EDITORIAL
They Despise Us—So What?

Oct 29, 2012

Republicans despise working people. That’s obvious. When in control, they siphon off public money from education, Social Security, Medicare, public projects, and public services. They divert that money to the villains who created the economic crisis in which we are submerged: the biggest banks, the biggest corporations and the wealthy. The Republicans take the country to wars aimed at imposing U.S. corporate domination over the world. They try to strip women of their freedom to decide for themselves what will be done to their own bodies. They work to keep racist attitudes alive among white working class and poor people.

It couldn’t be more obvious, the Republicans despise us.

The Democrats came in four years ago, claiming they stood for change. For the first two years, they controlled the presidency and both houses of Congress, as well as most state legislatures–and for the last two years, they controlled the Senate and the presidency.

What changed? Democrats continued Bush’s policies. They pumped more money into the banks, and handed more tax money over to the corporations. They widened Bush’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They increased Bush’s attacks on public school education. With attacks on women’s rights, on the unions, on the black population and on immigrants all escalating, Democrats proclaimed themselves on our side–and did nothing.

Isn’t it also obvious? The Democrats despise ordinary working people every bit as much as the Republicans do.

They both ask for our votes, and both think we are blind, deaf and dumb.

No, we’re not. Most of us–working people and the poor–feel in our bones that these parties don’t represent us.

The problem is, who else is there?

Who else? Us, that’s who. We have ourselves, the working people of this country. We make the factories, offices, stores, services all run. We have numbers, we are concentrated in the very center of the economy. We make everything run.

That puts power in our hands–to be more exact, that can give us power when we realize we can depend on ourselves.

We have to talk seriously to each other about what we all need. And first of all, what we need are jobs and decent wages.

Every person who wants to work should be able to work. Today, there’s no material reason that there couldn’t be enough jobs for everyone.

The bosses for years have cut jobs, putting the work of three workers onto two.

Well, reverse that, undo that, take the work done today by two workers, split it up into three jobs. Why not? Work would be easier and everyone without work could have a job.

We work hard for our money–we should have decent wages. Our labor produces enough value that we could all have a pleasant life. No one working a full-time job should be paid less than what’s needed to provide an adequate life. No one should see their wages lose out to inflation.

It’s obvious that the people who today benefit from the current situation would not willingly give us those things–and many more things we need, like an adequate education for our children.

That’s why we have to talk together among ourselves about what we need–above all, about what we can do. That’s why we have to look not to other people, but to ourselves, to the power that working people have when we organize together.

The bosses certainly despise us–so do those two big parties that represent them. But we should be proud of who we are and of the power we have to build this life we all need.