Where's the labor section?

[Michael Bailey]

Richard Fiero wrote:

> Here in the US every newspaper has a business section. Where's the labor
> section?
> Ex: Arizona State Carpenters' Union Local 1089.
>

good point...

Noam Chomsky wrote somewhere that at one point there were a lot of
union newspapers.  And somewhere else I've read, and certainly noticed
on my own, that coverage of unions, outside of union papers, tends to
focus on corruption and strikes

given the adversarial element to labor/management relations, the fact
that editors are members of management shapes the narrative

It's hard to deny that many things exist that diminish the luster of
organized labor.
But, ongoing mostly sympathetic treatment of outrageously flawed
people and institutions isn't impossible for a news organ,
though...(Kennedys, run-up to Iraq,
Republican vote manipulation, genetically modified food, untested
beef, capitalism,eg)

so an ongoing steadfast pro-union voice would probably need to emanate
from within the labor movement, or from a truly progressive news
organization with a unionized editorial staff
(it could happen...)

My own misinterpretation of Vineland allows for a certain interest in
labor, and especially the IWW, as being a fairly important background
theme, but not compelling enough to enlist Zoyd, and not vigorous
enough to give any kind of evangelistic appreciation of her legacy to
Frenesi, let alone Prairie.

One interpretation of that might be that Pynchon is decrying
reefer-muddled quietism in Zoyd - but I don't sense that.
I do sense a lively interest in the history of injustice directed
toward organized labor, and in the ideals it carries the torch for
though perhaps cannot be said to "own"  (which ideals, expressed in
one way or another, are the only real hope of humanity) ...and a
realistic assessment of the (valid) reasons for some of the failures
among the Movement...





-- 
"Three things in life are important. The first is to be kind.  The
second is to be kind.  And the third is to be kind." - Henry James