Let's Get to Work
If you’re willing to put in the work, to get your hands dirty, to take care of your neighbors—I’ll be right there beside you.
From Chase Linko-Looper:
I’ve been learning some hard lessons lately. Living in West Virginia, fighting for working people, for our homeless, our addicts, our union workers, our sick, our elderly, our kids—it means working alongside folks who, in another setting, I might call bootlickers. Some of them wave the flag too hard. Some love the cops. Some are convinced if they just work harder, they’ll get a fair shake in a rigged system. But you know what? They’re still human. And every single one of us is getting crushed under the same damn boot.
I ain’t here to make friends. But I also ain’t here to police people’s words just because I think they’re misguided. Some dude at a food drive calls it “helping the less fortunate” instead of “redistributing stolen wealth”? I let it go. Some old-timer says something ignorant but he’s the one doing hard labor out in a flood zone? I bite my tongue. Not because I don’t care—believe me, I care too much—but because arguing over semantics don’t mean a damn thing when people are starving, freezing, and dying.
I try to be a pacifist. I really do. But this country has made me so goddamn angry. Our state, our communities—we’re being bled dry. The feds have money for cops but not clean water. They got billions for war but no funding for the VA. Big corporations poison our land, our air, our water, and call it “job creation.” 40% of West Virginians are on Medicaid, but they wanna gut it. The overdose rate in our state is still one of the highest in the country, but they wanna jail addicts instead of treat them. They let our kids go hungry, then blame the parents for being poor. They let our roads crumble, our hospitals shut down, our people suffer—and they tell us it’s our fault.
I went to war for this country. I watched friends die for this country. And now I watch this country chew up and spit out its own people like we’re nothing. They act like veterans are sacred when they need a campaign ad, but when we come home broken, addicted, homeless, suicidal? Suddenly, we’re inconvenient. Suddenly, we’re lazy. Suddenly, it’s our fault. I served. I fought. And now, as a non-binary transgender person, I gotta fight every damn day just to exist. They say they love freedom, but they sure as hell don’t love my freedom.
I’m done being told to vote harder. I’m done being told to “just work hard.” I’m done pretending like the people in power give a damn. They don’t. They never have. And they never will. It’s on us to take care of each other. No one is coming to save us.
So yeah, I’ll work with people I don’t always agree with. I’ll stand shoulder to shoulder with someone who thinks cops are heroes if he’s handing out hot meals to the unhoused. I’ll organize with someone who thinks “socialism” is a dirty word if she’s fighting to keep the local hospital open. I don’t have to like you to fight for you. And I don’t expect you to like me either. But if you’re willing to put in the work, to get your hands dirty, to take care of your neighbors—I’ll be right there beside you.
If that don’t sit right with you, keep moving. If you think your bootstraps are gonna save you, keep walking. If you’re just here to argue, go find someone else to waste time with.
But if you’re here to fight—really fight—then let’s get to work.
