Truthout: Let's Begin the Year With a Major Victory Over Corporate Power

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/28379-the-movement-can-begin-the-year-with-a-major-victory-over-corporate-power

Tuesday, 06 January 2015 09:27
By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, Popular Resistance | Op-Ed

In 2014 we saw tremendous growth of the movement across numerous fronts of struggle – worker rights and the wages, racism and policing, climate, the environment and extreme energy extraction, building a new economy and so much more. We also saw how uniting and working in solidarity is essential for success.

“Building power together” means working together as a movement of movements to build on the progress of 2014 when people created a larger and bolder movement. We build together because our issues are all connected and unified power is when we are strongest.

We have an immediate challenge in 2015 that threatens our progress. Obama and Congress are pushing to finalize the Trans-Pacific Partnership. If we don’t stop it, our struggles will be set back and social, economic and environmental justice will be more difficult to achieve. But we can defeat the corporate powers that exploit our communities if we unite and work together and doing so will strengthen us greatly.

Our Struggles Are Connected

The #BlackLivesMatter movement, while focused on the urgent issues of police abuse and institutional racism, is also recognizing that economic injustice in black communities is pervasive. The wealth divide between the top .1% and the rest of us is stark enough; but the wealth divide between African Americans and Caucasian Americans is extreme and growing rather than shrinking. Whites have much greater wealth, with white median wealth at $142,000 to blacks at $13,700. Black unemployment has been double white unemployment for 50 years, throughout that time black unemployment rates have averaged recession levels, 11.5%. Also, during that time whites Americans have earned $20,000 per year more than blacks. Poverty has been rising in the black community for 15 years. Police are needed to keep unfairly treated communities in check.

FULL story at link.