Steee-rike
OK, so it’s happened. No one wanted it to happen, but it did. There’s a transit strike in New York City and plenty of people are none too happy about it. There are some easy ways, really easy ways, to cure this, however, and I’m going to cover them right here, right now.
First off, after living in the NYC area for 26 of my 27 years I have come to know a lot about New Yorkers. Heck, I’ve been going into NYC since I was old enough to walk and if I know one thing about New Yorkers it’s this, we are some of the most resilient people in the world. There is just no getting us down. This morning the news had footage of drivers offering rides to people they didn’t even know just so they could have the new four person minimum in their car to get into the city during rush hour. The Channel Seven news person asked one man if he knew the other people in the car he was in and he replied no, but he would in twenty minutes. That’s classic New York, and that’s the attitude that must be kept.
Another attitude that is needed, and this something Bloomberg is already messing up with his whole "this is going to cripple the city" talk, is that we should stay up. Yes, walking the extra blocks is going to be rough in this weather but the worst thing we can do to the transit workers’ egos is to not complain. Even if we think it sucks if we just go on about our lives and don’t talk about it the workers will get back to work right away. Nobody wants to think they’re unimportant and if by our silence we can do that to the workers, if we can convince them that they aren’t necessary, it will make for a swift victory for us. In a way it reminds me a bit of when the MLB Umpires tried to strike and baseball basically told them "there’s more where you came from, we can do without you." It led to a lot of seasoned umps losing their jobs due to their over-inflated ideas of self worth.
The subways are now lined up back to back in train yards, I saw an image of the one in Kew Gardens and only one thing came to my mind, it’s time for the graffers to get to work. I know it won’t be easy to break in there, but I doubt they have extra security and at this point those guarding the trains can’t be thrilled with what’s going on either and might be willing to look the other way so a few graffiti artists can start tagging up the trains like they did back in the 80’s. Do you think the transit workers want to come back from a strike only to have to wake up extra early to clean off their trains? As a member of the Hip-Hop community I have to say, DJ Kay Slay, round up the old troops and let’s see what we can do about getting that massive train yard beautified with some tags and massive burners on every car as far as the eye can see. Let’s do it up Style Wars style!
All in all the transit strike is something we will all survive, which is something I’m not sure they realize. The workers think they’re crippling the city, but the fact of the matter is they aren’t. Are they making life harder? Heck yes. But impossible? Hell no. Give New Yorkers a couple days and we’ll figure out ways around this issue, it won’t be perfect, but as long as we can show the transit workers we can live without them they’ll get their asses back in those trains faster than you can say "hey wait don’t they already make more than school teachers?"
First off, after living in the NYC area for 26 of my 27 years I have come to know a lot about New Yorkers. Heck, I’ve been going into NYC since I was old enough to walk and if I know one thing about New Yorkers it’s this, we are some of the most resilient people in the world. There is just no getting us down. This morning the news had footage of drivers offering rides to people they didn’t even know just so they could have the new four person minimum in their car to get into the city during rush hour. The Channel Seven news person asked one man if he knew the other people in the car he was in and he replied no, but he would in twenty minutes. That’s classic New York, and that’s the attitude that must be kept.
Another attitude that is needed, and this something Bloomberg is already messing up with his whole "this is going to cripple the city" talk, is that we should stay up. Yes, walking the extra blocks is going to be rough in this weather but the worst thing we can do to the transit workers’ egos is to not complain. Even if we think it sucks if we just go on about our lives and don’t talk about it the workers will get back to work right away. Nobody wants to think they’re unimportant and if by our silence we can do that to the workers, if we can convince them that they aren’t necessary, it will make for a swift victory for us. In a way it reminds me a bit of when the MLB Umpires tried to strike and baseball basically told them "there’s more where you came from, we can do without you." It led to a lot of seasoned umps losing their jobs due to their over-inflated ideas of self worth.
The subways are now lined up back to back in train yards, I saw an image of the one in Kew Gardens and only one thing came to my mind, it’s time for the graffers to get to work. I know it won’t be easy to break in there, but I doubt they have extra security and at this point those guarding the trains can’t be thrilled with what’s going on either and might be willing to look the other way so a few graffiti artists can start tagging up the trains like they did back in the 80’s. Do you think the transit workers want to come back from a strike only to have to wake up extra early to clean off their trains? As a member of the Hip-Hop community I have to say, DJ Kay Slay, round up the old troops and let’s see what we can do about getting that massive train yard beautified with some tags and massive burners on every car as far as the eye can see. Let’s do it up Style Wars style!
All in all the transit strike is something we will all survive, which is something I’m not sure they realize. The workers think they’re crippling the city, but the fact of the matter is they aren’t. Are they making life harder? Heck yes. But impossible? Hell no. Give New Yorkers a couple days and we’ll figure out ways around this issue, it won’t be perfect, but as long as we can show the transit workers we can live without them they’ll get their asses back in those trains faster than you can say "hey wait don’t they already make more than school teachers?"
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