That's Chase Rice. New album is due out in February -- better be available on vinyl. (THE ALBUM wasn't.)
Friday, December 16, 2022. THE DAILY CALLER smears US House Rep Katie Porter.
We're
back to the hearing. I knew we would be but I thought we'd be covering
another part of it. When I realized we had to cover US House Rep Katie
Porter's part, I thought I could just pull up some coverage and grab a
link to their story and a paragraph or two to excerpt.
But no one's covered the story.
Katie
is being lied about by a media outlet, outright lied about, and where's
our media watchdogs? Caught sleeping on the job again.
When
Republican Yvette
Herrell demonstrated that she didn't know how to listen at the House
Oversight and Reform Committee's Wednesday hearing about the attacks on
LGBTQ+ persons, I was appalled and felt she was
deliberately mishearing (and had been passed bad summaries by her
staff). Bryanna Lyman is at THE DAILY CALLER. Is that why she feels
free to
lie about US House Rep Katie Porter?
"Grooming." As we've had to point out (such as
here)
and "pedophile" are being applied to members of the LGBTQ! community.
It's a lie and it's always been a lie. Anita Bryant used the lie to
scare the nation in the seventies -- may she rot in hell (and take Glenn
Greenwald with her).
These are intentional lies that are told by homophobic people with the intent to stoke hatred towards the LGBTQ+ community.
For
those who don't know, pedophiles are people who pursue children (those
under the age of consent) for sex. That would be people like Scott
Ritter, the former United Nations employee who is now and forever a
registered sex offender who served time in prison for attempting to have
sex with girls. Pedophiles do exist. It is inaccurate to portray them
as gay people or as transgendered people Most are, like Scott Ritter,
straight people who are married. That's the reality when you look at
the figures.
"Grooming."
This is supposed to refer to those adults who are interested in having
sex with underage people (children) and so they 'groom' them -- they
ease into it slowly, they make them think they're friends, they then
attempt to abuse that trust by leading the person into a sexual affair.
You could look at US House Rep Lauren Boebert's convicted husband as a
groomer -- you could say that's why he was exposing himself in that bar
to those women.
In the
past, nut jobs like Anita Bryant would lie and insist that gay people
groomed and that they had to because ''they can't reproduce.''
So
today, the liars go on FOX NEWS or they chat with professional losers
like Aunty Gigi . They repeat these lies in an attempt to scare people
and whip up a mob sentiment against LGBTQ+ people.
That's
what the goal is, that's why Republican members of Congress make the
statements they do. It's not for nothing that this Committee hearing
featured one Republican after another who could not say "gay" or
"LGBTQ+." That was the topic, after all. Instead we got nut jobs like
Yvette Herrell who wanted to tell the witnesses (who, unlike her,
actually knew what they were talking about) that there are other "hate
crimes" -- do they know how many cops are shot each year?
You just want to slap someone like that because they're so damn stupid.
A police officer is trained, is armed. It's called "in the line of duty."
There's no reason that a guy holding hands with his boyfriend should be attacked.
And,
Yvette, not to be robbed. The attack wasn't motivated by a crook
needing money. It was motivated by hate when four homophobic, hateful
men saw two men in love.
Alex Bolliner (LGBTQ NEWS) reports:
Four men in Florida were sentenced to probation and community service
for the vicious 2018 beating of a gay couple at a Pride event because
the couple was holding hands.
The attack on Rene Chalarca and Dimitri Logonov
made national headlines at the time, taking place as the two were
leaving a restroom in Lumus Park after Miami Beach’s Pride parade. The
brutal attack was caught on security video.
“They start to hit us, like beating us, hard,” said Chalarca.
“It was, like, instant. I got hit, and they knocked me out,” said
Logunov, who said that the attackers called him a “fa***t” in Spanish.
“We probably provoked them because we were walking together, holding
hands. It was gay pride, South Beach was full of gay people.”
Chalarca and Logonov were hospitalized.
Police searched for the attackers, releasing images from surrounding
security cameras. Juan Carlos Lopez, Luis Alonso, Adonis Diaz, and Pablo
Figueroa later surrendered to police and were charged with aggravated battery with hate crimes enhancements and could have faced up to 30 years in jail.
But under a plea deal last month, the charges were reduced to two
counts of battery with prejudice. All four of the assailants got five
years probation and 200 hours of community service, and they have to go
to an anger management class.
As Elaine observed when she covered it, "They should have served hard time. They made a decision to attack two
men, they beat the men so badly that they were hospitalized. Yet they
walk with probation?"
If
Yvette can't grasp the difference between police being shot in the line
of duty and two unarmed men being attacked because they held hands,
she's a damn fool. Congress already has way too many of those.
Gay
people are being attacked, they're being beaten, in schools they're
being tormented and told they don't exist. Suicide rates are high. And
there's no need for homophobes in the first place, but I'll be damned
if I am silent while they try to destroy people. And Yvette to stop
pretending she decries all violence when she made it through an entire
hearing where she didn't decry violence against LGBTQ members or, for
that matter, even acknowledge them -- no mention of lesbians, no mention
of gay males, not mention of bisexuals, no mention of transgender
persons, no mention of queer people.
Republican
politicians are very eager to lie about LGBTQ+ persons, they just
aren't eager to acknowledge the very real violence the community is
experiencing.
,
since it was taken over by self-described “free-speech absolutist” Elon
Musk, has seen a dramatic rise in the use of the anti-gay slur
“groomer” among a cluster of high-profile anti-LGBTQ accounts, according
to a new report.
According to a study by Media Matters and GLAAD released Tuesday,
nine prominent anti-LGBTQ accounts had an over 1,200% increase in
Twitter users’ retweets of the accounts’ tweets with the “groomer” slur
in the one-month period after Musk’s Oct. 27 takeover compared with the month prior.
The accounts also showed an increase of more than 1,100% in mentions of
the right-wing media accounts in tweets with the slur. The accounts
analyzed in the study are: Tim Pool, Jack Posobiec, Jake Shield, Gays
Against Groomers, Blaire White, Allie Beth Stuckey, Andy Ngo, Seth
Dillon and Mike Cernovich. In addition, the Libs of TikTok account saw
more than a 600% increase in its mentions with “groomer” language, going
from nearly 2,000 to nearly 14,000 over the same timeframe.
Oh, look, Andy Ngo, Aunty Gigi's ward.
So
THE DAILY CALLER article notes that Katie decried the terms "groomer"
and "pedophile." They, however, 'report' it in such a manner that Katie
supposedly agrees with the terms being applied to LGBTQ but doesn't
want them used.
No.
Katie knows they're lies and she was noting the damage that the terms are doing.
US
House Rep Katie Porter: I wanted to start with Ms. Robinson, if I
could. Your organization recently released a report analyzing the five
hundred most viewed, most influential Tweets that identified LGBTQ
people as so called "groomers." The groomer narrative is an age old lie
to position LGBTQ+ people as a threat to kids and what it does is to
deny them access to public spaces and it stokes fear and it even stokes
violence. Ms. Robinson, according to its own hateful content policy
does Twitter allow posts calling LGBTQ people "groomers"?
Kelley
Robinson: No, I mean Twitter along with FACEBOOK and many others have
community guidelines. It's about holding users accountable and
acknowledging that when we use phrases and words like "groomers" and
"pedophiles" to describe people, individuals in our community that are
mothers, that are fathers, that are teachers, that are doctors, it is
dangerous. And it's got one purpose -- it's to dehumanize us and make
us feel like we're not a part of this American society and it has real
life consequences. So we are calling on social media companies to
uphold their community standards. And we're also calling on any
American that's seeing this play out to hold ourselves and our community
members accountable. We wouldn't accept this in our families, we
wouldn't accept this in our schools. There's no reason to accept it
online.
US
House Rep Katie Porter: So I think you're absolutely right and it's not
just this allegation of groomer and pedophile, it's alleging that a
person is criminal somehow and engaged in criminal acts merely because
of their identity, their sexual orientation, their gender identity. So
this is clearly prohibited under Twitter's content yet you found
hundreds of these posts on the platform. Your team filed complaints
about these posts, correct?
Kelley Robinson: Yes.
US House Rep Katie Porter: And how often did Twitter act to take down these posts which violated its own content policy?
Kelley Robinson: Very rarely.
US
House Rep Katie Porter: So from our calculation, it looks like about
99% of your complaints. They basically acted on one or two of the 100+
complaints you filed. Instead of taking them down, Twitter elevated
them. Allowing them to reach an approximate 72 million users. This is
not just about what happens online. What happens online translates into
real harm in people's lives. Ms. Popcock, you provide services to a
community that experienced the devastating LGBTQ attack. Can you
provide some examples of the link between speech online and the attacks
against providers like you.
Jesse
Pocock: We know really, I mean, online threats, in addition to creating
an atmosphere of bullying for young people, it also creates an
atmosphere of delegitimizing our real professional trained work at
INSIDE OUT YOUTH services. And it is just so critically important that
we can continue doing the work that we do. But I want to tell just one
quick story because it's beautiful. We have an online community center
and it is moderated by peer advisors and when asked how many issues of
like fighting or contention do you deal with on the disport server our
young people tell us "Well, it doesn't happen very often." So I'm here
to tell you that our young people have figured out how to moderate
platforms in positive, productive ways? Twitter, FACEBOOK, everybody
else can figure it out too.
US
House Rep Katie Porter: Absolutely. Ms. Robinson, your report notes
that these radicalizing posts, these 'groomer' posts, these other posts
that attack LGBTQ communities are related to acts in the real world --
what happens online is often reflective of what happens in the real
world. After Governor DeSantis of Florida passed his so-called "Don't
Say Gay" bill, what trends did you observe online with regard to
'grooming' related discourse.
Kelley
Robinson: Unfortunately, we saw a 400% increase on Twitter of this sort
of hateful language. Particularly calling our community members
groomers and pedophiles. And we know that rather or not the bills move
into effect, the lasting impact of that online bullying of defining our
communities in that way, it sticks -- especially with our kids.
US
House Rep Katie Porter: My time has expired but I just want to say I'm
proud today, I'm proud to stand with the gay community and I'm proud
that you're all here as part of our country and giving us testimony. I
yield back, Madam Chair.
Get it?
Bryanna
Lyman pretends she didn't -- I guess the clue's there in the last name that she's a liar.
She owes Katie an apology. She also owes Kelly Robinson an apology
because she lies about her as well.
Robinson
were offering expert testimony which is why Bryanna Lie Face doesn't
quote her. She's selective -- as she is with Katie.
"Groomers."
We've dealt with that garbage before. It's inaccurate and it's a
smear. That was the point both women were making.
Bryanna Lyman did not misunderstand the women, she deliberately lied about them. It's outrageous.
I
don't usually rail against THE DAILY CALLER. I don't read it. When
they've sent something to the public e-mail account, if it was worth
noting, we did. Otherwise, I had no opinion of it. I am now appalled
by it. They are deliberately lying. They have printed a deliberate
inaccuracy in order to smear LGBTQs people and they have deliberately
lied about what was said in a Congressional hearing. I don't think it
gets worse than that?
We've
reported on hearings repeatedly at this site over the years. I've only
been appalled by the coverage one other time. (Generally, I'm appalled
by the non-coverage.) That was when pretty much every outlet covered a
hearing and they all offered nonsense except for THE NEW YORK TIMES.
It was an important hearing, on the future of the US in Iraq. It
mattered, what was discussed mattered. Senator Kay Hagan, for example,
made important points (to the witnesses Leon Panetta and ), about how
the 'withdrawal' was a drawdown and how some of the US troops 'leaving'
Iraq were going to Kuwait and would continue to cross the border back
and forth. There was so much worth noting in that hearing. In fact, we
covered it -- community wide -- in the following: the November 15, 2011 "
Iraq snapshot," the November 16t. 2011 "
Iraq snapshot," November 17, 2011 "
Iraq snapshot," Ava's "
Scott Brown questions Panetta and Dempsey (Ava)," Wally's "
The costs (Wally)," Kat's "
Who wanted what?" and THIRD's "
Gen Dempsey talks '10 enduring' US bases in Iraq." That's all covering one
hearing because it was that important.
Again, only THE NEW YORK TIMES covered the importance, the substance of the hearing.
NBC? ABC? Various newspapers? They wanted to have fun and josh and joke.
At the beginning of the hearing --
Let
me stop there. Having sat in on multiple hearings, let me explain for
anyone unaware how this goes. Big media outlets send someone in. They
have copies of the prepared remarks. They sit for the first 30 or so
minutes of a hearing -- that might last two or even four hours -- and
rush off -- leaving the hearing -- to 'cover' it.
They miss the hearings over and over, the bulk of the hearing is completely missed by Big Media and it happens over and over.
John
McCain was in the Senate. In his initial round of questioning, he tore
into Leon Panetta over something. It was no big deal. The press
treated it like it was. They reported it as though it was a big deal.
That's all they took away (and delivered to news consumers) about a
hearing on the US' future role in Iraq. All they offered was: Catfight
between McCain and Panetta. As I've noted numerous times here, I know
Leon and have known him for years. I don't think I used that to explain
how insipid the press was for running with that nonsense. (I may have,
but I don't think I did.) It was performative nonsense and Leon didn't
take it seriously. Nor did McCain who, in the second round, was kidding
and joking with Leon.
That
outraged me because the media was ignore real and serious issues -- how
many troops were leaving, what troops were being stationed in nearby
countries, that talks were ongoing regarding another SOFA, what aspects
were being handed over by the Defense Dept to the State Dept -- to
instead focus on 'Catfight in Congress!'
There
they just weren't doing their job. And I've seen coverage where people
got something wrong -- like they had a quote that they attributed to
the wrong person.
I have not seen someone do what Bryanna Lie Face has done -- deliberately lie.
If
that's THE DAILY CALLER's standard, they need to shut down. Again,
this is not, "Oh, they're right-wing so I hate them!!!" We have linked
to them before when they've e-mailed something that was germane to what
we were discussing. We have linked to other right-wing sites as well --
especially with regards to Iraq because, for years now, they're more
likely to cover it than msm or left sites. But what THE DAILY CALLER
has done is deliberately lie about what a member of Congress and what a
witness said. She has lied and she's lied to incite. That's outrageous
and an abuse of The First Amendment. This is libel. And it's not an
accident and it's not a minor detail in the report. Bryanna Lie Face
has built her entire report around a lie.
I
have no idea how THE DAILY CALLER thinks it's okay to print that.
Should Kelley Robinson decide to sue, I bet they'd rethink their
policy. (They're lying about Katie but she's a public official and has a
higher threshold and may honestly not feel it's worth it to sue.)
They should be ashamed of themselves.
And THE DAILY CALLER needs to know that they are now seen as liars. Not a news source, but as liars.
They
didn't take issue with what Katie and Kelley said. They didn't say, I
disagree. They took what the two women said and deliberately lied about
what they said. That's why they offer a few words here and a few words
there as quotes.
And it's
offensive that they're lying about what two women said, it's offensive
that they're claiming to be a journalism outlet and they don't follow
basic journalism, and it's offensive that they are doing this to spread
lies about the LGBTQ+ community.
By the way, after she published her garbage Brianna Lie Face gushed on Twitter
about her how dad took her to see The Who: "I was lucky enough to see
The Who in May with my dad ans sister and folks let me tell you, BEST
CONCERT EVER."
Is she really that dumb?
She
wants to lie about Katie Porter and Kelley Robinson and claim that they
are a danger to children and then wants to gush about what a great band
The Who is? From CRAPAPEDIA:
Townshend accepted a caution from the Metropolitan Police (the Met) as part of Operation Ore, a major investigation on child pornography conducted
in 2002–2003. The Met stated that "it was established that Mr Townshend
was not in possession of any downloaded child abuse images". Townshend
was on a sex offenders register for five years, beginning in 2003, after admitting he had used his credit card to access a child pornography website.[144][145] Townshend claimed he accessed the images as research in a campaign against child sexual abuse[146] – specifically, to prove that British banks were complicit in channelling the profits from paedophile rings.[147] Authorities
could not prove that the website accessed by Townshend involved
children, and no incriminating evidence was found on his personal
computer.[148]
Glad you had the time of our life watching Pete perform. Now cross your legs, Brianna, your hypocrisy's showing.
So
many idiots. So little time. Yes, the person behind the attack on
Florida's Pulse Clubm was a right-wing extremist. It's too bad that Pat
Fallon is a damn idiot.
I don't know how you get so
stupid and still make it to Congress. And, trust me, I'm aware hate
merchant idiots like Marjorie Taylor Green and Lauren Boebert are in
Congress.
But the idiot that is Pat Fallon is on a whole other level. ISIS emerged in Nouri al-Maliki's second term.
Brandon Wolf survived the attack on Club Pulse and, for some reason, that made Pat Fallon want to attack Brandon.
He
tried to put the words of Democratic members of the Committee into
Brandon's mouth -- Brandon correctly told him those weren't his words.
But Pat Fallon is both an idiot and a bully so that's how he gets off.
Watching him try to intimidate Brandon, you got the feeling that if the
press hadn't been present, Pat would have loved to have committed his
own hate crime against Brandon.
And for the record, US
House Rep Cori Bush spoke after Pat Fallon. That's why she addressed
the White supremacy issue to begin with -- the one we noted yesterday
had Ranking Member James Comer sputtering. Cori's remarks did not take
place in a vacuum. They were a response to Pat Fallon trying to pour
is hate towards Democratic members of the Committee onto Brandon Wolf.
- Daniel Davis Aston, 28
- Kelly Loving, 40
- Ashley Paugh, 35
- Derrick Rump, 38
- Raymond Green Vance, 22
The shooting also left twenty-five people injured.
But the Republican side wanted to ignore the issue of the hearing which was violence aimed at the LGBTQ community.
So
you got Pat Fallon (who also practiced Flordia's "Don't Say Gay"
throughout the hearing) declaring that "crime is out of control against
everyone" and, as noted earlier, Yvette's lament -- and apparent
surprise -- that cops are shot at. Yes, Yvette, this is a new
development, you go study up on it.
So as Pat attacked
Brandon Wolf, he wanted Brandon to know that the attack on Club Pulse --
an attack that Brandon survived -- was carried out by an American who
had pledged allegiance to ISIS and this was not, Pat Fallon kept
insisting, a right-winger.
Uh, yes, it is you stupid fool.
ISIS
emerges in Iraq during Nouri al-Maliki's second term. It is an
extremist, right-wing, fundamentalist organization of terrorists.
Somehow, despite approximately a decade of terrorism carried out in Iraq, Pat Fallon never understood what the group stood for:
IS is a theocracy, proto-state,[170] and a Salafi jihadist group.[42][41][43][44][45][171] ISIL's ideology has been described as a hybrid of Qutbism,[37][38][39] Takfirism,[37][40][41] Salafism,[42][45] Salafi jihadism,[42][41][43][44][45] Wahhabism,[42][41][43][44] and Sunni Islamist fundamentalism.[43][44][172] Although ISIL claims to adhere to the Salafi theology of Ibn Taymiyyah,
it rebels against traditional Salafi interpretations as well as the
four Sunni schools of law and anathematizes the majority of Salafis as
heretics. ISIL ideologues rarely uphold adherence to Islamic scholarship
and law manuals for reference, mostly preferring to derive rulings
based on self-interpretation of the Qur'an and Muslim traditions.
According
to Robert Manne, there is a "general consensus" that the ideology of
the Islamic State is "primarily based upon the writings of the radical
Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood theoretician Sayyid Qutb".[174] The Muslim Brotherhood began the trend of political Islamism in the 20th century, seeking gradual establishment of a new Caliphate, a comprehensive Islamic society ruled by sharia law. Qutb's doctrines of Jahiliyya (pre-Islamic ignorance), Hakimiyya (Divine Sovereignty), and Takfir of entire societies formed a radicalised vision of the Muslim Brotherhood's political Islam project.
They
are fundamentalists filled with hate -- you'd think Pat Fallon would
recognize himself, it should be like looking in a mirror for him.
I filled in for Kat last night and noted I'd try to respond to the e-mails regarding Tara Reade. Quickly, here it is.
Tara Reade was on Tucker Carlson's show at some point this week. Don't care. Tucker's a hateful homophobe.
Tara
is saying Joe Biden penetrated her with his fingers. I thought that
was what she always said but maybe not -- maybe she didn't explain it --
or, more likely, didn't explain it in depth enough for some people to
grasp what happened.
I
don't like Tara and I think she's an idiot. I also believe every word
she has said with regards to Joe. I believe she was assaulted.
I've gone into why I don't like her, we don't need to note that again. The idiot part may be more spread out. So briefly . . .
1)
She just went on Tucker's program. Just. The time to do that was in
2020 before the election. She didn't want to be 'used.' Whatever, I'm
tired of the stupidity. I'll give April Oliver a pass but everyone
after -- including Mary Mapes -- I just don't have sympathy. April was
involved with a big report from CNN and TIME. And the chief source got
pushback from the Pentagon so he retracted his statements. Doesn't
matter. They were on videotape. He decided to back out and CNN did a
witch hunt and tried to treat it as something other than journalism. By
every journalism measure, April and Jack Smith nailed down all they
needed to in order to report. The media is not your friend. It's
never your friend. Yes, I was surprised this decade when, out of
nowhere, THE WASHINGTON POST decided to a hatchet job on offline me, but
I was surprised because I wasn't doing anything to get press
attention. Someone had a long standing grudge to work. But the media
is not your friend, they are never your friend. They are there for a
story and they'll use you to get it.
Tara
should have understood that. She should have understood that not going
on Tucker or whomever's show in 2020 was not going to make her more
believable. It was just going to deny her a large platform from which
she could make her case. April, Mary and many others have been stupid
because an 'investigation' was taking place. Unless you're part of the
team investigating, that 'investigation' is not going to be in your
favor.
Tara was being shut
out of the media when she wasn't being attacked by the media. It was
stupid on her part not to have grabbed every opportunity available. And
any real survivor would have understood her doing just that.
2) Some people are saying she's now a right-winger.
It
doesn't help that she's promoting a registered sex offender (Scott
Ritter) or that she's jumping up and down like the pep squad for various
conservatives. Tara's not right-wing. She may become it, but she's
not there yet. She was a partisan and, like many partisans, she thought
she knew all about life and political theory. She may know all about
life, she knew very little about politics. Go back to those early
YOUTUBE interviews and grasp that she never should have been put on
camera. I'm sure she herself would groan if she went back and watched
them. We all get there on our own time. What some are seeing as
right-wingerness in her currently is really just her adjusting her
stance. The same partisanship she believed in (but didn't term it that)
is what attacked and turned on her when she spoke out about Joe.
3) If Tara had come to me, told her story and I was writing it up, I needed to tell her what I had learned.
That
did not happen with regards to her reporter and Time's Up. She should
not have been blind sided to learn that they were (mis)using her. The
reporter on that story should have told her. That same reporter also
should have been the one to report the call Tara's mother made to LARRY
KING LIVE. Not to say, "She says her mom called in to LARRY KING
LIVE." That reporter should have done their duty and located the call
and reported on it. (No one does their duty. Sharon Stone's lying
through her ass and people are repeating it. 'I didn't work for 8 years
because I couldn't get hired due to speaking out on AIDS!' Can she ever
stop lying? And what idiot reporters are reprinting that without
checking her filmography and learning that there is no such gap in her
employment.) Yet Tara continued to defend the reporter. I don't think
she does now -- at least not as vocally -- due to who her new cohorts
are.
4) Alyssa Milano shot off her mouth.
I
immediately called her out here. It was newsworthy that Alyssa spoke
and what she said. Alyssa didn't believe Tara. She explained that she
knew things we didn't.
How?
Did someone slip it into the script for a bad TV movie?
No,
as I pointed out, Times Up was leaking on her. Not only did I point it
out, that reality was also told to the reporter covering her story. It
shouldn't have taken the Cuomo scandal for the media to tell the truth
about Times Up.
And I said to tell the truth.
The media's smear jobs were fed to them by the Biden campaign.
We
stood alone -- Ava and I -- in calling out the PBS 'scoop' of all those
people who worked with Joe at the time and never, ever heard about the
assault.
First off, you
don't show up at the office and say, "Hey, everybody, can you give me
just a second. A few minutes ago, our boss assaulted me. Okay, thank
you. If anyone's headed for the cafeteria, I could use a Diet Coke."
Second, PBS didn't do an investigation.
An
investigation of me is not me handing you a list of names I've written
and telling you to talk to them. Joe's campaign made that list. Every
name on that list had already been vetted by his campaign before the
list was handed to PBS.
Time
and again, even her reporter failed her. That included failing to do
an update. Tara lied! She compromised judicial cases!! Remember those
claims. It's a typical Biden move (look at Beau's efforts to discredit
people) and then, when the press looks elsewhere, no charges are brought
because nothing was done wrong. A report should have noted, no later
than January 2021, that Tara didn't lie about this or that and that no
court verdict was overturned by her actions.
Let's wind down with this:
Dear fellow workers, I
am gathering information from UAW members about what was and was not
done to inform members about the UAW election, if you or your coworkers
had problems receiving a ballot and similar information. If you have not
already, please fill out this form by midnight tonight to assist this investigation. Forward the form to your coworkers as well to help us gather as much information as possible. |
I
am filing a formal protest to the UAW Monitor over the fundamental
unfairness of the UAW election. In the first round of voting, less than
10 percent of the 1.1 million active and retired UAW members who were
eligible to vote cast ballots. This was not due to apathy but the
deliberate policy of the UAW apparatus to suppress the vote and
disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of UAW members.
Large
numbers of workers did not even know any election was taking place. The
UAW did not send out notices to inform them. Many workers never received
a ballot despite calls to local union offices and the UAW Monitor.
No
election in which 90 percent of the membership were excluded can be
legitimate. Neither Ray Curry nor Shaw Fain even received 4 percent of
the votes of the UAW membership. That is why I am asking the UAW Monitor
not to certify the results of this sham election. Instead, I am calling
on the monitor to include all five UAW presidential candidates in the
next round of voting and to compel the union to inform all members of
the new voting dates. Only in this way can every UAW member have the
right to meaningful vote in a free and fair election.
Fraternally,
Will Lehman |
|
The following sites updated: