr><br />
<br />
You may very well disagree with all or part of what we say here. Fine. But, just for the heck of it, we invite you to fill out the following Self-Questionnaire. The sole purpose of this questionnaire is to offer you a way to think about your job, Some of the answers may take some research. All of them are strictly confidential, because you keep them!<br />
<br />
1. How do you really feel about each of the various (or not so various) activities that make up your job? How do you feel about your job when you've been away from it for a few days?<br />
<br />
2. How many decisions of importance do you make during a typical workday? How much say do you have over the processes that make these decisions necessary?<br />
<br />
3. Is the most important aspect of your job: its contribution to human or environmental well-being? the challenges it offers? the paycheck?<br />
<br />
4. Do you believe that your job contributes to meeting a fundamental human need, such as food, shelter, or health care? How would you organize the meeting of this need differently?<br />
<br />
5. What technologies do you use in your work? What materials and other resources do these technologies involve? How does their production affect the environment?<br />
<br />
6. What work would you rather be doing? Why aren't you doing it?<br />
<br />
<hr><br />
<br />
[[Image:Playing-at-work Meg-Adam-Glenn-Gary-Rumor.jpg]]<br />
<br />
[[Image:Playing-at-work Jeff-Mooney.jpg]]<br />
<br />
[[Image:Playing-at-work Medo.jpg]]<br />
<br />
[[Image:Playing-at-work Adam-and-Glenn-and-unk.jpg]]<br />
<br />
[[Image:Playing-at-work Jeff-Mooney-dancing.jpg]]<br />
<br />
<br />
[[category:Labor]] [[category:Performing Arts]] [[category:Downtown]] [[category:1980s]] [[category:Dissent]]</div>
Ccarlsson
https://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Block_the_Boat_in_Solidarity_with_Gaza
Block the Boat in Solidarity with Gaza
2023-12-23T04:36:48Z
<p>Ccarlsson: fixed source link</p>
<hr />
<div>'''<font face = Papyrus> <font color = maroon> <font size = 4>I was there . . .</font></font> </font>'''<br />
<br />
''by Jim Haber, December 2023, originally published at [https://haberjim.wordpress.com/2023/12/04/jims-second-covid-missive/ Jim Haber's blog].<br />
<br />
[[Image:Block-the-boat-3nov23.jpg]]<br />
<br />
'''The ship being blockaded at the Port of Oakland, November 3, 2023.'''<br />
<br />
''Photo by Jim Haber''<br />
<br />
I awoke the morning of Friday, November 3 to a phone alert that a ship in Oakland was bound to carry military cargo to Israel, and it was departing that morning. I heeded the call and diverted from going to work, for a little while, I thought.<br />
<br />
[[Image:Block-the-boat-jim-3nov23.jpg|400px|right]]<br />
<br />
'''Jim Haber in front of the blockaded boat.'''<br />
<br />
''Photo by Jim Haber''<br />
<br />
The ship was being untied as we chanted and marched outside a chain link fence and gate. They were keeping us on port property, away from the ship and dock that was federal property according to the signs. It looked like I would get to work not very late, really.<br />
<br />
Somehow the gate got off track, and we were near the ship. No real security presence was there, just a few dock workers and one man with “security” on his jacket, but he did nothing. A rope ladder still hung down to an opening on the ship and the last coupe of ropes still held the ship to land. One, and then a couple more activists leapt onto rungs of the ladder. If they had been allowed to climb aboard, it all might have ended quickly, but the three were made to hang on. Coast guard came and wanted to control their rise and fall, so they hung on for six hours. One held on that long. The other two rested up on the ship for a while and then were whisked inside. The third took a couple more hours.<br />
<br />
The ship departed as soon as they lifted the last intrepid soul inside. She was one rung too high, and they were able to lift the ladder up suddenly so she was “safely” grabbable. Their placement on the side of the ship made removing them seemingly impossible for the coast guard. Their safety protocols helped make the action and kept the activists from being brutalized. They were released right away, and they have not yet received any charges or arraignment. This government tactic of identifying protesters but holding off on arraigning them is in wide use today. People are leery of racking up multiple arrests unless they are trying to push the issue and be processed.<br />
<br />
I was excited at the thought of being arrested as a group of us stood in support by the ship. A federal bust makes more sense, and I think the defense of necessity makes sense for any arrest intended to slow genocide. One lawyer thought that the block the boat three will likely be arraigned in January. Not sure, of course.<br />
<br />
To keep up on and support all of the “Ceasefire now!” arrestees, here is a [https://www.protestlaw.org/drop-the-charges link].<br />
<br />
[[category:Jewish]] [[category:Dissent]] [[category:2020s]] [[category:East Bay]]</div>
Ccarlsson
https://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Jews_Occupy_Oakland_Federal_Building_for_Gaza
Jews Occupy Oakland Federal Building for Gaza
2023-12-23T04:29:41Z
<p>Ccarlsson: removed photo at photographer's request</p>
<hr />
<div>'''<font face = Papyrus> <font color = maroon> <font size = 4>I was there . . .</font></font> </font>'''<br />
<br />
''by Jim Haber, December 2023, originally published at [https://connection.kehillasynagogue.org/jews-occupy-federal-building-for-gaza/ Community Connection], the e-magazine of the author's synagogue.<br />
<br />
[[Image:Jim-oakland-fed-bldg.jpg|800px]]<br />
<br />
'''Jim Haber at the Dellums Federal Building in Oakland on November 13.'''<br />
<br />
''Photo by Jim Haber''<br />
<br />
Jews across the country and around the world are seeing images of a starving, bloody, and obliterated Gaza, and they are coming out to support a free Palestine like never before. On Monday, November 13, several hundred of us converged on the Ron Dellums Federal Building in Oakland to occupy the building and stand up against Israeli military assaults on Palestinians in Gaza.<br />
<br />
Our coordinated T-shirts read, “NOT IN OUR NAME” and “JEWS SAY CEASEFIRE NOW.” We also decried worsening attacks on activists and Palestinian communities in Israel proper and in the West Bank (including Kehilla’s friends in Umm aI-Khair). We were demonstrating to protect the right to speak out for Palestine in the United States. However, we largely stuck to the main point, chanting, “Ceasefire now!” for hours.<br />
<br />
I didn’t know who the central organizers were until the afternoon of the action. Prior to that, I did know that Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow sponsored the action, as part of a national strategy to pressure the US government to pressure Israel to stop collectively punishing Gaza. A feature of “direct action” organizing for most participants involves being kept in the dark about important details, such as location. I did know that the plan wasn’t to occupy a freeway or fully lock down a building, because we would have needed more briefing, practice, and personal agreement. Like over 95% of the occupiers, I didn’t know the meetup spot until the morning of the action or our target until partway through the meeting.<br />
<br />
Kehilla Community Synagogue was well represented. Upwards of 20 Kehilla members participated in some way, including Rabbi SAM Luckey and Rabbi Dev Noily. Penny Rosenwasser and Brooke Lober served as featured chant and songleaders. Seth Morrison was a spokesperson, and Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb led us in song and prayer.<br />
<br />
After the action, Penny Rosenwasser commented,<br />
<br />
<blockquote>I was thrilled to be with 700 Jews and allies, sitting in at Oakland’s [Dellums] Federal Building for seven hours. 472 of us were arrested. Some say it was the biggest civil disobedience action in the Bay Area in 20 years. It was definitely the largest-ever Jewish direct action on the West Coast.<br />
<br />
I was a song leader, and I felt like I was pouring heart, grief, and outrage out of my body and into the chants and songs–and hundreds were right there with me. Activism as therapy. As I led the Israeli peace song “Lo Yisa Goy,” and sang “and everyone ‘neath a vine and fig tree, shall live in peace and unafraid,” I felt the tears. I kept remembering the babies… I felt, with a Palestinian child being killed every 10 minutes, if our actions could stop the genocide even one day earlier, one hour earlier, how many children’s lives could we save?</blockquote><br />
<br />
Meanwhile, Phil Weintraub, a Kehilla member involved in the three Kehilla Middle East committees, said,<br />
<br />
<blockquote>Although an activist for decades, I had never been in a situation before where civil disobedience was an option for me. When invited to participate in this action, I knew immediately I wanted to join and said “yes” after receiving enthusiastic support from my partner. I was nervous to be arrested and unsure what to expect, but trusted that those organizing and leading the action would use their experience to make it impactful. We only knew it would be in Oakland, and being a federal employee, I knew the [Dellums] Federal Building was a good possibility for the site. I had no idea how large the action was until the night before when I learned that 600 people were on the Zoom call where we received guidance from an attorney as to what we might expect. When I arrived where we gathered prior to the action, I saw many familiar faces from Kehilla whom I had no idea were joining the action. I was particularly moved that several of Kehilla’s rabbis were participating, although not everyone gathered planned on getting arrested. The leadership and organizing of our leaders and the action were amazing. </blockquote><br />
<br />
[[Image:Rabbis.jpg]]<br />
<br />
'''Rabbi Reuben Zellman (from left), Rabbi Dev Noily, Rabbi SAM Luckey, Rabbi Cat Zavis, Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb, Rabbi Faryn Borella, and Rabbi Elliot Kukla near the Dellums Federal Building in Oakland on November 13.''<br />
<br />
''Photo courtesy of Rabbi Lynn Gotlieb''<br />
<br />
During the occupation of the federal building rotunda and foyers, I shared some video and images to the Kehilla Facebook group. I was grateful to get some response, mostly hearts and thumbs up. One thoughtful challenge came from a Kehilla member who wrote, “What? Can someone please explain what shutting down the Oakland Federal Building is going to accomplish?”<br />
<br />
I wrote back, “To whatever extent Palestinians know these actions in locales all over the world are happening, it helps. Maybe our loving fierce determination will pressure them not to slaughter every Gazan. People have to do our local parts wherever we are. Palestinians have asked us to do what we can. We’re not beating or shooting our enemies though.”<br />
<br />
Then I added, “Shutting down an ammunition plant would feel more satisfying; it’s true.”<br />
<br />
While the threat of riled-up police was ever present, our plan of entering the rotunda while singing fervently (but sweetly) was intended to communicate to law enforcement that we were not going to be violent, even if we were rushing through an open door to take over the space. Luckily, the police did not harm us. Some people were ready to risk arrest while others were not sure, and the action’s leaders did their best to accommodate these different needs. As the atrocities in Gaza continue, activists are rethinking the levels of risk that they are willing to take to face down war crimes.<br />
<br />
The police said that additional officers were needed to process us, and I expected to wait a long time, also because the police often take a great deal longer than seems necessary. This night, however, the police didn’t go slowly and moved us out of the building faster than any arrest action I have ever participated in. We had said we wouldn’t leave until there was a ceasefire or we were arrested, and the police did physically remove us from the building, then photographed with our IDs and released us. We may get notices to appear. <br />
<br />
No consequence will compare to what Palestinians have suffered for over 70 years or what any prisoner or hostage, Palestinian or Israeli, is going through. As activists, we are all fighting for relevance as we decide how to act up. We want to make a difference. We want to save lives. We fight feeling irrelevant and powerless. We are trying to do more than make phone calls and sign petitions as we watch a genocide against a ravaged people carried out with weapons and political cover paid for with American tax dollars, by a government demanding to be taken as THE Jewish authority in the world. <br />
<br />
Kehillan and November 13 organizing team member Sara Shor said, “I was raised that Judaism was about fighting for social justice and speaking out when we see oppression in the world. What I learned from Jewish culture and history is that our freedom and safety is not possible without the freedom and safety of all oppressed people.” If like-minded Jews have to face off against other Jews and Americans, many more peace-loving Jews and Americans must join us, because, as it is written in Isaiah 32, “Peace is the fruit of justice.”<br />
<br />
To connect with the groups at Kehilla that are working in solidarity with Palestinians, contact the Middle East Peace Committee at mideastcomm@kehillasynagogue.org, Chavurah for a Free Palestine at chav4freepalestinecontact@kehillasynagogue.org, and Face to Face: a Jewish-Palestinian Reparations Alliance at f2fjprepcontact@kehillasynagogue.org. <br />
<br />
To look for upcoming local events, see the [https://www.araborganizing.org/events/ Arab Resource and Organizing Committee (AROC) calendar]. <br />
<br />
[[category:Jewish]] [[category:Dissent]] [[category:2020s]] [[category:East Bay]]</div>
Ccarlsson
https://foundsf.org/index.php?title=1965_Anti-Vietnam_War_March
1965 Anti-Vietnam War March
2023-12-19T02:22:13Z
<p>Ccarlsson: </p>
<hr />
<div>'''<font face = arial light> <font color = maroon> <font size = 3>Unfinished History</font></font> </font>'''<br />
<br />
[[Image:Anti-vietnam-war-march-with-coffins-market-street-c-1965-Claudio-Beagerie-Photographs-(SFP-164).jpg]]<br />
<br />
'''Anti-Vietnam war march with coffins on Market Street, c. 1965.'''<br />
<br />
''Photo: Claudio Beagerie, courtesy San Francisco History Center, SF Public Library''<br />
<br />
[[Image:Anti-vietnam-war-march-market-street-c-1965-Claudio-Beagerie-Photographs-(SFP-164).jpg]]<br />
<br />
'''Same march.'''<br />
<br />
''Photo: Claudio Beagerie, courtesy San Francisco History Center, SF Public Library''<br />
<br />
[[Image:Anti-vientam-war-march-market-street-c-1965-Claudio-Beagerie-Photographs-(SFP-164).jpg]]<br />
<br />
'''Further up Market, between 4th and 5th just past Powell Street (at Woolworth's).'''<br />
<br />
''Photo: Claudio Beagerie, courtesy San Francisco History Center, SF Public Library''<br />
<br />
[[Image:Anti-vietnam-war-march-on-market-c-1965-Claudia-Beagarie-collection-SFPL-History-center.jpg]]<br />
<br />
'''Against the war and for the rent strike, c. 1965.'''<br />
<br />
''Photo: Claudio Beagerie, courtesy San Francisco History Center, SF Public Library''<br />
<br />
[[category:Anti-war]] [[category:Vietnam War]] [[category:Dissent]] [[category:Haight-Ashbury]] [[category:1960s]] [[category:Downtown]]</div>
Ccarlsson
https://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Greyhound_Bus_Strike_1983
Greyhound Bus Strike 1983
2023-12-19T01:40:46Z
<p>Ccarlsson: </p>
<hr />
<div>'''<font face = Papyrus> <font color = maroon> <font size = 4>Historical Essay</font></font> </font>'''<br />
<br />
''by Chris Fillmer, originally published in the magazine ''Ideas & Action,'' Spring 1984.''<br />
<br />
[[Image:Greyhound-Strike-1983-mass-picketing-on-7th-street-IMG00073.jpg]]<br />
<br />
'''Mass picketing on 7th Street outside of the Greyhound Bus Terminal between Mission and Stevenson Alley, November 1983.'''<br />
<br />
''All photos: Chris Carlsson''<br />
<br />
[[Image:Greyhound-bus-during-1983-strike-IMG00072.jpg]]<br />
<br />
'''Passengers disembarking a block away from the terminal due to the pickets blocking entry.'''<br />
<br />
On Dec. 19, 1983, 74% of the Greyhound Bus Lines employees who belong to the Amalgamated Transit Union voted to accept a contract with Greyhound that amounted to a 15% wage/benefit cut overall. Not only were outstanding issues such as safety problems and abuse of casual or "extra-board" drivers not dealt with, the workers took a direct 7.8% pay cut along with the Ioss of four to five paid vacation days; also, the company will no longer cover the complete cost of health insurance or pensions.<br />
<br />
One of the biggest losses was one not voted for: On Dec.5th, Ray Phillips, of ATU Cleveland Local 1043, was run down and killed outside Zanesville, Ohio by a scab trainee-driver. The trainee was reportedly egged-on by his instructor. The bus drove through union pickets in a crosswalk, running against a traffic signal in doing so. Ray Phillips was unable to get out of the way. The slave driving the bus, as well as the slave-driving person in charge, went unpunished by the law. On the other hand, outside many a Greyhound depot the cops beat heads during the course of the strike. And about 30 strikers have been fired by Greyhound under allegations of causing "personal injury or property damage."<br />
<br />
<big>'''This may be the contract, but it ain't justice!</big>'''<br />
<br />
Greyhound Lines had opened bargaining with the ATU negotiators long before the actual strike by offering what amounted to a 25-30% cut in wages and benefits. As justification for its position, Greyhound cited the growing number of take-away contracts and non-union operators in the bus and air transportation industry. If the ATU membership didn't accept this offer the Greyhound Corporation (the conglomerate that owns the bus lines as well as businesses in other industries) claimed it would be forced to shut down the Bus Lines division within three years due to the increased competition.<br />
<br />
This first offer was rejected by the Greyhound workers with 94% voting "No." It was so bad that even the official union negotiators urged a "No" vote. And why should they have accepted it? Pickets from San Francisco Local 1225 knew quite well that the Greyhound Corporation earned $103 million in profits through mid-November in 1983. As Labor Notes pointed out (Nov. 22, 1983), "Greyhound Lines Chair Frank Nagotte pulled down a hefty $447,000 in salary and benefits" in 1983. In general, Greyhound management was slated to receive a 7-10% salary/benefit increase. Despite the competition from lower air fares, cited by Greyhound management, the Bus Lines division alone earned a profit that has been estimated at $5 million in the first nine months of 1983. Neither the parent conglomerate nor the Bus Lines division were in any immediate danger of bankruptcy, unlike the situation of Chrysler in 1980 or Continental in early 1983.<br />
<br />
After Greyhound's first contract of fer was voted down, the ATU negotiators came back with the offer to leave the then-valid contract in effect. Not a hint that even the current contract left important matters untouched. But Greyhound was out for blood, and they were in no mood to accept the status quo. Thus, the company just repeated their demands for concessions.<br />
<br />
The union piecards then pleaded for binding arbitration -- anythmg to avoid a strike!<br />
<br />
After the strike got underway, the stalemate in negotiations lasted until the Bus Lines tried to run scab buses, beginning on Nov. 17th.<br />
<br />
In response, the striking Greyhound workers carried out militant actions that were effective as far as they went. For example, early in the morning on Nov. 17th pickets from Local 1225 in San Francisco, together with some supporters, tried to block the departure of buses from the 7th Street depot in downtown San Francisco. There was then a cop attack on the picket line and a melee ensued. Only one bus left the station. It soon experienced a collision with another vehicle (the driver of the other vehicle just happened to be a striking Greyhound driver) and it was forced to retreat to the S.F. depot.<br />
<br />
[[Image:Greyhound-bus-blockaded-on-7th-and-Mission-1983 IMG00071.jpg]]<br />
<br />
'''Greyhound bus blockaded on 7th and Mission, November 17, 1983.'''<br />
<br />
[[Image:Greyhound-Strike-7th-Street IMG00075.jpg]]<br />
<br />
'''Outside the main doors on 7th Street.'''<br />
<br />
[[Image:Greyhound-protesters-1983-IMG00068.jpg]]<br />
<br />
'''Blockading the main bus entrance along Mission Street.'''<br />
<br />
[[Image:Greyhound-Strike-1983-Mission-Street-IMG00070.jpg]]<br />
<br />
'''On Mission Street looking northeast, [[Grant Building|Grant Building]] visible in background.'''<br />
<br />
When two of us arrived at the picket line later that afternoon, all of the men and women we talked to told us they were opposed to any give-backs. The involvement and mutual support shown by the local 1225 members was reflected in the fact that this local had organized rank-and-file-elected strike committees.<br />
<br />
The various actions around the country ran the gamut from (some times wild) picketing, support rallies with people from other unions and leftists to vandalism. All of this added up to a fairly successful effort to disrupt scab operations. Out of 1200 members in Local 1225 in the Bay Area, only one person crossed the picket line, and Local 1500 in Memphis had only three scabs out of its 300 members. After a month of trying, the Bus Lines was only able to get about 10% of its system running and often the buses ran empty or with few riders.<br />
<br />
The ranks shut down the bus lines effectively enough that they were able to halt the company's effort to break the labor organization in the Bus Lines Division and ultimately forced them to modify their stance a little (though not much).<br />
<br />
And yet, in the midst of this strike activity, the drivers, ticket agents, baggage handlers and mechanics of the Council of Greyhound ATU Locals voted to accept a crummy take-away contract, with 74% voting "Yes." Why?<br />
<br />
One reason is that the official union negotiators sent out the contract offer to be voted on by each ATU member in the privacy of their own home, where he or she is most likely to read it in isolation from their fellow workers—the best way to encourage a feeling that you're just a powerless individual and can't fight city hall.<br />
<br />
During any strike—especially in a situation where union bureaucrats control dues-funded strike pay-material pressures (rent or house payments, utility bills, RV financing, etc.) may influence strikers' decisions, as it did some ATUers after seven weeks on strike. One San Francisco striker told us that he had started saving as soon as he heard the company's first offer. He didn't want to be starved into accepting such a contract, he said. But what of the members who couldn't save, trying to enjoy a rather moderate style of life?<br />
<br />
Since Greyhound is not merely a bus line, but a conglomerate with revenues from many lines of business, it's capacity to bear losses from a strike is much greater than that of individual strikers and any dependents to bear the loss of wages. Even those who have substantial savings may run short during a long strike.<br />
<br />
Despite their diplomatic relations with the leaders of the other organized labor forces in the U.S., the ATU leaders never called upon other unions or workers to engage in secondary strike activity that might have aided the Greyhound strike—such as sympathy strikes in the transport sector. "Why, that's against the law!" How convenient. In fact, the ATU leadership didn't even bother to make minimal "No concessions" demands.<br />
<br />
'''<big>The basic problem isn't really bad leadership</big>'''<br />
<br />
The analyses of the Greyhound strike by various "friends of labor," "vanguards of the workers" or "tribunes of the people" that I have read try to explain why give-backs ultimatelv prevailed at Greyhound by referring to union bureaucrats, politicians—everything but the free-thinking and decision-making of the rank-and-file. Here are a few examples:<br />
<br />
:''Greyhound Corporation, . . . the Reagan administration and capitulating top union leadership. . . forced the 12,700 Bus Lines unionists to take pay cuts and other weakening contractual clauses.''<br />
::—People's World (12/24/84)<br />
<br />
:''As a result of the combined pressure of Greyhound management and the labor bureaucracy. . . of their own union and the AFL-CIO as a whole [they] concluded that they had no choice other than to vote if up.''<br />
::—Torch (12/83)<br />
<br />
:''What's behind the defeats of the unions (UE, PATCO, USWA, IAM, CWA, ATU) is not so much the courts and the cops, but the failure of the union misleaders to unleash the enormous power of labor solidarity.''<br />
::—Workers Vanguard (11/18/83)<br />
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These statements do contain some truth in that it is certainly true that the ATU or AFL-CIO officials didn't facilitate any actions which might have led to fighting off any give-backs.<br />
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Actually, I'm not surprised. Business unions have always acted in this manner. Whenever matters have gotten blunt, they have proven quite bluntly that they are representing the interests of their members only within the narrow framework of profitability of one particular industry in one particular nation, despite the global and integrated character of the system. At the least ATU or AFL-CIO leadership are not misrepresenting themselves. Business unionism IS basically pro-capitalist—it accepts the existence of private profit and ruling class power as a fact that can't be challenged They are the guardians of the contracts that regulate the position of workers within this framework and act as simply mediators between wage-earners and the corporate few at the top who use our labor. As such, they are not particularly interested in facilitating militant democratic control in working class organizations and activity. What need would there be for "mediators" if decision-making and responsibility in the struggle rested squarely where it belongs: in the hands of those directly affected by the outcome. In fact, the union officialdom will fail to support strikes, repress wildcats, squelch dissent and ignore their members grievances if it is necessary to preserve the existing framework.<br />
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Yet despite the non-facilitation and hindrances, and their pitiful business union perspective, this is not the same thing as "force," a "failure to unleash" or "leaving no choice." The fact that the ranks acted within the framework of business unionism -- with all its limitations—involved an element of choice.<br />
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The ranks could have acted on their full knowledge and prepared better in advance. Knowing what they know about the Greyhound Corporation and the Amalgamated Transit Union, Greyhound workers had two primary possibilities: They either had to convince the union and non-union workers of the other parts of the Greyhound Corporation to engage in some joint struggle with them, or else they could try to convince other transport workers and their unions to come out in sympathy with them. Only by generalizing the struggle in this way could the ATU have created enough pressure to win even their minimal demands of "No concessions."<br />
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But of course, all that's illegal under existing contracts and laws and union bureaucrats are very law-abiding. They would never sanction such a thing. But that only means that the ranks needed to take matters into their own hands from the very beginning. The rank and file did not have to respect either the bureaucrats or the law. There is the example of the rank-and-file-elected strike committees set up by the Bay Area unionists of Local 1225. This showed an awareness of the need to not leave things to the top officials and their appointed staffs, even in a strike limited to Greyhound Bus Lines.<br />
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Unionists who were already aware of the value of rank-and-file-run strike committees could have argued loud and clear for such committees being formed throughout the union—especially in a situation that called for actions that would go beyond the boundaries of what would be acceptable to the union tops. While building rank-and-file solidarity and democracy within the ATU, such committees could have reached out to workers in other divisions of the Greyhound conglomerate and other transport unions and rank-and-filers. Rank-and-filers could have set the stage for getting support by giving support to these other groups of workers on those occasions when it is needed (e.g., by giving money, picket-line presence, staunch opposition to strike-breaking, etc.). Instead of a situation where workers are separated into many different unions that are limited to just the concerns of workers in one particular company or industry, or separated into those who do belong to unions and those who don't, what we need is mutual support.<br />
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Competition and lack of support can only undermine all of us; what's needed is put into practice in our workplaces and struggles the principle, "We'd better all hang together or we'll each hang separately. "<br />
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None of these "could be's" are too unrealistic. And yet, the "could be's" remained just that. I believe that ultimately the failure of the ranks to pursue adequate means for even minimum ends rests upon their current acceptance of the prevailing economic and political system. With no perspectives for creating a different type of society, based on equality and freedom, most rank-and-filers fell into the self-defeating attitude encapsulated in the phrase, "give a little now or lose it all later. "<br />
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The corporation referred to its freedom under "free enterprise" when it threatened to close down the Bus Lines if it was "forced" to by lower profits or future losses-or in effect, whenever they want to. When so many assume there can be no alternative to capitalist power, the rank and file can be intimidated and frightened. And in the end, many workers may give a little now and lose it all later. But unless we go along with it, there is nothing that says the corporate few must be allowed to get away with that kind of arbitrary power. In fact, the threat of a shutdown could be met with occupations of company property, sympathy strikes from other Greyhound divisions or other transport workers, or even a general strike, if the solidarity has been developed.<br />
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What is needed is to break the cycle of futile acceptance, unhappy submission. And it can be done. Our abilities are many; our potential is great. The self-organization that we need to create today—directly democratic local worker meetings and rank-and-file committees, federated together throughout regions and industries and built independently of the union bureaucracies (where such bureaucracies exist)—is at times visible before us -- as some people make such organization happen from time to time in various lands.<br />
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Such autonomous organization needs to be seen as the the basis of a new society of cooperative and non-discriminatory workers' self-management. Unless this larger possibility is recognized, we will never be in a position to resolve the full range of human problems and accomplish our goals, whether in one industry or in the entire society. This needs no Vanguard Party, no Labor Party—in fact no "Party" at all. It requires the development of a social movement based upon direct democracy, direct action and individual responsibility, liberty and pride.<br />
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And you can still go out dancing! <br />
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[[Image:Greyhound-Strike-1983-view-north-on-7th IMG00064.jpg]]<br />
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'''View north on 7th Street from Mission. Greyhound Terminal was torn down in the late 1990s and replaced in the early 21st century by a new Federal Building.'''<br />
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[[category:Labor]] [[category:Transit]] [[category:1980s]]</div>
Ccarlsson