December 2021

In America as the middle class we trade time for money. You are paid based on your value. Your value is based of what a person or a company/ corporation is willing to pay you for the time that you give them to complete a task. If you offer to complete that task for free or to do more for the same rate you are paid to do the original task you are giving them a discount. Therefore the value of your service depreciates. If the collective whole allows for the depreciation of the service that the corporation pays for then they no longer respect the original price and or value that is set from the beginning.

Take pride in the work that you do. Don’t offer to do what you are already paid to do for less when you are not obligated to do so. Do nothing more and do nothing less. These past two years has shown so much to those of us in the automotive industry, and to the blue collar worker. Countries across the world with less fortunate situations as our own, have had to shut down and brought billion dollar corporations to their knees due to issues within the supply chain all because we have allow them to thrive on the willingness of other cultures to give the services that we can render at a cheaper and discounted rate amongst other things. All the while they benefit from this great country that we live without paying their fair share to our society. And in the meantime they want us to do more for them to be competitive in “the global economy” without being willing to pay for it.

Greatest doesn’t come from corporations having the bigger bank account; but from the lives that are touched when you take care of those who help build that bank account. As a collective the power is in our hands. To quote Walter Reuther, “the ballot box is a direct correlation to the bread box.” Meaning everything we do as a collective should be for the greater good of our wellbeing. What we do from our waking hour, to the time we lay our heads down at night. We as a whole in the middle class we dictate our own self worth. As the backbone to society we dictate if our worth depreciates, or if grows in value.

My hat tips off to the fighting force of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union who are standing up to Kellogg and the members of the UAW working for John Deere; stay the course and fight for what you believe in. Stand up for what is right for the collective. You are worth more then they want you to know; but you have to not only believe it but be willing to stand up and fight through the process to show them you are worth more. God bless you and Merry Christmas.

February 2021

With 2021 in full swing, it has me thinking of the past, where we have come from as whole, and the accomplishments of our leadership of the past. Thinking of things that we can do to get back on track and get ahead of the ball in the game. There’s nothing wrong with holding on to the past, but to embrace the future and prepare for it is to gain as we plan, prepare, and build the many strengths and qualities that make us who we are.
Frederick Douglass said “If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”
Our fight is not with each other or our own self, but with those who want to hold us back from the vision that those before us had for a better future of equal prosperity for equal work put in. A fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay. Comfort should be rare when we are in a day and time where those who control everything we do with the click of a button or stroke of a pen. Water, being one of the strongest elements, can’t have an effect on the environment when it sits still.
 When I was young, I was told by my father that a man has great power over you when he can dictate the life you and your family live by telling you how much money you can make. The deck will always be stacked against us; when those who want us to have nothing or earn little can control us and make us fight with each other. We are all mankind who want and desire freedom, respect, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; but they limit how much of each you can have just because you are not in the same tax bracket as them.
Brothers and sisters, I see a brighter future, but we must come together here as the working class to gain those freedoms and rights that should be given to every person that earns them. Stand side by side and not face to face.