January 11, 1944. FDR was giving a state of the union address. In it, he called for a "second bill of rights", under which "a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all - regardless of station, race or creed."
Sixty seven years later - how's that promise going? Do the people of the United States have, as FDR envisioned, the right to "earn, learn, and live?"
With the growing and no-longer-deniable mass transfer of wealth from the bottom up It's the Inequality, stupid!, those of us who can't wake up in the morning without worry - sometimes panic- about whether or not today will be the day we lose our job...or our housing....or get medical test results that diagnose an illness we can't afford to treat, well, we're a fast-growing group.
Can you send your child to college without risking bankrupting yourself, or your child? Do you feel that the state and national social safety net would protect your basic needs should you suffer a financial or health crisis? If you lose your job, do you feel confident you can find more work? If not, you have been betrayed by an economic system that views you as a means to an end, a commodity. You have value as a consumer, or to provide as much surplus value to benefit someone else as possible. When you are no longer useful, you will be thrown out. Get sick? Die. Lose your job and thus your means of paying for your housing? Are there no more piano boxes you could live in?
Some of us have given up for ourselves. Over 50, unemployed for long periods of time, betrayed once too many times by the "education is the way out" chimera, we listen in despair as we hear that we need to "share the sacrifice" of the financial crisis that we never created - or contributed to.
But from Russia 1917 to France 1789 to Egypt 2011, the issues have not changed. Bread, peace, and land. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. We will not starve indefinitely in the presence of plenty, we will not watch our children sink in a permanent underclass, sacrificing all hope of a decent life with dignity so the plutocrats can avoid ever having to increase their paltry or non-existent contributions to the public good.
There are rays of hope. Internationally, we all see them - in the Americas, more people are demanding control of natural resources and expecting they, the indigenous people, should benefit from them. In the US, public sector workers are fighting back, a fight that is for all of us and one we should all support. It's a hill "worth dying on", as the saying goes. Go to your borders - or they will come to you. If the Wisconsin public sector workers lose the right to collectively bargain, if the public assets of that state are sold off in a fire sale to vampiric private investors, we will soon find ourselves living in a true dystopia - where the lifeblood of the masses are used to feed the tiny group of ever-more-privileged.
We can push back. Support the fight against unions wherever you can - find a protest or action and get yourself and your family out there:Join the fight
If you are in the Chicago area or suburbs, there is an upcoming event I'm asking you to please try to attend:
The New New Deal Project presents
"The New New Deal: Strategies for Defending the Public, Our Families,
and Our Communities"
Saturday, April 9, 2011, from 3-5:30 p.m.
Chicago Temple 77 West Washington Street, Chicago
featuring U.S. Rep. John Conyers, Jr., (D-MI), sponsor of HB 5204, "The
21st Century Full Employment and Training Act"
and a panel of progressive leaders discussing a roadmap to realizing the
vision of FDR's "Second Bill of Rights," a United States where no one
lacks the right to earn, learn, and live in dignity
further details coming soon!
Have you heard of Jobs with Justice?Jobs with Justice It's an organization fighting for living wages, battling for the 99ers, for the underemployed and the exploited. It's grassroots - it's community. It is a voice shouting what the media will not say: We need jobs. We need jobs that pay a living wage. Jobs that will not be sent overseas so that the corporations that own them, and us, need never pay more than a poverty wage, or a fair share of their taxes. The profits they make are then used to buy a US domestic policy (thanks in no small part to John Roberts and the Citizens United Decision) that further impoverishes us and ensures (so they anticipate) a permanent underclass, desperate for whatever scraps we can get and competing with each other for subsistence level quality of life.
We need access to health care. As we've seen, the "red" states are fighting the health care reforms with money provided by special interest groups that benefit from the destruction of any reform. People are literally dying in the US from lack of access to affordable health care, far more than died on 9/11. Where's our "war on for-profit health care"? There is a movement, on the state level, to establish single payer health care. You can support this in your own state by contacting this group Physicians for a National Health Program.
Jobs. Housing. Healthcare. We can - we must - fight back. We can achieve victories, in Wisconsin and in every state. All we need to do is what working people have done throughout history when, as the Chinese saying goes, "The rich get too rich and the poor get too poor." We need to unite - and "Don't mourn, organize!"