Fight or Perish

In 2012 more than a quarter of all political contributions came from just 30,000 people who represented the 1 percent of the 1 percent, 90 percent who spent the most won. Today, we are an experiment in either a democracy, which started in 1787 or an oligarchy, which is winning. The nonunion people, like Trump and Musk, have most all the tools in their pockets to destroy our unions. They have money, they have the courts, they have law enforcement, they have the media, and 50 percent of workers that don’t know this don’t know the history of the working class people. This is the perfect storm to lose all the gains workers have made whether they’re union or not, even our Social Security and Medicare, and the Affordable Care Act. So, now we will have to go way back to the late 1920s and ‘30s and dig up the old labor party books. One book, written in 1964, has the information, The Rebel Voices, an IWW Anthology by Joyce L. Kornbluh, educator, activist, and advocate. The history of our labor movement in the U.S, shows us what worked and what did not. It shows us step-by-step how we got to where we are today. And the cost in lives and suffering. We will have just given all the blood, sweat, tears and lives away come February 2025 when the Trump regime takes control. We will most likely, given the talk Musk and Trump have spewed, will have to start over from scratch and educate our members on how to take to the streets to protest and how to form unions. Most people today do not know how to form unions and have never had to go to the streets, but we better learn fast for Social Security, Medicare and unions will be the first on the hit list. To get a feel of the type of people who fought for workers rights, read a piece by Pierce C. Wetter titled The Men I Left at Leavenworth.” And then ask yourself if there are any people like him who will carry on the new for the 99 percent of the workers, those not in the corporate world or born into wealth. It's back to the streets we go to fight or perish.