Don't Mourn. ORGANIZE

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Another Labor day has passed, but America feels farther than ever from celebrating and respecting working people. The situation is bleak, the minimum wage hasn’t been raised in nearly 20 years, the consumer financial protection bureau has been gutted, labor unions strangled and stonewalled, functional unemployment may be near 25%. AI is exacerbating worker precarity, siphoning ever more money from labor to capital, meanwhile the US government spends billions upon billions on a war no one wanted, that we are losing, and is making everything more expensive. And then we are told there is no money for schools or healthcare. Sadly, that’s just the tip of the proverbial iceberg of problems besetting workers today.

Is anyone in power going to help? Not in this administration! They’ll be lining their own pockets and pointing their fingers to blame whoever is most helpless. Immigrants are not coming for your jobs, nor trans people or tenured college professors politicians no matter how loudly Republicans yell it. In fact, too often immigrants are doing the work that most Americans don't want to do. Jobs that remain open there are mass deportations It’s the old, divide and conquer strategy, exploiting the growing precarity of workers, and pitting different factions against each other to prevent the kind of solidarity that could change things.

  It’s hard to organize for change, or even work productively if you fear imprisonment and deportation. Witness Springfield Ohio about the honest and industrious Haitians who helped to revitalize the town.  Folks there are genuinely upset that Trump or Stephen Miller or Natalie removed Temporary Protected Status for this group. Now, instead of immigrants building lives and bringing prosperity and vitality to America’s rust belt, we see the working class turned upon itself at the behest of a pedophilic billionaire elite and scrabbling ever harder for fewer scraps. While so many immigrants live in fear or have been disappeared. Under such extreme conditions, the discussion for many is not about better working conditions, higher wages, or medicare-for-all, but simply survival.

Together with the heartbreaking tragedy of the people who made a life here being sent back to Haiti

as well as the cruel chaos guiding the actions of DHS and ICE.

And yet, we see signs that perhaps people have been pushed so far, they are coming together, whether in hope, frustration, or desperation, to ask for more. Progressive and Democratic Socialist politicians are winning primaries promising bold new visions for government. In New York City, we see a glimpse of what is possible with Mamdani, and elected leaders who deliver results instead of excuses. Now, on top of freezing the rent and opening city run groceries, he has opened up a city funded pet food pantry. He's feeding the cats/he's feeding the dogs. A statement that is actually true.

Outside of politics proper, we see workers and consumers alike struggling against corporate behemoths. Continuing to fight despite stiff headwinds. Take Starbucks, the workers have voted for unions in over 700 locations.  Their demands are simple and reasonable…And being ignored by management. So on top of the union drive there is now a boycott inre Starbucks for two reasons. 

1. Mistreating the workers and ignoring the union demands

2. As well as facing a global boycott due to alleged ties to Israel.

Economic protests are becoming more effective and as each worker’s struggles overlaps and combines with others the more powerful we become economically and politically powerful.. That was one of the strategies used in designing #DSOT.  Some people don't patronize certain stores or specific products. So, if you can, don't support companies and corporations that are predatory and only profit driven, but no matter what your consumption habits we ask that you don't make discretionary purchases on Tuesday.

An America with workers front and center might feel ages away, but the last decade has shown how fast politics can change, and a new day is possible, if we join together in solidarity, rather than be torn apart by propaganda. So unite with the fight for a fairer and more just America in whatever way you can, and join us each week in growing solidarity, don’t shop on Tuesday

#DSOT. #UPM