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.
There are three phases of a general strike and unions must plan for one. Those three phases are: 1. general strike in an industry 2. general strike in a community 3. general national strike We need to move away from being on the defensive and move toward a good offensive. The American Federal of Labor (AFL) could not have held a general strike if it wanted to because they had thousands of different contracts that expired at different times of the year. This was done deliberately so that there is no consolidation of power for a general strike. Also, nowadays, there is no law agency that will support labor, except the National Labor Relations Board (NLBR), which has been under attack and in decline for years. This leaves the burden of change up to unions, and unless unions work together, little will change. We essentially have a combination of job trusts, which are not as strong as contracts, and the courts can break easily because the NLBR will be further weakened and essentially elim...
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