Far fucking out.

I'm embarrassed that, as a longtime Stranger reader, my first thought was shock that there's an altweekly with union writers somewhere. Best to them.

But if I don't read the Weekly when it's in the Weekly, why would I read the Weekly when it's on Tumblr?

Do not any of you forget that the Village Voice, the venerable NYC newspaper, was bought lock, stock and branding by "New Times" from Phoenix Arizona back in 2005-6. New Times purchased the entire VV chain of 6 papers (it already had 11 of it's own) -- which includes the Seattle Weekly -- and proceeded to demolish their editorial departments and remake each paper in the template format of their own. In '07-08, the New Times took the name Village Voice Media, because it had better history and acceptance (my opinion).

While the original VV paper itself cannot be reduced to the craptastic NT template formula (see the Seattle Weekly if you have any questions as to what that template looks like), they did spill plenty of blood in their editorial department during the transition.

I would suggest that the VVM/NT is clearly looking to squeeze more out of their investments --- especially in the light of their spectacular $21M+ loss last year against the Bay Guardian.

@3: c'mon though -- it's a pretty brilliant labor action.

Maybe the NBA players' association should do a playground pickup league series this season....

Amazing. It's a brilliant move, and means a great deal, apropos @4, because of where it is happening. I'm curious what role union organizing played in arriving at this strategy, because the strategy is smart and its implications are enormous. I grew up and remain a dyed-in-the-wool union supporter. But is that the instrument that made this move possible? I wonder what tools we actually need if we want to retain control of our own economies and means of production. Charles, what do you think?

Matthew, this is the moment. Teachers are striking in London, Chicago is cutting thousands of teachers from work, the banks were able to maintain high fees from transactions in stores, and Goldy just posted this: "As had been widely expected, the University of Washington Board of Regents approved a 20 percent resident undergraduate tuition hike this morning, from $8,701 to $10,574, the largest increase in tuition and fees ever. Following two consecutive years of 14 percent increases, the in-state cost of an undergraduate education will have increased by 55 percent over three years." it is the moment indeed. it's neoliberalism without the sermons.

Sounds like we need another tax break for rich people.

I was going to congratulate Charles on keeping the insanity out of the article until the very last sentence. Then I saw that the rest of the article was just a quote, and in fact one of Charles' two sentences is claptrap. Ah well.

@9, I've long had a theory that Charles's posts could be mostly "fixed" by removing the last paragraph. This could be done with a Greasemonkey script... I may have to do that.

@10: Brilliant. Also remove any sentence that includes "neoliberalism" or "we are all".

@9: For me it helped that after reading it, my mind immediately replayed it to the tune of "Everyone has AIDS." Try it again.