The Governor loves you and believes that you should have a big, competitive pay raise. Her gratitude for your two endorsements knows almost any bounds.

The Legislature loves you and thinks that putting UH faculty in at least the 50th percentile among your peers is fair & equitable,  and is about to give the Governor and her staff an 18% pay raise to celebrate their concern for you.

The University President who, on average, makes as much in a single year as many of you make in—oh—ten years—and makes more in three years than many of you will earn in your lives--loves you,  but has also said that in your last strike you settled cheap—you punked out. And had he been President then—well, he’d have done much better—because you are deserving of the kind of money—well—not the kind of money he makes maybe, but some of you are worth something really, really, fine. A lot. No. Really. I mean it. 

He said then that Mortimer skunked us—that there was money left on the table we didn’t get. We blew it. Dummies. Punks.

He also said that if you ever were brought to the point of a strike again—that he would resign his Presidency in protest—or was it that he said he’d buy a Presidential Rolex? I forget. It was one or the other. I get confused.

I do remember that he said that if ever you should be forced to strike again, he’d lead you out himself-- and furthermore, he would close the University until the powers that be came to their senses and placed you into the 80th percentile among your peers where you belong. Recently he has changed that ringing challenge to… he will do for you whatever the Board of Regents tells him to do.

Not quite the same endorsement—but then that was then and this is now.

The Board of Regents loves you too. They have said, it seems to me, at least 40 million times (which is an interesting figure) since 2001,  that they respect you, love your work, admire your work ethic, are proud of all the contributions that you have made, are making, will make in the future.

The people of Hawaii love you. The fact that you’ll educate their children for less cost to them in tuition than the price of kenneling their pets for the same amount of time is just awesome! The fact that your average pay has dropped from being in the top 20 percent in the nation in 1992 to the bottom 15% in 2001 and now back up to the bottom 30% in 2003 because you struck 34 months ago is deeply appreciated, and will continue to be deeply appreciated,  if you keep it up.

By God,  it must make you proud to be at  the center of all that love and admiration!  

I hope not.

Doesn’t make me proud. 

Because I don’t want to be loved. I’m not like your good and Christian President Bush—who says he’s a uniter,  not a divider. It’s easy for a person in the sixth generation of untold wealth to believe that folks ought to be happy in their respective stations in life.

Until we get our fair share, I’m a divider, not a uniter. I believe in class warfare if the upper class has what is fairly mine. I believe I am not anybody’s victim, and I believe in the legal right to withhold one’s service to his master if that master is withholding one’s fair wage.

Wake up from all that warm and golden love and understand that it was all a bum’s dream, a Big Rock Candy Mountain dream. Forget the love.

There ain’t no Lemonade Springs where the bluebirds sing…what there is is:  this is here and now in hard Hawaii nei---where we deal in hard reality. Governor Lingle, Governor Cayetano, Governor Whomever,  is going to “give”  us whatever we are strong enough and smart enough to take. Nobody but us will look after us or be fair to us.

What I have learned in almost thirty years in this hard political pit, is that if you permit it, you will be used like a rented mule and nobody will ever even look back in shame for what they’ve done to you—you will perennially be taken advantage of by the folks who work the system--if you don’t fight for your right to get what is fair. And you will rightly be seen as fair and easy game.

I am not saying that you will win if you fight. I am saying you will lose if you do not. In that sense things have not changed. Ben Cayetano was an easy target—easy to whip people up over—a perfect foil…Linda Lingle is the hardest kind of person to fight—one who feels your pain—can articulate your yearnings…

Evan Dobelle can sing your praises more sweetly than the choirs of heaven can praise Sweet Jesus, God Almighty.

They have the power and the money, you have one thing they want: your service. 

They want you to be good and give it.

I urge you to tell them to go to hell.

No classes, no grades, no college, no higher education,  until we get a fair deal. Shut down, close down, all around town.

The deal that these honey tongued, mesmerizing, thieves of your value want is for you to “UNDERSTAND” their plight.

Understand this. Evan Dobelle had his turn.

His administrators got their turn.

The Governor and her staff are getting their turn.

The other unions are getting their turn.

You will not get your turn unless you join with me—with us—stand together and prove that your value, your work is based on a fair wage which can be measured against your peers.

And no work will take place until you get it.