Our friends at Noise Pop have launched The No Free Lunch Campaign with Lewis Black to show support for service industry workers being screwed by buyout firms. They can describe it better than I can so here you go…
“Comedian Lewis Black filmed a “rant” against the greed of these “Buyout Barons.” Indie rock band Radio 4 contributed a great track for it too. Go to http://www.july17action.org to check it out, and find out how you can get involved by signing a petition or registering to attend an action on July 17, 2008 in your area.
Noise Pop became friends with SEIU, the largest Union in the country that represents hospital and healthcare workers, doormen and other service employees, last year in Austin when they partnered with us at our show and Zach Galifianakis brought some comic relief about the healthcare system in this country. It was a great way to engage our audience about an important issue. Now SEIU is taking on Private Equity and once again Noise Pop has teamed up with them to produce our first short film entitled “No Free Lunch”, written and directed by Antonino D’Ambrosio of La Lutta NMC and starring hilarious political comedian Lewis Black with original music by dance-punk band
Radio 4.
Check out the video here - http://www.july17action.org/ or http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASCAama93R0
Below is an article in today’s NY Times about the campaign.
BUSINESS / WORLD BUSINESS | June 4, 2008
Union Takes Anti-Buyout Campaign Worldwide
By MICHAEL J. de la MERCED
The Service Employees International Union, one of the country’s biggest unions, will call upon people to attend protests against buyout firms in July in 100 cities in 25 countries.”
The perennial Christmas-haters at Lowe’s just don’t know when to surrender, do they? I guess they forgot the fallout from their 2005 attempt at rebranding Christmas trees “holiday trees,” because they’re at it again.
Whether they were trying to wage a daring attack on Christendom or just lighten up the holidays by evoking the excitement of genealogy (or boost disappointing sales by reaching out to non-Christians, but that’s crazy talk,) culture warriors across America were having none of it! Last week, as news spread through the conservative grapevine, Lowe’s customer service lines were flooded with angry calls from thousands of -presumably unemployed and hobbyless- Christians. Not only were they furious that Lowe’s was trying to erase Christmas from national consciousness, they were also upset by the upside-down Christmas tree.
Seriously, who does that?! Forget that upside-down Christmas trees have been around since the Middle Ages and represent the Trinity. They also fit snugly into a pentagram, and if you put one behind a right-side-up tree I think it forms a star of David.
Strategically, we have a lot to learn from our tenacious Christian brothers and sisters. They weren’t slowed by the fear that their attack on family trees might damage their pro-family image, and they showed once again that the best defense is a strong offense. Lowe’s released an official apology, dropped the C-word a few more times on their website, and have sworn to change their catalog before the next pressing. Some people would say that the only thing dumber than denying that those big, tinsel-covered pines are Christmas trees is overreacting about the whole thing. Those people will probably get a lot of angry phone calls very soon.
So far, the score for this season of the War on Christmas is Christians-1; Atheists, Jews, Muslims, hardware stores, and the liberal media-0. Updates as they come.
