March On Wednesday

First up, we think the march is a good idea. The last march was an undeniable success in terms of attendance, and the tremendous publicity woke up a lot of people to legitimate grievances we had against the mayor and the city. In the midst of Shortshanks' push for No-lympic glory, it was a "perfect storm" of sorts.

That being said, we (and others) have had reservations about marching at HQ instead of City Hall again. We had such concerns that we ran a poll to gauge others' reactions to the location. Although unscientific in nature, we did restrict voting to one vote per person per week. There are ways around this of course, but a whopping 87% of respondents said City Hall was the better location.

For whatever reason, the boys over at FOP ignored this poll, this site, other sites and numerous letters from concerned cops, active and retired. They have yet to respond to a single e-mail or phone message. They are bound and determined to forge ahead no matter the questions or opposition. We might be a bit rusty on the whole "representative" thing, but we're pretty sure that they represent us, and are answerable to each of us, each of our concerns, and are pretty much supposed to address questions we have. The cop-out (no pun intended) is to have the march, then have the General Meeting next week.

We kind of see this as the cart before the horse. Daley has removed himself from the field of battle, it is true. But he still calls all the shots and pulls all the strings. J-Fled's actions, promotions and words betray that he has no power. Why the march location and all the questions raised can't be addressed by our elected representatives is astonishing. Between this site and Shaved's, we do over 20,000 visits a day. No matter how you slice it, that's a sizable percentage of the membership. The FOP chooses to ignore this and can't even be bothered to run their own poll of the membership - it's a free poll, for Pete's sake.

So we're going to follow the FOP's lead. We have even taken time due to attend the march as we did for the previous one. It is still a good idea to make our voices heard no matter the venue. But the FOP would be wise to take a look at what's happening across the country and in Washington DC to elected representatives who refuse to listen to their constituents. A tectonic shift is underway and many of those feigning deafness are about to be reminded who they answer to. At the union level, we don't even have to register to vote - they mail us a ballot. All we have to do is fill it out.