The Fight of America’s Working Class: Your Great-Grandparents Would Be Ashamed

http://newsjunkiepost.com/2011/05/06/the-fight-of-americas-working-class-your-great-grandparents-would-be-ashamed/



The plight of the middle class, the working class, the laborers and workers of the world, has seldom improved – and even then in incremental steps only – and often only to be briefly enjoyed, lost, and fought for again another day. Documents from the American labor movement, over a hundred years ago, prove that the current battle is nothing new, and poised to revert to the agonies of its early days.

The current austerity measures being imposed on the citizens of the world, while corporations and financiers profit, is a battle that has been fought before. We can look at where those policies now being presented have taken us in the past. It’s not a pretty place. We must remember our history before we are forced to repeat it, again, and again.

There is a cyclical pattern of boom and bust in the economy at large, but what we often overlook is that it only pertains to the majority of us; those who have been convinced that our role is to serve the economy that serves only the very wealthy. We force ourselves to labor, to sacrifice, and to weather the storms of bull and bear markets alike. They matter little to us. We work our lives away regardless of which animal personifies the markets used to consolidate our wealth in the hands of the few.



We no longer even talk about ‘quality of life;’ an abstract too painful for the expendable class. We shoulder the burden of our lot while the fruits of our labor are binged on and purged, by a class for whom we are chattel.

More at the link ---

suppress people.

perfectly and I'm glad to see that I'm not alone. Thanks for this Donna.

The best part: "The time to stand is now. We need CHANGE, not reform. We need ACTION, not moderation. We need ANGER, not acceptance."

I promise to try and live up to the working class giants that came before.

has history like in these pictures with actual words, letters, speeches, pictures of rebels, dissenters and visionaries from America's past.

It is based on Howard Zinn's A PEOPLES HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES.

Great DVD with Dylan, Pink, Springsteen, Vedder, Legend DMC, Freeman, Glover, Penn and many others.

I just watched it today...

The book and DVD should be taught and shown in all schools.

It shows a past that was changed because people spoke, sometimes at the risk of their lives but they had the guts to speak up.

That's the title of a lengthy thread on an unofficial discussion group of my Union. Much of it may be of interest here, so here it is: http://coffeetime.forumcircle.com/viewtopic.php?t=55&postdays=0&postorder=asc&sta rt=0

It's pretty lengthy, and includes some of interest primarily to maritime unions, but there are some graphic photos of some bloody labor battles of the thirties.