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F. V. Trebe gives a fuck about the Oxford Comma. She is also passionate about writing the wrongs in the world.

Unions Occupy!

OWS Gets Major Support

Dozens of major unions across the country have voted to back the anti-corporate Occupy Wall Street protests in Lower Manhattan. A move that could mean thousands more people will be joining the Occupy movement.

The Transit Workers Union Local 100′s (TWU) executive committee, which oversees the organization of subway and bus workers, “voted unanimously Wednesday night to support the protestors” and the SEIU 32BJ (32BJ), which represents doormen, security guards, and maintenance workers, has also joined the movement.

TWU, which has 38,000 members, organized a march on Wall Street earlier this year, and the union, along with 32BJ, is planning a rally on Oct. 5 to “express solidarity with the Zuccotti Park protestors.”

It is expected that other major unions will begin to back the Occupy Wall Street movement, and it is reported that both the “New York Metro Area Postal Union and SEIU 1199 are considering such moves.”

Kwame Patterson, spokesman for 32BJ, stated “we’re all coming under one cause, even though we have different initiatives.”

Jackie DiSalvo, an Occupy Wall Street organizer, believes that the movements recent support of a postal workers’ rally and their disruption of a Sotheby’s auction, have “convinced unions that the two groups’ struggles are one.”

She added that the pepper spray incident from last weekend generated union sympathy and recent “anti-labor actions like Scott Walker’s in Wisconsin ‘really shocked the unions and moved them into militant action.’”

Chuck Zlatkin, of the postal union, said that when a group of the Occupy protestors showed up at the postal worker’s rally on Tuesday, “complete with purple hair and big drums, ‘they went a long way towards touching people and making connections.’”

The Strong Economy for All Coalition, which receives support from the United Federation of Teachers, the Working Families Party, plus SEIU 32BJ and 1199, will all be rallying for the grassroots group.

Director Michael Kink said, “They’ve chosen the right targets. We also want to see a society where folks other than the top 1 percent have a chance to say how things go.”