Spring Issue Editorial

It has been a hard Spring with over a thousand tornadoes, record flooding, much of the country on fire, and a comatose economy leaving too many of us without jobs. It seems all our government is doing in response is threatening us with "austerity" and expanding its military aggressions around the world.

As we limp into the oppressive heat of Summer, our desperation and anger building like super cell thunderheads, the dark promise of our militant fight-back grows.

So too the threat from the corporate right. Desperate to maintain their dying order, the police state continues to expand as legislating puppets rip away our hard won rights and life saving entitlements, eviscerating Medicare, Social Security, our right to organize, environmental protections, and our children's education. Nothing is sacred to the corporatists but profits and the delusional power of military might. Nothing frightens them more than the spectre of our awakening to unity as a class, acting in our own interests. Thus they do everything in their power to keep us divided using wedge issues, lies and fomented hatreds.

The poetry in this issue laments our losses, particularly of good jobs, without saccharine nostalgia. It voices our anger at the abuse of dehumanizing work. The poets and writers in this collection see through the lies -- our vision clarified by experience. These poems glow with the sanity of solidarity and the humanity of militant class consciousness, as opposed to the self-absorbed, anti-social, fear-laden anger and judgment pushed by the teapublicans. This conscious working class is our hope for the future of civilization.

In these anxiety ridden times we are especially grateful for your continuing support making possible the publication and salvation of our voices here.