Winter 2025-26 Editorial

As we go to press with this collection, our leadership, now inseparable from Israel's, is illegally bombing Iran in a spreading nightmare of mass murder and destruction involving a growing number of countries and likely to go nuclear. As we have stated in every Summer issue for decades, war and its climate impact are inseparable. In this one, oil, gas and nuclear facilitates along with oil tankers are prime targets.

As more than one poet, has said, every day seems to bring a new horror. This criminal administration wreaking havoc on the world and on all of us at home is the inevitable result of the corruption of corporate, CIA, and billionaire dominance; of the influence of private wealth which has undermined public safety, foreign policy, media, and any semblance of a deomcratic citizen- representative republic.

Working class people are threatened with rising prices from rents to groceries, fuel and medicine. We are increasingly facing replacement by A.I., robotics and of being abducted by ICE agents or killed in shootings. Recently Daniel Sanchez, in response to a demonstration outside the Prairieland ICE detention facility in Alvarado Texas, was accused and found guilty of terrorism for possession of "radical antifascist literature" setting a dangerous precedent. This is the country we are now living in and this understanding permeates this collection.

On the positive side, and also evident in these poems are the growing number of citizens becoming active in standing against this assault on our country, people and world by a corporate fascist, blatantly criminal administration and its unelected cronies.

This is a telling moment for all of us. Many feel helpless. Some voice a desire driven by fear, disgust and helplessness to just withdraw -- as if that were possible beyond delusion given the intrusive reality. What we do now matters far more than what we say in the face of fascism. This foul and blatant administration has bared its ugly reality for all to see. Its popularity, even among its base -- mislead for decades by disinformation and paranoid bigotry -- is in the pits. As the "No Kings" demonstrations increased labor actions, and the heroic mass resistance in Minneapolis and elsewhere show, We the People are coming together to defeat it. That defeat must go beyond simply removing a criminal administration and holding it responsible for it crimes. People across the spectrum are sick to death of the corruption of greedy capitalists that harm us all for profit. Going back to a pre-Trump normality is not acceptable. People are increasingly ready for progressive politics and citizen first democracy. That requires the abolition of corporate rule and the banning of private money from politics at all levels. It requires an end to the monopoly of the partisan duopoly and its electoral college.

With his issue comes our with annual fund drive, necessary to keep our collective voices in print. The past shows us the vital importance of progressive working class culture in shaping popular consciousness. There has never been a more important time for the outreach of progressive working class voices and culture. Your editors struggle to get by on inadequate fixed incomes so we understand how hard times are. We more than appreciate your support as well as your powerful words