Fall 2017 Editorial

This issue comes out on the anniversary of the disaster of a stolen election, in reality, a corporate coup. Our country, our rights and our basic life-line services are being systematically dismantled. Immigrant refugee roundups escalate along with harassment and arrests of those who stand publicly against fascism, corporate crime, and climate destruction. The most vulnerable among us are directly threatened by the cynical thieves plundering public funds to enrich themselves.

This has been a tough season, made tougher by families split along partisan lines even as we all suffer the results. Like a growing majority, the poets in this collection feel the pain first-hand and see through the filth and shallow media narratives to the core issue; the truth of an ugly system of anti-human corruption that threatens life itself for the insatiable greed of the few.

As poems in this this issue attest, we know the fear and subservience to bosses and landlords. We are aware that this system empowers them just as it dis-empowers us. We know we are poisoned, abused and discarded and by whom. Most of us feel trapped in this prison of work and debt awaiting the day we are abandoned to illness and poverty even as we watch the flimsy safety net being shredded.

What we have is each other. The strength of community cannot be underestimated. Our power together, united when we've finally had enough, is unstoppable. Standing in the way of our unity are tightly held delusions of alienated individualism, fear, and a sense of being powerless and alone. This is the culture we are fed to keep us in line. It is the oppressive paradigm we seek to overcome and replace with a more just and sustainable vision of community based in class awareness. This perspective enriches and empowers us to come together in overthrowing the yoke of corporate enslavement and emancipate ourselves. Only a working class culture of solidarity can replace corporate autocracy with cooperative democracy. This is the only hope we have to abolish exploitation and war, and to address not only our own oppression but the preservation of the biosphere on which we all depend.

Though this small journal cannot begin to achieve such a lofty and necessary goal as the transformation of the culture of a nation, we strongly believe working class writers and poets have a vital role in affecting cultural consciousness. The Blue Collar Review provides a rare venue for outreach and example. We need to spread issues around for as many readers as possible to experience.

We too are hard hit economically. We struggle to publish and mail a physical, print on paper journal with costs rising. We usually reserve our begging until the Winter issue, but meeting even basic expenses is tough with a staff of penurious retirees on fixed and barely livable incomes. In these times when the assurance and example of class unity and commitment are most needed, we must count on the support of our readers to keep our words in print though the next year. You can make tax-deductible contributions or buy collections via Paypal on our website, donate through the mail via the insert in this issue or consider becoming a Partisan supporter for only $10.00 a month. As a Partisan supporter you will not only be assuring the continuance of our journal and press but you will receive chapbook poetry collections. You will also receive four issues of the Blue Collar Review per quarter. You can slide them onto the shelves of your local bookstores. You can leave them in coffee houses, laundromats, your workplace lunchroom, or pass them on to fellow workers. Together, we can and must work to build the consciousness of interdependent and mutually responsible beloved community needed for a backlash of civilization to the present monstrosity.