On Occupy

Nov 18th, 2011

On Occupy
Recent changes in tactics of Occupy movements make blocking traffic and disrupting flows of commerce a strategy. Not surprisingly,people are being met with arrests. Lots of folks are being cuffed and taken away from building entrances and byways. Both high profile union bosses and ordinary citizens are making the news clips in cuffs.

Moving out, by choice or eviction, of encampments like Zaccotti Park in New York or Grand Circus Park here in Detroit are being taken as defeat by some. No longer will the visual, press appealing pictures of protesters in parks serve as a backdrop to highlight the disparity in our social, political and economic landscape...case closed?  I think not.

I agree with Michael Simmons, the millionaire rap-artist/social justice advocate in New York. The elephant in the room will not go away because you change the room. Simmons is a grateful 1%er. In his opinion, their is no beef with the right to earn a lot of income, get rich, trade stocks....It is in the influence that money has on the institution of government that most would agree is at the root of our national and global disparity and disenfranchisement.

Until Washington cleans its own house(s) and chambers, Occupy is not going away. I made that assessment when I announced the David v. Golliath campaign to become a US Congressman. They say I’ll be running in my home district to  represent the 9th District of Michigan and will run against long-time incumbent Sander Levin, chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means committee.

I say this: I’ll run against a broken system and have as my dictate the concerns of ordinary people,  that there can be no corruption of the peoples government. I will be one of many who will seek to Occupy Washington and return it to the citizens by removing, through the power of our vote, those who would threaten our citizens through the misuse of office for unreasonable personal gain, bought and sold by corporate and big-money interest that would have no issue at tearing down our communities for their own personal gain.

The people are not going away, nor would any rational, grateful, industrious 1%er want them to. As Henry Ford showed us here in Detroit 100 years ago, when you give your workers the dignity and respect of a fair paying job, they will become your greatest asset as a customer.

Keep that mindset with every American having an equal chance, and we shall overcome.  

AJ O’Neil

Focus, Focus, Focus

It's simple: This is the focus and the bedrock upon our entire movement and it's called "Cross-Trickle Economics." When you take away a worker here and replace that job with a cheaper foreign worker for a Wall Street profit, you remove a community builder and a customer. Those are the customers here at AJ's Cafe in Downtown Ferndale, Michigan and that is the scene being played on main streets all across the USA.

We change that, we'll restore jobs & tilt the scale of the economy and politics back to Main Street and community, giving ordinary citizens the voice they deserve.

1, Do what we're doing, and stay focused.

2. Organize and grow in size with one voice out of millions.

3. Elect politicians who agree and will be Peoples Lobbyists.

Cross Trickle Economics 101

Unless we work there, we tend to detach ourselves from union negotiations between rank & file and management as something that ain't on our side of the fence. Why does it matter if the UAW fights for big 3 auto jobs and workers rights anyway, I work at a cafe, or a barber shop, grocery store, city hall, salon, hospital...you get the idea. I don't build cars so the rights of auto workers don't affect me, right?

Wrong, way wrong!

A worker is a producer. A producer who earns income from a job becomes a consumer. A consumer is a customer. You see, they are all the same person. That is simple , market economy.

I call a properly working economy that operates this way "Cross-trickle economics." Cross -trickle understands that a community sustains itself because people get jobs and earn a paycheck. With that paycheck, they purchase goods and services. Good jobs, those with dignity and security, allow a person to buy a home, drive a car, start a family, eat out, take a vacation,...be the stake holders of a community.

So when GM, Ford, Chrysler, GE, Boeing, Caterpillar...deny workers rights and cut jobs in the name of investor dividend "profit," they take away community builders, stakeholders...and customers, theirs, yours and mine.

Cross-trickle economics works when we buy what we build, build what we buy, whenever its possible.

But, when the definition of economy takes a corporate, Wall Street mentality, companies answer to investors. Investors want to see growth and a return on their investment; Nothing inherently wrong with that. However, because we live in a global economy, the ability to invest in foreign workers and resources is a great frontier of possibility.

With improper safeguards and inadequate laws to protect domestic workers from loosing their jobs, and thus their ability to be the community builders that they want to be, a corporation can find that work somewhere else more cheaply, under different work rules and workers rights....so dometic shops close, schools suffer, teachers, police, fire, municipal services get cut...and rich get richer from disinvesting in the homeland... our towns stores get boarded up, Walmarts, complete with cheap,foreign goods replace them and and people go hungry.

Worse, the very people who we elect to "lobby" for us, the ordinary citizen are bought and paid for by the corporations that benefit from laws that get enacted to make all of this perfectly legal.

Cross-trickle economics would contend that the real market opportunity and potential for maximum return on investment rests in the dignified relationship between employer, producer and government policy.

Just as Henry Ford knew when he initiated the 5 -dollar- a- day work wage, far above the normal fair rate at the time. He knew that if he treated his employees fairly with dignity and security, he'd profit from a good work force and a great customer base.

It's not that we cant expand into foreign countries, taking advantage of vast markets, but wouldn't we all be better global neighbors if we saw that potential as a means to help countries become self sufficient, trading cultural specialties and resource abundances that would be mutually beneficial?

I'm no economist, hell, I don't even have a college degree. I am however, a businessperson, who has a small cafe on a main street in Any town, USA. I may not have all the data, know all the laws...but I do know that what I say is the closest thing to how most people feel...

And, this is nothing new, it's just become more widespread. Heck, Highland Park, Michigan was one of the finest city in the world to live in fifty years ago. Look at it now. Our citizens have been abandoned and left with no means to sustain themselves in the name of expansionist corporatism for a long time...We are now seeing that mentality invade more than just a minority...we call it the middle class.

How are corporations and politicians going to reconcile the fact that so many people are hurting and unemployed? It can not be Wall Street v. Main Street. It must be an intersection and a merging of these two integral roads. We know this can be done.

There isn't a choice.

How do we do that....?

I submit that it is a 3-pronged approach and it entails the perspectives of cross-trickle economics and the cooperative relationship between our communities/ ordinary citiizens, corporations and politicians.

AJ O'Neil

10/09/11

Wall Street (Yankees) v. Main Street (Tigers)

Baseball: Main Street vs. Wall Street

Tigers v. Yankees (Main Street v Wall Street)

I love baseball. The late Ernie Harwell, Detroit icon, Hall of Fame Broadcaster and a friend of AJ's Cafe once said, "AJ, you don't go to see a baseball game, you take it in.." So profound, so true.. With all of the nuances and subplots, baseball is always high drama, even the sometimes seemingly "boring" pitchers duels...

A baseball purist can not help but appreciate the managerial mind games that go into every action of a baseball game. Each player is a "chess" piece to be maneuvered as best as one can guess to complete a successful "move."

And we fans, we have the luxury to follow a game called baseball that doesn't rush us through, leaving us to play manager as we see fit. We get to second-guess Jim Leyland (and do!) And we can hope, always hope that we beat those damn Yankees.

Really, why the Yankees? I mean who doesn't love New York, or New Yorkers for that matter? 9-11 aside, we have loved New York and its place in America as our big-city poster child for as long as I can remember. Why do we want to beat them so bad? Why do we want them to lose?

Those are two separate questions.

This is what I think.

Why do we want to beat them so bad? Because they've won a gazillion titles already. They have the bankroll from Wall Street that buys players with impunity. That mindset of "everything has a price, everything's for sale" is the overriding strategy. Yes, they still deal, cost analyze, scout...but, make no mistake, this is a corporatist warrior of a team...They will stop at nothing to buy whatever it takes to bring a championship and with it, all of the buying and selling power that it comes with. Viewer ratings translate to marketing and marketing translates to sales numbers and New York has the numbers. The Yankees are a link to all of that.

We Detroiters represent the rest of the nation. Those hard working men and women who clock in every day, putting their time in on a line somewhere, be in building cars, airplanes, computers, sofas, lattes, ....We want to beat them so bad because we need to remind them that we're the reason that you thrive in the first place; you forget that way too often.

Why do we want them to lose? Because, like in 2006, you seem to think that its yours for the taking. Sure, you'll talk the humble talk every team talks, saying you're taking nothing for granted, praising your opponent, blah, blah, blah... But when the cameras are off, when that one-on- one talk comes from Joe Girardi to his players....he's got his directive from today's front office corporate heads, legacies of the god of the entitled elite, George Steinbrenner, whose "humble" rise gave him and those who follow this mandate, ...This is NEW YORK, we are the YANKEES....this BELONGS to US! GET IT!

This is America's game, America's pasttime.

In 2006, those hard -scrabble Tigers...those underdog, assembly line Tigers, firmly said....no!

But these Tigers, these 2011 Tigers are not such underdogs. They represent a leaner, meaner assembly line that, make no mistake, would still like to remind those Yankees that, you may think that we owe you one...you peel back the onion of your marketing machine, your take away the speculative facade of appearance and uncover the real-real. This IS imported from DETROIT!

Its not the players, who are most welcome and appreciated, coming from all over the USA and beyond. It's not our own version of corporation, Mr. Mike Illitch, also my friend, who year after year build his legacy in thankful defiance of the asinine mentality that its financially wise to move out of our big-city rust belt town...

This is for the fans. It is for us that we want the Yankees to lose. Maybe these Tigers, transplanted Detroiters every one of them... care more about contributing to the grit and hard-working persona that is the very essence of Detroit as national representative to ordinary citizens.

Those tears from our tough, no-nonsense manager as he thanks the fans of Detroit could not be more sincere. They make us all feel so much like a big, loving family.

And the Yankees are pissed....There, there , you will still have your deals to make, your dividends to count, your entitled mantle that I swear every sportswriter takes a course in....We are Detroit, and we represent a nation of workers, that because we go to work every day, you have stuff to speculate on...

Go Tigers.

AJ O'Neil

9/30/11

Press Release Immediate Release inquiries to AJ O'Neil 248 399 3946 ajamesoneil@gmail.com

Occupy AJ's

Thousands of people are organizing. Young and old, creative, talented..some working, many looking for a job, all gathering in solidarity to support the rights of ordinary citizens and the right to have a job.

Wall Street? New York? Washington? Los Angeles?

Try Ferndale, Michigan and "the little cafe that bailed out the auto industry, one cup of coffee at a time."

It can be argued that what first caught the attention of the world in 2009 with a Guinness world record's longest continuous concert, the Assembly Line Concert at AJ's Music Cafe in our fashionable little hamlet was the beginning of it all.

While many in Washington DC and Wall Street were calling for an end to workers rights and the death of the domestic auto industry, our hometown cafe went to bat, big time. Who could forget the news trucks and crews, literally from all over the globe who came here to witness main street fight back! AJ O'Neil and the band of musicians and volunteers that joined the cry were not about to give up on their hometown. The industry took note with millions of others who were sowing the seed that the concert had planted; "cross-trickle economics."

"It's simple," AJ says when you take away a persons job here and replace it with a cheaper foreign worker, for a Wall Street profit, you not only lose a producer, you lose a member of your community and a customer." Those are my customers too, and that's the scene being played on main streets all across the USA."

So naturally, with the newest world record for longest concert pending Guinness approval for this years 362 hour epic concert, AJ's doesn't think it should wait until March for the next shift (concert). "We owe it to the country to stay focused and remind them that we know what needs to be done to fix the economy and restore jobs; stop sending them out of the country."

November 4-6th, AJ's is holding a mini-marathon called "Assembly Line Party-Occupy AJ's," where dozens of bands will recreate the world-record effort and get the word out that it was the little cafe who showed the way, and who knows how to do it again.

They've even started a counterbalance to the Tea Party called The Assembly Line Party that anyone can join by simply texting "mainstreet" followed by 41242 or by going to www.assemblylineparty.com

I have a feeling that AJ O'Neil, AJ's Cafe and Ferndale are just getting started; again!

For more information, stop by AJ's Cafe, 240 w. 9 Mile Road, downtown Ferndale, 48220 (248) 399 3946 www.ajsmusicafe.com

Well, here we go! After 3 years of Guinness world record concerts, thousands and thousands of cups of good, Detroit Bold coffee and a band of committed friends and patrons from all walks of life...Game on! We begin to tilt the scale of our government and politics back towards main street and community, where it belongs. Why me?

Well, I dont think you could get a better perspective of how things are on main street than on main street. I live with the struggles and challenges of operating a small business every day from AJ's Cafe. And, I see and hear the concerns of people from all walks of life who come in and share with me their ideas, hopes and dreams.

What's more, I see how talented, creative and hard working they are. They've worked with me and , instead of moaning and groaning and sitting on their asses complaining, they've actually helped me to do something about it. Our Guinness world record for concert longevity (288 hours, with a 362 hour concert pending approval) is about as hard as anything I've ever been a part of. But you know, we did it! Those concerts are bigger than any one of us. But, because we all banded together and put our collective voices together to speak as on strong voice. The underlying message: We are a part of a strong, talented , hard working, good people who have the tenacity to speak (or sing) and be heard. We don't like that our representatives have lost their way and have forgotten who they work for. It is we, the people of main street and community that are the integral link. Without us, there is no need for Wall Street or Washington. We humbly but firmly demand that our representatives in the corporate and political worlds work with us to restore the scale of our economy and our politics back to main street and community, where it belongs.

I believe as much as anyone, I qualify!

Please get on the line and join us! www.assemblylineparty.com

Thought for the day May 21

You, and Main Street can take back the domestic manufacturing industry one pair of shoes at a time.

The time has arrived when the buying power of each citizen can show the way back.

Corporations hire foreign labor to manufacture things at a less expensive price because there is a market to sell these goods, the "market" being the vast majority of citizens who blindly purchase goods, say shoes for example; from the major retailers nation wide.

They would not do this if there were no market for the good.

The time has come to look at the big picture. Do everything you can to not blindly purchase what the corporations have produced, rather let corporations produce what we, the domestic producer who is the consumer wants.

Places where you can purchase "Made in the USA" shoes.

Thanks Alan Benchich!

http://www.unionlabel.com/carhartt-blue-jeans-3-pair-for.html

http://www.texasjeansusa.com/customer_recommend_jeans.html