The offshoot of the American Legislative Exchange Council or ALEC is the American City County Exchange or ACCE. ALEC operates at the state level while ACCE is at the city/county and both are the product of the Koch brothers, etc., to create legislation for these government levels. This is where the low-wage corporations expect to beat back minimum wage hikes.
If the wage hikes do become law in cities, then ALEC will pass laws to stop the wage hikes at the state level and these laws will supersede city laws. This type of strategy will also be used against unions. To write Right to Work laws, they will take away the cities’ local control and right to protect themselves against ways to save their water, air, and environmental laws, such as Austin, Texas’ plastic bag ordinance, which was overrule by the ALEC-controlled state government.
At this time in the U.S., of the 10 most populous cities, only San Diego, CA, has a Republican mayor, all the rest are Democrats. But the anti-workers, anti-union moneyed people are taking the progressives’ urban offensive very seriously and experimenting with strategies to fight back like ACCE groups.
The Republicans are moving swiftly to roll back or block city-led environmental initiatives related to fracking. Yes, this is urban warfare of the 99 percent against the 1 percent Koch brother types. The large cities are the last stand for the Have Nots, Have Littles and the Used to Haves, and we cannot afford to lose this base of operation and the proletarians need to understand there is no place to retreat unless the people capitulate into slavery to the 1 percent, who are against any type of pay, healthcare, Social Security. We would really be just slaves with no rights and this will condemn our offspring to a dreadful future. What a legacy this would be for those of us who worked through the 1950s through most of the 1990s and had it pretty good. Our children and grandchildren deserve the same.
Yes, they are coming for us. Workers need to have one another’s backs because no one else will. Neither the broader labor movement nor the Democratic party are prepared to meet the urgency of this moment. So it’s going to fall upon the rest of us to mount a real resistance against Trump’s authoritarian takeover. We’re going to have to get our hands dirty. I don’t care if you have a good, well-paying union job and you are in the middle class now—if you see a worker being dragged out of his workplace regardless of how skilled the job and potentially taken to another country, you should be ready to be there for that worker. When I.C.E. shows up, gather around and shame them into leaving. It has worked in other places. America is sleep walking into authoritarianism, and if there’s anyone out there who is a member of a labor union that is safe—at this point— and doesn’t think this applies to them. Understand that they just haven’t gotten to you yet. They’re coming for all of us. There are ...
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