Denis RancourtDenis Rancourt is a person who is unafraid to challenge conventional wisdom. For example, he is skeptical about the scientific consensus around climate change, and recently, he looked at the meta-analyses of using masks and questions their effectiveness against viral respiratory infections.
Say what you will about corporate human-resources departments, but the one thing they effectively do is keep low-grade morons with a propensity for power trips in line. Though managers and owners with inherent tendencies to be upright prick machines will always invent ways to be walking fingernails against a chalkboard, at least the specter of employees reporting them to the HR Manager looms over them like the ultimate check and balance, preventing their asshole propensities from going fully hemorrhoidal at any given time.
Frontline healthcare, transit, and grocery clerk workers are too busy risking their lives helping and saving people exposed to the deadly Covid-19 pandemic to see themselves emerging as the force that can overcome decades of commercial obstruction to full Medicare for All.
These heroic, courageous, and selfless people are getting the job done, often without protective equipment and adequate facilities. Many of them get extremely sick or die from Covid-19.
On May 28, 2020, John Lonski, chief economist at Moody’s Capital, said:
Both the troubling outlook for debt repayment and the unfinished hammering of an already weak labor market underscores the highly speculative nature of the latest rallies by equities and corporate bonds. In addition, corporate earnings have yet to escape from a now deep contraction.1
As a retired sheet metal worker, on Memorial Day, I watched the Memorial Day video put out by the general president of my union. This was my response to him.
I appreciate your stress on staying safe during this pandemic, as well as the listing of our 14 members who have died from COVID-19. I also appreciate your speaking of how our union has helped veterans transition from the military to our trade.
Throughout history there has been only one thing that ruling interests have ever wanted — and that’s everything.”
— Michael Parenti, Dirty Truths (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1996), p. 46.
Now that May Day is behind us, we must build the General Strike campaign. The next strike day, June 1, should be the culmination of a month of working toward the day of action. This is the responsibility of everyone involved in the General Strike movement.
End of the day, factory whistle cries,
Men walk through these gates with death in their eyes.
And you just better believe, boy,
somebody’s gonna get hurt tonight,
It’s the working, the working, just the working life
— Bruce Springsteen, “Factory” (1978)
