Imagine

John Lennon's song Imagine spoke of what the world could be like if it was run in a humane way. I regularly think about the need to make a conscious effort to imagine other peoples lives in the world of today.

I see undocumented workers obviously from Central America stand on the corner waiting for work. I imagine what the last period of their lives has been, leaving their homes and families, traveling across the Southern US border and through the US, being preyed on and hunted, then to end up here in Chicago desperate for a job. And most likely with not a penny in their pockets. Then I imagine myself. At no time in my life have I had absolutely not a penny in my pocket or nobody from whom I could borrow a penny. I am lucky.

Then the young man Oscar grant killed by the cop in Oakland. If that had been me I would not have been killed. I am white and in my sixties. I try to imagine what it is like to be young and black and hated by the racist system of US capitalism. And then for the cop to be tried by a jury with not a single black person. I cannot imagine myself being anything else than forever the most ferocious enemy of the system.

When i think of these things my mind then turns to the union leaders. These people control the unions with their millions of members. And they hold the workers in these unions down with a death grip. Everyday the capitalists in their own media show how rotten their system is. But do the union leaders take this and run with it and build a movement to change the system. Not a bit of it. In fact the opposite. These union leaders, terrified of a movement for change, convinced there is no system but capitalism, desperate to hold to their existing privileges and power oppose and oppress any and all efforts by union members and workers to change things. They are a disgrace. Their role is criminal. Like capitalism has proven that it does not work and has therefore forfeited the right to exist, the union leaders show daily that they will not struggle to improve their members lives and the lives of all workers and so they have forfeited their right to control the unions, their right to be so-called leaders.

Capitalism does not work. It must be ended. For a Democratic Socialist Society.

The union leaders support for capitalism holds back the essential movement for change, they must be replaced by a leadership which will take on the bosses and their criminally corrupt capitalist system. For a Democratic Socialist society.