 Well folks, striketober is still going on and guess what? It's not ending anytime soon because McDonald's workers have joined striketober. So as Jessica Corbett of Common Dreams explains, amid the wave of worker walkouts that supporters are collectively calling striketober, McDonald's employees in at least 12 US cities took to the streets Tuesday to raise concerns about how the fast food giant has handled sexual harassment and to demand a union. The McDonald's in April announced new sexual harassment training standards that all of its restaurants worldwide will be required to meet by January 2022. Workers still joined the one day walkout from Chicago and Detroit to Houston and Miami, charging that the company has not done enough to keep employees safe on the job. I'm going on strike because despite years of protests, McDonald's still refuses to take responsibility for the countless women and teenagers who face harassment on the job at its stores across the globe. Jamilia Fairley, a McDonald's employee in Florida said in a statement ahead of the walkout. I do believe that we're in a moment where workers are standing up more for their rights, said Fairley, a plaintiff in a class action lawsuit accusing McDonald's of systemic sexual harassment. I have met others who have experienced sexual harassment. We want a union to prevent it from happening. The company's statement added that every employee deserves to feel safe and respected when they come to work and sexual harassment and assault have no place in any McDonald's restaurant. The action also comes after the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission at the end of September sued another McDonald's franchisee, AMTCR, for subjecting young employees at 22 locations in Arizona, California and Nevada to egregious sexual harassment that included unwanted groping and touching offensive comments and gestures regarding male genitalia, unwelcome sexual advances, sexual ridicule, intimidation and insults. So I absolutely am glad that they're doing this walkout. Good for them. It's nice to see this domino effect happening and this is one thing that I was hopeful for. Because if you see a lot of workers rising up at various companies, you could start to see this domino effect where others feel less intimidated about speaking up themselves. I mean, we saw the failed effort to unionize an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama. But even though that failed, there will be a recount, even though that failed though, other employees at different corporations are also speaking out in favor of a union Starbucks is now seeing unionization efforts in their stores. It's just it's really nice to see workers finally stand up and say enough is enough. And when it comes to McDonald's and the systemic sexual harassment, the workers are correct that having a union would give them a bigger voice. And it's not going to solve all the issues. It's not going to erase the sexual harassment. But what that will do is in the event they are experiencing this, they have a bigger say. They could take this issue to the union and the union will say, if you don't fix this, we're going on strike. We're making demands. So it really this shows you the importance of having a union and how workers without a union are always worse off than workers with the union. Now, since we're talking about striked sober, I do want to give you an update on John Deere workers and their strike. So I just want to share a clip from Jordan Sheridan, who interviewed a John Deere worker. And this is really, really fascinating. And I think that these stories have to be shared. Long hours, weekends, time away from family, missing things. And frankly, for not incredible pay. Absolutely. There's there's departments in there that work 10, 11 hour days, five days a week and then do it at least six or eight on Saturday. And only because they have to make money somehow, they're not making money off their kit plan. So they got to make it off over time. And that's how people are surviving. But you have to live in this place just to survive. I don't think that's the way it's set up. I think that's the way it's supposed to be. Thought they cared about our home life. They don't care about our home life. They care about our work life. We're just we're just a number to them. We're as replaceable as a light bulb. So that's my thoughts. So, folks, I mean, look, here's what I want to say to everyone. Stand in solidarity with these workers. If there is a chain, a restaurant, if there's a corporation that's seeing worker walkouts and strikes, do not cross the picket line. Support these workers, stand in solidarity with these workers. Don't support them. Don't buy John Deere. Don't buy McDonald's for the duration of this walkout. That's the bare minimum that we can do. But more importantly, we do have to get active and we have to petition lawmakers to actually pass legislation like the pro act, which would make unionization easier in the United States. But either way, this is really good. Kudos to the McDonald's workers and also all the workers striking during strike October. I hope this is an annual thing and I hope that walkouts and strikes happen more often because we need it.