Austerity Nut

[Omaha Steve]

Run time: 04:14 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24BTI2F3MF0   Posted on YouTube: July 26, 2011 By YouTube Member: AusterityNut Views on YouTube: 99   Posted on DU: October 12, 2011 By DU Member: Omaha Steve Views on DU: 435

 

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/10/12/1025531/-America,-Your-Billionaires-Need-Your-Help-%E2%80%93-Now-More-Than-Ever

This guest post comes from Costas Panayotakis, a New York City labor activist with the Professional Staff Congress (PSC), the faculty union at the City University of New York.

Costas has sparked an innovative public education effort, detailed below. I’m sharing it with you as a great example of creativity at work in unions today, and as something that others might adapt and repeat as part of their own political efforts.



In unusual times one has to do unusual things. That’s how my stolid existence as a sociology professor at the City University of New York came to be enriched, by my second life as Austerity Nut.

Austerity Nut rides the New York City subways preaching the virtues of budget cuts, and the need for working-class sacrifice for the sake of our suffering brothers and sisters on Wall Street. He reminds riders, “Ask not what the billionaires in your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country’s billionaires.”

This week Austerity Nut took a break from his subway sermons, and brought his message to Tuesday’s March on the Billionaires of Park Avenue. With more than 1,000 people gathered across from the Plaza Hotel, Austerity Nut stood up and spoke out:

We are in a terrible crisis, my friends, because people who work for a living in this country have just gotten too greedy. The rich, on the other hand, are falling further and further behind – and they need our help!

FULL story at link.