Winter 2021 Editorial

Whether you have been locked down or worked overtime fearing for your health, this has been a strange and hard winter for all of us. Many of us have lost friends and loved ones, yet we look forward with tenuous hope to spring. We are encouraged by increasing vaccine availability and by a new leadership which surprises us daily. seeming in some ways, more progressive than we would have believed.

Progress on economic issues, climate and immigration address crises at least 40 years in the making which are the direct result of corporate dominance and imperial myopia. Based on our experience we understand that even well-meaning corporate democrats (rhetoric aside) push empty symbolism, incrementalism and rarely do anything close to what is needed to address problems we face daily. If we are to win real labor rights, civil rights, national health care and climate sanity, we must keep the pressure on.

Though domestic policy changes are better than we would have hoped, Biden's foreign policy remains aggressive, pushing for cold war conflicts to support military industries as well as continuation of refugee deportations. He continues policies of strangling countries that resist our corporate dominance with dire results.

The poems in this collection speak to the realities of soul deadening jobs, often rife with abuse. They speak out against sexual oppression and related violence and of the decline and unraveling of our economy, ecology and of our country. Though there are ongoing efforts to guarantee voting rights, to undermine gerrymandering and the kind of racist voter disenfranchisement we see in states like Georgia, extreme right terrorism remains a powerful threat.

Even after the recent assault on our capitol by fascists, many of our fellow workers remain misled by media disinformation, xenophobic hate and partisan conspiracies. Poems in this issue speak to and lambaste the self-destructive idiocy of fascist nonsense which only serves to strengthen the very forces which impoverish our lives and destroy our health.

Poking fun and fiery words are not enough. If we are to have a livable society and future, we need to reach out and close the media-cultivated divide which can only lead to violent disaster.

As worker poets, we do this by relating our shared class experience and connecting it to issues which affect us all. It is no coincidence that even many who continue to identify with the extreme right approve of Biden's stimulus package which, beyond the payout, includes payments for child care. Many also support health care expansion, minimum wage increases and job creating infrastructure improvements. As the last poem by longtime labor organizer Stewart Acuff says, eliminating poverty would undermine much of the righteous anger that corporate think-tanks and their libelous media twist to fanaticism by scape-goating.

Beyond acceptance of half-measures that maintain corporate rule, this journal seeks to inspire us toward its replacement with authentic, post-capitalist working class democracy based on sustenance and living within our ecological means. As our fund-raising season continues, your literary and financial contributions to our collective efforts are most appreciated