Wednesday, June 02, 2010

The American Working Class Needs A New Agenda

By Nick Egnatz
Online Journal Contributing Writer
May 26, 2010, 00:12
Courtesy Of "The Online Journal"

Two hundred thirty-four years of capitalist rule has left us with massive permanent unemployment, endless wars for empire and the rapid disappearance of the short-lived American middle class. All the while, the non-working moneyed class gets progressively wealthier and we in the rest of the heap lose jobs, homes and dignity.

We Need A New Agenda:

  • Bring all the troops home and prosecute those who lied to take us to war!

  • Cut the military budget in half and then half again!

  • Break up the criminal Wall Street banks and prosecute their officers!

  • Start taxing the wealthy at 1935-1980 tax rates!

  • Allow workers to take over companies that have moved and are planning to move factories overseas!

  • Dump free trade and reenact tariffs to level the playing field with slave labor countries!

  • Lead the world in creating a sustainable economy in harmony with the environment instead of sabotaging the global climate justice movement Obama orchestrated at the Copenhagen Conference!
  • Start from the premise that healthcare is a human right and enact an expanded form of Medicare for all!

  • Guarantee all workers a job at a livable wage!

  • Have federal government provide supplements so that small business employers can pay livable wage!

  • Immediately halt home foreclosures and put families back in their foreclosed homes, and reduce principal amounts on all home mortgages by the amount each home has dropped in value with those responsible for the crash, the lenders and federal government, sharing the loss!

Neither political party will do any of the above. The American working class and the poor need to step outside the rigged political structure and create a new agenda. Boycott elections in which the two corporate parties refuse to support this people's agenda.

Nick Egnatz of Munster, Indiana, is a Vietnam veteran and member of Veterans For Peace. He has been actively protesting our government’s crimes of empire in both person and print for some years now and was named “Citizen of the Year” for Northwest Indiana in 2006 by the National Association of Social Workers for his peace activism. Contact Nick at nickatlakehills@sbcglobal.net.

Copyright © 1998-2007 Online Journal

No comments: