A friend suggested I contact you. You may want to know about the largest restaurant worker justice project in NY history.

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-Charles Vogl
charles@roguish.com
917.836.781

As you know, Phyllis Schlafly is best known as the primary female opponent of the Equal Rights Amendment (Who really wants to be treated with dignity and equality? Certainly not Phyllis!). Like Clarence Thomas, the most powerful black judge in America who benefitted from but nonetheless opposes affirmative action, Phyllis' opinions on any subject should be taken with a billion grains of salt. In fact, when Phyllis is publicly trotted out to support/oppose a polical issue, it is probably safe to assume that no one of sound mind was available.

I've only ever heard ONE decent argument against the ERA (and, ironically, it was Aaron Sorkin writing for the character of Ainsley Hayes on The West Wing - I love how progressives can argue for conservative issues better than conservatives can!), and that's that it is insulting to women that there needs to be an amendment saying that women are equal to men. It reiterates the 14th amendment, which women should already be covered under. To have a separate amendment serves as a reminder that society has to be REMINDED that women deserve equal rights.

Of course, Ainsley's (Sorkin's) argument has an interesting undertone - obviously, society *does* need to be reminded! If they didn't, the conservatives would have come up with that argument on their own and then stood by it. But, instead, they have women like this.

I had a friend who worked in food service a few years back, and while she was cleaning out crates on the floor, her manager walked up to her and said she was in the perfect position to engage in other activities, to paraphrase. I want to know what was so unvirtuous about HER that she deserved that disgusting remark. By the by, she had him fired that day.

Maybe ABS could provide an answer to this question in her next HuffPost post.

At dmiblog.net/archives/2005/10/the_manhattan_institute_in_sib.html she says this:

And [HeatherMacDonald] tends towards sensationalist and unfounded allegations, such as that "police forces and county jails [are] reeling under the burden of illegal-alien rapists."

Note the period, because that's where the quote ends. However, if you look at HMD's essay ( city-journal.org/html/eon_09_16_04hm.html) you find this is the full quote:

[TimeMagazine's] WHO LEFTTHE DOOROPEN? catalogues the costs to the public: increased risk of terrorism; local hospitals driven out of business by borderinterlopers demanding free care; police forces and county jails reeling under the burden of illegal-alien rapists, murderers, bank robbers, and car thieves; Southwestern ranchers andhomeowners who daily face �revolting mounds of personalrefuse� on their property, not to mention broken fences and missingproperty; and a corrosive assault on the �U.S. tradition ofencouraging legal immigration.�

Does this reader think ABS should have included all the groups that HMD lists, and that not doing so is intellectually dishonest?

As for Schlafly, I strongly encourage everyone to read this article by her:

eagleforum.org/column/2005/july05/05-07-13.html

Word for word, who do you think gives you better quality information? Who is better at informing you of topics that you hadn't considered or weren't aware of?

On the other hand maybe she's an expert witness on immigration because she looks so much like one of those aliens from the movie Men in Black.

I think that the Republicans are trying to use 'immigration' as a diversionary tactic to throw a smokescreen around the unpleasant truth that they are literally waging war on middle class and poor Americans in every possible way. Its not immigrants fault that they are looking for a better life. The GOP is fighting increases in the minimum wage, it is encouraging companies to export both unskilled and skilled jobs with tax breaks, and it is doing its best to end things like public education, environmental protections, and employer-provided healthcare. One cannot help but see what they do for what it is, an attempt to destroy the everyday people of this country's security and replace it with a new feudal system in which people are powerless before corporate power.

God willing in 2006 they will be exposed for the greedy liars they are and we won't have to endure any more of this. We can't endure another two years of GOP control. By 2008 it will be too late for many people. A lot of Americans are just hanging on.