Stand up. Link arms. Fight back.
Because the truth is, no one’s coming to save us. It’s us or nothing.
From Chase Linko-Looper:
“First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak for me.”
That’s not some history class memory. That’s a blueprint for how the powerful silence us, one by one, while the rest sit scared.
And right now, it’s happening again.
I served ten years in the US Army. I bled overseas. I was trained by the empire itself on how to kill.
And I’m here to tell you: They should be terrified of people like me.
I’m not a politician begging billionaires for scraps. I’m not a sellout playing inside their rotten system.
I’m what they fear most: a working-class fighter who’s wide awake and pissed off.
In 2025, 64% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck.
Over 600,000 of our brothers and sisters sleep on the streets.
Kids in the richest nation on Earth go to bed hungry while CEOs pop champagne.
They spend $850 billion a year on bombs but can’t fix a damn water pipe in Jackson or Flint.
They tell you prisons are for “criminals”, but they don’t tell you the 13th Amendment legalized slavery inside those walls.
And when workers rise up, they do what they’ve always done: send in the cops, the army, the courts.
In 1921, at Blair Mountain, my ancestors—coal miners, real rednecks wearing red bandanas—picked up rifles and stood against the mine bosses and their private armies.
They fought for basic human decency while the U.S. government pointed guns at their backs.
Eugene Debs, locked up for speaking truth, said it best:
“The most heroic word in all languages is Revolution.”
Let me tell you something plain:
We aren’t here to beg.
We aren’t here to plead for a seat at their rotten table.
We’re here to flip the damn table over.
So I’m asking you right now, on this May Day, a day built by workers’ blood:
Organize.
Unionize your shops.
Defend your neighbors.
Feed the hungry.
House the homeless.
And fight like hell for every damn inch of your dignity.
Because the truth is, no one’s coming to save us.
It’s us or nothing.
And I don’t plan on going quietly.
Stand up. Link arms. Fight back. Burn their cages down and build something better in the ashes.
Solidarity forever!
Remembering Blair Mountain
The following is a speech by Robert Gillette, director of the Eastern Panhandle Liberation Center in Martinsburg, WV. The speech was given as part of “Remember Blair Mountain: Celebrating the Largest Labor Uprising in US History,” an event held in Shepherdstown, WV, organized by the
Righteous!
The revolution we need! Instead of the civil war the oligarchs are trying to be sure we have.