Spring 2024 Editorial

This Spring is marked by escalating tensions. Our potential hopes for the upcoming election season are deluged by corporate and dark money, threats, lies, fear, and a dearth of decent candidates. It is further marred by spreading war and the arming of a continuing genocide. Growing labor and citizen activism from campuses and workplaces to the streets demonstrate that we are not taking this lying down..

April 28th is Worker's Memorial Day. Based on OSHA statistics, over 5,000 of us a year die from preventable workplace injuries. Poems in this issue by Dave Roskos, Tad Tuleja and George C. Harvilla confront workplace hazards and the real cost of earning a living.

Many of the poems in this issue deal with the stresses of poverty and the pressure of rising costs. debt and abuse. And we are stressed!

As most of us know from experience, the workplace can be a place of frustration too often made worse by co-workers, management pressures and the blatant abuses of corporate greed. Sometimes we are stressed to the point of exploding. A poem in this issue by G.C. Compton, "Mr. C. Workorder Clerk," describes such anger mounting to thoughts of workplace violence. As he writes, "This poem is a warning to those who feel crushed under the heel of corporate tyranny. The worst can happen, if we allow it. Sometimes we just need to see the right faces." In his case, these were the faces of his family. As poems by Pepe Oulahan and George Fish make clear, we are all family and we need each other in the struggle against the tyranny of those who exploit and abuse us.

Many of the poems here express the solidarity and empathy we need to live together in society. On May Day we honor the struggle to overcome cultivated division, united against the rule of wealth and its brutal agenda for our mutual security .

In this issue we have poems on Palestine and the siege of Gaza by James Deahl, Tariq Jawhar, and Mary Franke calling for an end to the nightmare of colonialism and murderous ethnic erasure.

The poetry and prose presented here by Evel Economakis, Ed Werstein, normal, E.P. Fisher and others express ecological sanity and a global post-national class consciousness, seeing through and beyond the present reality of gangster-run corporate rule and the violence of competitive nation states. They express our collective determination to survive and move beyond this bloody era to peaceful, genuine civilization. As Stewart Acuff concludes this issue with "Change Must Begin," we understand that such change must come from the bottom, from the working, exploited and oppressed -- from us.

Promoting and presenting examples of the consciousness of class connection necessary for that change remains our primary goal. We continue to struggle against the odds of increasing expenses and censorship pressures to get your words out. Your continuing support and unique writing keep this effort alive and we are grateful.