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I'm just a hick from Oklahoma. Even when I was really trying to make a change on society, I was either feeling my way dumbly forward or I was following somebody else. I didn't really start to think for myself until I met George Meyers.
George was the trade union leader of the Communist Party, USA. He came to Dallas to check up on trade union developments. He was always kind enough to advise me when I asked. His was the voice of experience. At one time, he had led the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) in his state. Like a lot of communists, he gave it all up to join the army and fight fascism. After serving in the army, the government gave him another chance to serve. This time it was a long prison sentence for being a red.
So George was really wise when it came to working people's struggles. He told me that working people had never made any permanent gains. As long as capitalism is in power, George said and I believed him, they would always try to take back everything we won. So even when we win something, we just have another fight to keep it or to win it over again. And it will always be like that as long as the capitalists are in power.
Now, in 2019, it's easy to see how right George was. In my lifetime, we won some civil rights. Now we're losing them. We won some more democracy. Now we're losing it. We won a pretty good standard of living for working people. Now we're losing it. It's not natural, it's capitalism. It's the fact that working people have enemies, and those enemies will take back everything we win if they can. The only way we're ever going to get permanent gains and really go forward into the future is to remove the capitalists from power first.
On the one hand, that sounds really hard. On another hand, it sounds really easy because we could get everything we wanted in a single day if we could all just pull together. Of course, we can't pull together right now. But we're learning. We're practicing and we're learning.
That's what George Meyers taught me and that's the truth.
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