I guarantee it. I am that trouble. I am making that trouble. And so should you.

I feel our pain. I am sorry. It was sad. We try so hard. The deck is stacked. Turnout so low. Lies are told. Again and again. Commercials bombard us. Messaging is targeted. Divide and rule. Impeccably done.

Thank you for fighting. The goals are just. The punishment is not. Mid-term blues hurt. Real people are hurting. We won’t deny it. Two years of garbage. Triumphal reactionaries.

So it really happened. And it will keep on happening.

We must change the system. While working tactically to make the best sausage, we must also think strategically. We must also have a second set of simultaneous tactics. We must figure out ways to take that frigging sausage grinder and break it into pieces.

The system we have inherited is rigged. So, at least some of OUR focus should be on OUR need to change THEIR system to OUR system. Participatory self-rule by the masses of the workplaces, of the planet, of the spaces, high and low, where we have to survive, if we are to live, much less thrive.

So, I fight those sad battles of political engagement. I get out the vote. I strive for marginal advantages. I get it.

Participation in the system is necessary in the short run. But changing the system is necessary in the short run too. Changing the system is not just a long run goal. The pain is real. The pain is now. The pain is widespread. The pain has no valid driver’s license or green card. The pain has no job. The pain lives in fear and need. The pain is all around us.

So we try to ease the pain, not just with indirect action but also with direct action. We strike. We march. We sit in. We occupy. Where opportunity presents itself, we fight for minimum wage ordinances at the local level. We band together the best we can to provide each other mutual aid. We learn about our commonality with people all around OUR world who also do not benefit from the neoliberal hegemony.

I don’t know very much–I know. I am mindfully naïve. I bring my best as a species-being to share it with you and all my sisters and brothers of OUR world. That is all I can do, and I refuse to do anything less. I refuse to settle for the hamster wheel. I refuse to be a hamster. I may look like a hamster to you. You may look like a hamster to me. But it is because we have allowed the creators of the wheel to convince us that we are hamsters and not truly free species-being capable of breaking their hamster wheel.

So there you have it. Mixed metaphors. Not very palatable. Sausage grinding. Revolting hamsters. Eat crow if you want to. You did not deal these cards much less create that deck. Fight the power.