Eric J. Garcia
As difficult as it may seem, we are witnessing the birth pangs of a new society.
No one can deny that we are living in times of momentous and tumultuous change. Everything we have known and loved about America seems turned upside down.
Democratic rights are trampled. Women’s and minority rights are threatened. The environment and our children’s health are being poisoned. Our youth continue to be gunned down by militarized police.
We face the very real threat of trade and shooting wars even with nations that have been friendly. Immigrant families, including religious minorities, are threatened with separation and wholesale deportation.
It is as if the saying on the Statue of Liberty — “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” — were no more.
As difficult as it may seem, we are witnessing the birth pangs of a new society. Just as the night seems darkest before the dawn, the forces of reaction now seem insurmountable. Yet we are many and they are few.
PHOTO: John Anderson
As the American revolutionary Thomas Paine said when the new nation confronted another tyrant from another epoch, “These are the times that try men’s (women’s) souls.”
It is all about vision and keeping our eyes on the prize. We can either accept Trump’s vision of making America “great again”—an America of deep inequalities and exploitation, with privilege for a select few—or we can fight forward to a cooperative society of plenty for everybody. That is what the new production by robotics makes possible.
We can take heart in the massive and almost daily marches, sit-ins, airport protests, sanctuary movements, vigilant monitoring of ICE raids, and numerous other actions—overshadowing and outnumbering the presidential inauguration.
Small victories are already occurring. Traditional leadership that has held back independent motion by working people is being side-stepped and gradually cast aside.
However, what is most important to the future of our country and of future generations is that a sense of class is developing among those participants. This unity as a class must be nurtured and fought for by conscious revolutionaries.
Soon enough, those who believed Trump’s lies will see that he and the corporate class that he represents are their enemy, too.
We are all part of the same class. Now we need our own independent party to represent our own independent class interests, not the existing parties that abandon us and pit us against each other. And we can build that, too
