From Struggle to Strength

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world;

indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” –Margaret Mead

Sometimes life can feel like ice skating uphill. Every time you think you have made it to the top, or even just a comfortable resting spot, you slip and come crashing down. At times it seems like the more effort you put in, the worse that fall is. Then you are left looking at all the time you lost trying to break free into a seemingly unreachable life in which you are stable and happy and wondering if there is any point in trying. You look at social media and see the handpicked highlights of everyone’s lives, leaving you with the sour taste of envy and asking yourself why you can’t have the same success. The truth is, things are getting harder for the majority of people. The ladder is getting longer, the ice hill steeper. This truth does not give us an excuse to give up, though. If anything, the reality of what so many of us are facing today should embolden us, strengthen us, and jump start a political, social, psychological and spiritual revolution to better our lives and the lives of every living being on this planet.

The last couple of decades have seen a massive increase in the disparity between the richest Americans and the rest of us. Productivity continues to increase while wages remain stagnant. The attacks on unions and labor rights have resulted in decreased living standards for the American worker. Most jobs that don’t require a degree have little to no benefits or health insurance, forcing us to work without proper vacation or sick time, and dangling us over a precipice in which one medical emergency could mean financial ruin. Trades are quickly being automated or outsourced. The price of higher education is absurdly high, forcing people to burden themselves with soul crushing debts in the effort of raising themselves out of wage labor and to provide a comfortable life for their family. When you couple all of these problems with a government that is completely controlled by the economic elite, the situation can seem extremely bleak.

The revolution must start in your mind. The first step to solving a problem lies in admitting there is a problem. This situation is not right, the way things are is not normal. We should not accept further decreases in education funding, a crumbling infrastructure, the most expensive, yet nowhere near the best, healthcare, and a lack of guaranteed benefits that are the shame of the industrialized world. We should not accept constant warfare, a military budget larger than the next ten nations combined, decreased financial sector regulation and the utter destruction of environmental protections. We are under attack and we must realize that. While hard work, determination and perseverance are important, we must admit that the game is being rigged. The odds are increasingly against economic mobility, the chances of a life in which you are not constantly struggling to stay afloat are decreasing, and there are people at the top who are working to make that happen.

The next step is to strengthen our minds. Don’t let this struggle destroy you. Don’t let it make you feel insignificant. Don’t call yourself a failure when you know you are doing your best. Feeling hopeless and the fear from being one step away from financial ruin is how they control us. We have power in our numbers but we will achieve nothing if we allow the struggle to define us as a people. We are more than our jobs, we are more than our bank accounts, and we are more than our debts. We are living, breathing, and loving creatures who deserve respect and happiness. Don’t despair because of financial problems, don’t let your desperation make you suffer. Let the struggle make you stronger instead of letting it break you down. What I am asking is no easy task, it will take a level of determination and extraordinary levels of hope to achieve what I am proposing. Not only are we capable of overcoming the financial, physical, emotional, psychological and professional struggles in our lives, but we are capable of so much more. We can change this system, ensuring that our children inherit a better world than the one we have.

What I am proposing might seem crazy to someone who spends a majority of their waking hours working or taking care of their family, but it is our only way out of this cage being built around us. We must become politically active as well as involved in our communities. The rates at which people abstain from voting is atrocious, the lack of participation in political reform groups is disheartening, and they are counting on that. We need to simultaneously work to build alternative power structures of mutual aid while also being unrelenting in our efforts at reforming our politics from within. The oligarchy of exploitative capitalists will not relent in their attacks on us from all fronts, so we can not abstain from fighting them from every angle as well. We must use any free time we have in the pursuit of bettering our lives, and nothing can do that more than working tooth and nail to make the ladder shorter, to destroy the mountain of ice keeping us down. Those who came before us fought and died during the labor movement to provide you with things you may take for granted today. Things like overtime pay, weekends, federal holidays, child labor laws, racial justice, women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, occupational safety, and worker’s compensation didn’t just happen on their own. Working Americans, who had it way worse than we do now, took a stand. They marched in the streets, went on strike, protested, got beaten down by police, were shot to death by state and federal troops and ultimately… they won. We cannot let their sacrifices be in vain. We cannot sit by and watch as the few benefits we are given erode. It is time we stop accepting the boot on our neck and stand up for ourselves.

I have seen too many friends and family members struggling to barely survive while living in the richest nation in the history of mankind. I have watched too many times those at the top rig the game in their favor. I have been disheartened too often when I hear people blame themselves for losing in a game they were never going to win. We must stop having the mentality that our votes and our voices means nothing, that the game is so rigged we cannot change it. Our apathy is their success. Our hopelessness is their strategy. Our obedience is their goal. The struggle has strengthened you more than you know, now use that strength to fight back.

Research and join a political or labor group that you agree with and spread the word.

–Workers’ Solidarity Alliance

–Industrial Workers of the World

–Socialist Rifle Association

Register to vote. Get your family to register, get your friends to register. Use your power.

Continue to educate yourself on the history of labor and political struggles and use what you learn from those events to continue pushing forward.

The People, United, Can Never be Defeated