by Bryan Watson – Seattle, WA, Certified Nursing Assistant

My mother is a schoolteacher. My grandfather taught for forty years. My uncles all are in education. I witnessed the stress, the long hours, the paltry pay, the sacrifice, and the struggle of my working class family, and began to question the way things were. As I grew up and began to pay attention to society and listen to the politicians, I realized that these people did not speak for my family. Whether it was a Republican or Democrat in office, my family’s situation rarely changed, and if it did change, it was usually for the worse.

My family was to me a microcosm of society. I could see this being played out a thousand times over in every household in every town – families overstressed, overburdened, forced to make impossible decisions in an effort to make every penny last. Meanwhile the politicians, the corporate executives, and the banks all got richer. With each sacrifice by my family I could see that neither the Republicans nor the Democrats had any solution.

Then I read The Communist Manifesto, and through that reading and Socialist Alternative I found a solution to the problems that affected my family and all other working class families.