Overnight Outrage: Tax-Funded Courses in Missouri on Strategic Union Violence

April 26th, 2011 12:21 AM

Imagine if a Tea Party backer by some miracle got to teach on a college campus, and began describing ways to, oh, I don't know, keep opposing politicians from conducting business, hack into their computers and destroy data, and make their staffs feel threatened. How long would that class last, and how long would it be before it became a national news story?

Well, Publius at Andrew Breitbart's BigGovernment.com reports that " the University of Missouri-St. Louis (UMSL) and the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC) sponsored two college courses: Introduction to Labor Studies and Labor Politics and Society, to be taught simultaneously through a video conference between to two campuses." Publius asserts, with video proof, that the courses really really are "How-to College Course(s) in Violent Union Tactics."

The two must-see BigGov posts are here and here. Direct links to the videos and brief descriptions follow the jump:

Part I (BigGov link):

The Professors are Judy Ancel, Director of Labor Studies at UMKC and  Don Giljum, business manager for the International Union of Operating Engineers at Ameren UE in St. Louis. (Bonus: he is a member of the Communist Party.)

 

In the class, the Professors not only advocate the occasional need for violence and industrial sabotage, they outline specific tactics that can be used. As one of our colleagues pointed out, its the matter-of-factness of it all that is so disturbing.

Part II (BigGov link):

In this new video, the professors make clear that they aren’t just speaking in theoretical terms. Union official David Giljum recounts several anecdotes where he, or other union officials, used threats to strengthen their negotiating positions (or simply get two-weeks paid time off work).

 

Professor Ancel recounts favorably a tactic used by a friend of hers in a union protest in Peru. (Her story will be particularly interesting to any cat lovers out there.)

As to the cats, they were used to sabotage an electrical facility. You can imagine the outcome.

It's hard to pick out other particularly odious lowlights from the vids, because, as viewers will soon see, there are so many.

And yes, this is a tax-funded exercise.

Don't buy the New York Times or read Associated Press reports hoping to find news about this. If they do eventually feel compelled to cover it, they'll tell us how "selective" and "heavily edited" the videos are, as if that matters.

A related post is at BizzyBlog.com.