BlogWood: MT Archives

Union protest stirs Storms

Isn’t it rather ironic that the party responsible for flying paid DC interns in to Miami to stage a white riot and to intimidate and stop the counting of legally cast ballots is now whining about an effective, non-violent tactic employed by union members this week?

Members of the Hillsborough County Republican Party on Wednesday denounced a labor union protest that erupted in their Tampa office the day before and labeled protesters' tactics as "brownshirt" and "terrorist."

The group of Republicans - which included County Commissioners Ronda Storms, Ken Hagan and Jim Norman - held a press conference behind the 2004 Bush-Cheney campaign office on Platt Street and said the Democratic party and its presidential candidate, John Kerry, were to blame for the protest.

"Kerry supporters intimidated our volunteers," said Hillsborough Republican party chairman Al Higginbotham, who also said protesters used "terrorist tactics."

Higginbotham provided no evidence that the union members acted at the behest of anyone but their own leadership, but said "We know they weren't Bush supporters." A spokesman for the AFL-CIO said neither the Kerry-Edwards campaign nor the Democratic Party had anything to do with the protest. He said the event was a legal and peaceful protest of the Bush administration's new rules, which threaten to cut overtime for millions of American workers.

"They are the ones making this a political issue," Eddie Acosta, an organizer with the AFL-CIO, said of the Republicans.

About a dozen union members entered the Republican office Tuesday afternoon wearing shirts that read "Hands Off Overtime Pay."

They chanted slogans and stomped their feet and left after the police arrived.

Similar protests took place throughout Florida and the United States, Acosta said, as a way to send a message to the Bush administration after lobbying and phone calls didn't work.

The new rules say that an employer can classify a worker as an executive and not pay overtime even if the worker doesn't supervise anyone.

Workers are losing jobs and health care benefits, and their wages aren't improving, Acosta said.

"For him to say that now is the time to take away people's overtime pay is outrageous," he said. "That's what this is about."

The Republicans said they were willing to listen, but that they won't put up with the protesters' brutish methods.

"These are brownshirt tactics," Storms said, alluding to the Nazi militia of Hitler's Germany.

"If you can't win by any other method than intimidating little old ladies making phone calls, that's a sad day in politics."

Stan Fields, 41, a volunteer and Republican campaign coordinator for South Tampa, said the protesters "ran" the two interns, three phone callers and handful of volunteers into a back room by crowding into the front office and marching around.

Brownshirts? Terrorists? This from the party of John “I need your library and bookstore records” Ashcroft, the party that wont let even mild dissenters anywhere near their candidate, the party which arrests those who disagree, the party that hires armed thugs to intimidate legal voters, the party which is against the free and open sharing of ideas and culture and art...

Here’s the deal: this was a creative, effective and legal protest by the working class. The protestors were non-violent, occupied public areas of the offices, and left as soon as instructed to do so by police. There were never any allegations of physical intimidation or threats, despite the implications of Ronda’s Nazi rhetoric.

Contrast this week’s union protests to Miami in 2000, when the Rethuglican party financed a “stop the counting” riot in Miami-Dade. That incident helped to disenfranchise thousands of Floridians by ensuring that their legally cast ballots would not be counted.

So, in Ronda’s world, paid thugs who thwart democracy are heros, but working people taking time off to protest an unfair labor rule by creatively exercising their freedom of speech are Nazis.