Essential Uprising<\/p>\n
When the minimum wage is gridlocked at $7.25
\nAnd I\u2019m dedicated to the humble goal of staying alive
\nI must fight for the right to organize
\nBefore my very eyes
\nI\u2019m watching the price of everything skyrise
\nWhile my check\u2019s paltry purchasing power plummets and nosedives
\nWho can survive off of measly $15.00 an hour
\nHow do we fight back against these misers in power
\nI\u2019m tired of trading in my life in exchange for pennies
\nHow do we crush a system where a few get rich from exploiting many
\n
\nWorkers must organize to assert their power
\nWe must unionize so we don\u2019t get devoured
\nWithin the ravenous fangs of profit-hungry bosses
\nWho treat our lives as bottom lines causing shareholder losses
\nMy physical, mental and emotional wellbeing can\u2019t be reduced to operational expenditures
\nI refuse to be disfigured
\nDehumanized into dead digits and fractional figures
\nOn corporate spreadsheets that function like Middle Passage manifests
\nTurning human beings into inanimate objects
\nThe silent cogs in wheels who feed the machine their flesh
\nWe graduated from 3\/5 of a human on their constitution
\nTo the gaudy and abundant amount of 1.5 of a person on a spreadsheet calculating headcount
\nYet my paycheck doesn\u2019t even account
\nFor the singular needs of me
\n <\/p>\n
Let alone that whole half a person they squeezing out of me for free
\n
\nA living wage and full benefits are not perks
\nThey\u2019re basic human rights for those that work
\nThey are basic human rights for those that don\u2019t work
\nAnd these basic human rights
\nMUST be the foundation on which we fight
\nAnd if the bosses object then we\u2019ll go on strike
\nWe\u2019ll cripple the corporations because they\u2019re NOTHING without us
\nThe longer we strike the more we\u2019ll realize our power
\nAs we realize our power, we\u2019ll grow more militant
\nExpanding our demands; sharpening our class consciousness
\nWe\u2019ll win a living wage, universal healthcare and universal housing
\nWe\u2019ll defund the police and abolish the prisons
\nDestroy every tentacle of this vicious system that upholds capitalism
\nWe\u2019ll smash the ruling class and reverse their corruptions
\nWe\u2019ll organize to unionize until we own and control the modes of production
\n
\nFrom our labor we\u2019ll no longer be alienated
\nThe wealth they stole from us will be expropriated
\nAnd delivered back into the hands of the people until human need is satiated
\n
\nFeatured Image Credit: Nevena Pilipovi\u0107-Wengler<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In \u201cEssential Uprising,\u201d Demetrius Noble<\/strong> urges workers to organize to demand an end to alienation and the meeting of basic human needs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":242,"featured_media":10339,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,258,268],"tags":[107],"class_list":["post-10334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-article","category-creative-writing","category-culture-and-arts","tag-workers-power"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/noble-poem_feature-scaled.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/242"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10334"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10334\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}