Reprinted from the People’s Weekly World

Earth Day, April 22, is sandwiched between Tax Day, April 15, and Workers Memorial Day, April 28. Just around the corner is May Day, May 1, the international workers day and a day for flower baskets and maypoles. What do they all have in common?

An economy powered by two toxic pollutants: oil and corporate greed. Misplaced priorities that send more than half of our tax dollars to military spending that kills people, ruins lives, pollutes the planet and wrecks our economy. Damaging foreign policy driven by a quest to secure oil. Workers lives lost and health destroyed because of corporate greed. A system that puts profit before people and ravages the earth along the way. And the need for workers and people of the world to unite, to love and preserve our planet and to build a better world.

Its clearer than ever that the present system cant continue. Its not sustainable, either economically or environmentally. Vast parts of our country are industrial wastelands empty factories, mills, warehouses and storefronts testify to jobs gone forever. In too many places, military bases and industries, or prisons, are the best or only jobs around. Toxic brownfields and Superfund sites dot urban and rural landscapes. Open green space, family farms, woods and wetlands have been plowed under for wasteful exurban sprawl and industrial parks many now sporting for lease and foreclosure signs. Industrial agriculture has brought degraded and tainted food, pollution and toxic working conditions.

Turning this around means getting our economic system in sync with Mother Nature greening our economy. It means a massive national undertaking to invest in sustainable, non-polluting energy, industry and transportation systems; in well-planned, vibrant and sustainable green cities, towns and rural communities; in education, health care and culture to produce an informed and involved citizenry. Of course, that means putting people, and nature, before profits. This wont happen without a fight.

Earth Day and May Day remind us to breathe the beauty of the flowers of spring and the roses of summer and struggle. Love your mother planet Earth, and, in the words of labor organizer Mother Jones, fight like hell for the living.

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