EDITORIAL
Under Attack—Workers Can Turn Back the Tide!

Oct 10, 2005

Delphi, the giant auto parts supplier, which was part of the GM empire, says it wants to cut wages and benefits by two-thirds! Two-thirds! This comes on the heels of what the steel companies and airlines have already screwed out of their workers and retirees.We are getting hammered from every side. On the job, one worker is doing the work of three, and the other two are booted out the door. No job is safe.

The bosses are outright bloodthirsty.

So is the government. The politicians are constantly gutting vital programs: education, health care, unemployment insurance, workers compensation. Other programs, such as public health or public transportation, are in the process of disappearing. Even the National Hurricane Center had its budget slashed.

The government cut spending on the infrastructure–and then cut it again, letting the roads, bridges, water supply, sewage systems all go to ruin. Everything that allows society to operate and that protects us from disasters–like the levees around New Orleans–is neglected. All so that more money could be given to the wealthy.

It was government negligence and indifference that caused the incredible toll from hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and not the storms themselves. Thousands of people were killed, millions are now refugees, because the lives of the workers and the poor are expendable to the corporations and their political lackeys.

In their eyes, we are something to be used up and tossed away. In Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. military is turning young people into cannon fodder. And why? Only so the rulers of this country can put their hands on more oil, more money, more power.

A tiny minority is getting ever richer and more powerful, while our world disintegrates.

Don’t tell us we have to pin all our hopes on getting Bush out of office. That means waiting. And we don’t have the time. Waiting got us into this disaster in the first place.

As disgusting as Bush is, he is only a puppet. Pulling the strings are his corporate masters. Just like the Democratic mayor of New Orleans and the Democratic governor of Louisiana, the Republican president does what the puppet master wants.

We need to respond to the attacks, we need to take on the corporate bosses and their political henchmen. It may be true that there are few people fighting today. So we start where we are, with the forces we have, against the enemy we can take on.

What we do can influence others. The mother of one soldier killed in Iraq decided to confront Bush. Others joined in, and that echoed all over the country. How much more couldn’t we do when workers join their forces together.

Working people are fed up about the war, job cuts, unceasing demands by the bosses and politicians to give up more and more. Fed up as we all are, living in a society crumbling around our feet, we can turn back the tide of attacks. And no one else can do it for us.