The Whole Damned System is Rigged Against Us
How long we gonna take it?
From Chase Linko-Looper:
The whole damned system is rigged against us—against you. And don’t you sit there for a second thinking that it ain’t.
You feel it—in your wallet, in your bones, in the hours you trade for scraps while billionaires sip wine made from your sweat. You see it in your town, your community—schools closing, factories gutted, main streets boarded up. You hear it in the news, if you can even call that corporate garbage news anymore. We got billionaires playing god, buying up politicians like trinkets, lobbying laws that break your back while fattening their own pockets.
You work more and own less. You work harder and get further behind. You vote but nothing changes. You protest, they gas you. You struggle, they call you lazy. You bleed, they call it necessary. How long you gonna take it?
See, history repeats when folks got short memories. But I ain’t got amnesia, and neither should you. This country wasn’t given to the people. It was taken—torn from the hands of kings, of lords, of men who thought power was their birthright.
1776: That was treason. That was a ragtag army of pissed off farmers and workers saying, “No more.”
Shays’ Rebellion: They burned courthouses because banks were stealing land from veterans just like you, just like me.
The Battle of Blair Mountain: 10,000 coal miners fought the US Government and the whole US Army because they were sick of dying in the coal mines for pennies.
The Civil Rights Movement: Folks bled in the streets because “freedom” meant chains unless you were born the right color.
Revolution ain’t something foreign… It’s American tradition.
Thomas Jefferson said, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”
And don’t get it twisted. They want you to forget that. They want you scared, quiet, obedient. They want you docile.
Fred Hampton said, “You can kill a revolutionary, but you can’t kill the revolution.”
And that’s why they keep trying. They locked up our leaders, assassinated the ones they couldn’t buy, and told us to be happy with table scraps. But we ain’t forgotten.
Malcolm X said, “You can’t have capitalism without racism.”
And that’s the truth they don’t want you to hear. They keep us divided: Black versus white, rural versus urban, left versus right. Because as long as we’re fighting each other, we ain’t fighting them.
But let me tell you something: They fear you more than you fear them. You see it every time they pass a law criminalizing protest, every time they stack courts to protect the rich, every time they sic their dogs on workers demanding fair wages.
They’re terrified you’ll remember who really holds the power. It ain’t them. It’s us: the farmers, the nurses, the teachers, the truckers, the welders, the single moms working two jobs, the veterans they break and call it service—the ones who break their backs building this country while a handful of parasites hoard the wealth like dragons on a mountain of gold.
And I don’t give a damn if you’re Republican, Democrat, Green Party, independent, or don’t vote at all. This ain’t about left or right. This ain’t about red or blue. This is about top and bottom. And if you ain’t sitting in a penthouse right now, then you’re on the bottom with me.
So, what the hell are we waiting for? Another decade of wage theft? Another war that sends our sons and daughters to fight and die for oil barons? Another bank bailout while your town crumbles?
Nah. We get up, we link arms, we shut it down. You sick of gas prices? Shut it down. Sick of rent going up while wages stay the same? Shut it down. Sick of watching billionaires quadruple their wealth in a pandemic while your family skips meals? Shut. It. Down.
John Adams said, “Liberty once lost is lost forever.”
And we’re losing it every damn day. But we ain’t lost it yet.
Malcolm X said, “If you’re not ready to die for it, take the word ‘freedom’ out of your vocabulary.”
So, stand up. Speak out. Link up. They got money, sure. They got guns, yeah. But we got numbers. And that’s one thing they can never buy.
