Where is the wage slaves’ leadership or leaders? Or will there be a leaderless movement, like the Wobblies used? Has the time passed for a leader, such as Martin Luther King, Eugene Debs, Bill Hayward, Reuther brothers, Mother Jones, Joe Hill, John L. Lewis, or Cesar Chavez, among so many others. Is it even possible for these types of leaders to serve in positions of leadership against the corporations that have bought and paid for law enforcement? Knowing this, wage slaves will have to depend on Anonymous and WikiLeaks types of guerilla warfare with a type of underground and Occupy movement that has no assets or set home base.
A type of organization that is very mobile with very good intelligence and tactics, such as the four used in Art of War: #1) when the enemy advances, we retreat; #2) when the enemy halts, we harass; #3) when the enemy seeks to avoid a battle, we attack; #4) when the enemy retreats, we pursue.
We need to train our fighters in Art of War strategy. If one woman studies our war, she can successfully instruct ten others. If ten others study our strategy, then they can successfully instruct one hundred; and if one hundred studies our plan, then they can instruct one thousand; and one thousand can instruct ten thousand and ten thousand can successfully instruct the entire army of working families.
This army does not need what the enemy needs to fight us. We just need knowledge, people and sympathetic lawyers. They need money to pay for law enforcements’ wages and overtime, which unions fought and won for workers, their equipment, tanks, arms training, cost of lost revenue, among other costs. Our costs is time and the will to win good living wages for our families, which will give us healthcare, dignity, education, pensions, and housing—worth fighting for? Our old labor leaders thought so and a lot gave their blood and lives for what little we have left from the fights of the 1930s, through the ‘50s.
There will always be this fight. The fight will go up and down in intensity. At this time, wage slaves are feeling the pressure that comes from being on the downside. It is time to for us to fight our way back up before we are so deep we can’t. Remember the winners of war are determined by who gets buried and who gets to walk in the sun. The sun is starting to fade for wage slaves.
Without the living wage of $15 to $18 an hour and union pensions, the economy suffers. Just look around at the sea of grey in any restaurants, not fast-food places, and see who most of the customers are—most are retirees who will be dying sooner than later, and then who will be there to take their place if there are no union pensions?
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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