Union Perspectives

Stingray with upgrades costs $640, 000. Stingrays are part of a post 9/11 push by the federal government to step up local police departments Intel gathering and coordination. Since 9/11, the Department of Homeland Security has given more than $54 billion to local law enforcement in part for high tech surveillance equipment, like the Stingray, which eavesdrops on phone calls, and with an assortment of add-ons, like the Fish Hawk listens in on calls. The Harpoon broadens the Stingray’s range. The Amber-Jack antenna helps pinpoint individual phones. The King Fish analyzes call patterns, doing in one stroke. The U.S. military developed Stingray technology in the 1990s. The Local law enforcement started using it in 2003. There are at least 48 departments now using this technology. This type of surveillance monitoring and infiltrating of rallies, soap box speeches, arresting speakers and intimidating strikers, which even went as far as shooting demonstrators is not new. These types of tact...

In all wars the one thing that always happens is the dehumanizing of the opponent—usually one side will lie and make up names and other propaganda to make the enemy look bad and the other side to look good, and usually each side is on the side of some god. The opponents will just throw crap on the walls to see what sticks or resonate and this type of war tactics has a long history. It is done because most humans have some compassion for each other, but in order to get the opponents to fight or even kill each other, the enemy must be seen as not worthy of living. Usually, this is done to the people lowest on the economic ladder and can be by race, religion or location. There were times in this country when the Irish, Chinese, Indians (both American and East), Italians, blacks, Philippines, or Japanese, were looked upon with disdain. Then there were the religious hate toward Jews, Catholics, Mormons, Muslims and Seventh-day Adventists. Then there is where people live, Ukraine comes to mi...

Old anti-union and protesters’ tactics still work and are used by the corporations and large and small governments, cities, counties, state and federal. A tactic from the old days was to keep workers and workers’ families from getting together and comparing notes. The bosses worked people sun up to sun down six to seven days a week. Today, workers work two to three jobs at a time. They also used people’s ethnicity to keep people apart, such as the Irish, Asians, blacks and browns. The idea was to keep the workers from forming relationships so the bosses thought if they could keep the workers overworked, uneducated and suspicious of each other. They, the 1 percent, control the masses. The only place toilers could go and be together was church, which was again split into different religions and should be taken with a grain of salt for many were controlled by the rich. Today’s protests we see the Wall Street protesters and the police tactics, which are getting closer and closer to our m...