This Labor Day, Working People Deserve Money, Power and Respect

Over the weekend I had the joy of serving as a marshal in the Chicago Labor Day Parade. I was raised on the South Side of Chicago, by my grandmother, a union steward who taught me early that there is dignity in work and power in standing together. So spending Labor Day back home, surrounded by working people and the labor movement that has shaped this city, was deeply special to me. Thanks for reading With Radical Imagination! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. But it also underscored an urgent truth: The basic bargain between working people and power in this country is broken. And it did not happen by accident. For generations, working people were told that if you worked hard, played by the rules and did your part, you could build a good life. That work should lead somewhere. That you could afford a home, care for your family, retire with dignity and leave your children with more opportunity than you had. That promise was never equally available to everyone. Black workers, women, immigrants and generations of others had to organize and fight to expand who could participate in it. But today, even that basic promise has disappeared for too many people. You can work hard every day and still struggle to pay rent. You can work full time and still have to choose between groceries and medicine. You can care for someone else's children or aging parents and still be unable to afford care for your own family. You can do everything this country tells you you're supposed to do and still wonder whether you will ever own a home, retire, or leave your children something more. That is not a failure of working people. It is the result of choices. For decades, corporations and the ultra-wealthy have accumulated more money and more power while working people have been asked to make do with less. Corporations suppress wages, outsource jobs and responsibilities, fight workers who try to organize and use their enormous influence to shape the rules in their favor. And then, too often, billionaires and corporations use race, immigration status, geography, gender and who we love to keep working people fighting one another instead of asking the question they hope we never ask: Why do the people with the most keep getting more while the people who make this country run have to fight for the basics? Imagine what would be possible if the wealthiest paid their fair share. There is enough wealth in this country for working people to live good lives. The question is who our economy is designed to serve. Imagine what we could build if billionaires and wealthy corporations paid their fair share instead of using their power to rig the rules. We could make child care affordable for every family and pay care workers wages that reflect the essential work they do. We could make healthcare something every person can count on, instead of something that can bankrupt a family. We could invest in great public schools, good union jobs, affordable housing, clean energy and infrastructure in every community. We could create real pathways for working people to buy homes, build wealth and retire with dignity. We could make sure that as AI and new technology transform our economy, workers have the power to shape that future and share in the wealth it creates instead of watching another generation of billionaires get richer from our labor. None of this is beyond our reach. We have the resources. What we have lacked is a fair distribution of money and power. And that is why our fight is about three simple things: Money. Power. Respect. Money means a job should pay enough to build a good life, not simply survive until the next paycheck. Power means working people should have a real say over the decisions that shape our jobs, our families, our communities and our democracy. Respect means our work, our families, our rights and our humanity are treated with dignity. These aren't radical demands. They are the foundation of a society that actually works. And unions prove every day that when working people have power, we can begin to rebalance the scales. When workers come together and win higher wages, that money doesn't disappear into an offshore account. It goes to rent and mortgages. It goes to groceries and school clothes. It gets spent at the neighborhood restaurant, the barber shop and the corner store. When workers win predictable schedules and job security, parents get more time with their children. When care workers win better jobs, the people they care for benefit too. Worker well-being is community well-being. That is why the labor movement has never only been about the people who already carry union cards. Our responsibility is bigger. We are fighting for a country with no poverty-wage jobs. A country where every worker has the freedom to join together with their coworkers and bargain. A country where corporations and billionaires cannot buy more political power than millions of working people have together. And this fall, that fight goes from our workplaces to the ballot box. We are mobilizing one million SEIU members around the country because elections should be about more than choosing between candidates. They should be about deciding what kind of country we are going to build and who will have the power to build it. We will support leaders who will fight to put more money in our pockets, more power in our hands and more respect in our lives. Leaders who will protect our freedom to organize and vote. Leaders who will make billionaires and corporations pay what they owe. Leaders who understand that earning the support of working people means delivering for working people. Because at the end of the day, we are the ones who keep this country going. We care for the sick and our elders. We teach and care for our children. We clean our airports, schools and offices. We drive buses. We keep our water safe. We feed our communities. And yes, on Labor Day, we deserve the cookouts, the parades and some damn rest. But we also deserve something much bigger. We deserve an economy and a democracy that recognize the dignity of our work and the power of our contribution. We deserve money. We deserve power. We deserve respect. And together, we are going to demand all three. Thanks for reading With Radical Imagination! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.