The Baracka Wake Up

I don't put much stock in most politicians but put much more in Baracka than McCain.

I wouldn’t worry too much about what Baracka didn’t get done. He’s part of a Senate and government that doesn’t do much but screw us and send our troops off to yet another Unjust war.

I believe in good jobs for everyone because there is no way to resolve the massive social problems we have without jobs. I spent a lot of years arguing with Left and Right wingers about everything from phony diversity programs to the permanent underclass.

I finally reduced the big question for organizing to what will it take to have full employment at good work?

Lots of people get in the way of answering this basic qustion about good jobs for all. But the most damaging people to winning back our work, good neighbiorhoods & towns, our country and world are the new liberals who say we are all lost without Capitalism, the free market and the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex. They all, as Chesterton pointed out, seem to disdain every honest worker & love every country in the world but their own.

The truth is, without a return to the American values for decent work and virtuous community business men like Mike Ptacek (my favorite friendly, small town Patriot & grocer) we're going nowhere good. The insanity of the big business elite’s profiteering criminal trade agreements is destroying our country. They are making it impossible for millions of us to make a good living for our families.

It's all getting much worse but McCain says we need more of the same free market, free trade and massive banks and corporations. Bull Shit! It amazes me that any working stiff can be so out of touch as to support him! I really wonder what some people think about?

No politician is going to change anything for the betterment of most of us. For one thing, it’s still impossible to win an election while telling the truth about Big Business. But there is a huge difference between McCain and Baracka and that is, Baracka admits it. And McCain puts himself up as the saviour. Baracka is, hopefully, about organizing a Populist Movement. If he wins, we’ll find out if he’s really serious about maintaining this movement he’s organized. If he sells out, perhaps other leadership will emerge and continue the organizing towards a more family-friendly society.

McCain is all about "Elect me and I will save you all." Which appeals to those Americans who never seem to get it: that we are part of the equation. Unless we organize around principles of justice and become powerful enough to act and win, nothing will change for the better. And everything will get much, much worse.

I had lunch yesterday with Bill Hannigan who fought all the way through WWII with the 82nd Airborne. He is alive because of many miracles. Bill says this mess we have today is not the America they fought WWII for. He laughed when I said his generation would have seized the docks, sunk every slave-product container ship and blown up the rail tracks before they'd watch our country being sold to China and our troops sent off to an unconstitutional war.

Bill laughed because he knows his generation would never have put up with anyone destroying their livelihoods. And he knows that they wouldn’t have begged some hack to save them. They were a generation that fought for each other and saved themselves. And saved us too. Bill is 87 now. He tells me it’s our turn to fight. He’s right.

We should feel embarassed to leave our children and grandchildren so badly off. We would be the first American generation to do that. It pisses me off that the good, old dudes in my Union turn in their graves now because we have refused to defend what they won for us. They were the guys who organized the greatest strike wave in American history in 1946. They were the guys who gave us all the great things that are being stolen from American workers today like the Union wage, work systems, the 8-hour day, vacations, health care and pensions....without a fight. It is all disappearing without a fight! (At least beyond those few valiant battles by overmatched and stabbed in the back, honest Local Unions.)

There have been a number of wake-up calls to American Labor that have pretty much fallen on deaf ears. People are busy sending jokes and prayers around the internet while whining about everything else. They say they care about our troops. But where were they when the troops, before they were soldiers, went on strike to defend their jobs? Where are they now when the troops come home and their jobs are in China? The same people who hated us as workers say they love us as troops. BS.

So Baracka is giving us another wake-up call.

Let's hope it is not the last wake-up call before everything is shot to shit. We either get ourselves together around Solidarity and get ourselves into position to win a fight or everything's going to be gone.

I think it is clear that Obama would help do that while McCain will have the cops at our doors and picketlines.
The country's crumbling. I think you can see the evidence for this everywhere, everyday. It's time to get focused on what can be done about it and the answer can't be the guy who tells us everything's cool.

It's all about good jobs and whether us working stiffs can get back to basics.