This May Day working people deserve better than this!

 

There is little to celebrate on this May Day. Our government has taken working people for granted and in many states, such as Kansas, most workers have suffered degradation at the hands of ideologues that are willing to kill the working poor in order to carry out their far-right agenda.

One thing that has been done here is to block any benefits from Obama-care, even sending back Federal money this state could really use. The results are that there are many poor people—and I know of several—who are not getting badly needed health care or medicines. Health care providers are squeezing working class patients with constant law suits to the point where some have to file bankruptcy. In Kansas there is absolutely no respect for working people. While our Governor, Sam Brownback talks about “smaller government” working people may now have to take a drug test to get unemployment benefits that THEY paid into.

As Richard Stephenson, a speaker at yesterday’s May Day event, at the Peace and Social Justice Center, said: “People feel crushed, saddened, they have learned-helplessness.”

In this state, the anti-union sentiments have led workers to a point of self-loathing. It would seem that our governor and his army of Republican drones are out to punish all those who do not make much money at their jobs. Wal*Mart and other retailers depend on using working class dupes and yet they show nothing but disrespect for the people that make their profits possible.

Right now, the new tax plan, by our governor, allows big breaks for the wealthy and is paid for on the backs of the working poor. If we are working and not earning much—we are paying most of the tax burden of this state. Who in their right mind votes to let the wealthy of this state have a big party at the expense of the rest of us? It just makes no sense that these people are in office or that they are being allowed to run our state into the ground.

In the news this morning we can see how the city of Seattle is handling of people it considers disruptive. Here we live under a government that harps on the human rights of other countries and the right to freely oppose their governments and our own government uses brutality to “shut up” its own critics.

Who can blame young people in that city from being fed up with this government that expects us to follow as sheep to their blind obedience? We all should rebel against this system. They tell us we have all this freedom, and then when we try and use it, they shoot flash grenades at us.

This government—whether state, local and Federal has lost any credibility it may have ever had. There is only one thing that makes sense today and that is total rebellion against a system built on pure lies. The working people of this country deserve better than this.  -សតិវ អតុ