President Trump Would be Pleased to Know Jesus is Back at Emery!
Colin Kaepernick: If You Ever Find Yourself in Emeryville, Keep Traveling
Yes, THAT Jesus. After a four month hiatus, the Pledge of Allegiance is back at Emery Unified School District, in all its God fearing automaton-like saccharine inducing patriotic glory. It would appear the Tattler's story back last August on the demise of the loyalty oath known as the Pledge of Allegiance at Emery Unified School District was premature. Or maybe the School Board voted to reinstate the Oath (3-2; Inch & Langner dissenting) taken at the start of every meeting BECAUSE of the Tattler. Either way, under God, the Board can read the tea leaves and they think this kind of symbolic patriotism is de regueur in this age of Donald Trump.
So it's hats off, hands on hearts and to hell with critical thinking at Emery Unified. Children must learn to support the government, right or wrong, no matter what. Next comes ROTC, morning flag drills and bonnets for the girls at our patriotic little school district.
Praise be to God, Jesus, President Trump and Board member Cruz Vargas, the true blue American, for bringing this back to Emery.
10/25/17 Video Communist Alert: Listen closely and you'll hear Board President Donn Merriam (center) forsake God during the Pledge. Board member Barbara Inch (right...should be left) doesn't even partake at all, a tell-tale sign of a godless communist.
Number 7 is not welcome at Emery Unified School District.
Emeryville Patriotism in the Age of Trump Publicly Administered Loyalty Oath At City Hall Should Exit With Trump's Entrance
Opinion "I pledge allegiance to the United States...". "Without benefit of critical thinking, I swear my loyalty"- how's that sound, especially now that Donald Trump will wield near supreme power? How about, "No matter what Donald Trump has planned for us, I pledge my allegiance to him". How's that sound? Those stand-in pledges can now be construed to be at the black heart of the Pledge of Allegiance, an un-American loyalty oath wherein the speaker unthinkingly gives up his or her own agency to do the bidding of the federal government (and by extension, its executive). Starting on January 20th the beneficiary of that bidding has a new neo-fascist face most Emeryville residents will be uncomfortable with.
The American loyalty oath, before bootcamp-like in its coercive adherence, now suddenly seems positively Pyongyang-like.
The eagle wants us to make a pledge of allegiance: to ban pesticides and end habitat destruction.
That is unless the Emeryville City Council does its patriotic duty and dispels with the public administering of the Pledge of Allegiance before every Council meeting; something they have pledged, so to speak, to consider at the Council meeting on January 17th.
A change in how our local government sanctifies its democratic legitimacy is shaping up. Mayor Scott Donahue is directing the Council to consider all manner of loyalty oath Pledge replacement possibilities to satisfy the function of bringing the community together at public City Council meetings including the singing of the Woody Guthrie classic 'This Land is Your Land' and/or the public recital of Walt Whitman poetry. It represents an important shift away from the banal provincialism of Emeryville reliant on kitsch sophistry as it is to a more aspirational civic engagement as it could be.
Many towns in the Bay Area don't do the loyalty pledge before their public meetings. Indeed, there's no law saying the oath must be administered, so why do we do it? We can see plenty that's put at risk by administering the oath but nothing that can be gained that couldn't be gained by a less authoritarian and demanding avowal such as the populist unifying hosannas from Mr Guthrie or Mr Whitman.
“May we think of freedom,
not as the right to do as we please,
but as the opportunity to do what is right.”
- Walt Whitman
Besides the oath being un-American, we've noticed the City Council, while asking us to join them in reciting the oath, don't like to say it themselves. Even former Councilwoman Nora Davis (how we love to say that), the premier conservative on the Council, stood silently as do her colleagues whenever the oath is being administered. It is the crowd in the Council chambers, cowed as they are, that freely give away their agency hands on hearts and sign on to relinquishing their critical thinking rights so wantonly as they speak the words. The hypocrisy of this Council on this score has been blinding; if you're going to ask us to say the pledge, don't you think at least you yourself should say it, City Council?
Under God Kicked to the curb: Jesus wants us to continue praising him at City Hall.
Nonetheless, now it would seem, those days are behind us. We like the Mayor's idea especially of having the community unite in song with the palliative effects brought on from This Land is Your Land with its Trump-canceling collectivist vision of our community and country. This will likely get the right wing all agog and agitated, a nice side benefit.
The Council will also consider various non-theocratic pledges, for instance from a contest held by TheHumanist however inspiring as some may be, those represent just more of the same; a pledge. The government should not ask our community to pledge it anything. Loyalty is to be earned, not coerced. We urge the Council to reject the Pledge of Allegiance being replaced with another pledge, even one that kicks Jesus to the curb.
We hope this City Council rejection of the American loyalty oath will spill over to the School District where it's needed at least as much as at City Hall. We have long been agitating against the Council led administrating of the McCarthyist loyalty oath especially at the School Board meetings. How blinkered is it we have to ask, that the School District spends so much time teaching the value of critical thinking skills to the students only to subvert that message every School Board meeting when everyone enters collective amnesia and again nearly on automatic, goes through the anti-critical saccharine display of phony rectitude and piety. Back in the dark days of 2011, the School Board was on the verge of dispensing with the loyalty oath but reactionary forces rose up to make sure the District stayed on the straight and narrow with God and country.
It shouldn't take the terrifying idea of President Trump to spur the City Council into action on this and we're not sure if that's indeed what was instrumental in their turn around; really it doesn't matter. We just welcome rationality in association with public policy at City Hall and we applaud the Council for this symbolic but still important rejection of heretofore unneeded and unhelpful nonsense.
We're a community here that has allegiances we'd like to proclaim, yes, but we're a community that has allegiance to redwood forests, gulf stream waters and the collectivist idea that the land was made for you and me.
The Emeryville Tattler turned five in February and we're re-posting some of our favorite stories and the reader's favorites during our month-long celebration. As the news cycle permits, look to see some of these oldies but goodies re-blasted.
We continue the celebration with a piece from Tuesday January 11, 2011.
Republican Party apparatchik and Christian evangelical Sam Hardage, CEO of Woodfin Suites Hotels had just been forced by Emeryville (and the courts) to pay his Emeryville workers their back wages as mandated by Emeryville's Measure C, the 'living wage for hotel workers'. City Council members (except Ruth Atkin) all fought against Measure C before the election but were obliged to enforce it once Emeryville voters passed it. Mr Hardage spent far more on attorney fees fighting Emeryville then he owed his workers. The victory for Emeryville culminated in the wages being distributed to the workers after a nearly five year battle including big weekly protests in front of the hotel on Shellmound Street and the largest protest march in Emeryville history (from the hotel to City Hall) . After his defeat, Mr Hardage decided he had enough of Emeryville and he sold the hotel to Hyatt House and left town with his tail between his legs.
Here's the story, one of our faves:
1/11/2011
Woodfin CEO & Christian Evangelical Laments:
In Emeryville It's
Woodfin Workers: 1, Jesus: 0
Loser
Woodfin Hotels CEO Sam Hardage tries to do the Lord's work. A self-professed Christian evangelical, he's a member of the Council for National Policy, a right-wing group pushing what it terms Christian precepts on policy-makers. It's also why Mr. Hardage fought so hard against Emeryville's 'Living Wage ordinance for Hotel Workers' and then refused to disburse unpaid wages, even after ordered to do so by a 'secular' court. As a good Christian, Mr. Hardage was presumably following Christ's example. After all Jesus would certainly never have paid His workers what they earned if He had owned a hotel chain back in the day in the Bethlehem/Nazareth metropolitan region. Mr. Hardage put up a good fight but in the end the Woodfin workers proved more than a match for Sam or Jesus.
Sam Hardage: Works
for Jesus and against
his employees.
The non-profit organization East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy (EBASE), recently announced that Woodfin workers finally received their back pay, some $125,000 in a negotiated agreement divided among 54 workers. Woodfin for its part, hired a phalanx of attorneys and fought the workers and the City of Emeryville for four years in an effort to impose upon the employees the moral philosophy of Jesus Christ: that the wealthy dwell upon a mountain of riches and dispatch the less fortunate to penury and pestilence. Mr. Hardage and Woodfin spent an undisclosed sum on their losing cause, a figure likely exceeding what was owed to the hotel maids. After their bruising loss, they have indicated they now intend on obeying Emeryville's laws.
Nora Davis:
Not too fond of
working families.
Measure C, the ordinance that mandates a living wage for hotel workers in Emeryville was passed by voters and implemented five years ago in December. During that time, Measure C has delivered a cumulative 1.2 million increase in employee wages. The ordinance increased the pay-rates by up to $5 per hour (most received less), putting up to $5,000 a year into the wallets of working families, helping them make ends meet without relying on public assistance.
Ken Bukowski: He's poor so
why should workers make money?
The Measure was passed by Emeryville voters on November 8, 2005 and was endorsed by the Alameda Labor Council, UNITE HERE Local 2850, Congresswoman Barbara Lee and Assemblywoman Loni Hancock. 54% of Emeryville voters approved Measure C despite $115,000 spent by the Chamber of Commerce and the hotels to defeat it. Local politicians who worked to defeat the living wage in Emeryville include Council members Nora Davis, Ken Bukowski and Dick Kassis. Political operative and Chamber of Commerce political action committee (EMPAC) chairman John Gooding also joined in the fight against the living wage. See Tattler story (May 18).
Another loser: John Gooding,
strangely he works for Barbara Lee
and against living wages.
Mr. Hardage, in addition to spreading Jesus' word, has sat on many conservative councils and public policy think-tanks including the Council for National Policy, an umbrella organization for social conservative activists described by the New York Times as a "little known group of the most powerful conservatives in the country". Mr. Hardages' colleagues on the CNP board included Jack Abramoff, Tom DeLay, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. Mr. Hardage also sits on the board at the Adam Smith Institute, an anti-government libertarian think tank that is among the most effective groups advocating for privatization of government functions in the United States. Rounding out the list of powerful appointments is the Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed State Commission on Judicial Performance.
Mr. Hardage was the Republican nominee for Governor of Kansas in 1982 and was twice an elite 'Bush Pioneer,' the highest echelon of campaign donors that each bundled contributions of more than $100,000 for former President George W. Bush campaigns.
The impressive political work of Mr. Hardage was joined by our own Emeryville City Council members and Jesus in their fight against living wages for Emeryville workers.
Woodfin Hotels CEO Sam Hardage tries to do the Lord's work. A self-professed Christian evangelical, he's a member of the Council for National Policy, a right-wing group pushing what it terms Christian precepts on policy-makers. It's also why Mr. Hardage fought so hard against Emeryville's 'Living Wage ordinance for Hotel Workers' and then refused to disburse unpaid wages, even after ordered to do so by a 'secular' court. As a good Christian, Mr. Hardage was presumably following Christ's example. After all Jesus would certainly never have paid His workers what they earned if He had owned a hotel chain back in the day in the Bethlehem/Nazareth metropolitan region. Mr. Hardage put up a good fight but in the end the Woodfin workers proved more than a match for Sam or Jesus.
Sam Hardage: Works
for Jesus and against
his employees.
The non-profit organization East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy (EBASE), recently announced that Woodfin workers finally received their back pay, some $125,000 in a negotiated agreement divided among 54 workers. Woodfin for its part, hired a phalanx of attorneys and fought the workers and the City of Emeryville for four years in an effort to impose upon the employees the moral philosophy of Jesus Christ: that the wealthy dwell upon a mountain of riches and dispatch the less fortunate to penury and pestilence. Mr. Hardage and Woodfin spent an undisclosed sum on their losing cause, a figure likely exceeding what was owed to the hotel maids. After their bruising loss, they have indicated they now intend on obeying Emeryville's laws.
Nora Davis:
Not too fond of
working families.
Measure C, the ordinance that mandates a living wage for hotel workers in Emeryville was passed by voters and implemented five years ago in December. During that time, Measure C has delivered a cumulative 1.2 million increase in employee wages. The ordinance increased the pay-rates by up to $5 per hour (most received less), putting up to $5,000 a year into the wallets of working families, helping them make ends meet without relying on public assistance.
Ken Bukowski: He's poor so
why should workers make money?
The Measure was passed by Emeryville voters on November 8, 2005 and was endorsed by the Alameda Labor Council, UNITE HERE Local 2850, Congresswoman Barbara Lee and Assemblywoman Loni Hancock. 54% of Emeryville voters approved Measure C despite $115,000 spent by the Chamber of Commerce and the hotels to defeat it. Local politicians who worked to defeat the living wage in Emeryville include Council members Nora Davis, Ken Bukowski and Dick Kassis. Political operative and Chamber of Commerce political action committee (EMPAC) chairman John Gooding also joined in the fight against the living wage. See Tattler story (May 18).
Another loser: John Gooding,
strangely he works for Barbara Lee
and against living wages.
Mr. Hardage, in addition to spreading Jesus' word, has sat on many conservative councils and public policy think-tanks including the Council for National Policy, an umbrella organization for social conservative activists described by the New York Times as a "little known group of the most powerful conservatives in the country". Mr. Hardages' colleagues on the CNP board included Jack Abramoff, Tom DeLay, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. Mr. Hardage also sits on the board at the Adam Smith Institute, an anti-government libertarian think tank that is among the most effective groups advocating for privatization of government functions in the United States. Rounding out the list of powerful appointments is the Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed State Commission on Judicial Performance.
Mr. Hardage was the Republican nominee for Governor of Kansas in 1982 and was twice an elite 'Bush Pioneer,' the highest echelon of campaign donors that each bundled contributions of more than $100,000 for former President George W. Bush campaigns.
The impressive political work of Mr. Hardage was joined by our own Emeryville City Council members and Jesus in their fight against living wages for Emeryville workers.
Yes, THAT Jesus. After a four month hiatus, the Pledge of Allegiance is back at Emery Unified School District, in all its God fearing automaton-like saccharine inducing patriotic glory. It would appear the Tattler's story back last August on the demise of the loyalty oath known as the Pledge of Allegiance at Emery Unified School District was premature. Or maybe the School Board voted to reinstate the Oath (3-2; Inch & Langner dissenting) taken at the start of every meeting BECAUSE of the Tattler. Either way, under God, the Board can read the tea leaves and they think this kind of symbolic patriotism is de regueur in this age of Donald Trump.
