Saturday, September 27, 2014

Excerpt II from the Novel "It Won't Work"

By David Barry Temple
          (Excerpt from the novel under construction It Won't Work; Life's Progressive Movement)             
10: Earthquake and Other Shockers   1998-2001
 Emerson held the address on a slip of paper in his hand as the daylight hit his climb on the steps out of the City Hall subway station. In 1998, WBAI moved to the tenth floor at 120 Wall Street in the Financial District. Emerson had an errand to do among the business canyons of Lower Manhattan. His mind was occupied, frozen in December 2000. How would he phrase what he wanted to say after he reached his destination, if only he could get into the building? He wasn’t that occupied or cold to notice the new riot resister at the City Hall driveway; how it looked like a subterranean torpedo rising to block passage as an infantryman stood guard. He may not be able to enter and fight City Hall but he had something to say to the hijackers of peoples’ radio.
      WBAI was the progressive movement’s mouthpiece in New York City. It was started in 1960 by several World War II conscientious objectors who called themselves the Pacifica Foundation. Emerson remembered listening to Radio Unnamable with Bob Fass all night long during his late teens. WBAI never let the movement down for cutting edge entertainment and grass-root, anti- corporate political open-mindedness. Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez kept it relevant into the 90’s. Emerson couldn’t believe his ears in ’98 when he heard Amy interviewing a dumbfounded Bill Clinton who couldn’t avoid showed his true chameleon colors. Emerson always thought the liberal democrats ruling class had had enough posturing t and went after WBAI full throttle after that.
      When one morning before the Christmas break he woke up turned on the radio for news and didn’t hear Bernard White and Amy’s voices, he knew he was witnessing the end of a semblance of free speech on the airwaves.
A few weeks later, over the Christmas weekend, a new general manager was snuck in by the Pacifica board of director overnight and the locks were changed. The old staff was prohibited from entering the studios. There was a gag order on those the station still tolerated.
      “Do you feel like something is happening?” Emerson said to his colleagues around the cafeteria table in school that morning. “They’re shutting up WBAI.”
      “Even if they were, there are other sources for the news,” a social studies teacher retorted. Emerson knew the difference.
       “I feel like there is a coop going on in America; all the trappings of democracy and free speech are coming unraveled.” Of course, his colleagues though he was exaggerating, but Emerson had been an activist since the 60’s; he knew when there was a clampdown coming on. On Election Day in November 1999, the table was set for complete modern end to freedom. On September 11, 2001, the whole thing came tumbling down.
      On that frozen December morning, Emerson walked south on Broadway passed City Hall, passed J & R Music World. Trinity Church with its brownstone steeple loomed across the street. As taxis whizzed by, he imagined what Lower Manhattan must have looked like when it was built in 1700. They kept building it back up after it kept falling down from fires and winds. Now, after it had all but been swallowed up, chewed, and spit out into a tourist attraction, Trinity Church stood a few blocks west in the shadow of the World Trade Center, the only warm spot on that cold winter morning.
      Emerson turned left onto Wall Street, passed the Stock Exchange, and headed towards the East River. The narrow streets were desolate. The chill whipped up the winding canyons. A few weeks later, after the reality hit, 500 people chanting “Despotism Won’t fly at WBAI” would congregate on the streets outside, but not on this Christmas weekend morning. Emerson alone walked to the entrance of 120 Wall Street. The security cameras had yet to be installed.
      “I’d like to speak to the general manager of WBAI, Utrice Leid,” he said as he stood on the other side of a formidable high-backed front desk; one receptionist came around the podium to meet him.
      “Who may I tell them is calling?” he replied, arms folded defensively over his suited chest.
      “My name is Emerson Davinsky.”
      “Are you expected?”
      “I don’t think so.”
      “One moment please.”
      Instead of calling upstairs to the studio offices, before asking that Emerson sign the log, indicate the time of arrival, and get a sticker to plaster onto his coat, one guard stayed with him strategically positioning himself in the lobby between Emerson and the bank of elevators, while the other contrived down the lobby to said elevators and rounded a corner presumably to take one up.
      Emerson stood silently, patiently, and avoided making the small talk the guard initiated to feel him out. Secretly, he wished he had a howitzer with him, silencer attached, like he had seen in the spy movies. He then could have shot the guard and made a dash for the next elevator up, taken care of business, given Bernard White his job back and return WBAI to the people. It was not going to happen that way though; Emerson was too peaceful a man to own a gun and he wasn’t going to shoot anyone today.
      The security emerged from around the bank of elevators ten minutes later; perhaps he had taken the opportunity to urinate before heading back down with the response.
      Ms. Utrice Leid said she doesn’t know you. You will have to leave the premises.”
      “But I know her.”
      “Please leave now.”
      “Could you tell her I think she’s wrong for taking over the radio station and she should give it back.”
Emerson knew this bug wouldn’t fly but he had spoken from his heart. He felt no compulsion to stay home this Christmas morning with his family. He had schlepped down to the financial district to raise the specter of the oncoming backlash. It was what every loyal WBAI listener should do. He turned and left the building without the obligatory ‘thank you’ or ‘goodbye.’
Back on Wall Street, he didn’t have to re-button one button on his coat; only wrap the scarf around his neck tighter, like a noose. Bitter New York City winter winds ricocheted between the walls of the steel canyons. They would probably be the walls of fifty-story thick skating rinks in the coming ice age once the glaciers had melted and volcano soot returned the earth to scratch. How many times, he thought, would God have to start over until humanity wised up? Better yet, he mused, why couldn’t God make humanity wiser in the first place instead of evolving dinosaur bones into fossil fuel and assorted Tweedy birds?
On his way back to the City Hall subway station uptown, Emerson passed a vest-pocket park that some corporation had forgotten to build a skyscraper on. Maybe they were waiting for the price of real estate to sky-rocket. For now, it was a rectangular block, not long or wide enough to play football on; not deep enough to stop home runs or wide enough to stop foul balls from smashing windows to its left and right. The man-made park, with leafless transplanted trees without enough branches for a bird to build a nest upon, sat unoccupied on this cold exposing day. A homeless man lay on a spread of cardboard folded like a pup tent over the grill of a steam duct cleverly concealed by the landscaper on a raised garden bed near a park path winding to make a summer lunch-break stroll seem longer than it actually was. Smoking in public places hadn’t been made illegal back then. Emerson stopped to light a cigarette and glace up westward towards the World Trade Center that still cast a shadow for another nine months. No one New Yorker could imagine what was in store for them. Zuccotti Park would be a staging area for attack victims long before it was converted into a world stage for Wall Street occupation. 

Excerpt from the Novel "It Won't Work"

16. Occupied on Wall Street
September 2011
By David Barry Temple
(Excerpt from the novel under construction It Won't Work; Life's Progressive Movement)
            Emerson replayed the frozen morning he faced the music at WBAI eleven years earlier; security at the heady studio on Wall Street wouldn’t let him on the talk show after the Christmas coop. With the wind whipping around the jack knife corners of the financial district, he had passed Zuccotti Park without a second glance, certainly no thought of stopping in it to take a piss behind a bush on that empty Sunday morning. If he had known that spit in a vest pocket would be the heart of resistance against the takeover, the beginning of the grandiose non-violent occupation, he would have at least stopped in to bring hot soup to the homeless there whose piss froze their cardboard beds to the pavement.
            Ten years after the Twin Towers had disintegrated like sand castles in the American mea culpa, he couldn’t even find the little shit of a park. He was looking for something much bigger, at least as big as the footprint of one of the downed towers. Maybe four-hundred thousand joyful protesters blaming the end of the free world as they knew it on the melting environment had taken one hundred fifty years for his namesake, Ralph Waldo Emerson, to prophesize. It was futile to do anything about it in 1840 and it was still futile. Greed has its way because might always, always makes right with gag orders.
            Look as Emerson may, he couldn’t find the war; no man could find the war. Workers of the world would unite over the ashes of cold dead remains, but in the ‘slash and burn’ mentality of the ruling class, the world wasn’t worth living in anymore.
            So Emerson followed the cooing of the pigeons that strutted near hot dog vendors and glided like silent drones over Pine Street on the backside of the Stock Exchange. The pigeons would tell him where the bread crumbs lay in the park under the nearest trees to Wall Street in Zuccotti. Emerson walked on the other side of little Pine Street slowly passed the black-clad gargantuan guards standing like upright cockroaches. “The occupation isn’t here,” he muttered to himself as the guards, armed, seemed to eye his passing, so he put his head down and kept on moving his flat feet squashing the dungaree sneakers onto steamy grates around Broadway.
            He looked left; nothing. He looked right; nothing. Then he saw three young sojourners across the valley, like mountain men in the wilderness, tattered packs ripped and tied to their backs haphazardly.  
            “Where are the Occupy Wall Street people?”
            “Over yonder,” one young bearded man responded pointing unhesitatingly across the street that he kept climbing.
            “Over there?” said Emerson incredulously for he had passed by that spot a short while ago and had seen no one but a few folk standing around talking. The police were there now indicating what terrible danger they were preventing and the business people they were protecting. “Over there?”
            “Yeah, over there,” the other tracker yelled from up the path where Emerson stood in disbelief. Emerson followed. When they reached the clearing in the petrified forest of buildings, he had to rub his eyes in disbelief. Perhaps two dozen people were there mulling around a missing piece of New York puzzle. Some looked like they had just been sleeping. There even looked like there was a soup kitchen with a staff meeting cross-legged near some hung tarps. “Gee,” Emerson thought, “I’ve seen more people congregating in Thompson Square on a Tuesday afternoon that I see here. This is the resistance?” 

Thursday, September 25, 2014

Public confidence grows over economy

Public confidence grows over economy

POSITIVE OUTLOOK:Easing global geopolitical uncertainty and sustained economic growth in the nation has given one-third of the population a positive economic outlook

By Crystal Hsu  /  Staff reporter

Public confidence has this month grown slightly with regards to the economy and wage increases, thanks to easing geopolitical uncertainty in Europe and sustained economic improvement at home, a survey by Cathay Financial Holding Co (國泰金控) said.
A total of 36.9 percent of the respondents said they are positive about the economic outlook, outnumbering peers with neutral views at 33.3 percent and pessimists at 23.3 percent, the monthly poll found.
The rebound came after military conflicts in eastern Ukraine showed signs of easing, while major economic barometers in Taiwan continued to tip upward, Cathay Financial said after polling 18,418 clients online in the first week of this month.
A considerable number of respondents expect pay increases going forward, though their confidence in the job market had dropped slightly, the survey indicated.
About 18 percent of those polled are expecting higher wages in the next six months, compared with 14 percent who voiced worries about a pay cut, the survey said.
The vast majority, 68 percent, expected their pay to remain unchanged.
Though unemployment after seasonal adjustment remained below 4 percent for three consecutive months, 29 percent indicated job-hunting is to become more difficult in the future, while 18.4 percent said it may get easier, according to the survey.
Additionally, 83 percent expect inflationary pressures to deepen by 3 percent to 6 percent, fostering caution for consumption of durable goods as well as big-ticket items, the survey said.
“The public is not eager to spend more, despite improved economic fundamentals,” said Achilles Chen (陳欽奇), assistant manager at the company’s economic research department.
About 32.3 percent of those polled plan to lower spending on big-ticket items, while 23.7 percent intend to reduce purchases of durable goods, the survey said, adding on nearly 50 percent would keep their budget for either intact.
Investors are more upbeat this month about the performance of local shares — with 34.9 percent expecting the main trading index to move upward in the coming six months, high+er than respondents with dim views at 25.7 percent and neutral forecasts at 22.6 percent, the survey said.
Respondents are divided over the wisdom of selling homes now, but most, 75.5 percent, agree it is unwise to buy now, the survey said.
Almost 57.8 percent threw their support behind government plans to raise tax on housing transactions and 58.6 percent said they would consider entering the property market when price corrections exceed 20 percent, the survey said.
Respondents in the north of the nation favor more drastic corrections than their counterparts in other parts of the country, the survey showed, especially as home prices in Greater Taipei, Taoyuan and Hsinchu have picked up significantly in recent years.

Unemployment rises due to graduates

Unemployment rises due to graduates

JOBSEEKERS:Students fresh out of university, searching for their first jobs, raised the unemployment level last month, while some sectors saw average wages rise


The unemployment rate rose to 4.08 percent last month from 4.02 percent in July, but the figure is still the lowest level posted in August for the past 14 years, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday.
The results were in line with the agency’s expectations, as recent university graduates entered the job market last month, giving the figures a slight bump.
However, the 4.08 percent unemployment rate represents the lowest level for August since 2000, indicating that the unemployment was better than seasonal, the DGBAS said in its monthly report.
The increase in first-time jobseekers usually boosts unemployment figures in the June-to-August period, as it did last month, contributing to a month-on-month rise for the third consecutive month, DGBAS Deputy Director Lo Yi-ling (羅怡玲) said.
“The nation’s unemployment rate may show a month-on-month rise for this month, if no significant accident occurs,” Lo told a press conference.
The number of unemployed rose by 9,000 to 473,000 last month from a month earlier, with the number of first-time jobseekers failing to get an offer up by 5,000 month-on-month, the report said.
For the first eight months of the year, the unemployment rate stood at 3.99 percent, down 0.19 percentage points from the same period last year, but that is the highest period level since 2009, the report’s data showed.
1111 Job Bank (1111人力銀行) public relations director Daniel Lee (李大華) said demand for human resources has been relatively strong this year, with demand from the service sector in the year-end period to be the major factor deciding movement of the unemployment rate in the second half of this year.
The DGBAS report also said that average monthly wage in the industrial and service sectors climbed to NT$38,460 in July, its highest level since February 2012.
In the first seven months, average monthly wage in the industrial and service sectors climbed to a record-high level of NT$38,036, an increase of 1.58 percent from the previous year, the report said.
The overall average monthly wage, including bonuses and compensation, rose 4.45 percent to a new high of NT$49,708 in the January-to-July period, compared with the same period in the previous year, statistics showed.
However, the increase in the average monthly wage was still lower than the pace of the nation’s headline inflation reading.
After adjusting the average for inflation — which climbed 1.29 percent year-on-year in the first seven months — the real average wage, including bonuses and compensation, totaled NT$47,953.
This is still lower than the NT$48,774 recorded during the same period in 1999, according to the DGBAS’ data.

Friday, September 19, 2014

Ministry’s offer of lower pay for locals sparks outrage

Ministry’s offer of lower pay for locals sparks outrage

By Yang Yuan-ting and Jake Chung  /  Staff reporter, with staff writer
Netizens accused the Ministry of Culture of treating Taiwanese as second-class citizens after the ministry ran an advertisement offering different salary rates for Taiwanese and foreign nationals for the same job.
The ministry recently posted an advertisement on the 1111 online job bank looking for a copy editor, with candidates required to have either a master’s degree or two years of work experience.
The job involves preparing all English drafts of their boss’ speeches, translating all their speeches and text, translating international news, interviewing and writing news reports and doing write-ups for distribution to other media outlets, the advertisement said.
Taiwanese applicants were asked to provide proof of English capability equivalent to the advanced level of the General English Proficiency Test (GEPT). The salary offered was NT$57,000.
As for foreign applicants, they were required to be fluent in Mandarin Chinese. The salary offered was almost double at NT$108,000.
The job is not open to dual citizens, the advertisement said.
Netizens expressed outrage over the different pay scale offered, saying that while Taiwanese would be working for their own country, they would be paid less than foreigners.
Some netizens posted comments such as the “Lives of people with Taiwanese passports are worthless” and “The discrimination of the Ministry of Culture [against Taiwanese] is ubiquitous.” Others said the ministry was partly responsible for why wages for Taiwanese were always lower than those for foreigners.
One netizen said that since Chinese are also foreigners, they would command double the salary of Taiwanese if they were hired.
The ministry is “utterly without shame” for making such an offer, some netizens wrote, calling on Minister of Culture Lung Ying-tai (龍應台) to explain why government agencies were leading discrimination against Taiwanese.
Responding to the complaints, ministry official Peggy Chou (周蓓姬) said the advertisement was drafted based on the format used by the now-dissolved Government Information Office.
The ministry acknowledged that the advertisement was problematic and should not have listed different wages for Taiwanese and foreign nationals, adding that it has withdrawn the advertisement for review.
The ministry would in the future not set two standards on wages based on nationality, Chou said.

Monday, September 15, 2014

taIWWan 世界工業勞工 TAIWAN IWW LENDING LIBRARY

taIWWan   世界工業勞工   
TAIWAN IWW LENDING LIBRARY
All titles english unless indicated

Two month loans  -500nt deposit–
All books CD’s DVD’s returnable to: David temple    
台中市北屯區水景街67巷3號4樓     4F., No.3, Ln. 67, Shuijing St., Beitun Dist., Taichung City 406.

The kid’s guide to social action – lewis
A TROUBLEMAKERS’ HANDBOOK – LA BOTZ
THE POWER IN OUR HANDS – BIGELOW & DIAMOND
GREAT BISBEE IWW DEPORTATION 1917 – HANSEN
RED SCARE IN COURT – SABIN
AN IWW ANTHOLOGY – KERR
EUGENE V. DEBS – SALVATORE
MOTHER JONES SPEAKS – ED. – FONER
LABOR IN ACTION – PARADIS
DIE NIGGER DIE! –BROWN
OCCUPY! – ED. - TAYLOR & Cessen
Freedom in jeopardy (mccarthy years) – HIRSHFELD
JOE HILL – SMITH
BREAK THEIR HAUGHTY POWER – NELSON
CLASS WARFARE – ROCHESTER
BLACKBOARD UNIONS – MURPHY
WHAT IS THE IWW (PAMPHLET) – NYC GMB
  DOWNFALL OF FASCISM IN BLACK ANKLE COUNTY - GILFOND
FELLOW WORKER (FRED THOMPSON) - –OEDIGER
THE CIVIL WAR IN FRANCE – MARX
LA COMMUNE – NATHAN
PARIS BABYLON – CHRISTIANSEN
10 DAYS THAT SHOOK THE WORLD – REED
TERRORISM FOR HUMANITY – HONDERICH
THE TALES OF HOFFMAN – ED. – LEVINE
ABBIE HOFFMAN (SOON TO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE – HOFFMAN
DEBT – DAVID GRAEBER
JACK (BIOGRAPHY OF JACK LONDON) – sinclair
Sacco & Vanzetti – ed. – davis
Communist manifesto – marx & engels
Introduction to the labor movement (pamphlet) – N.J. center for economic policy
High tech low pay – marcy
Fast food nation – schlosser
A people’s history of the u.s.  - zinn
Robert’s rules- Zimmerman
False promises –aronowitz
John brown – du bois
The wobblies – renshaw
Memoirs of a wobbly – mc guckin
TaIWWan iww intro– henry (mandarin)

Sunday, September 14, 2014

Taiwan For Environmental Action And No Nukes! Sept. 21

Taiwan Free English Lending Library

The Industrial Workers of the World in Taiwan (taIWWan) has available for members in Taiwan a free English lending library of political and cultural books about Taiwan and Rock 'n' Roll and CD's. To join contact us and send a $500 deposit to the address you're referred to. 

taiwwangmb@hotmail.com


Solidarity,

David