What Does it Take?

Just put down the morning paper.
Thought I might just write a few words on the blog.
The recession deepens - and I am wondering when the politicians and trade union leaders are going to come up with the "we are all in this together and we all need to work together to solve this problem" in a more public sense.
This line of BS may be a bit harder to sell to working people this time around.
At any rate the other shoe is not taking long to fall.
At work I have been talking a lot about the concrete ways working people and the poor will be forced to pay for this economic bailout and the nothing less than criminal activity of the rich capitalists.
I am reminded if what we in Ontario call the Rae days of 1993. The then so called workers party leader of the NDP called on public sector workers earning over 30,000 dollars a year to give up one day a month in pay the province to help overcome a 12 billion dollar deficit. They called it the Social Contract. Nurses at the time were not making much over this and along with teachers were included in this sacrificial rite. I remember being so angry I ripped up my NDP membership card at the time and went to the bank to cancel my monthly donation to this "workers party." The clerk at the bank told me that morning I was the 3rd person to do this that morning.
So i walked out of the bank thinking "what now?- In my mind this was such a blatant kick in the face to workers - if the NDP will so boldly ask the working class to take on the responsbility for the mess up of the economy -they are obviously bankrupt as a party of the left.Where to now I asked myself?
Well they saved up something like 1.7 billion of the 12 billion deficit and helped pave the way for the right wing Harris government to come in and lay off 16,000 public sector workers., slash public services, close hospitals, cut welfare rates in half and publicly stengthen their privatization agenda up to now done behind closed doors.
Already the provincial government announced as the big talk of defict budgets is being bandied about that there will be cuts to schools, hospitals and municipalities ( welfare, housing , child care ,programs for youth and immigrants, libraries , community centers -on and on we go again.) Social services and health care and education budgets that are already slashed .
So what does it take I ask rhetorically. 200,000 manufacturing jobs already lost in the manufacturing sector in Ontario to the global agenda that pays workers in Asia and Mexico dirt bottom wages and creates massive hunger and war. Trade union leadeship that might just as well roll over and die-not a word even of protest from them re an organized fightback, let alone eucation about the real scoop about the economy and the bailout for the rich.
Anti-immigrant sentiments and policies will be strengthened , collective agreements opened up - wage cuts . Workers who haved worked for 30 and 40 years will have pesnions slashed and new workers fortunate enough to have a job that offers a decent pension plan .
Capitalism has forfeited its right to exist. It has starved millions and killed millions.It takes our work and our wages and then punishes us when we ask for crumbs.
A worker last night asked me why is this happening,why are the rich taking it out on the poor . She was talking about how hard it is to look after our health when we are so busy working and it seems that when you retire you have more time to look after yourself- and how backward that seems and now maybe we will not be able to retire.
She just returned from germany and was amazed at how many benefits and holidays German workers have than North American workers. I pointed out to her that no benevolent governments handed that over to the workers , that every single gain , every second of leisure time, every benefit was won by the working class and socialists .
Someone posted that it now seems easier to talk in terms of systems to workers.
And how to do this creates an opportunity to talk of alternate sysyems like socialism.
I hear more people referring to capitalism now than before.So now is an opportunity to talk about socialism.
So we do not know yet what suffering and deprivation will prevail for workers and the poor in light of these blatantly corrupt events over the last months.
So what does it take to rip off the veil of deception - to expose these criminals?
I know that when i walked out of the bank that day in 1993-i felt betrayed and lost. Before too long I found a place to fight back - I became a member of the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty and believe me there is nothing extraordinary about me.I am just an ordinary worker.
I became an activist, socialist , an agitator and a fighter. So there are many opportunities out there right now - we must to keep talking and agitating and organizing .