My hero.
BARF.
Posted on 03/15/2006 3:11:20 PM PST by conservatrice
"The more you know, the less you need."
"Think globally, act locally."
These are just two of dozens of bumper stickers that Jack Powell has carefully arranged on his white van. They've become stuck in his psyche as well.
A longtime singer and guitarist with the Zucchini Brothers and a substitute teaching assistant for Washington-Saratoga-Warren-Hamilton-Essex BOCES, Powell has lived frugally for years. He works about three days a week as a sub, earning about $70 a day, with no benefits. From March to October, he rides his bike 20 miles to work when work is available.
Sometimes he works for a funeral home to make extra money. The shawl he has wrapped around himself on this winter day, he says simply, doubles as a blanket.
"I do whatever it takes to survive and live a socially conscious life," said Powell, who has a tepee in his yard.
Part of that survival — or so he thought — included shopping at Wal-Mart to take advantage of cheaper prices for himself, his partner and her two children. Then his discussions about Wal-Mart with Sandra Carner-Shafran, a teaching assistant at BOCES and a member of the Board of Directors of New York State United Teachers, started churning inside him.
Back to another of his bumper stickers: "Words become actions. Actions become habits. Habits become character. Character becomes destiny."
Powell put the brakes on his actions. Shopping at Wal-Mart? This is a place that encourages employees to get social services because it does not provide adequate health insurance or wages; sells goods made in sweatshops; and upsets entire communities by undercutting the downtown stores, then raising its prices when the locals go out of business.
"I don't like what Wal-Mart stands for," Powell said, noting the mega-chain's scanty health insurance for staffers. "Because of all those things they can lower the prices."
He and his partner agreed to go on food stamps for their family rather than shop at Wal-Mart any longer.
"I don't like to have to do that (use food stamps)," he said. However, the two children who are part of his family gave him extra courage because they had disliked shopping at Wal-Mart anyway, Powell said. They knew what the store stood for.
"I'm just trying to live my life. I try to set an example and do what I believe," said Powell. When he travels across the country to schools, theaters and festivals for the Zucchini Brothers, he sings and strums about health and environmental awareness.
Carner-Shafran, past president of the Saratoga Adirondack BOCES Employees Association, concurred. "He doesn't just say it," she said of Powell. "What he did — that's a big step." She works with Powell at the high school, which has a population of special education and vocational students, as well as GED students.
Carner-Shafran said she became more vigorous in opposing Wal-Mart after watching a film at NYSUT headquarters last year that demonstrated the social ills that come from the invasive retailer.
"It further made me understand that I have to tell everyone I know," she said. "I talk to Jack all the time about social issues ... Maybe someone that shops there can hear that if this young man can do it, maybe someone else can stop doing it, too. He's leading the way."
BARF.
He favors Socialism over Capitalism. Big Surprise!
So not only is Walmart responsible for its employees being on foodstamps, it's also responsible for its customers resorting to welfare?
Why doesn't he get a real job and stop leaching off the taxpayers?
(Well, that answers itself. He'd have to stop the mescaline before the drug test.)
How does his shopping habits affect his eligibility for foodstamps?
Looks like a friggin deadbeat to me.
Are this twinkle-toed little Communist and his live-in trollop engaging in welfare fraud? The US Attorney that has jurisdiction in this case should be investigating.
"Think globally, act locally."
OR...
(think goofy,act goofy)
What a lazy a** loser. He should grow up and join the real world.
The most frightening aspect is that this idiot is actually allowed to "substitute" in schools. That means he has the minds of our youth in his power two or three days a week. Of course the fact that he was "informed" of the "rotten tactics" of Wal-Mart through a teacher's union says it all.
I am a former high school teacher. I left in 1980. What a mistake. I apologize to all those kids who missed out on learning to write, read and think.
Powell, who has a tepee in his yard.
Isn't that special?
What better way is there to show revolutionary solidarity with all the oppressed peoples of the world?
"A longtime singer and guitarist with the Zucchini Brothers.....lol
I guess I don't get why he has to go on food stamps if he doesn't shop at wal-mart. When you apply for food stamps, one of the reasons you must give is not, "I don't want to shop at wal-mart."
One of my favorite bumper stickers is "visualize whirled peas"
Thanks.
What a brainwashed dolt. Good thing his genes aren't making it to the next generation.
Lame protest of Walmart gets him free foodstuffs from the taxpayers.... ok, I'd be banned posting what I really thought of him.
This is the guy my Mom warned me about becoming when I took up guitar. He's a bum and a lazy bastage.
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