Gonna be clear, I'm not interested in whatever Karen's response to this is because, let's be real, it's gonna be some braindead NIMBY shit, but for anyone who is actually curious about the tension between the labor movement and police unions, read on...

Karen would like people to see her response and think, "Wait, that's hypocritical! Stupid liberals!" Unfortunately for them this line of thinking falls apart when you apply even 30s of critical thinking to the question, "Are police unions part of the labor movement?"

They're not, but let's examine why they're not, and why it's not only fine to be pro-labor and against police unions but why it's arguably hypocritical to be anything else.

Why would members of the labor movement include police unions in our number when, push comes to shove, the police will never support us?

One of American law enforcment's earliest activities was strikebreaking. Why? Because it was politically and economically useful, of course!

>The use of public employees to serve private economic interests and to use legally-ordained force against organizing workers was both cost-effective for manufacturing concerns and politically useful, in that it confused the issue of workers rights with the issue of crime.

But it's not like you need to go back to the 1800s to see this in action. Remember how much money the cops got paid to stand there and harass people during the St. Vincent Nurse's strike?

In fact, it wouldn't be out of line to say that much of our image of modern policing developed largely in response to the police's role in suppressing organized labor.

>Anti-labor activity also compelled major changes in the organization of police departments. Alarm boxes were set up throughout cities, and respectable citizens, meaning businessmen, were given keys so that they could call out the police force at a moment’s notice. The patrol wagon system was instituted so that large numbers of people could be arrested and transported all at once. Horseback patrols, particularly effective against strikers and demonstrators, and new, improved, longer nightsticks became standard issue. Source

Which brings me to my second point...

Police do not see themselves as part of the labor movement.

Let's get this out of the way early, yes, the main role of any union is to protect the interests of their members. In that respect, police and labor unions don't differ much. But as you can see from the AFL-CIO page on What Unions Do, part of what makes a union strong is that no union exists in a vaccuum. They're part of web that strengthens and supports each other in a struggle that tries to benefit all workers. It should perhaps come as no surprise then that only one single police union: The International Union of Police Associations (which represents only 2.7% of American police) is actually affiliated with the AFL-CIO. And that affiliation is...troubled at best.

Kim Kelly, the incredible labor writer for Teen Vogue, says it best:

>Williams argues that the shared workplace identity that makes up the “thin blue line” mentality for cops transcends other identity markers, and shows how they view themselves as police first, and everything else second. As such, police unions tend to keep their distance from the rest of the labor movement (unless they’re cracking its members’ skulls). Even the basic terminology is different. These organizations are usually broken down into “lodges” instead of “locals,” and are more often known as “associations” rather than unions. Some people balk at the thought of referring to police associations as “unions” at all, and it’s understandable why, though for the sake of this piece, we’ll hold our noses and use the more common term. Labor unions exist to protect people; police exist to protect property. They may carry their version of union cards and enjoy the benefits of collective bargaining agreements, but that’s about where the similarities between cops and unionized workers end. Source

So yeah, no...police "unions" are not unions. Don't let people like this fucking troll try to convince you this is some great liberal hypocrisy. The Labor Movement is just that, a movement. Cops only care about themselves, you don't owe them a fucking thing.

> Here's a 90's community video podcast from back then: > > https://ia802605.us.archive.org/25/items/FoxCopsOut/foxcopsout_512kb.mp4

This link isn't working but I'd definitely be curious to see that.

On a similar note, for anyone who's curious, there's a podcast from a few years back called Running From COPS (or something very similar) that was about televised policing and how sketchy it is. Highly recommended!

Not sure he has enough of a national profile for a serious run, even if he wanted to. But he could do a Mitt Romney in '08 where even if he only takes home a few electors he's getting his name out there.

That being said...Baker is still too liberal for the national GOP.

Okay, yeah, that might be the case then. I'd have been like....10 at the oldest.

I've never heard this story, and I kind of doubt its authenticity, but I'm not going to lie when I read the news my first thought was, "It's going to be hard to prove that WPD target specific groups of people because they just treat everyone like shit."

This should have happened a while ago, but it was quickly becoming inevitable after the bodycam footage from those pastors getting assaulted started making the rounds.

The beauty of the Worcester Renaissance is it never really starts. It just revs its engine but never takes its foot off the clutch. They've been saying, "The Worcester Renaissance is just about to really kick off!" since at least 2005. But it never does, really.

It's a pretty routine part of pilot training. Pretty sure the Navy requires any carrier pilot who's been on land for more than a month to practice touch-and-go landings before they can land back on a carrier.

Other poster mentioned it looked like they landed and immediately took off so they're probably working on touch-and-go landings. That would also be consistent with circling the airport area.

Seems like they're working on touch and gos.

Hell, even before it closed, Beatniks was a shadow of what it used to be.

Yeah, I'm all for calling out police for overreaching their authority but this doesn't seem like this is a case of that. WFD discovered a crime in the process of fighting a fire, appropriately responded to the fire, and then reported the crime afterward. Hard to make WPD the bad guys in this situation.

> You're not wrong, but it wasn't used in such an intentional context as you're implying.

I'm not saying the link between Plantations, Colonialism, and Slavery is intentional, but nonetheless the link exists.

> If North America was entirely uninhabited, the word would've still been used.

"If things had been different, they'd have been different!" Sure, maybe, but it wasn't uninhabited. Hence the issue.

>Duncan is living in a fantasy world thinking changing a major street name would be cheap and easy. Clearly she didn't even bother to look into the actual details before pushing this...

On this we are in agreement.

So, I'm not getting in a giant debate over this again, I have stuff to do today, but I did wanna address one thing cause I'm sure it'll get brought up a bunch on this thread:

>Plantation was also a term that was used for a settlement in a new region. That's why it was "Plymouth Plantation".

So, you're right, but people have a tendency to gloss over what that means.

Plantation in English:

>From c. 1600 as "introduction, establishment." From 1580s as "a planting with people or settlers, a colonization;" used historically used for "a colony, an original settlement in a new land" by 1610s (the sense in Rhode Island's Providence Plantations, which were so called by 1640s).

"It's not tied to slavery, it's actually tied to colonization," isn't really a sterling defense of keeping the word Plantation in things.

Yeah, that sounds about right. I felt like I hit the jackpot the fall before COVID when I spur of the moment decided to drop my wife off at work and hit up a few yard sales and one actually had a handful of N64 games. Jet Force Gemini ain't a masterpiece but for $2 it's a deal.

About what I expected.

As someone who is pro-name change, and said as much on the last thread, I don't disagree with Rivera here: that the word Plantation has inextricable connections to slavery in the United States but this particular change seemed largely performative.

That being said, hilarious dog and pony show from city council to act like inconveniencing residents is a bridge too far from the people who insist we have to buy special trash bags or the city won't pick up our garbage. If they wanted to make the change they'd just cover the costs for residents, cities have done it in the past, but it's an easy justification for why you're not making a change you weren't ever really gonna consider making anyway.

It's a huge bummer. I miss when every single hobby wasn't monetized.

Yeah, splitting up the game collection was never a decision that made sense to me. Especially since so many of your most popular Switch titles end up catalogued as children's games because they're rated E and targeted at all audiences.

WPL definitely has Switch games. They've always been in an easy to miss spot, though and I think they moved a bunch of them to the Children's Room after the renovation, so it might be a good idea to ask the staff to see if they have what you're looking for and where it is.

It'll be hard to find anything worth owning below market value these days outside of yard sales, estate sales, etc. and you'll have to compete with resellers looking for merch there, too. The days of finding $2 PS2 classics at Salvation Army or buying a GameCube and 10 games for $40 are long gone.

No? That's literally not my argument. It has nothing to do with who named the street, it's that in the United States the word "plantation" is inextricably linked to the Atlantic Slave Trade. This is not a question. The majority of Africans taken from Africa ended up on Sugar Cane plantations in the Carribean. The majority of Slaves in America ended up on cash crop plantations in the South. The slave trade picked up and expanded specifically because these plantations needed labor. They only started to use paid labor when they ran out of slaves to use. Even if you want to argue that some people within the plantation economy system didn't use slaves, the vast, vast majority of them did. Are you starting to see a link between the word plantation and slavery?

Yes that people who did not own slaves could still take part in a system that relies on slavery. This isn't some fucking galaxy brain take. The point is that you can't "Not All Plantation Owners!" away the fact that in America the word is inextricably linked with the Atlantic Slave Trade.

This is all entirely seperate from the fact that Quinsigamond Village and Quinsigamond Plantation are basically the same thing. QP was more like a homestead than a plantation in the traditional sense. So people getting bent out of shape about the fucking plantation part are ONLY getting pissy because of the race/slavery aspect.

As /u/Kirbyoto points out, American colonists in colonial New England had very few compunctions about selling Native Americans into slavery, so whether or not Quinsigamond Plantation itself had slaves is kind of ignoring the point that it's largely impossible to extricate the word 'Plantation' in America from the practice of slavery. Even if a specific plantation owner didn't own slaves and used entirely paid labor (which is a massive if) they were all part of a system that relied on slavery for sustainability. Why do you think profit margins on goods from the American colonies were so high?

People like OP can point to the fact that Plantations still exist without slavery all they want, but Plantation St. was named after a Plantation that actively took place in the American plantation economy, and that is impossible to divorce from slavery.

I'm in favor of the change, it's good if it happens, but it's maybe item #734 on my list of "Ways to Make Worcester Better."