Saint Stupid

Imagine if a parent is befriending the enemy of his own child, then the child will view that parent as an idiot and they would hate him for that. As a result their relationship would be strained, and the child would probably move out of the house. Clearly that parent does not see what is in the best interest of his child and that the child would have negative feelings against their own parent. We know that our president John Samuelsen has been duly elected, thus he has to govern without any interference, and we the members have to abide by whichever policies he implements. In addition he has the right to align the Local 100 with whomever he likes at his whim, however we the membership do not approve of that.

The Straphangers Campaign has been doing antics, stunts, and gimmicks against all cross town buses by walking and claiming that they are faster than the bus. Those gimmicks have been major grievances to the bus operators. The Straphangers Campaign ignores the fact that bus operators have to observe safety guidelines and not speed. Now coming back to Samuelsen maybe he isn't aware - why would a president of a union side with an organization isn’t looking for the benefit of the membership? This organization wants the Local 100 membership to ignore the safety guidelines by speeding up, so that they could get across town faster. That is completely in contradiction with the mission of the union.

Secondly when the Local 100 membership are verbally attacked or physically assaulted,  the Straphangers Campaign has never ridiculed the rider or even come to the defense of the Local 100 membership. For instance the recent attack on the bus operator Jacqueline Benjamin in Brooklyn, a bus operator on the select bus service M15 was spat on and did you hear the Straphangers Campaign come to defense of the blue collar?

We have heard numerous excuses such as ‘we and the riders need the same thing’, and ‘an enemy of our enemy is our friend’. Those may be Samuelsen’s views and we will abide by his wishes however we do not like them. We are also aware that it is his time, however when the membership is attacked verbally or physically - an organization which is not coming to the aid the blue collar, to befriend them then it is wrong. The excuse is that they are media savvy, and that they have participated in a letter to the governor elect those excuses are ridiculous. Lets imagine that a landlord association and a tenants advocacy group are getting along, that wont happen due to the nature that they have different objectives. We TWU Local 100 and the Straphangers Campaign have opposite goals. It is Samuelsen’s time if he wants us to participate in the Saint Stupid's Day Parade, the annual parade that takes place in San Francisco we will not participate.