The 2nd coming.....

 

• Trump will keep alive the hope that he will run for prez again.  He might even declare for 2024 soon after leaving the White House.  That way he gets the first big headline after Biden's inauguration - right on the money. But since Trump loves to eat at McDonald's don't expect him to live long enough to make it to 2024.
  

• Christian evangelicals are hugely angry that Trump didn't win.  They were repeatedly told by leading preachers that God was sending 'Angels from South America and Africa' to save his ill-fated reelection from defeat.  The Republicans understand the importance of the Black and Hispanic vote and will take every possible opportunity to shine some love on them - without of course any significant financial support during this time of crashing economies.  
• The pandemic is the perfect 'opportunity' to support Wall Street's strategy of 'capital re-accumulation'. The couple trillion dollars of bailout money for the banksters was just the beginning.
  

• The city of Gary, Indiana was created virtually out of nothing by US Steel Corporation in 1906 as the location for a new steel plant.  Much of the steel industry was moved out of Chicago to Gary which was twenty-five miles south of the windy city on Lake Michigan. The new steel city was named after US Steel founder - Elbert Henry Gary.

• One of the key reasons for the move to Gary was the growth of unions in Chicago. The workers were militantly challenging Chicago's industrial elites.  The workers had to be restrained and punished for daring to make collective economic and social gains. Thus began the 'period of capital re-accumulation'.
  

• The Pullman Strike of 1894 was the first national strike in US history. Before coming to an end, it involved over 150,000 persons and twenty-seven states and territories and would paralyze the nation's railway system. The entire rail labor force of the nation would walk away from their jobs. In supporting the capitalist side of this strike President Grover Cleveland for the first time in the nation's history would send in federal troops, who would fire on and kill strikers and their supporters. The federal courts would outlaw striking by the passing of the Omnibus indictment. This blow to unionized labor would not be struck down until the passing of the Wagner act in 1935. This all began in the little town of Pullman, Illinois, near Chicago.

 

• So the rich fat cats put their big heads together and decided that the unions had to be broken and that local communities had to be destabilized which the move to Gary did in fact accomplish.  It was a sociological and political act of evil.  The impacts on workers, their families, local shops frequented by workers, churches - the entire fabric of the local community was broken and lives were destroyed.  

• Oligarchs, and their minions, are always blinded by their worship of the 'almighty dollar'. Their spiritual connection to the earth and to fellow living creatures is snapped by this love for money and power.  It is a deep sickness - a wickedness one might say.

 

• I had a Palestinian friend when I lived in Orlando, Florida.  (I was organizing along with the Callahan Neighborhood Association to stop the city from destroying their historic downtown neighborhood in order to build a sports arena and hotels in the now lucrative real estate market.  The once palmetto scrub land where black people were told to settle had become prime real estate in Orlando's exploding city after Disney World came to Central Florida.) The Palestinian owned a small grocery in the neighborhood and gave us food to share with the neighborhood when we organized big rallies in a park calling on the city government to stand with the black people in Callahan.  In the end the city had to compromise because of the determined organizing and steps were taken to 'Save the Callahan' as the campaign was called.

• So we either fight to save our neighborhoods and our communities or else the ruling elites will run us over with bulldozers and send us packing.  Look at how many are facing no jobs and loss of health insurance today (if they ever had an insurance policy they were one of the lucky ones).
  

• Millions of people all over the country are currently living similarly close to the edge. "Congress is set to cut off 12 million Americans from the only thing holding them back from falling into financial wreckage and disaster," says Andrew Stettner, a co-author of the new study from the think tank called the Century Foundation. Unemployment benefits - once they are gone the homeless population will explode.

• We always have to be vigilant.  Only the rich can take time off to lick their wounds after constant battle.  But for us on the bottom of the heap there is only this moment.  What are we each doing today to protect our Mother Earth and all of our children - including the generations to come?

• This is the discussion that was largely missing during the recent election campaigns.  The two corporate dominated political parties carried freight for the mega-rich while betraying the poor and the working class.  With no one to speak for them many Americans turned to Trump who was able to astonishingly keep their attention.  His acting experience paid off big-time for him. After all, the show must go on.
  

Bruce