Montoya Minute Dry Run
Testing, testing... The week of 12/23
Hey everyone! This has been a long time coming and I am very excited! Sorry it’s so late I was wrapping presents and I got carried away. 3 hours later… I was like holy crap— I’m making my goal even if it’s midnight.
My tentative launch date is January 6th (the first Monday of 2020). This is meant to expand the Weekly Round Up on IG. The plan is to have a paid version that will include podcasts, videos, links to further readings, and whatever I think is interesting or cool. The free version will be pretty much what you get on Instagram but I’m debating on what it will feature still.
I’m probably going to play around with the days and times I publish as well as the formatting until I find my sweet spot. Dm me your thoughts here por favor!
Google Fires Another Worker for Exercising her Rights and Protecting Coworkers from Illegal Company Retaliation by Kathryn Spiers.
Kathryn Spiers coded a notification that would pop up on her coworkers computers. Something apparently all employees did. She was passing along a message about employee rights and was fired. Recently Google has hired a union busting firm because employees are retaliating over military contracts they don’t find particularly ethical. Basically Google is saying they want those billion dollar military contracts so STFU or you’re fired workers.
Google’s response to this was to suspend me immediately and without warning. This was the week of Thanksgiving, the same day they fired the Thanksgiving Four. They also dragged me into three separate interrogations with very little warning each time. I was interrogated about separate other organizing activities, and asked (eight times) if I had an intention to disrupt the workplace. The interrogations were extremely aggressive and illegal. They wouldn’t let me consult with anyone, including a lawyer, and relentlessly pressured me to incriminate myself and any coworkers I had talked to about exercising my rights at work…
Google has overreacted in an egregious, illegal, and discriminatory manner. The notification I wrote had no negative effect on our users or other employees and Google will do its best to justify my firing in a way that pits workers against each other but they can’t hide behind this fabricated logic forever.
This doesn’t just affect me. The company is too powerful and they must be held accountable. As long as the company can treat me this way they can treat anyone this way. Workers need a voice in the company. We need to protect each other and stand together as a unit.
Food for thought:
The United States is the only industrialized nation without a Labor Party. The fact is that one of the reasons Labor parties are so unpopular in the US is because the Labor party is low key anti capitalist simply on the basis of their principals. Their entire job is to give a voice to the people who make the money not just those who collect it from them.
The overall American ‘dislike’ of anyone opposing free market capitalism is pretty astounding especially since none of the people who are super into it are billionaires… or even millionaires! It all comes down to the fact that if “the people” (workers) have any footing to bargain with employers they can demand things like fair wages, better conditions, and benefits. Is that really asking for too much though? Why is human dignity boiled down to a productivity and a “right to make money” issue?
Free market capitalism makes the majority of people who work their butts off look like lazy assholes for demanding fair treatment. Is it any wonder that laws to limit our right to protest have been sweeping the US?
Think about how conversations around equity get labeled as “socialism.” And someone will always point out Venezuela but never Sweden and Norway—because Venezuela is not how any of this works.
There is a lot of rhetoric and dogma used to cover up workers rights issues.
For more on Labor in the US “American Exceptionalism A Double Edged Sword” By Seymour Martin Lipset.
State legislators in nearly 20 states proposed bills in 2017 that would restrict people’s right to protest. Almost 60 were proposed or reintroduced in 2018 alone. “States Rush to Pass Anti-Protestor Laws”
Teachers on Strike at the University of Chicago— ironically it was the hyper-capitalist economic ideology that came out of the UofC that is in responsible for getting us here. “Worker Power Is a Threat to the Way the University Is Run An Interview with Laura Colaneri.”
For more on the “Chicago Boys” and what their theories on economics has done to the world. What is Happening in Chile is a Revolution Not a Protest or a Riot by Yvette Montoya
This week on SNL Eddie Murphy tackled workers rights and why it’s important to have safe working conditions. North Pole News Report.
Special Offers!
World News
Researchers Say U.N. Peacekeepers Fathered And Left Behind Children In Haiti NPR's Scott Simon Speaks With Dr. Susan Bartels
Social Justice
The Hidden Cost of Incarceration By Nicole Lewis and Beatrix Lockwood
Researchers Tried to Test ‘Abortion Reversal.’ 3 Women Wound Up in the Hospital. By Claire Lampen
Bruja Shit
Rituals & Limpias For Each Astrology Sign to Bring in 2020! By Esoteric Esa
In “Cancer Alley,” Toxic Polluters Face Little Oversight From Environmental Regulators by Gordon Russell, The Times-Picayune and The Advocate
Five years ago, the owners of the Noranda Alumina plant on the border of St. John and St. James parishes in Louisiana discovered a big problem: They were emitting more than half a ton of mercury, a heavy metal that is toxic to humans and animals even in trace amounts, into the air each year. And the plant had likely been doing it for decades, in violation of its permit…
For its sins, Noranda agreed in May 2017 to pay a $95,750 fine. Rather than force the company to cut mercury emissions immediately, the DEQ required only that Noranda investigate ways to do so and to perform additional monitoring. In the meantime, it would be business as usual…
While Denka has invested a reported $35 million into pollution reductions at the DEQ’s urging, critics are upset that the company has yet to face any fine or official sanction.
Pollution is a racial justice issue! These are Black neighborhoods. This also impacts the globe. Companies want to act like they can “cut back” and that somehow absolves them from the bad they continue to do. You can’t just cut back, we have to stop! We can’t stop pollution if companies are aggressively causing it while at the same time “doing charity.***” Let’s not forget US military is doing it’s fair part in all of this.
The US military is a bigger polluter than more than 100 countries combined
Study Finds Racial Gap Between Who Causes Air Pollution And Who Breathes It
Childhood Asthma: A Lingering Effect of Redlining
***SERIES: Why Billionaires Won’t Save Us Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj on Netflix