Democracy and the Traveller
by 
The writer, speaker, consultant, organizer, activist determined to do his part.
To stop the country’s move to meanness and division and more exploitation and more feet trampling workers and the weak and condemning the old who can’t work to ugly death and busting the unions so there is no one left to say STOP, DAMMIT, STOP!!!! Or we will put sand in your gears or strike or just say NO when the straw boss says time to work.
That one sits to figure out how to get from one struggle to the next in small towns that can start big movements. It ain’t easy when you stay on the road and this massive, beautiful country is home whatever night and whenever you gotta be where you gotta be just because the folks here are ready to raise hell and can you help?
Of course he can help cause he can’t say NO and now is the time to fight and he can’t stay out of this fight.
Even though he knows as the old man in Maine said Ya can’t git there from here.
Lord willin’ and the traveller prayed on it and he thinks the Lord is willing the traveller will get there.
And he is happy to take up the biggest thing he’s got in defense of an idea called democracy that says the powerful can’t rule the powerless, and so he will use the biggest God-given thing he’s got – his voice to shout the truth, out the lies, call the shit what it is, and do all he can everywhere he can to return this massive, beautiful country to democracy.
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Stewart Acuff is America’s best-known and foremost labor organizer. He is the former organizing Director of the AFL-CIO. Acuff has also written two books: Playing Bigger Than You Are: A Life in Organizing, and Getting America Back to Work, coauthored by Dr. Richard Levins.
