Our Job

Have you forsaken Earth - Oh worker?

Have you forsaken our wide family

that nourishes its children everywhere?

For now every bough and rocky crevice,

every grove and curving bay

and the hope of every heart

is in your hands.

What was the reason for the Union?

What created us out of scraping vassals,

out of exhausted, breathless human property?

It was not the jobs assigned by Owners

with their great plans and mansions,

with their exploitations and their wars.

We made the Union - out of our recognition of each other -

The garment worker’s bruised hands,

The mason’s limp, miner’s cough,

The young in poverty, the old in despair -

We made the Union when we saw that together

we had the power to change all that.

We made the Union out of active love.

Will we worship the jobs doled out by Owners,

and put our futures in bondage to their greed?

Or will WE set the jobs that must be done

to bring this Union to the future we all need?

They tried to portray the Union as a little faction,

grasping for a share of what is produced.

But we always knew this story was a lie.

Our interest, our constituency, is all the people

and all the Earth as well.

There we will find our real job.

We are the Union.

We will determine what jobs need to be done -

Together. - Everywhere.

And jobs for hire and owners will be no more.