Don’t mourn—organize

As Molly Ivins wrote in 2004, using the words Joe Hill made famous (in a letter to Bill Haywood, prior to his execution in 1915),

Think about how you can lend a hand to the amazing myriad efforts that will promptly break out to help the country recover from what it has done to itself. Now is the time. Don’t mourn, organize.

Even though, as William B. Gould IV explains, on New Year’s Day, American workers might effectively lose their right to be represented by a union.

Even though, according to Charles M. Blow, the new American delusion is that, against all the facts, economic inequality is not a major problem.

Even though the effect of an economics education is to indoctrinate students in the benefits of self-interest and thus to discourage gift-giving.

Because, squeezed by rising living costs and stagnant wages, a record number of Americans—nearly 1 in 2—have fallen into poverty or are scraping by on earnings that classify them as low income.

Because the current unemployment rate, when adjusted for labor force participation, is the same today as it was in November 2009.

Because, in Milwaukee as in the nation as a whole, working-class families are losing their middle-class status and becoming increasingly poor, even as the wealthier suburbs are thriving.

And, finally, because the fall in labor turnover has contributed to the sharp rise in the number of long-term unemployed, as well as to the stagnation of wages.