Our Rights Sold to Highest Bidder

This could be the year of the Have Nots, Have Littles and even the Used to Haves. The year 2015 will have some good things moving for them, such as in many places the $15 to $18 an hour minimum wage has or is being adopted and other wages hikes are being slow walked. Gas prices have put a little extra money in the pockets of U.S. wage slaves. Finally there is talk of free junior college education for everyone, even old people! There is healthcare for more people than ever before. There is a pushback against law enforcement brutality against blacks, poor and anyone recording them. And it looks like Anonymous has our backs. It also looks like workers the world over are talking to each other and supporting each other, like Hong Kong, Ukraine, France, UK, Turkey, Greece, Africa, Canada, Mexico and South America; but, we need to get ready for spring and the fight ahead. The wealthy are going to fight back with everything they have and they are experts in convincing the average person to give up what’s rightfully theirs. We have to continue the fight for higher wages, free education, voter rights, a return of more jobs here in the U.S., defend unions and also defend Social Security. The GOP is pushing to privatize Social Security, and there are people out there ignorant enough to think they don’t need the government managing their retirement money and they think they can do better in the Stock Market, which is very volatile and the low man loses out every time. What some of us are lucky to have, such as earned union pensions, others are being denied. Our rights are being sold to the highest bidder: the Koch brothers, who are buying the people who make the decisions that affect our lives. Instead of looking out for us, politicians sell their votes to the highest bidder. The likes of the Koch brothers are even buying state governments. They now own the U.S. Senate and Congress. Also, they have 27 state governments plus Assembly and Senates, and they are bought and paid for by anti-worker, anti-union, anti-minimum wage members of the American Legislative Exchange Council or ALEC and the oligarchies who will buy the next president. And if they get their way, they will win and we will lose. We must not let them split us up with ideology and propaganda spewed by Fox television. We must counter with the tools we have at hand—our mouths, our feet, our cell phones, social media, and blogs. We must use everything we have or can think of to win this year’s fight for all of our rights, even if we have to do it in the streets. We should look at organizing ourselves to help retail workers with wages and benefits. Wal-Mart has a value of $76.7 billion, and even though Target’s revenues are falling; its value is $38.35 billion. Where is this money going, certainly not to the workers? These companies, like most others, have their items made cheaply overseas, but mark it up and sell it here. This is one key to the fight. To bring the merchandize back, it must go through our docks where the Longshoremen’s union controls the docks. It has to get through the docks before it can go to their store. There could be some leverage here to help the retail workers improve their minimum wage earnings.