08/12/2024
As specified by Jon Queally and Common Dreams, ""There is only one answer to the threat we face as a nation. The answer is solidarity."
That is the core message directed at the American working class from the United Auto Workers (UAW) in a new ad that frames the nation's current political battle as one between organized workers and the billionaire and corporate classes.
"We stand at a historic crossroads in this country right now," says UAW president Shawn Fain to begin the 2-minute video. "And it's clear Donald Trump represents the billionaire class—that's his base."
"We let working-class people lead the fight."
Calling Trump a "scab" who will "ruthlessly fight for a vision of America in which the wealthy rule everyone and everything, and the working class is left behind and forced to settle for the scraps," Fain argues that "what we win or lose now" will ultimately impact "whether we go forwards or backwards for a generation—everything is at stake."
"In the wealthiest country in the world, working class people shouldn't have to scrap to get by, paycheck to paycheck," Fain says before championing the UAW's historic strike last year in which the union's members stood up to the Big Three automakers—and won historic contracts.
"We united the entire working class," he added, "that's the winning formula."
"The dream of a man like Donald Trump is that the vast majority of working class people will remain divide," says Fain. "They divide us by race. They divide us by gender, by who we love, or where we were born. That's the game of the wealthy, divide and conquer."
The UAW's framing accumulated praise Friday and into the weekend from progressives who share the idea that working-class solidarity remains the key to defeating the fascist threat posed by Trump and that also must serve as the foundation for enacting the vision of more equal, just, peaceful, and sustainable society.
"This is brilliant. It's also true," said author and social justice activist Naomi Klein in response to the ad. "It's also the message we need to be sending non-stop."
Andy O'Brien, a columnist for The Bollard magazine, reacted with: "Holy shit this ad is powerful."
Fain's speech that acts as the narrative of the new video was delivered last month when the UAW leader spoke at the national convention of the American Postal Workers Union (APWU) in Detroit.
"In the wealthiest country in the world, working class people shouldn't have to scrap to get by, paycheck to paycheck."
The UAW has endorsed the Democratic presidential ticket of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. Meeting with the candidates earlier this week at a local union hall in Wayne, Michigan, Fain said, "To me, this election is real simple. It's about one question, a question we've made famous in the labor movement: Which side are you on?"
"On one side, we've got a billionaire who serves himself and his billionaire buddies. He lies, cheats, and steals his way to the top. He is the lapdog of the billionaire class," said Fain. "On the other side, we've got a badass woman who has stood on the picket line with working-class people. Kamala Harris is a champion of the working class."
Though not featured in the new ad, Fain also told the APWU members in July that the key to the UAW's victory against the Big Three was that "we let working-class people lead the fight" against management.
"We gave our members the information, we gave them the tools, and we gave them the courage to stand up for themselves," he said. Like the broader concept of working-class solidarity, he said, that's the "winning formula" for workers and their families to take control of their economic and political destinies.
"If you follow those core principles," he told the postal service workers, "you will not lose. And I guarantee you, the UAW will have your back every step of the way.""
https://www.commondreams.org/news/uaw-working-class-solidarity
As UPR News has previously reported in our Active Measures section (see the link above), this strategy of dividing to conquer used by Trump and the Republican Party is a Russian, royal, and other dictators' strategy, used by a small minority of people to oppress a much larger majority of people, a strategy known as "active measures", which manufactures "wedge issues" to polarize natural differences in the population -- pitting the rights of the rich against the poor, the rights of men against women, the rights of adults against children, the rights of one spiritual group over another, the rights of one political party over another, the rights of one race or country of origin over another, the rights of one language over another, the rights of one sexual preference group over another, and so on.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_measures
Then they stoke fear among the polarized camps they engineer, and this divides the majority into smaller fighting factions, which the super elite control through ownership of the largest propaganda channels, social media, the news, advertising companies, movie companies, but not at all limited to the same, which deceptively-shapes the fear and anger narratives of those they seek to divide and conquer.
It's literally one of the oldest imperial, royal, and fascist tricks in the book, and is how a small group of people lord over a much larger group of people, who within a single day could otherwise end their oppression if they united and organized to do so. We could all be free of the failed billionaire experiment and their corruption of our government in a single day, if we united and organized to do so, which is what the billionaires and a minority, but powerful, corrupted public offices fear the most.
The GOP SCOTUS usurpers installed by Jeffrey Epstein's, the GOP's, and Russia's overlapping crime syndicate are only 5 people who are reshaping America for the billionaires, traitors, organized crime, and child sex traffickers, regardless of the other 300 million plus Americans, whose lives, country, and faith they are destroying, threatening, perverting, corrupting, and/or dismantling.
Unite the left and the right against Jeffrey Epstein's and Russia's overlapping billionaires' fight, fright, and might.
End this failed billionaire experiment by writing your members of Congress and demanding a wealth tax on the networked and conspiring billionaires, attempting to bribe and corrupt the government, to divert taxpayer funds, and to RICO-obstruct for their ongoing treasonous organized crimes, America's greatest threat.