Montreal    In two years,  the New York Times notes that there have now been seven actions involving fast food workers and demands for $15 per hour. The latest claimed to have held actions in 150 cities around the US with up to 500 arrested for civil disobedience, largely street blocking. The Times’ labor reporter, Steven Greenhouse, now puts the tab covered by the Service Employees at $10 million for this campaign, though I’m sure that’s “above the line” costs, not counting deployment of much more involving existing staff, offices, and operations, which is one of the ways a flag gets planted in this number of cities.

Grant Williams, an old ACORN organizer in his youth for several years and a longtime SEIU organizer now, left best wishes for me the other day with Toney Orr, Local 100’s state director for Arkansas, when he was in Little Rock trying to expand the campaign from his home port of St. Louis. This is something that must feel like a walk in the park for Grant and right in his wheelhouse, and the number of times fast food workers from St. Louis pop up in these stories, indicates that he and his team are doing a great job. Someone from St. Louis was one of the 19 arrestees in New York City. Three of the eleven arrested in Little Rock were from St. Louis. Not sure how many of the dozen or so in Memphis.

In fact, Missouri must be the real ground zero from this campaign since on the list of 150 cities on the www.popularresistance.org website a full 20 of the cities were St. Louis and Kansas City suburbs with a few other scattered sites in Missouri. Pine Bluff, Jacksonville, and North Little Rock were on the list of cities as well, because folks from those cities were part of the actions in Little Rock. Local papers recorded no actions in the cities themselves. Add Southhaven, Mississippi to the Memphis action on the credit list for the St. Louis team as well. An action in New Orleans included people from St. Rose, Luling, Harvey, and Slidell, all part of the greater metro area, so they were part of the 150 list as well. Three were arrested in New Orleans, two of whom were workers, and though Baton Rouge is on the list of 150, there were no reports in the Baton Rouge Advocate of any Baton Rouge activity.

The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported that the protestors began in Little Rock at 8AM, and had been arrested and were back on the bus by 9AM, and headed to Memphis to continue their protest. The Memphis Commercial Appeal reported that a dozen were arrested blocking the entrance to a McDonalds on Popular Avenue in that city at noon, so they made good time, despite that construction past Forrest City. This roving picket line of sorts had managed to stay busy!

From these numbers it looks like New Orleans, Memphis, and Little Rock are right at the epicenter of the fast food organizing with almost 10% of the cities where there are actions. Throw in the Missouri-based work and their 20 hotspots, and going up and down the Mississippi River we have more than 20% of the hotspots. Who knew?

I was optimistic about the reports on homecare workers joining the campaign, and there was evidence that some spoke to the issues, as I predicted, in Illinois, but otherwise they were not part of the story, even if I still hope there may have been others that were part of the action.

Don’t misunderstand me, if a fast food worker was from a city, then nothing wrong with claiming the city, but as an organizer, I know that someone passing through or picking up the bus someplace is not the same as having the location organized. But, when you get involved in the “claims” game of how many cities and how many arrests, it’s just a matter of time before someone starts counting the names and numbers to see if this is manufacturing or a movement, and when that happens the smoke and mirrors can cloud the strategy and workers and supporters get confused between what they know and can see versus what they had hoped was there.

For fast food and other lower wage workers, the anger is real and the demands are just. We better make sure that we don’t get tripped up by the tactics on the way to putting together a winning strategy.

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Please enjoy Come from the Heart by Hard Working Americans Featuring Rosanne Cash.

Thanks to Kabf.