The power of a little Wall of Shame

Oh the power of a little Wall of Shame is truly remarkable. I was not completely aware of the power of a little Wall of Shame when I started my website Jobless Unite little more than 4 month ago. I wanted to inform the unemployed masses about what was going on and how to advocate for our badly needed benefits as well as get the word out about the massive suffering within the American Unemployment community.

There is a great deal of information within the 14 pages published on that site, including petitions, videos, great cartoons, chat, Twitter, a full legislator contact list, current events and our lobbying efforts to name a few. In a relatively short period of time, that site has almost a half a million hits. Jobless Unite free, no membership website dedicated to the unemployed masses in America. Our fight - to stay alive, our cause - to get benefits until there are enough jobs for those who need them.

Of all the pages on this website, the most popular and most feared seems to be our WALL of SHAME. All who appear on this page are sent an email of welcome to inform them of why the are listed here saying: WELCOME to OUR WALL of SHAME and providing them with the link to view it for themselves.

This page has gotten the attention of Congressional staffers all across the country and Washington D. C. as well. In my interview with a reporter for CNN Money last month, I told the reporter I was not very happy with the tone of her last piece. Her immediate response was: "Please don't put me on your Wall of Shame!" To that I replied "Then don't do anything to deserve it!"

A few months back, a web blog called erroneously reported HR 4851 as our holy grail: Tier 5. I promptly placed them on the Wall of shame and had all my website visitors contact them to voice our disgust. The article was pulled days later and that news blog began to publish very accurate, positive articles about the 99ers and the unemployed in general. Eventually my viewers voted in favor of removing that party from the Wall of Shame, but for some reason I do not see much from them on the net these days.

After I added a blogger from Syracuse.com to the Wall of Shame, I received a response of protest from her and her staffers via Twitter. The tweets urged all to stop following me (@Paladinette) and said other disparaging things about my character. In less than 1 hour I had nearly 50 more followers and did not lose a single one. They shut up pretty fast after that.

A staffer for Montana Senator Max Baucus actually said to me recently, when I called and gave my name as Paladinette, "oh you're the one who put up the video and the Senator is not very happy about that." (referring to the YouTube video of Mr. Baucus Drunk on the Senate floor last December up on the Wall of Shame) To which I replied: "That is really too bad. I for one am not very happy about Mr. Baucus letting the 99ers and other long term unemployed starve. So I will make you a deal, (Washington loves deals) when we get a Tier 5 for all states extending unemployment benefits for Americans who have exhausted them, then I promise to remove both Baucus related Wall of Shame posts from my site."

More recently I have actually been threatened with a lawsuit from one Shame alumni member. Since we still have the right to free speech in this country and I have done nothing but let him defame himself by his own words and actions, I am not at all worried about such empty threats.

What this all boils down to is there is a way to try to hold accountable those who publish with impunity their opinions on the net and claim them to be fact. Anyone who posts articles claiming 'those of us who cannot find a job are lazy and living off the government' need to check the facts.

Fact is we have lost between 8 and 11 million jobs in the past 3 years in this country and have created about 500K all year. You do the math and it is not hard to see that the jobs just are NOT out there for us. Add to this the fact that of the longest term unemployed is the USA today, 47% of them are age 50 and older. Potential employers are more guilty than ever before of age discrimination and they disguise it with terms like "Sorry dear, you are over qualified."

Anyone, including Congress who is so callous as to badmouth the unemployed in these difficult times and refuse to help us out of a problem that Wall Street created needs to be voted out of office, called on their behavior or boycotted completely (especially blogs posing as news services). If nobody is reading their drivel and their ad revenues dry up then, oh well they will know what it is like to be unemployed soon then won't they?