Summer Editorial

This summer has brought record heat, more powerful hurricanes and massive fires. We are, as ever, at war. Threats of new aggressions against Iran and Venezuela continue to be made. This is the dire price of insatiable end-stage capitalism and of a country addicted to militarism, racism and endless war as its economic base.

We, your editors, have also had to work against the obstacles of tight money, ill heath and our computer crashing, in order to continue publishing. As sidelined citizens we often feel helpless and afraid for our own futures. We struggle to survive, to hold on to our jobs and to what little security we have from day to day. But that isn't enough. We must continue to struggle together against an ecocidal corporate dictatorship on the cultural front and in the streets.

Our summer issue deals with the inseparable themes of climate destruction and war. These are more timely than ever. Poems in this issue show that the toxic tyranny of the workplace on which we depend cannot be separated from political autocracy, the poisoning of our communities or the destruction of the biosphere.

Workers know that we sacrifice our time, our freedoms and our health to pay for overpriced rents, mortgages, medicines, food and utilities even as our wages lose value and our jobs and retirements become increasingly indequate. We understand the class commonality between our bosses, our landlords and the arrogant bullying crooks who wield political power over our lives. We know, many of us first hand, the pressures of sexual harassment, workplace abuse and the utter arrogance of those who, like Brett Kavanaugh, lord their power over us.

Our Summer issue also announces the winner of our annual Working Peoples' Poetry Contest. Choosing a winner was especially difficult this year due to the number of strong poems entered. After much deliberation, the winning poem is "From My Hands" by Leslie Irene Johnson. This poem speaks with agonizing truth to the reality of the cultural as well as biological threats we face from the poisoning of our world; of the scale of what is being lost. We also have two runners up; "Loading Dock Moored at Kellogg Marine" by Timothy Shilke and "Roses at the Coal Drifts" by Andrena Zawinski. Each of these stunning poems is a great example of the power and truth essential to working class writing at its best and could just as well have been the winner. Though they do not win the $100.00 prize, the runners up do win a year's subscription. Like the winner, their poems are posted on our website for one year.

Many other contest entries fill the pages of this collection. They speak to the present moment and to our ongoing struggle for survival and ultimately to our struggle for worker democracy. We are thankful to all who entered our annual contest as well as to those who continue to send powerful, honed words that, we believe, make a powerful difference in the consciousness and lives of those who read them.