Originally Posted by rube

There are many reasons not to wear the (hideous) orange lanyard:

1. You could be completely checked out of anything related to ALPA. That sounds nice, I would like to go there someday.
2. You might not like having anything around his neck. Fine. How about a pin?
3. You might find the thing offensive.

No reasonable person can pretend that the symbol of one side in a contentious decision is somehow the new symbol of unity going forward. I don't expect Auburn fans to wear crimson until the next year's game (which they will lose anyway, but that's beside the point).

Well it wasn't just one decision, it was every decision of 2015. The TA vote and all the misinformation and lies attendant to it, the subsequent kangaroo court recalls for Endler and Marino, the torches-and-pitchforks, standing-room-only recall vote for Council 44, and the fall LEC elections were all orange. Remember "Team Restoration?" They're going to hope you'll forget about that someday, but that's for another post if this thing goes pear shaped.

When the new MEC picked orange it was just pandering to the mob on chitchat, APC and Facebook (Brielmann said so in a C66 update). The fools at Operation Orange, the brain-eating zombies at DPA, and the (strangely angry) new hires on Facebook all picked orange as their totem; that makes it hard to expect universal support.

Bear with me. We need universal support. We kept telling the arsonists to get involved in ALPA work, and now they seem to be running the show. Satan punishes you by granting your wishes.

They should have picked another color if they were serious about getting everyone on board, but the political strategy going forward mostly involves keeping their electoral base happy. Sort of like the GOP and how they alienate anyone with an education during the primaries, then try to roll it back to the middle for the election. Maybe division is the whole point for some of these clowns. It's just a political move to create scapegoats, or clear out the opposing faction. Mission accomplished!

PERSONALLY, the accessorizing decisions of other pilots don't concern me. I could wallow in what happened last summer, but I can't change it, and I want John Malone to get a TA. Anyone who is serious about that has to show support for our chairman.

I am still extremely dubious. The reps keep promising the moon on social media, then walking it back in their updates. They are afraid to offend anyone with the facts, spinning people up, setting unreachable expectations, and keeping the membership ignorant of both the legislative and judicial precedents for situations exactly like ours, but there is a deal out there, and I trust John Malone to get it.

Any TA short of another Appomattox is going to have something in it for management. It behooves all of us to support the chairman, and even more so, it will behoove all of us to ignore the political game that will ensue once that TA is reached, and actually read the fine print in whatever results from this. I'm going to vomit a little bit every time I see myself in a mirror, but I'm going to put the politics aside, focus on our leverage, suck it up and wear the thing until we have a TA, and show up for picketing if I can get the day off.

There. You got me. Happy now?