The Heroes of Super Bowl Sunday

By Dave Zirin The Nation February 6, 2012

http://www.thenation.com/blog/166097/heroes-super-bowl-sunday

I emerge from the echo-chamber of Super Bowl Sunday
energized and armed with a new set of heroes and folk-
tales to pass on to others. My hero on our great (near)
secular national holiday wasn't Giants quarterback Eli
Manning, who one suspects would be going to Disney
World whether he won or lost. It wasn't the incredible
looking Madonna, spotted backstage drinking her
daughter's stemcells, or M.I.A. with her  middle-
finger-malfunction. It also wasn't Clint Eastwood who
made a commercial where I think he threatened to murder
Detroit.

My new heroes are the people in the Occupy and Labor
movements who gathered to protest on Super Bowl Sunday.
It certainly didn't make Sportscenter that night, but
several hundred people gathered at the Indianapolis
state house to stand up against the recent passage of
the state's "right to work" legislation and make clear
that the fight was far from done.

They included representatives from the Indiana Occupy
movement, members of the International Brotherhood of
Electrical Workers, union iron workers, as well as
trade unionists from UNITE, and the Communication
Workers of America. They came from Indianapolis,
Bloomington, Anderson, and beyond. Their ranks included
radical cheerleaders from Indiana University who
chanted,  "Lies and tricks will not divide. Workers
standing side by side..Union town through and through.
You for me and me for you."

My heroes include Randy, a member of the iron worker's
union who came with a delegation all the way from
Wisconsin to speak at the rally.  Following his words,
people chanted "From Tahrir Square to Wisconsin, We
shall Fight we shall Win".

My heroes include people named Amy, Ben, Mike, Heath,
Ed, April, Jacob, Jubin, Bill, and the tireless Tithi
Bhattacharya who emailed me at day's end, "Class
solidarity does exist!"

All of these proud trade unionists and Occupy activists
showed up even though the AFL-CIO explicitly instructed
people not to protest on the day of the big game. They
accepted the bullying line that the Super Bowl was not
a day for politics. They accepted this even though a
brutal anti-union ad played during the game for much of
the country.

That's why it's so important that the people were a
presence at this Woodstock for the 1%, leaving
energized and excited about further forging connections
between the Occupy and the Labor movements. After all,
we don't have $3 million for a 30 second ad. We just
have the ability to gather and be heard.

As for the game itself, I think I'll always remember
the stirring words of Gisele Bundchen. For those who
don't know (and if you don't, then more power to you)
Bundchen is our world's first billionaire Super Model.
She's also the spouse of New England Patriots
quarterback Tom Brady. In the aftermath of the game,
she was recorded saying, "You've to catch the ball when
you're supposed to catch the ball. My husband cannot
fucking throw the ball and catch the ball at the same
time. I can't believe they dropped the ball so many
times." One player said after hearing her words, "It's
like knocking someone when they are down."

Gisele comfortably carries the billionaire's impatience
with the great unwashed breathing her air, who in her
mind, are the fools unable to catch her husband's
throws. But with her statement, I think we can see why
so many people are overdosing on schadenfreude
following the Patriots 21-17 loss to the Giants. For
years, the Patriots have played with a sense of
entitlement. They won three Super Bowls in Tom Brady's
first four seasons as a starter and since then, every
year, they've played like it was their trophy that some
other team was just borrowing. It's an arrogance that
has festered and worsened into a scabby crust that
surrounds Brady and his coach Bill Belichick with each
year of failure. They have become the Randolph and
Mortimer Duke of the NFL, screaming after every season
ending loss for the stock exchange to "Turn those
machines back on!" Then there is Patriots owner Bob
Kraft, and his owner's suite mate Rush Limbaugh,with
Limbaugh caught on camera forlornly picking his nose.

Seeing the arrogant and the entitled get knocked down a
peg is always welcome. But in the real world it doesn't
mean a damn just because one arrogant and entitled
owner's box cheers, while another weeps. It happens
because people around the country are standing up and
saying, "Enough is enough." In Indianapolis, it
happened because people heroically dared to be heard on
a day when everyone told them to just shut up and watch
the game.

[Dave Zirin is the author of "The John Carlos Story"
(Haymarket) and just made the new documentary "Not Just
a Game." Receive his column every week by emailing
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Super Solidarity over Super Bowl Weekend

By Arlene Holt Baker AFL-CIO Executive Vice President
AFL-CIO Blog Feruary 6, 2012

http://blog.aflcio.org/2012/02/06/super-solidarity-over
-super-bowl-weekend/

Over the weekend, all eyes were on the Super Bowl in
Indianapolis, where tens of thousands traveled to see
the event and hundreds of thousands more watched it on
television. But while the spotlight was on the game,
workers across the city took to the streets to protest
the outrages happening to working people.

In one such event, we rallied at the Hyatt Regency in
downtown Indianapolis, where hardworking hotel
housekeepers are fighting to keep their jobs and boost
their poverty-level pay at a hotel where rates can be
more than $1,000 a night for a Super Bowl week room.
Twenty longtime hotel workers may be out of jobs in a
few days when the hotel ends a subcontract with
Hospitality Staffing Solutions.

The hotel workers are not in this fight alone. In the
midst of what is undoubtedly the busiest few days for
football players, DeMaurice Smith, executive director
of the NFL Players Association (NFLPA), and NFL players
joined Hyatt housekeepers at the rally to demand Hyatt
end its abuse of subcontracted workers and hire
outsourced workers directly. Smith said NFL players
would  continue a year-old boycott of Hyatt over its
treatment of  workers and told the crowd:

I love people who stand together to fight for what's
right.

Just blocks from the Super Bowl, these football
players, together with construction workers, office
staff and steelworkers, stood side by side with hotel
housekeepers, joined in common cause by the struggles
that unite all working people-all of the 99 percent in
this country who are fighting against corporate greed
and challenging politicians who seek to take away our
rights as citizens of this great country.

AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker on
the picket line with UNITEHERE! members and allies.

Days ago, some of those politicians right here in
Indiana pushed through the state legislature
legislation that is a massive assault on the wages of
the state's working people. The "right to work" for
less bill was hustled through the legislative process
in a series of dirty tricks in outright contempt for
democracy.

What's happening in Indiana is just one part of the
massive assault on working families across the country.
Yet over the past year, we saw again and again the
strength of collective action, of public protest in
state after state as the rights of workers came under
attack. We re-learned that we are not alone, and we
have seen that when we stand together with those who
share our values, victory is ours.

Hours after Gov. Mitch Daniels (R) signed Indiana's
contemptuous bill, tens of thousands of Hoosier workers
came together in solidarity to march from the
statehouse to Super Bowl village. Construction workers
and teachers, grocery clerks and truck drivers chanted
"Remember November," vowing to take back the state door
by door, neighborhood by neighborhood.

This year, as in Indiana, we will stand together for
jobs and for economic freedom across the nation. We'll
congregate in the public square. And on Election Day,
we'll march to the ballot box to cast our votes for
economic, social and political justice.

___________________________________________

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