Spring Issue Editorial

In spite of everything we do to wreak havoc on our world, spring arrives in all its glory. In spite of the best efforts of our embedded corporate media with its steady drumbeat of anti- immigrant xenophobia and terrorism-driven fear, popular resistance to war, racism and environmental degradation is blossoming.

As our ruling elites desperately struggle to hold on to what they cannot have in Iraq at the cost of so many lives, their criminal insanity, moral bankruptcy and powerlessness become increasingly obvious to all. Their inane and lawless actions create and feed what they most fear.

This issue reflects our American reality, not the Disneyland illusion fed to us; not the vengeance laden, racist, sexist entertainment designed to keep us an army of reactionary consumers and complacent team players. What is presented here is the nitty-gritty reality of bad jobs with terrible schedules, the tyranny of the workplace, the economic insecurity and human solidarity that define our working class lives. This is not the introspective, lovelorn abstract verse of the ivory tower but the word from the shop floor, the cubicle, the restaurant kitchen the fields, the prisons and streets. What is exposed is the commonality of our experience as we struggle to survive this Culture of Death and the inherent contradictions at the heart of that struggle. Robert Edwards sums it up in the final poem in this collection: Amerika vs. America.

We have added four extra pages to our journal in order to include more of the work we have accepted. We thank you for your poetry, patience and continuing support in making it possible for us to continue providing a home for the literature of our working class.