This blog is cross-posted at StewartAcuff.com
What a hard week for all of us. What a time for us all to stand. We haven’t recovered from the Newtown mass killing. And those running to honor those who died at the hands of a deranged young man with a military assault rifle – not a hunting rifle with massive bullet magazines – went through horror and terror all over again with the bombing at the massacre of the Boston Marathon. So the families of those killed in Newtown who came to Washington to lobby for gun regulations, which don’t violate the Second Amendment, go home with their hearts broken all over again.
And then we all stand in horror while bombs kill innocents, maim others, and blow off the legs of recreational athletes at a day of joy and happiness during the Boston Marathon.
All this happened in one week. And the Senate takes up a bill for universal background checks to weed out criminals and the deranged and fails to break a right-wing radical Republican filibuster. So while the Senate has a majority in support universal background checks, they fail to break the ridiculous and anti-American filibuster.
I know a young single mother with three kids who works as a social worker. She applied for a second job to catch up on her bills and finds out the first employer wants her to take on more responsibility for no extra pay and the second employer just wants to use her – USE HER as an on call employee.
Now they want us to work for free. They want our time and energy for nothing, as if we are supposed to be grateful to be allowed to work for NOTHING. This is not a society nor an economy that is working for all of us.
And on Wednesday night, a fertilizer plant blows up all the town of West, Texas. We don’t know if it was an industrial accident or another act of terror.
Our President and Vice President were visibly shaken and angered by the filibuster defeat of sensible Constitutionally approved gun regulation background checks.
It is past time to rid our country of the scourge of the filibuster, the scourge of violence, and the scourge of the increasing victimization of America’s workers.
We have much to do brothers and sisters. Do not weaken in well doing.