Strange attraction spreads its wings

It's been eight months, so I guess it's time to go back to Plastic Passion. For those of you who weren't around or weren't paying attention last time (including a series of mobile posts), PP is alternative eighties dance night that happens once a month--they're not at PJ's any more but they have a new home at Necto.

Locals? Anybody interested? I'm going, but it's more fun for an introvert to go with people he knows than to go all alone or try to make new friends in a noisy club. It's this Saturday (next month, unfortunately, it's the same night as the Peter Murphy concert. Ironic, hunh?) and.... I probably don't have a car, but I suspect I can arrange the loan of one.

Also? This month's VC program has a lot of eighties pop (as well as forties pop, fifties pop, nineties pop...) and you should totally check it out.

"Who is Karl Marx?" asked John Galt bemusedly.

Spotted on Al Petterson@FaceBook #socialism:
Since the recovery started in mid-2009, productivity has increased 5.3% (that's huge!) and wages have increased 0.3%. Divide. 94% of your increased productivity has gone straight into corporate profits. You got 6% of it. Keep carrying water for the aristocracy: you're doing a great job!

Which leads into some thoughts I've been having, sparked by the anti-union vitriol and the upcoming centennial of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire.
For those of you whose history class didn't cover it, at this point a hundred years ago in New York, a group of largely poor largely immigrant women were on strike. They had stopped working thirteen hour days for six days a week--that is, when their pay wasn't docked for a myriad of possible offences--so that they could be beaten by police and harassed by citizens who felt that they were 'out of line'. The factory finally lost enough money to offer some concessions, but they refused to concede on the point of unionization, among others.

On the twenty-fifth of March, a fire broke out in the factory. While management fled the building, the workers were not alerted about the fire. Treated fabric and shredded scraps fed the fire quickly. Doors leading out had been locked, to prevent theft or unauthorized breaks.

You can guess how this ends. That's right--with a public outpouring of demand for the creation of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union. Because for a banker to get support, he shows the red in his books. For some people, it takes actual blood or burned corpses. Or a union.