Spring 2021 Editorial

As the contagion continues, spring arrived this year strained between optimism and pandemic burnout. This is further complicated by those hesitant to get vaccinated and by new variants. The Biden administration, while working to make progress on important issues, struggles in its attempt to appease and compromise with ideological zealots and corporate-loyal politicians who hold progress hostage. Biden seems stuck in outdated, cold war foreign policy and agendas of dominance.

Meanwhile, jobs remain tenuous with low wages, unsafe working conditions and lack of child care, leaving many hesitant or unable to return to work. In reaction, there are moves to cut unemployment compensation and to end the moratorium on evictions. These attacks on workers come even as more money is dumped into the Pentagon budget.

Over-stressed medical workers and others deemed "essential" have slogged through a hellish year with little appreciation or increased pay, as noted in poems by Joe Hilliard and Stewart Acuff, who lambaste the wealth accrued at their and our expense.

As our broken country returns to delusions of normality, mass shootings and racist police murders are once again daily news. There are continuing attempts to prevent and to reverse limits on assault weapon availability along with calls by the extreme-right against teaching a fuller account of our national history which includes systemic racial oppression. These subjects are also confronted by poems in this collection. The mounting evidence of extreme-right inseparability from police, the courts and from the violent assault on the capitol are ignored, denied and downplayed in media. Biden has voiced his intent to crack down on violent extremism using the FBI and Justice department, also inseparable from right-wing extremism. Our history tells us that the outcome may well be a crackdown on progressive activists who, unlike the extreme right, challenge the corrupt power and vested interests of wealth.

This spring has also seen an increase in activism with demonstrations against the continuing police murders of Black people and against our funding of genocidal terror by Israel in its increasing brutal attacks on Palestinians. The connection between Israeli apartheid, American racism and our continuing mistreatment of refugees has become increasingly evident. Those standing against U.S. underwriting of Israeli atrocities have been attacked as "anti-Semitic." Continuing abuses by Israel and the growing number of Jews protesting them have discredited that charge and moved public opinion against continued blind support. Yet, more weapons have been supplied and promises of support continue as do hypocritical punishing embargoes against Cuba, Iran and Venezuela even blocking medical equipment in the pandemic.

This was a tough collection to put together in a moment that is hard to define. The change of leadership and the availability of vaccines have given us cause for relief even as our deeply broken and divided country faces the climate crisis, armed reactionary terror and escalating global tensions.

Due to your continuing support we are grateful to be able to continue publishing vital writers of our working class. We continue to believe in the power of working class literature to speak to and connect us beyond cultivated partisan division through the commonality of our class experience in a way that other venues cannot. We thank you and look forward to continuing and enlarging our outreach.