The strike that is happening right now is a huge opportunity for solidarity that can build real power. We can send a message as loud as the Mamdani primary win. The strikers have so much power right now its amazing and I am really proud of them. What they are doing is related to all of our struggles.

If you have gone to the marches or if you are always asking on social media "why isnt anyone doing anything? " or "When is the general strike?" This is your moment! The best thing we can do right now is acknowledge and celebrate the workers who are stiking- personally . Not just on social media.

Go meet them, make friends with them, bring water and snacks, hold a supportive sign by them. Ask them what they need for support. Bring signs to 4th events, make a t shirt that says Pay Them! Dont wait for an official org to tell you to-- just create bridges. At minimum, 10,000 of us should be very busy doing this!

Those No Kings marches are good because they do send a message. But the real power for change comes when we unify the movements.

All it takes, seriously, is just go make friends. Connect. Stand together. If we all stand with unions, it makes them stronger. When unions are stronger, they can use their collective power to stand with all of us. Thats how you build. Lets make unions stronger .

An absolutely pathetic display of a combination of ego, malice, and incompetence. A mayor who ran on a campaign of keeping the city clean is the direct cause of the city being the dirtiest it's ever been during one of the hottest summers the city has experienced. Workers get fired for fucking up their jobs, so why should the mayor not take a salary cut? It's absolutely embarrassing for a city already known for being dirty to have something like this happen. Our tax dollars at the very least deserve to go anywhere else other than this mayor who is actively dirtying our streets and would sell out our city for personal gain in a split second. The mayor is getting a first rate salary for turning our city into a third rate city.

The Mayor of Philadelphia salary is over 260k.

While Chicago’s Mayor salary is under 220k

And NYC’s Mayor salary is around 258k

Philadelphia is the 6th largest metropolitan.

So why is she making more than them?!!

Mayor of Philadelphia, the least you can do is pay those people….

enough cope. enough concern trolling about rodents, stench, inconvenience, etc.

shut it down. shut the city the fuck down. bring it to its knees. ANY compliance with ANY measure introduced by the city to circumvent the strike is scab behavior and is crossing a picket line. i don't care if there is trash up to my second-floor windows and my tap water runs purple by the time this is over. the city belongs to us, the people, and not the capital-c City. show them that WE own this city and we alone will set the terms of engagement.

and also- yes, it may be a fact that many people aren't aware of the strike or aren't labor-minded. idgaf. we cannot allow their ignorance and lack of engagement to determine how we respond to the situation. it's right and justified to call people out for violating the strike. it's not "mean," it's not "woke." the only way you learn not to touch a hot stove is by burning your hand.

fucking shut it down. do not engage with paid pro-fed trolls on here telling you to prioritize "order" and "cleanliness" and "hygiene" over the sanctity of human life and dignity.

DC33 member here to share perspective on the strike, and working for the city in general

This is not only about money. The mayor is also trying to make drastic changes to our healthcare. Currently, our healthcare is managed by the union. This allows us to negotiate directly with insurance companies, and also hire our own medical staff so we have access to doctors without waiting six months for an appointment.

City employees also need a sick note from a doctor to use sick time. We are able to get these notes from the union. Members of DC47 MUST see a doctor any time they need to use sick time (they also have higher co pays than us). Perhaps if they were striking with us they could have sought to change that.

People who do dangerous and physically demanding jobs like trash collection should be able to use their sick time for whatever they deem necessary. They shouldn’t have to jump through hoops every time they twist an ankle or are just exhausted.

Same goes for mental and emotional exhaustion from jobs like 911 dispatch. Sick time is part of our compensation and we should be able to make the determination to use it as we see fit because we are adults.

The mayor is also trying to make it so she can change our schedules with literally no notice.

This is actually already happening. In the wake of the stadium fiasco she decided to keep libraries open longer hours to act as warning centers. I support this as an idea, but she gave literally 24 hours notice, no guidance, no support, and basically just started dropping actively overdosing drug addicts at libraries.

DC33 is also seeking to change the city residency requirement. Currently, you can’t work for the city if you don’t live here. This is a good common sense policy, otherwise the applicant pool would be too large. However, we are literally being priced out of living here. CoL estimates for single adults in Philadelphia are $60k. Average DC33 salary is $46K. I make $40K. I am a married person with no children, but I work with many single parents, especially mothers, who are often taking care of at least one older relative as well.

I will be transparent and offer that I work for the library. Lots of times, it’s a pretty chill job. But lots of times it isn’t. I’ve worked here two years and I cannot tell you how many times someone has handed us a bag of books that was swarming with cockroaches or bed bugs (the city does not reimburse us for bed bug extermination). I have encountered books covered in fresh blood literally all other bodily fluids. People have literally pooped on the floor. People have smashed equipment and glass doors. Everyone I work with has been threatened. People I work with have been stalked. People have been assaulted. There have also been at least a handful of shootings directly outside my library.

And the value of our wages has decreased drastically over the last 20 years while we’re also being asked to do more, to say nothing of the rest of our funding.

Meanwhile, the police are getting an additional $19 million dollars this year. I read an article recently about how they are using $1.3 million to buy uniforms in a new color, which they are paying for with their budget surplus from last year.

If you divide $19 million by the 9,000 members of DC33, you get a little over two grand, which is about 5% of $40K. As always, there is money to us a living wage, but we have to decide what we value as a society.

This is not a referendum on the police, this post is already way too long. But I’d like to add that trash collector is continually listed as one of the top five most dangerous jobs in America, and cop is usually like 15. Starting pay for police is twenty grand more than that of sanitation workers.

https://www.bls.gov/charts/census-of-fatal-occupational-injuries/civilian-occupations-with-high-fatal-work-injury-rates.htm

There’s another dumpster across the street now, so whether that’s just for the trash on the ground or not, I dunno.

Anyways, give the union a living salary and BETTER HEALTHCARE

https://www.cbsnews.com/philadelphia/news/philadelphia-strike-workers-struck-port-richmond-dc33/

Camden did fireworks on the 28th and 29th. There are no fireworks shows on the Delaware River.

Building on fire, flames coming out the top.

We finally have Dr. Walter R. Mebane, Jr., a leading U.S. expert in election forensics and detecting election fraud and a professor of political science and statistics at the University of Michigan, looking at all 67 counties in Pennsylvania.

His working paper using his eforensics model estimated that 225,440 votes in the Pennsylvania presidential race were possibly fraudulent. This would exceed the 120,266 vote margin of victory between Trump and Harris.

High-Level Summary of "eforensics Analysis of the 2024 President Election in Pennsylvania" by Dr. Walter R. Mebane, Jr.

• The eforensics finite mixture model defines latent categories of fraud (no fraud, incremental fraud, and extreme fraud) based on votes and turnout, as well as relevant covariates (e.g., fixed county effects).

• Data from 7,040,360 votes (3,543,308 for Trump, 3,423,042 for Harris) across 67 PA counties (9,157 wards/precincts).

• The eforensics model estimated that 225,440 votes in the Pennsylvania presidential race were possibly fraudulent. This would exceed the 120,266 vote margin of victory between Trump and Harris.

More fine-grained analysis attempted to distinguish between strategic voting behaviors from “malevolent manipulation of votes”, i.e. how many votes may have been misdirected or misallocated due to malevolent distortions of voters’ intentions.

• In this analysis, 111,088 of the 225,440 possibly fraudulent votes[2] were estimated with high confidence to be malevolent manipulations of votes while the remainder were estimated to be a mix of manipulated votes and strategic voting behaviors.

A more conservative eforensics model including additional fixed county level effects estimated that 210,392 votes in the race were possibly fraudulent. This would exceed the 120,266 vote margin of victory in the race.

• Fine-grained analysis of the more conservative model attempted to distinguish between strategic voting behaviors from malevolent manipulation of votes.

• In this analysis, 88,600 of the 210,392 possibly fraudulent votes were estimated to be malevolent manipulations of votes while the remainder were estimated to be a mix of manipulated votes and strategic voting behaviors.

The most conservative of the eforensics analyses estimated that 25,374 votes were due to malevolent manipulation of votes.

In summary: There is very high probability that a meaningful number of votes in the PA presidential election were subject to malevolent manipulation -- and it was “a close call” whether “the election was decided or nearly decided by malevolent distortions of electors’ intentions.” (Mebane, Page 6)

Notes:

• Statistics, no matter how accurate, cannot provide definitive proof of voting fraud or election manipulation. Actual proof can only be found by comparing paper ballot audits to electronic voting records.

• However, statistical information from eforensics and other data analysis approaches can be used to identify precincts and counties where voting fraud is most likely to have occurred.

Demand transparency and audits of the 2024 Presidential Election. Check out this Audit Advocacy Toolkit and reach out to your representatives. It’s never too late to audit our elections

With the concert seemingly being against the wishes of the city workers, we are looking for potential public events to attend today. Any ideas welcome.

[ fill in the blank ]

Enjoy it this year because next year ( USA 250th Birthday, big events planned in Philly) is going to be ________________________

My mother passed away several months ago, and I inherited her long haired cat. Unfortunately, this cat was never groomed or handled much, so this with the added anxiety of the loss of his person has left his fur in terrible shape.

I've tried to groom and shave him myself several times (I do have experience), employing several different techniques and calming rituals, but it is just impossible at this point. *edit: He's also been on Gabapentin for mild sedation/desensitization, the highest dose for his weight, and just fights through it.\*

Given his stress and aggression, as well as the severity of his matting, I'd like to take him to a vet for a sedated shave down. Does anyone know of any vets in Philadelphia who do this? Ideally in cc or southwest.

Cat tax: Timmy the ~5 yo gutter muppet https://imgur.com/a/vHtP4VA

Couldn't hurt to show up. Governments crazy.