The CWAs and their associated IBEWs (not my local) were wearing red shirts, collar instead of Ts and Verizon management sent this big beefy guy wearing a red collar shirt into the crowd. Due to his camoflage I didn't know he wasn't some rank and filer at first, then he started talking to me, and he was pushing right wing crap on every issue we discussed. Finally we got around to Israel and he started badmouthing the country. I already knew where he was coming from by then, but I tested my theory out by saying 'You mean you're mad about what's happening to the Palestinians', which momentarily confused him, but he then said he didn't give a s**t about them. He just hated Israel. He hated Jews. He was a bircher, and was working for management to threaten the unions. So I just said to him 'Oh, you're anti-semitic. Well, this is America, you're free to talk about your beliefs if you want.' He started gibbering, gesticulating and yelling, not saying that he was upset about being called anti semitic, or saying he wasn't against Jewish people,just yelling that it WAS his right to say what he wanted. He wandered off yelling into the demonstrators, just trying to sew some fear into the union people, who had quite a large number of physically fit rank and filers among them, and weren't afraid at all. I just went back to facing the traffic with my sign, helping chant when the CWAs started chanting, cheering when pro-union people gave frequent horn honks of support.
Too bad for him that his corporate masters just recently lost their fight.
I think you can like Israel, Palestinians, and unions. None of them are mutually exclusive.
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