heavy4thevintage [none/use name]

Depends on the county. I have a good manager who keeps us at A floating number of about 50 cases.

Meanwhile I'm over 300 lmao, like you said it really depends. And this is probably the best county to be a PD in the state I'm in, I've heard it's worse everywhere else here smh. Keep fighting the good fight!!!

Actual co-ops have individuals with hiring and firing power

Who are democratically decided, sure. Even if it's true that there was no surplus value extracted it doesn't matter because the workers are still alienated from the product of their labor. When they attempted to have more democratic control over the process of making the magazine, they got fired. Sounds like a capitalist boss worried about losing control, to me.

He doesn’t even own the business, and it’s structured such that no owner can skim off whatever profits are generated (it’s a not for profit).

As someone who's worked in the non-profit sector, trust me when I say that this means basically nothing. These set-ups can often become even more exploitative because they're generally set up to do work that people consider "good," like organizing workers or fighting climate change. But regardless, the pay isn't the issue here. It's about power dynamics and how the boss reacted when the workers attempted to organize to change those power dynamics.

As long as he retained hiring and firing power, along with the editorial control that he had, then it was a capitalist enterprise. The equality of pay may lessen the surplus value extracted by the boss, but by maintaining those power dynamics his workers are still alienated from the product of their labor. They wanted a co-op model to have a much more democratic say over those processes, and when his control over that was materially threatened for the 1st time, beyond just saying it would be great to have workplace democracy!!, he lashed out and fired everyone.

This is a boss vs worker dispute. The equal pay doesn't change the power dynamics.

NJR had built up a decent amount of respect because of CA, much more so than other writers for the publication because he was the face of it. The example of BJG doesn't change that. Bernie's campaign isn't just some random stuff outside of CA , his 2 campaigns have been the impetus for a rebuilt left in America. So yeah, you get more clout in a notable role on his campaign than just about anywhere else. That doesn't disprove that NJR got a good amount of clout from building and running CA.

That is his framing, but if we’re going to read his story critically (as we should) then we have to read the other side critically as well. I see a lot of people taking the other side as the gospel truth but finding all sorts of places to be skeptical of this. That’s not a good way of sorting through disputes.

In a labor dispute there are 2 sides: the boss and the workers. I'm going to believe the workers every time, especially when they explicitly say the boss is lying, but you do you.

and I’d say more people know of Briahna Joy Gray (a former CA contributor or editor) than him.

...because she was Bernie's Campaign Press Secretary, not because of CA

It's even funnier when you see that this all started when Killer Mike responded to a comment from SEPTEMBER on EASTER after creeping through the person's IG account and referencing a pic where they called Kanye their dad from when they were 18. Completely embarrassing unforced error. I don't know how anyone could take him seriously.

“The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit- and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains. And the smell of rot fills the country. Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth.

There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificate- died of malnutrition- because the food must rot, must be forced to rot. The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quick-lime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.” - The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck

change is coming

Grapes of wrath been growing

-heavy4thevintage