It is past time to shut off the money tap to the Democratic National Committee and also bring in our foot soldiers for the people we are helping to elect are giving us nothing in return. In fact, they are supporting the antiunion people by just doing nothing while our rights are expiring. You hear nothing about the loss of our National Labor Relations Board. The Democrats are now calling themselves “Centrists” (Blue Dogs) and as they chase the GOP, the GOP moves further to the extreme right then our Democrats move more toward the center right.
Now is the time to draw a new line and it needs to be brought back to the early ‘90s at least and restore all the rights that we wage slaves have lost since then. We cannot keep throwing our money and manpower into the blackhole that we are digging. We must stop digging and start over with new or old tactics that have worked or will work. Our membership is falling fast and with that money in which to support us and fight. This money must be spent prudently and not thrown away on elected people who have no will or power to give us the tools to fight or organize.
Our money and people must be used to build a new and much larger army, and they might not all be dues paying people (they just might not have any money), but they do have a voice, they vote and they have two feet. It will be up to us union people present, future and retired to educate and support their needs and just maybe they will turn off Fox News and join us to rebuild the working middle class. It needs to start now for the spread between the 1% and the have nothings is just about unfathomable to most workers.
A lot of workers have given up. We need to be at colleges educating them about how long they will have to work to pay off their student loans, which by the way our elected people just raised the interests rate and if there is a job for them when they graduate the wages will be lower. Every year the cost of living goes up and had the minimum wage kept up with the cost of living it would now be around $20 an hour yet we are fighting to get just $15 an hour. Even if we win an increase in the minimum wage, we're still behind.
Not everyone goes to college so we need to get our message out to the masses, especially those who vote Republican and against their own best interest, but not in a condescending manner as that only alienates people further from our cause.
This fight is where we need to put our resources and not in the pockets of elected Blue Dog Democrats, who are being paid off by lobbyists and corporations.
Yes, they are coming for us. Workers need to have one another’s backs because no one else will. Neither the broader labor movement nor the Democratic party are prepared to meet the urgency of this moment. So it’s going to fall upon the rest of us to mount a real resistance against Trump’s authoritarian takeover. We’re going to have to get our hands dirty. I don’t care if you have a good, well-paying union job and you are in the middle class now—if you see a worker being dragged out of his workplace regardless of how skilled the job and potentially taken to another country, you should be ready to be there for that worker. When I.C.E. shows up, gather around and shame them into leaving. It has worked in other places. America is sleep walking into authoritarianism, and if there’s anyone out there who is a member of a labor union that is safe—at this point— and doesn’t think this applies to them. Understand that they just haven’t gotten to you yet. They’re coming for all of us. There are ...
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