Collective Will Needed

In 1912, Eugene V. Debs said, “The workers can be emancipated only by their own collective will … and this collective will and conquering power can only be the result of education, enlightenment and self-imposed discipline.” The working class has to advance together or not at all for unionized labor has become but an island of well being in a sea of resentful low-wage-unseen aspirants due to income inequality within the working class. If labor is to make progress it should work with their community’s but not at the expense of the community. One example of at the community’s expense is the Cop City project in Georgia. At this time, Labor is on a roll, but this can stop with a wrong election or with a single stroke of a pen and all of collective bargaining could be wiped out. But the good news is, we have found some new labor leaders and they are winning, such as Shawn Fain with United Auto Workers, Sara Nelson with the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, and Sean O’Brien with Teamsters. All labor needs these leaders and I am sure Walter Reuther, president of the UAW from 1946 until his death in 1970, would advise them when flying to always check the altimeter, the instrument used to measure the altitude of an object above a fixed level. The plane Reuther was on had a “defective” altimeter and crash upon landing. Labor must start training their members on how to protest and stay out of jail or be fined. Twenty-one states have passed legislation to enhance penalties and fines for just common protest, and accuse the strikers of trespassing or blocking roads or sidewalks. At this time, there are nearly 300 anti-protest bills introduced in state legislatures since 2017. Forty-one have been passed. There will be harsh penalties for even blocking a sidewalk and some states have added laws granting immunity to drivers who hit protesters and extending liability for crimes committed during protests to any organization that supports them This is just not the states where we have Republican Senators cracking down on protesters, which could include the use of the National Guard. We are skating closer and closer to authoritarianism where basic freedoms, once enshrined in the Constitution, are now at risk of being eliminated. Labor must get ahead of this in the training, education and getting the right people elected from the cities, counties, states and federal government. We are, again, at a turning point in this country and our workers need to be educated and trained on labor history so we can keep and save what our labor leaders in the past fought so hard for and what our new leaders are fighting to maintain and increase.