Union rights
Reproductive freedom
Civil rights
Pay equity
Womens rights
Voting rights
Worker rights
Health and safety regulations
The need for a good educational system for everyone
Access to affordable technical, vocational, and college education
Environmental protection standards
Fairness and justice issues
The need for a social safety net
Tax fairness
Corporate responsibilities
No, you're not dreaming. We've spent a good portion of the past decade refighting the fights of the past. The fights we or our parents and grandparents won with their sweat, their work, their blood, and, sometimes, their lives. We're fighting them again as though somehow history has been forgotten or sent down the memory hole never to be remembered collectively.
The same exact fights over the same exact things. Unfortunately, we've been losing a lot of those fights not just because people are not being reminded why they were fought in the first place, but because most of this isn't being taught anymore in our deteriorating, increasingly ideologically driven, and severly underfunded school system. Ask young people today about what we knew as "civics" and, unless they've educated themselves, it's likely they don't know much.
We love to proclaim our country as the land of freedom and liberty. In fact, it's been everything but that wonderful land of song and legend.
We're a country plagued by racism and misogyny with far too many looking to grab as much as they can for themselves while avoiding contributing anything for the benefit of their community. It's a country that didn't see a problem with people working 14 hour days 6 days a week whether they were adults or children. A country where women were property belonging to their fathers until ownership was transferred to their husbands. A place where the color of your skin or gender determined whether or not you could vote, or (gasp!) run for office, or what jobs you could apply for, or where you could live. It's been a country where laws exist to rule the behavior of people, but not the wealthy or corporate who evade it or change the rules to benefit themselves. A country where children left school at a very young age to help support their families by working in factories and mines or wherever there was job to be had when you're 8 years old. And business loved that because they didn't have to pay an 8 year old much.
Whether through action or tragedy, those bad old days were morphed into something better. A fairer and more equitable society where the job of children is attending school, not digging coal out of a mine. Where workers health and lives are protected by government regulation, inspections, and a seat at the table discussing the trms and conditions of our employment. Where people doing the same job are paid the same regardless of gender or skin color. Where women are free to become educated, vote, and apply for any job they want as well as control their own bodies and reproduction.
Every bit of it came from activism and/or lives lost. The Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire led to worker safety regulations to ensure that no longer would women die in a fire because they had been locked in a workroom. Workers have the right to collective bargaining because union activists were beaten and killed for decades by Pinkertons for the audacity of asking for a voice in the workplace. The civil rights movement worked tirelessly for decades at the costs of threats, violence, murders, intimidation, bombings, and more horror than can be recounted to obtain what this country claimed to be - a land of equality. The right to vote, similarly, took decades to achieve for people of color and women.
The sinking of the Titanic with more first class men saved than third class children horrified the public into demanding changes, not just in maritime law, but in the Old Money inheritance class that wielded far too much influence.
Reformers were embraced by the American public to bring the changes that were needed. Monopolies were broken up and laws created to prevent them in the future were enacted. The first inheritance taxes were instituted to ensure that money didn't pass intact from one generation to the next as it had and income taxes would make everyone responsible for the financial support of the nation.
However, it took tragedy to bring about more serious changes. The stock market crash of 1929 brought needed changes to our financial laws and regulations. The depression brought about a social safety net of unemployment insurance, social security, and food programs for the poor and vulnerable.
These were supposed to have been settled, accepted as what's right and good about this country. A reflection of what freedom and democracy mean in practical terms. But, mostly, the place of "now" where we move forward into something better, more democratic, more free, and more inclusive society.
Forcing us to relitigate the past means we're not moving forward into a better future, but fighting to retain that which has been won through blood and sacrifice in the past. I'ts as if we were being asked to continually defend the independence of our nation from the grasp of the British Monarchy year after year as if it was illegitimate and wrong from the start in 1776.
Of course, these rights that have been won are good for us, the people, but are inconvenient for the monied elite who can't discriminate anymore, can't save a nickle by eliminating worker health and safety measures, can't hire a child to do their parents job at 1/3 the of pay, can't pay the lowest wages possible for a 14 hour workday 6 days a week, can't sell faulty products or contaminated food without serious consequences, can't pollute as much as they want at no cost, can't hire women at pennies on the dollar to do the work of men, and can't fire or intimidate workers on a whim. In the Guilded Age, all those things were possible and empowered a monied elite that bought every elected office from town council to President of the United States to keep the money flowing to them and block any and all opposition.
It's taken decades, an endless flood of propaganda, the removal of labor history and civics from our classrooms, and a very lazy media to get us to the place where questioning the legimacy of our rights, paid entitlements, and laws is considered anything but ridiculous. Our media, purchased outright and controlled by the very monied elite which would benefit from a New Guilded Age, is serving their masters well by legitimizing the discussion.
If these were normal times, the Ryan Budget would be laughed out of Congress, the Bush Tax Cuts would have expired a few years ago (if they had ever been enacted in the first place), we would be pouring money into our schools and colleges so our children would do better than we have, we'd have a modern day WPA to put people to work to restore and improve our crumbling infrastructure, an endless array of jobs training programs, a tax system that ensured that no individual or corporation could avoid the financial obligation to support this country, and a system of tariffs that would remove any financial incentive to move work to slave labor countries so it could be reimported as cheaply as possible.
But these aren't normal times. These are the times when money talks and everyone else walks. Where money buys media and influence and laws and tax breaks. Where the truth is whatever money says it is. Where up is sideways and down is blue with pink polka dots. Where money is considered free speech which means that no money means no speech.
We can't surrender democracy to the monied elite or allow it to be purchased or stolen from us. It's ours. And we will need work hard to educate our neighbors, families, and friends to keep those hard won rights, necessary laws and regulations. We cannot allow our country to forget how we got here and why these rights and laws are important.
PS: I wrote this a couple of months ago, but just stashed it away. Sadly, it's just as timely today as when I originally sat down and pounded it out on the keyboard.