The kind of progressive movement we need.

My Letter to the Editor gets published in the International Falls Daily Journal, the largest circulation newspaper in northeast Minnesota which is an industrial town centered around the forestry industry:

http://www.ifallsjournal.com/opinion/letters_to_the_editor/america-needs-employment-act/article_426a8fec-6680-5a32-81f0-5b6a10b9a757.html

We need to talk about how peace is related to full employment since these dirty wars kill jobs just like they kill people and how fighting climate change creates some jobs--- but, we also need to talk about how a National Public Health Care System will create over twelve-million new jobs and a National Public Child Care System would create another three-million new jobs and how we need to open all the closed mines, mills and factories to begin producing what we need for an environmentally sound stable economy which puts human needs before Wall Street's greed.

We need to discuss re-establishing the WPA, CCC and CETA in order to take care of aging infrastructure, combat the effects of climate change and make sure people are properly trained while working in WPA and CCC programs and projects.

And what about the fact that the huge military-industrial complex leaves behind the largest carbon footprint of all? Anyone with an ounce of common sense can see that peace is provides a bigger way to fight climate change than switching over to new kinds of more energy efficient light-bulbs; both are necessary but that which yields the most potent results needs to be included in the discussion of the remedies--- and so far the importance of peace has not entered the climate change movement because certain forces want to keep peace out of the discussions about both climate change and jobs even though peace is the key to solving climate change and unemployment and getting the kind of public health care and child care systems working people are entitled to.

Why isn't it possible to shape a progressive agenda on all of these factors instead of just approaching the problems in a piece-meal fashion as if all these factors are somehow separate from one another when they aren't?

And why the failure to advocate the need for a working class based people's party which would articulate such a progressive agenda?

Full employment is possible and we need to see to it that the government becomes legislatively responsible for full employment.

Half a million jobs from fighting global warming is good; but, what about the fifteen million more people who are unemployed and those forced into poverty because the miserly Minimum Wage forces poverty on working class families and drags all wages down just like this unemployment is doing?

A Labor Network for Sustainability needs a much broader agenda based on the reality of the dire straights warmongering Wall Street coupon clipping parasites have placed us in making it a requirement that in the process of fighting for these reforms we are challenging Wall Street for political and economic power with working class power.

Let's get these issues properly framed so we can unite the working class in the kind of struggle creating a sustainable economy and world will require if we are going to survive.

Economic stability and prosperity for all along with sustainability in a complex world requires peace and full employment where everyone has access to health care and child care as we combat climate change and global warming; and, it is on this basis we need to build a united working class people's movement capable of defending this kind of progressive initiative where people work, in the streets and at the ballot box.