Communicate or ... are we already dead?

I talked with Steve briefly about helping out where and when I can to keep this updated, we will probably talk more about that next week. Also, there is an union Carpenter/ activist that we both know, whom I think would be ideal to take some lead over the whole updating project. He is running his own site at ubcnewsroom.com and is a regular contributor and administrator on Union Review.

There are all kind of sites that are springing up, seemingly out of nowhere ... and I think it would be great if we can all communicate about our site victories and struggles here. I can certainly use as much feedback and pointers as possible.

It is good to hear from you Matt, I hope you are well.

"not turn over Communicate or Die to those who would ignore your original goals for this site."

My posts were not proper for this forum. They had nothing to do with Technology.I have removed all my posts for this reason It is difficult to remain silent when people PRETEND to be Good Union members.

Sometimes we need to take ourselves out of the daily routine of everyday life, and be put our in a situation that makes us really understand how great we really have it. Being part of Union used to be a priviledge, at you time or another joining was almost impossible where you had to be or know someone of influence, no doubt those privileges are still there, but only for the internally few. These days Organizing efforts are overshadowed by BIG BUSINESS, people don't look at Unions the same way anymore. Even Our own organizations are involved in some sort of corruption, have been and maybe always will be, but does that mean we stop doing the things that make us stronger.

I THINK NOT !

Rank and File members are discouraged, our political options are limited, or use of organizing funds are'nt being used to their full potential and the memberships "LACK OF MORALE" is at and all time high.

Don't get me wrong... Things have changed for the better and we anticipate a brighter future, but we have to take personal responsibility for our own actions.

Member Involvement Can Be Very Contagious...

It's All Quite Simple !

Organize, Educate, Nominate and Don't Agitate

Charles Lezette
Carpenters Local 370
Albany, NY

www.nominateducate.com
www.ubcnewsroom.com
www.unionreview.com
www.youtube.com/voc370
www.myspace.com/nominateducate

Just noticed that Mass. Jobs with Justice has set up a "MySpace" page - http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendi...

deleted

"lot of unions are making use of the "GetActive" system, which I think the AFL-CIO makes available free to its affiliates."
+++

This post is deliberately a little vague on the details for obvious reasons.

I have discovered a security problem with union newsletters published thru get-active and for which the chief scientist refuses to admit or take action

The problem in my case was exploited NOT by a spambot, but instead by some union employees-officers who have gone to great lengths to stifle my access to union members and even the company because of my activities in pointing out significant financial malfeasance and corruption

In a nutshell, it turns out that if you sign up for your [get active version ] of a union newsletter, AND your union does NOT disable some default features which allow you to easily access YOUR profile, AND you either forward to friends or publish on a web site the newsletter you received, YOUR profile and email address can be easily accessed or changed. Then by changing email address , your newsletter password can be sent to anywhere.

The result then allows those so inclined to send out spam with your email address, and by making it circular to the newsletter site, either your email address gets blocked for input to the union, or in worst case, the get active system might get put on the blacklist.

Getactive (Convio ) also supports many major non profit orgs.

Bottom line - IF your union uses that system - be VERY careful and BE sure YOUR union does NOT use the defaults.

I had hoped that Convio would put out a warning - but since they apparently have not - I am posting this here.

I don't know if it "died" but I honestly think there was something wrong with the software. Something went haywire about determining recent posts. As in it didn't. So even if there was new content it wasn't apparent.
[shields up]
There seems to be something of an apple-like effect with drupal and I fully expect to get nuked for
suggesting drupal could malfunction :-) (Ok if it wasn't drupal then there'd be an intimation it wasn't configured correctly and I'm pretty sure that's not going to make someone happy either. oops. Ok let's blame it on the browser. I always use firefox. :-)

Besides considering a software tuneup, I suggest the concept be refined a bit. If the concept was something like "help existing unions communicate
with their membership and the world in general" that's kinda doomed because unions don't like to communicate substantive things. While a lot of people especially the rank and file unionists would really like to hear more from unions and be more involved, the unions don't want to do it. It's that classic newbie thing that a newcomer comes across what looks like an
obvious problem that needs to be improved and then they find out that the reason it never 'improved' was because almost no one of any stature in the system wanted it to change. When you try to change things the forces come out of the woodwork on a continuum ranging from disinterest to fierce hostility against change. A lot of times wouldbe changers never know what hit them. They just magically get excluded from everything.

But I think that promoting unions is a good idea. Just leave out the part where we expect unions to want to do it and participate in any formal kind of way. A good way to get around this kind of problem classically is to find a good enemy. And there are really a lot of them. So I think Richard's suggestion to take on anti-union websites is a good one. (Sorry Richard I didn't see it until now.)