Build Back Better or Back the Billionaire Bosses

It's a bright sunny day in Brooklyn, NY! I'm here for work and I'm visiting my family who still live in South Brooklyn where I grew up. As an adult, I appreciate this place much more than I ever did when I lived here in the 80s and 90s. I'll share more about this later.

Just across the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge is Staten Island, the forgotten borough of NYC, and it was there that a historic event in the labor movement took place yesterday. Amazon workers battled and won their fight to unionize!! Woot!! Woot!!

They took on multi-BILLIONAIRE, Jeff Bezos, and Amazon's anti-union mis and disinformation and persisted in spite of all the intimidation tactics. Regular folx, like us, stood up for workers' rights and human dignity! It may not have been a victory by a large margin, but it was a BIG 2022 WIN!!

This news makes me proud to be a New Yorker, proud of our sibling borough and all the individuals who took action by bravely signing and joining and advocating for workers' rights. We should all be wickedly impressed by the. courage of these every day working people and grateful for the young organizers leading the charge.

As many of us know, the HR 5376 Build Back Better Act was introduced into Congress and passed in the House in November of 2021 only to end up getting buried in the Senate thanks to the obstructionist moderate Democrats, Joe Manchin (WV), & Krysten Sinema (AZ). We were betrayed by our own team; it's maddening!!! But I'm not surprised and that makes me deeply sad.

All the good stuff in that bill - all the people it would/could help - but neither doing good nor the people seem to matter. And seeing how easily. our legislators just gave up makes me even sadder.

And those of us who vote blue feel despondent and like viable options don't exist. Praying for the dems to have the courage to change the pro-corporate status quo responsible for killing those of us holding on to the lowest rungs of the socio-economic ladder feels delusional and pointless; yet I do it because it's part of my practice now. I'm not religious, but I'm discovering that prayer eases my soul; it's a healing resource.

Yes, I feel betrayed by our leaders and drained by the energy I've expended trying to create change in the political sphere when I'm not in that space nor do I want to be. I'm a civilian now, but I didn't used to be. I served before and it's important to me that service-oriented people are in our government. After all, they sometimes make life or death decisions that impacts our military. Unfortunately, we all can see just how grossly self-serving our leaders, regardless of political party, can be.

Still, I care about what I'm witnessing and part of my job as an adult is to figure out what can be done; it's important that I don't disengage. I'm alive in 2022 and I can't just ignore how we, the adults, are behaving; it's disappointing. We're infuriating.

And now, Biden is talking about introducing a Billionaire Tax and we have progressive democrats, like Rep. Katie Porter (CA), who support such efforts trying to get the word out and explain it to the rest of us. But, really, how many of us are actually paying attention? Will we actually get it before the next election?

We're gonna need to hold the House and flip the Senate in order to gain ground. But if we're being "realistic", passing any legislation that supports the majority of the American people looks bleak. Despite all the lies and corruption we've been privy to these past few years, we still vote scum in to lead us. It's bonkers!! We've got eyes that can see the machinations of the elite, which is not really that hard since they like to flaunt their greed.

I know, I alone, cannot change the state of our union, but I hold firm to the idea that, together, we can do better than this. But first we have to believe and by and large, we don't. To me, it feels like we, the people, have lost faith in ourselves and each other. We can't imagine better than what we see and all many of us see is division and hate and GREED!

It seems like many of us have lost our will to dream and have resigned ourselves into believing that things like peace and true allyship are impossible. We look at reality and point to society and throw up our hands and say nothing we could do would ever yield different results. Of course, that's simply not true. Every little choice of ours actually counts too.

But I get it, we're too tired to engage beyond the now reality; too overwhelmed by all the need. We're lost and don't know what it will take for us to succeed so we say forget it. Instead, we, the masses, temper our hopes and arrest our dreams; it's what we've been taught to do. But some of us know better and we must work together because we, the people, deserve better.

Thanks to citizen warriors like labor organizer, Chris Smalls, I keep the faith. I believe that it's him and people like him that will Build Back Better for real. Yes, let's do what we can to hold our leaders in office accountable, but don't forget the every day heroes on the frontlines taking on those Billionaires who make their fortune off our labor. Bravo!!

We need to listen to the people working for the people more than those flying off to space just because they can; because fair pay and humane working conditions is never part of their plan.

Listen: We are the Champions by Queen