The American Sin

The fear of being a person of color in America was brought once again to the forefront of everyday living, exploding onto the pages of reality dictated by a 21 year old blond-haired young man in a way that has sparked a discussion from coast to coast. The history of discrimination based on skin color once again has presented itself, covered in the blood of grandparents, of mothers and fathers, of a librarian, of a Allen University graduate, and of clergy all of whom thought themselves to be safe and in a place of peace. There are two companions joined at the hip, responsible for this American born, South Carolina tragedy.

Reality is tied to history in this horrific episode of absolute domestic terrorism on which such hatred is founded. The kidnapping of millions of African slaves dragged off to this developing country and forced into decades of free labor and a life of absoluter horror is the start of “America’s Greatness”, and the place we should all be aware of as we search to finds reasons for this latest, violent incident. The legacy left by that terrible yet historical truth underscores that “Blacks can never escape the shadow of the plantation.”

We must engage a discussion now that calls for calm and clear heads as we examine the “whys” and the “what-next” conversations that must follow if we are to stay on course. America has used the color question skillfully over the long night of 400 years this practice has been in place. Bombings, shootings, burnings, castrating’s, amputating’s, raping’s, family separations, jailing’s, executions, the list is long but not at all foreign to the progeny of former slaves. This commemorative marker will stay on the hearts and minds of many as it represents a degree of shock, awe, and depravity that we have not been witness to in such stark tones while “main-stream” media works to convince us all that the nation has moved forward leaving such violent acts in the past.

America is at fault for this tragic episode, but it has an “ALPHA” partner in this criminal act. The basis of the country founded so long ago promised to be the land where “equality and democracy” reigned supreme, and that no mistreatment toward its citizens would be tolerated. Our forefathers wrote volumes about the rights of the average citizen and the propertied class in this new country, and dictated glorious and beautiful paragraphs about opportunities and about equal access and other truths that were to be held as self-evident. Something happened on the way to the fountain of democracy, as the “ALPHA-DOG” corporate-class saw a way to make eternal profits if they could just secure then normalize measures that would keep different groups fighting each other while they raked in millions, then billions, and today trillions. So far, the policy of divide and make money, has worked wonderfully for this corporate culprit.

There are other tools of hatred and division in that bag of tricks that when needed, surface quickly, though none are as potent or as effective as what we get when some people train their young to hate on the basis of skin color. When that tactic doesn’t produce the result wanted, we can expect the rise of other points of division. Could be along gender lines, or attacks aimed at low-income mothers, against Hispanics, or against Native Americans, or against Muslims, against the families that live “over there”, and so on. There is no end to the examples of how one group is turned against another group, taught to hate the other especially if these questions appear wrapped in religion, or in politics.
American history and corporate control sleep together. They are both are complicit in this murder of nine African-Americans who were in church to pray and study peaceful ways to serve the Almighty. This 21-year old “creature” had to be taught to both hate and to direct violence toward worshippers whom he sat with for an hour. He and the “9” have been enshrined into our collective memories for years to come. We will not always remember the names of these fellow citizens, but we will always remember this tragedy and will mourn this episode for the rest of our days. It is what we do next that will mark how we recall this murderous moment that happened on a Wednesday night, during Bible study, June 17th, 2015.

Progressive and revolutionary thinkers are marching ahead, envisioning a new world without the influence of corporate pirates who keep us poor and fighting for crumbs as they train how to blame others for individual economic challenges. Progressive and revolutionary thinkers are marching ahead, envisioning a new world where people access what they need in a system that supports equal access and opportunity for all. Progressive and revolutionary thinkers are marching ahead, envisioning a new world where we don’t let 9th graders drop out of school, nor do we allow messages of hatred masquerading as “free speech” to be shared on “FACEBOOK” without consequences, nor do we allow traitors to that vision who call themselves Klansmen, Nazis, or the rest to operate with impunity and in the dark. Time to call them all out, and to make them pay along with their financial sponsors, those who would defile the peace and the prosperity that is ours to claim.

From neighborhoods, to this greater American tragedy that played itself out in Charleston, S.C., any single person or class of persons that supports violence in the form of bullets, or in the form of poverty, or discrimination of any type must be challenged. No one can legislate feelings or thoughts, but we must hold those who openly declare hurt toward others, responsible in such a way that they learn to fear saying similar words where others might hear them. We cannot allow this horrible incident to take us off our mark as we go forward toward the building of such a new world that works for the majority of working class people. We must close ranks around our sorrow and carry the memory of those lost to us by the senseless act of this demonic, domestic terrorist with us into the bright future that lies ahead.

Lastly, about that flag that flies over the Carolina capital bldg. It is a symbol of treachery, Kid Rock, a constant reminder of slavery, a symbol of violence and of hatred that those who can’t let the Civil War fade into the past, hold on to. In years past, the Black Panther Party openly carried fire arms in their defense against elements they suspected were active in the murder of Black folks. Since that flag won’t come down, I challenge all in the memory of the Black Panther Party who have rifles, to go to that site at night and open fire on that flag. Anglo-Americans in greater numbers are invited to join with other national patriots already in motion by adding their voices to the demand for peace and the end to war, to violence, to hurt toward Mother Earth, to poverty, and the call to end all forms of discrimination. The twin towers of abuse - the legacy of American history along with the recent occupation of corporate control - will maintain their reign of terror over us all that promises to be the death of our nation.

We are witnesses to America’s Sin, so a few holes in that flag fired by a few skilled, blonde-headed patriots, may send the right message…” Hurt No One Else in fact or with symbols.” The other message may also be heard, and that is…”we are not going to sit and be foreclosed on, have our water shutoff, injured, impoverished, or slaughtered day and day, city after city without consequences to those who would cause such a degree and scale of pain”… Take that painful flag down and take it to a museum, with the bullet holes still visible.

MD  Taylor
MI Welfare Rights Organization

Water Statement to Michigan Rep Chang

MWRO/WATER STATEMENT

To: Rep. Stephanie Chang

From: Maureen D Taylor, MSW

Re: Status Report on Accessibility


Rep. Chang;

As the State Chairperson of the MI Welfare Rights Organization, know that we are humbled to present these words that outline our collective feelings on this sensitive and critical issue as thousands of residential customers in Detroit face new rounds of water shutoffs.

I am reminded that in the Lansing State Capitol, stands a bronze statue of a seven-year old Helen Keller, blind at birth, memorializing the moment of her historical enlightenment.  Her teacher, Ann Sullivan, and this story made famous in the Oscar winning movie, “The Miracle Worker” was trying to convey the essence of what words meant to a child born without hearing or sight. The bronze statue captures that moment as Helen put her hands under the pump while her teacher, Ms. Sullivan, used hand-to-hand sign language and spelled out the word…  W-A-T-E-R…to her.  Helen finally understood the relationship between the word and what that word represented.

June 1st marks the day the great Helen Keller passed away, so it is ironic that in June of this year, we are celebrating not an age of enlightenment, but instead we are a witness to a period of human darkness that will stain this State for years.

It is not necessary to recant the economic climate that residents of Michigan have been struggling through since the recession of 2005 and beyond.  Entire cities and communities scattered across the State continue to reel from the loss of financial foundations built by so many years of fruitful employment. In the US Census of 2010, it was reported that MI was the only state to have loss significant population.  In Detroit, we know this fact all too well, as do all elected officials that purport to represent the residents.

Over one million residents from just Detroit have left this City leaving us with just under 800,000 to fill the void created by such a dramatic population decline.  Factories that were the back-bone of financial stability for millions of families have been slowly phased out. Computers are taking the place of the American working class, and that trend is best seen here in Detroit and in surrounding factory-based counties. Technology that used to enhance labor, today has replaced labor leaving in its wake the skeleton of what was in neighborhoods all over Wayne County. 

We are slipping into the dark-side, shoved into this draconian condition marked by a false and divisive narrative, which covertly suggests Detroiters have resources but because of our criminal leanings, we don’t want to pay water bills. Poverty is being criminalized as the poor are held responsible for not having enough money to pay rising utility costs.  The economics of the low-income family profile is completely overlooked. Consequently, we learn nothing from past
civil uprisings, or the current uprisings in Cities across the country.    

Our calls for relief are mostly ignored. Our tears go unnoticed, and our prayers have been unanswered. We have hope, and try to hold on, but this latest assault against the most vulnerable is galvanizing a response that know one here wants to anticipate.

Welfare Rights and the Peoples Water Board have fought tooth and nail over these last 16 months, in every way possible to convince the City of Detroit Water and Sewerage Dept. that the path they had chosen was both wrong and not cost-effective. We have tirelessly offered solution after solution to this crisis demanding that a Water Affordability Plan be instituted, even if it is implemented at first as a pilot project to be tested.  Always the answer is “NO”, so we find ourselves again in this painful gap of pending defiance and civil unrest as we are unable to do anything but stop this by any means necessary.

We urge our elected officials to review this crisis and that they put the issue of mass water shutoffs at the top of the list as the deadline for continued tolerance approaches.  As MWRO is the recognized union for low-income families, we cannot turn from this struggle.  If our colleagues from the UNITED NATIONS are correct in that the US of America cannot deprive low-income populations of access to clean water and sanitation, we will then pursue the path of litigation as we seek to file suit against this violation of international law.

We will not stop there.  We will press you to create legislation that outlaws such practices now and forever.  We will not stop there.  We will demonstrate, we will picket, we will agitate, we will interfere with business as usual everywhere we can in an effort to erase forever the notion that water is a commodity to be bought and sold.  Access to water is a human right, and must always be held as a common trust never to be denied because people are too poor.  Shame on those who created this concept, and shame on us if we allow this “cancer” to exist without an all out battle against it.

Maureen D Taylor
State Chairperson

There are Only 2 Classes in America

The Middle Class is a fallacy the Rich created to inspire the bottom to dream, to strive, to in fact work harder (for their employers) toward the goal of someday achieving their same status and heights!

Oh, I understand why they’re fighting to remain Middle Class, and I forgive them. As when you fall, it seems like the ground is coming up to meet you. Those who think they're Middle Class hope that by being in the middle, they are protected from hitting the bottom. It’s because the bottom is rapidly coming up to meet them!

Instead, they realize that what they’ve been taught all their lives has been proven to be a lie. In fact, it is causing a myriad of medical problems -- physical and mental -- and the lies are just another avenue for the Rich to continue (still at our expense) to line their pockets, as we continue to starve and die!

WAKE THE HELL UP PEOPLE! The WORKING CLASS is and CAN BE the MOST POWERFUL WEAPON EVER WIELDED against the CAPITALIST SYSTEM!! We just need to accept that we are who we are, and the process of taking back what is ours anyway can begin in earnest! We NEED to GET 'ER GOIN' FOLKS, the TIME HAS COME!!

1) THE RICH...

2) The WORKING CLASS = ANY class which HAS to exchange LABOR (physical or mental cerebral) for a living wage.

(Working Class hyphen everybody else!)

WORKING CLASS-Information Technology (IT)
WORKING CLASS-Medical
WORKING CLASS-Educational
WORKING CLASS-Skilled Trades
WORKING CLASS-Factory/Assembly line
WORKING CLASS-Social Worker/Public Service
WORKING CLASS-Municipal/State/City worker
WORKING CLASS-Food Service
WORKING CLASS-Cashier/Counter help
WORKING CLASS-Stock/Warehouse worker
WORKING CLASS-Private Owned-Airlines/Trains/Bus Lines wkr
WORKING CLASS-STAY AT HOME MOMS (Work without SALARIES!)
WORKING CLASS-Self Employed(Entrepreneurial/Cottage industry)
WORKING CLASS-Working poor (2-3 jobs still not enough to maintain self/family)
WORKING CLASS-Unemployed (no jobs are available!)
WORKING CLASS-Permanently unemployable (mentally ill, disabled/unable)

Ann Grimmett
STOP the INSANITY!! (studying as we all should!)

Image from AlJazeera

Maureen Taylor on Mark Steiner Show

"Do the volatile financial markets, weak economy, rising inequality, and global protests mean that capitalism is failing us?  Do we need a new system, or just reform of our current economic structures?"

Listen to The Mark Steiner Show on the nature and the future of capitalism. This August 15, 2011, podcast includes discussion and analysis by Maureen Taylor, State Chair, MWRO; and Sam Pizzigati,  author of Greed and Good, a book on the looting of the U.S. from the top.

Taylor and Pizzigati discuss whether capitalism in the U.S. is fundamentally flawed or simply in need of reform, plus the role of technology and the state of workers. The Mark Steiner Show is broadcast on WEAA 88.9FM, Baltimore, Maryland.

Listen to the podcast or download the mp3.

Image from The Mark Steiner Show.

Wake The Hell Up!!

‘CIPIENTS SPEAK
by Maureen D. Taylor
State Chair, MWRO
May 2009

On Thursday, May 14th, 2009, most Americans woke up to the grim news that in order for Chrysler to save itself, 25% of the current dealers needed to be sacrificed. Some 789 Chrysler dealers were on a list to be closed, some as early as June 9th, after having served the master for decades. Never mind the hundreds of thousands of new families who are now facing unemployment, never mind the many community programs underwritten by these dealerships over the years, never mind the feeder businesses near by who rely on the traffic created by these car dealers - with one swipe of the pen, they will soon be “toast!”

Next comes the dreaded list issued by General Motors who will name the fate of thousands more GM dealerships that must close to save GM. All the while these horrific announcements are being made, a psychotic Wall Street reacts by closing higher, happy at the news that the Big Two are being saved by the sacrifices of millions. Is there not something insidious, sick, and diabolical about these happenings?

Perhaps what is most disturbing is the ease in which millions of car-related workers accept the premise that for America to be better, they must starve, lose healthcare, have homes taken from them, and in other ways stand “mute” while their very lives are being wrecked. The incomes offered to the next generation of workers is woefully lower than what their predecessors earned and will not allow the purchase of these hi-priced cars of the future.

The question is, where are the blue-collar and no-collar visionaries who have the answers to these current economic issues? Welfare Rights firmly believes that the solution to this deepening crisis is not to be found in the direction which we are all being pushed that calls for us to lose everything for the sake of the company. Don’t our lives and the future of our children count? Every response to the growing international crisis is one that suggests that we must bear the pain…closing schools, reduced wages, loss of retirement funds, loss of retiree health coverage, mounting foreclosures, rising domestic violence, rising suicide rates among children and veterans, rising incidents of police brutality…all things connected to rising stress levels. What do we get for our pain?

The time to bring up new ideas is now. The time to suggest a new and different course of action has arrived. The 6.5 million workers who now receive unemployment benefits must soon decide what is to be done when that last check arrives and a job has not been secured. The only answer to this greed-driven, corporate crisis is to engage in building an organized society that rests on certain foundations. People must eat, no matter what. People must have access to clean drinking water, no matter what. People and families must have homes to raise children in, no matter what. Elders deserve respect and a level of comfort, no matter what. We take care of sick people, we educate children so that they can make wise decisions as adults, we care for animals, and we live our days to serve a higher cause that includes kindness and concern.

The time has come to make a choice – “which side are YOU on?” Massa won’t let you live with him, so we must live without him. Wake the hell up!

People's Summit Takes On National Business Summit

From June 14-17, 2009, the People's Summit will take on the nation's CEO's and major corporations as they come to Detroit for the National Business Summit. Over two dozen of the nation's richest corporate leaders will be meeting to discuss how to increase their bottom line. But what they won't be talking about are the massive home foreclosures and evictions in Michigan, or the historic 22.2% unemployment rate in Detroit!

Corporate lay off kings and millionaire capitalists from Conoco-Phillips, Dow Chemical, General Motors, Chrysler, Humana Inc, Ascension Health, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, BNSF Railway Co, and more, will meet at Ford Field with government officials to set their economic course for the next few years.

But while the people of Detroit, and other hard working and unemployed men and women across this country are shut out of these meetings, a parallel "People's Summit and Tent City" will take place adjacently at Grand Circus Park.

Local and national participants in the People's Summit will draft a "People's Stimulus Plan" and an "Economic Bill of Rights" that recognize the needs and decisions of working class and poor people. Make your plans to be there for these three days of discussion and active resistance!

For more information, contact Moratorium Now! at (313) 680-5508

No End in Sight for Working People

Excerpt from Commentary by the editors of Fight Back!, March 2009

...In Minnesota, welfare rights, labor, student and other community groups have formed a People’s Bailout Coalition to make the rich pay and to protect the interests of working people. In California, high schools students have walked out of class to protest budget cuts.

Looking towards the future, we need to reject capitalism and fight for socialism. Is all that we can hope for is a return to what existed before the crisis? A return to a capitalist economy where millions go without health insurance even when the economy is growing? An economy where working peoples’ incomes fall in the long run while the rich get richer? An economy where we have to go up to our necks in debt to make ends meet while always having to worry where the next paycheck is coming from? An economy that is drained by one or more wars thousands of miles away to protect the interests of big oil? An economy where more than forty years after the civil rights act, African American, Latinos and women still earn less than whites and men? We can do better.

Working and oppressed people need a socialist system where political power is in the hands of the working class and the economy serves the people.

So as we fight for our needs and rights today, we should educate and organize for a socialist government and economy that will benefit us, and not Wall Street and big business.

See Fight Back News for the full editorial.

“Capitalism vs Democracy”

‘Cipients Speak! December 2008
by Maureen D. Taylor, MWRO State Chair

As we come to the end of the year, MWRO sends out greetings to our members across the state and to the welfare rights members across the country, the front-line fighters. Don’t get weary now! The American worker is looking at this collapse of an economy that we have all grown up under, and many questions abound.

Most of our lives, we have equated capitalism with democracy. People have the right to make money at the expense of someone else. Lights, gas, water – all natural resources have been privatized as corporations make millions at the hands of our suffering, and we are taught that this is the “American way.”

Retirees put their trust in these same corporations, and allowed these snakes to invest their pensions in stock market ventures, and now that their precious dollars are gone, the message is, “too bad!” We have seniors living well below the poverty level, juggling decisions to pay bills or pay for prescriptions, and we are okay with that?

Veterans who served honorably are living in homeless shelters, and we are okay with that? Southern congressional officials are demanding that northern workers accept the no-benefit salaries paid to non-union workers, and we are okay with that?

Capitalism doesn’t mean democracy, it equals terrorism.

The door is open to start rebuilding the country based on a new standard of living. Welfare Rights supports a guaranteed annual income for those unable to secure employment that maintains a level of existence well above poverty. If we can spend $10B per month over eight years for wars, we can keep people fed, clothed, and out of harms way.

The technology exists today to feed folk, to build cars that run on vegetable oil, to build affordable homes, to provide healthcare, and to make America closer to the dream that it was built on. We have to construct a new point of view that emphasizes that the needs of the many are more important than the needs of the few. Thank you, Mr. Spock! Happy Holidays to All!