The Slaughterhouse on Western

This article is being written a few hours before I leave home to attend the Local 308 Executive Bored Meeting. A video version is at my YouTube channel.

I hate being at the union office and being around union officials. It's depressing. Truly demoralizing and uninspiring. We have nothing in common with each other. 

I am a Revolutionary Unionist. They are Business Unionists. I believe in vigorous democratic debate and decision-making. They believe in iron-fisted, top-down, corporate bureaucratic authoritarianism.

However, I have a duty to be there twice a month. The members elected—and reelected—me to sit in on the boss agents' vile plans to rob and feed us to their CTA partners.

One thing I learned from my fellow officials' attempt to arrest and unelect me: None of them can be trusted (with the exception of one or two). Nothing I say or do resonates in their cold, money-hungry hearts. Everything I say or do is contrived as a justification for them to remove and/or punish me and those who seem to sympathize with my message of Revolutionary Unionism.

Being at 11204 S. Western is like being in a livestock slaughter house: I see, smell and hear suffering and death all around me. But it is not the officials that are suffering. It is the members whose lives they have in their grimy hands that are being bled, butchered and betrayed for favors from mismanagers and politicians.

I love being with union workers though. Listening to them. Inspiring them. Standing beside them to fight demonic managers. The workers who are members in our union bring me joy. They make the sacrifice worthwhile.

By some freak of nature, should I ever become president at Local 308, I hope to convince members to sell that monstrous tomb on Western. Not only is it a financial burden we cannot afford, but it has been a haven for treason and conspiracies to destroy jobs and lives of decent, hard-working human beings. Symbolically, it represents our defeat as a union. 

It is my daily prayer that more and more members will understand their responsibility to democratically control our union. To see it happen in my lifetime would be nice.